The Best Roguelikes, Ranked
Seventeen run-based games, ranked by how much work the run itself does, meaning how fast decisions compound and how different the tenth attempt feels from the first. Vote the order into better shape. Purists wanting the roguelites gone will be disappointed. Drawing the line at meta-progression would cut Hades and Dead Cells while keeping games almost nobody finishes, and what a run does to you matters more here than whether an unlock survives death. The ASCII lineage comes in on the same terms: NetHack and Caves of Qud earn slots because a Qud run kills you in ways the action wave has not imagined. Dwarf Fortress stays out, since the mode most people play is a colony sim. Early-access builds and expansions were skipped, and where the sole Steam listing is a remaster the copy says so. Single-sitting games without runs belong on the under-ten-hours list instead.
Hades is #1 on “The Best Roguelikes, Ranked”.
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Hades
Dying is the plot, which nobody had pulled off this well before Supergiant released the 1.0 on 17 September 2020. Zagreus fails, the House fills with people who have opinions about how he failed, and the story moves forward a notch. The Mirror of Night is the trap: one more run, because Death Defiance is always another handful of Darkness away.
Hades on SteamDefy the god of the dead as you hack and slash out of the Underworld in this rogue-like dungeon crawler from the creators of Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre.https://store.steampowered.com/app/1145360/ - 2
Slay the Spire
Card removal is the whole thing, and it took me fifty runs to believe it. Your starting deck is mostly Strikes and Defends, and the winning runs are the ones where you spent gold at the merchant deleting them rather than buying something shiny. Mega Crit released the 1.0 on 23 January 2019 and every deckbuilder since has been arguing with it.
Slay the Spire on SteamWe fused card games and roguelikes together to make the best single player deckbuilder we could. Craft a unique deck, encounter bizarre creatures, discover relics of immense power, and Slay the Spire!https://store.steampowered.com/app/646570/ - 3
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
Brimstone turns your tears into a red laser and rewrites a run in one pickup; two synergies later you are deleting bosses and cackling, and then you find Cursed Eye and it all falls apart. Nicalis rebuilt Edmund McMillen's Flash original and shipped this version on 4 November 2014, which is why people have four-figure hour counts.
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth on SteamThe Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a randomly generated action RPG shooter with heavy Rogue-like elements. Following Isaac on his journey players will find bizarre treasures that change Isaac’s form giving him super human abilities and enabling him to fight off droves of mysterious creatures, discover secrets and fight his way to safety.https://store.steampowered.com/app/250900/ - 4
Dead Cells
Motion Twin shipped the 1.0 on 7 August 2018, and the moment it clicks is parrying an elite with the Ice Shield and freezing the whole room, where combat stops being twitchy and starts being deliberate. Cells buy permanent unlocks between runs, purists hate that, and the game is better for it, because every death funds the next attempt.
Dead Cells on SteamDead Cells is a roguelite, metroidvania inspired, action-platformer. You'll explore a sprawling, ever-changing castle... assuming you’re able to fight your way past its keepers in 2D souls-lite combat. No checkpoints. Kill, die, learn, repeat.https://store.steampowered.com/app/588650/ - 5
Balatro
LocalThunk built it alone and Playstack published it on 20 February 2024. Poker hands are the vocabulary and jokers are the grammar; the run where Blueprint lands next to a scaling joker is where the numbers stop meaning anything and you start playing with exponents. I lost a whole evening to an ante-nine flush build without once checking the clock.
Balatro on SteamThe poker roguelike. Balatro is a hypnotically satisfying deckbuilder where you play illegal poker hands, discover game-changing jokers, and trigger adrenaline-pumping, outrageous combos.https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/ - 6
FTL: Faster Than Light
Venting a hull section to suffocate a boarding party while your pilot bleeds out is a decision you make in about four seconds. Subset Games released it on 14 September 2012 and nothing since has made a spreadsheet this tense. The Rebel fleet creeping across the sector map is the clock, and it has ended more of my runs than any boss.
FTL: Faster Than Light on SteamThis "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" allows you to take your ship and crew on an adventure through a randomly generated galaxy filled with glory and bitter defeat.https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/ - 7
Spelunky 2
Nothing here is random noise. Shoot a shopkeeper with a stray bomb and he will hunt you across four more levels and kill you at the exit, which is a grudge no other roguelike bothers to model. Mossmouth and BlitWorks put the sequel on PlayStation 4 on 15 September 2020 and on Windows a fortnight later, and learning to leave shopkeepers alone costs about sixty deaths.
Spelunky 2 on SteamSpelunky 2 builds upon the unique, randomized challenges that made the original a roguelike classic, offering a huge adventure designed to satisfy players old and new. Meet the next generation of explorers as they find themselves on the Moon, searching for treasure and missing family.https://store.steampowered.com/app/418530/ - 8
Caves of Qud
Freehold Games built it and Kitfox published the 1.0 on 5 December 2024, which makes the oldest-feeling game here one of the newest releases. Choosing a mutant over a true kin at character creation forks everything after it, because mutations compound in ways nothing bothers to explain. My best run ended when a fire I started spread into a village I needed alive.
Caves of Qud on SteamInhabit a deeply-simulated science fantasy world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Build a character from over a hundred mutations and cybernetics. The award-winning sandbox roguelike & RPG full of robots, deep lore, and sentient plants.https://store.steampowered.com/app/333640/ - 9
Risk of Rain 2
Time is the difficulty curve, so looting carefully is itself a mistake: the longer you take, the nastier the spawns. Hopoo Games moved the series into 3D and Gearbox published the 1.0 on 11 August 2020. Stacking a dozen Soldier's Syringes behind a Brilliant Behemoth until Engineer turrets clear a whole screen is the dumbest fun in the genre.
Risk of Rain 2 on SteamEscape a chaotic alien planet by fighting through hordes of frenzied monsters – with your friends, or on your own. Combine loot in surprising ways and master each character until you become the havoc you feared upon your first crash landing.https://store.steampowered.com/app/632360/ - 10
Noita
Wand editing is where the thing turns on you: I welded a chainsaw trigger to a homing spark bolt and vaporized myself in a single frame. Nolla Games released the 1.0 on 15 October 2020, and every pixel is simulated, so sand falls, oil burns, and water carries lightning straight back to whoever cast it. Deaths are nearly always self-inflicted.
Noita on SteamNoita is a magical action roguelite set in a world where every pixel is physically simulated. Fight, explore, melt, burn, freeze and evaporate your way through the procedurally generated world using spells you've created yourself.https://store.steampowered.com/app/881100/ - 11
Hades II
Supergiant's sequel reached 1.0 on 25 September 2025, and it is denser, longer and a little less disciplined than the first. Spending Magick to hold a cast rather than dashing clear changes the rhythm of every fight, because witchcraft rewards standing still where the first game punished it. Routes above the Underworld as well as below mean more to see and a longer wait before a run feels tight.
Hades II on SteamBattle beyond the Underworld using dark sorcery to take on the Titan of Time in this bewitching sequel to the award-winning rogue-like dungeon crawler.https://store.steampowered.com/app/1145350/ - 12
NetHack: Legacy
Open-source since 1987 and still maintained by the NetHack DevTeam, this is the ancestor the rest of the list descends from; the Steam product is FrozenCrate's 2018 remaster of that free original rather than a new game. Praying to your god while Weak from hunger saves you roughly as often as it doesn't, and one cockatrice corpse ends everything.
NetHack: Legacy on SteamNETHACK: LEGACY is a remastered version of the original NetHack, the deeply rich and complex fantasy D&D roguelike. Hack and slash your way through orcs, dragons, and cockatrices as you explore the perilous procedurally-generated dungeons seeking the Amulet of Yendor.https://store.steampowered.com/app/837200/ - 13
Darkest Dungeon
Stress is the antagonist, not the monsters. Douse the torch for better loot and the resolve checks get worse; a hero at a hundred stress can turn Abusive and spend the fight screaming at the healer instead of swinging at anything. Red Hook Studios released it on 19 January 2016. I lost a fully leveled Vestal to a heart attack two rooms from the exit.
Darkest Dungeon® on SteamDarkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes against unimaginable horrors, stress, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark. Can you keep your heroes together when all hope is lost?https://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/ - 14
Crypt of the NecroDancer
Brace Yourself Games released it on 23 April 2015 with Danny Baranowsky on the soundtrack, and the rule is that you move on the beat or you lose the coin multiplier. Greed and timing become the same resource, which is a cruel idea. The shopkeeper sings along in key with whatever track is playing, and that is the detail everybody remembers.
Crypt of the NecroDancer on SteamCrypt of the NecroDancer is an award winning hardcore roguelike rhythm game. Move to the music and deliver beatdowns to the beat! Groove to the epic Danny Baranowsky soundtrack, or select songs from your own MP3 collection!https://store.steampowered.com/app/247080/ - 15
Enter the Gungeon
Dodge Roll made it and Devolver Digital published it on 5 April 2016. Rolling through a bullet costs nothing if you time it, and rolling over a table flips that table into cover, so movement is offense and defense on the same button. Gun puns wear thin around hour forty; the run where the shop sells you a Black Hole Gun does not.
Enter the Gungeon on SteamEnter the Gungeon is a bullet hell dungeon crawler following a band of misfits seeking to shoot, loot, dodge roll and table-flip their way to personal absolution by reaching the legendary Gungeon’s ultimate treasure: the gun that can kill the past.https://store.steampowered.com/app/311690/ - 16
Vampire Survivors
poncle released the 1.0 on 20 October 2022 and started a subgenre in which you barely press anything. You move, the weapons fire themselves, and twenty minutes later the screen is a solid wall of garlic and lightning with a boss somewhere inside it. Ranked here for what it began rather than what it asks of you, and I still played forty hours.
Save 25% on Vampire Survivors on SteamMow down thousands of night creatures and survive until dawn! Vampire Survivors is a gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements, where your choices can allow you to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you. Be the bullet hell!https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794680/ - 17
Returnal
Selene crashes on Atropos and starts the loop again. Housemarque shipped it for PlayStation 5 on 30 April 2021, and the PC version reached Steam on 15 February 2023, which is why a PlayStation roguelike can sit on a Steam-linked list at all. Suspend Cycle, the mid-run save added in an October 2021 update, exists because one cycle can eat two hours. Losing one to a bad landing still stings.
Returnal™ on SteamBREAK THE CYCLE Fight to survive as this award-winning third-person shooter brings Selene’s story to PC. Take on roguelike challenges. Engage enemies in bullet hell-fuelled clashes. Share your journey through Returnal™ with another player.https://store.steampowered.com/app/1649240/
How this list was ranked
Readers rank this list by voting items up and down. Items are ordered by reader votes.
