Getting into DCSS a lot recently. Still just running Minotaur Berserker with the furthest I’ve made it being the 10th floor aha.
Regardless, really enjoying it and wondering if others have any other recommendations. I tried ToME4 and just felt overwhelmed and wasn’t enjoying myself too much.
Have my eyes of Caves of Qud as well. Love the more “literary” aspect to it (even though I know it’s often nonsense), and the atmosphere/setting. Seems to be highly regarded overall though. Wondering if I should buy it and play alongside DCSS.
Tangledeep is honestly really underrated. Beautiful graphics, great music, monster taming, swapping to whatever job class you like… My favourite roguelike hands down.
The Pokémon mystery dungeon games are also amazing, a little more simplistic but still great. If you want a punishing challenge then the Shiren series might be for you!
I’ve very recently spent a close to a hundred hours on a single character on Caves of Qud, and I’ve hardly scratched the surface of what would be it’s endgame areas. If you can handle the interface it’s an incredible game with near endless possibilities. The build variety is pretty massive with the way mutations/cybernetics and skills/stats interact with each other, allowing you to build your characters exactly how you want.
Tales of Maj’Eyal is also an excellent choice with a huge variety of ways to play with it’s dozens of classes and a wide variety of races to play to keep things fresh each run. The world itself is static, but each zone itself is random per run, and it also has the ability to tune the difficulty a bit to your liking, as well as having a couple expansions to check out too (with another on the way).
Cogmind is another one I’ve put a decent amount of time into that has a ton of depth, allowing you to pick and choose what parts to strap onto your bot for each run. Stealth hacker runs, ranged artillery explosion builds, incredibly fast ninja melee builds, there’s a myriad of cool ways to experience all it has to offer.
These are all pretty in depth games, and the first 10-30 hours could easily be seen as your tutorial, so don’t be discouraged by being overwhelmed by things, and don’t be afraid to look things up if you need to!
I love the idea of these games, but I am terrible at them. I sat down with Dark Souls and played it until I got gud, but Caves and Tales and Dwarf Fortress all kick my ass. Even Dungeons of Dredmor, which I poured dozens of hours into and got pretty far in, would annihilate me before I got to the bottom floor. Any tips on how to not suck long enough to learn how to not suck?
All of the games you mentioned regularly destroy my characters and plans, but that’s part of the fun of them I think. Dwarf Fortress is one I haven’t put enough time into due to the sheer depth and confusion of learning everything, I do plan to revisit it when I’ve got the itch for a colony builder and want to fail horrifically.
For Caves of Qud and Tales, my best recommendation is to try out new things and builds and see what works. I had miserable luck in Caves with most of my melee focused builds, but using a ranged focused build (use your ammo semi sparingly until Grit Gate where you can buy 1k rounds per restock) was what got me further then ever before. There’s some abilities that help immensely with survival too, the Precognition mutation allows you to see the future and reset on a cooldown, even if you stumble into an unfortunate death for example. Also look at domination or proselytize/beguiling, as those will allow you to recruit or control other characters, even shopkeepers who you can then drop the full inventory on the ground for you to utilize (though be careful, failure may turn them against you). Using a zone tier map like the one found on the Qud wiki if you don’t mind knowing roughly how tough each over world area is also is a good way to avoid stumbling into an area you’re not prepared for.
Tome I have less advice for even after 100+ hours, I had a blast trying out all sorts of build combos, but a good way to get an idea of what builds work well is to check out https://te4.org/characters-vault and search for your difficulty and campaign, and filter it to only show winners. This will show you a list of characters who have cleared the game, and allow you to see what their exact build was upon winning, including stats, talent choices, gear, and a few other useful things. Having a zone order guide pulled up absolutely helps as well and is a decent way to get familiar with where to go when still starting out, especially if you want to see every zone the game has to offer.
Lastly, for Qud, ToME, and even Dredmor, don’t be afraid to turn on a difficulty that isn’t permadeath. I love the thought of only having one life, but for learning the game it’s never a bad thing to turn that off for your first run (or first few!), as it’ll allow you to retry the same scenarios with different approaches to see what works best. Qud I think does this the best with it’s Roleplay mode, checkpointing at settlements so you’re set back usually by dying, but you can still continue on to get a better understanding of all the game has to offer, making future runs that much smoother. Death is all part of the fun either way, sometimes you’ve taken a character to the point where it’s starting to feel stale and a new build can reinvigorate interest in wanting to continue exploring what the worlds have to offer!
Cogmind is what I mentioned too, the developer is borderline obsessive and somehow it never gets the attention that other roguelikes get. I’m always shocked to see that it’s still getting regular updates.
You would really enjoy Caves of Qud. It’s like DCSS but science fantasy in a crazy world instead of pure fantasy. Mechanically they’re fairly equivalent; both offer a lot of deep builds and complicated ways to solve the problem of “how do I survive this next turn?”
If you’re into Pokemon, the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are fantastic. They aren’t the hardest roguelike in the world (still harder than a mainline Pokemon game though), but they’re fun. The stories are also incredible (can only speak for Rescue Team and Explorers, haven’t played the 3DS titles yet).
I’m currently playing Hades (a top-down, isometric brawler). The gameplay is really fun and with different weapons, skills & upgrades per run, it stays entertaining for a long time. The story is simple but engaging, and after almost every run, there are some characters with new dialogue that tells you more about it.
I was never really a roguelike fan but I loved Hades! The game always makes you feel like you’re making progress without feeling grindy, which I think is an issue that pushed me away from most roguelikes.
As a roguelike fan, I could not find a taste for Hades. A lot of roguelikes I play have a systemic nature to them where you can combine elements together to come up with creative solutions to problems, like making enemies attack each other because you triggered some criteria that allows that to happen. In Hades, all of the power ups just seemed to be a way to make you deal more damage and that was about it. Plus, out of four levels, I really wasn’t a fan of levels 3 and 4.
You’re right, Hades is not a very strategic game. There are some synergies between the power-ups, but mostly I just pick the ones that suit my playstyle. I’d also say that the power-ups in Hades are just there to mix it up a bit (and not really a core part of the gameplay loop).
There seems to be some disagreement over the term, but I have always liked the explanation that “true” Roguelikes are “like Rogue”, in that they have randomly-generated maps, permadeath, and nothing saved between runs; meanwhile Roguelites feature a “meta-progression” system that allows the player some kind of persistent progress that carries over between runs, and maybe other QOL features.
I’d like to add Enter the Gungeon to this list, as it fits thematically. It’s a roguelite with bullet hell aspects. In many respects very similar to The Binding of Isaac. And it has a great art style and humor.
If you are curious about a classic originator in the genre, and willing for a steep learning curve, I highly recommend to check out Nethack: “NetHack is a single-player roguelike video game originally released in 1987 with ASCII graphics. It is a descendant of an earlier game called Hack, which is a clone of Rogue”
It’s still under development today! I prefer the tile-based versions over the ascii versions. And if you can play it on a touch-screen device, that can be an even better experience.
Nethack is an amazing deep system to explore and learn about… but it’s not that fun to play (at least once you’ve already been to the late game). It’s more fun to read NetHackWiki than to actually play the game IMO. It would be a huge downgrade from DCSS, which is carefully designed to be fun.
I can see that. It did take me a while to really appreciate Nethack even back in the day. TBH I haven’t played it in 10ish years so maybe my recommendation was made poorly.
Darkest Dungeon is a game I keep coming back to. Long story short, it’s a roguelike where you send a group of four heroes into a dungeon and you fight lovecraftian horrors there. It’s also really well narrated!
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Inscryption is pretty great. It’s like a horror card game.
Brogue is worth a try. I like the back-to-the-genre-roots minimalism and the hybrid-ascii aesthetics. I alternate between DCSS and Brogue these days.
Tangledeep is honestly really underrated. Beautiful graphics, great music, monster taming, swapping to whatever job class you like… My favourite roguelike hands down.
The Pokémon mystery dungeon games are also amazing, a little more simplistic but still great. If you want a punishing challenge then the Shiren series might be for you!
Skul: the hero slayer is fantastic, there is a ridiculous amount of build variety and the gameplay is great.
I’ve very recently spent a close to a hundred hours on a single character on Caves of Qud, and I’ve hardly scratched the surface of what would be it’s endgame areas. If you can handle the interface it’s an incredible game with near endless possibilities. The build variety is pretty massive with the way mutations/cybernetics and skills/stats interact with each other, allowing you to build your characters exactly how you want.
Tales of Maj’Eyal is also an excellent choice with a huge variety of ways to play with it’s dozens of classes and a wide variety of races to play to keep things fresh each run. The world itself is static, but each zone itself is random per run, and it also has the ability to tune the difficulty a bit to your liking, as well as having a couple expansions to check out too (with another on the way).
Cogmind is another one I’ve put a decent amount of time into that has a ton of depth, allowing you to pick and choose what parts to strap onto your bot for each run. Stealth hacker runs, ranged artillery explosion builds, incredibly fast ninja melee builds, there’s a myriad of cool ways to experience all it has to offer.
These are all pretty in depth games, and the first 10-30 hours could easily be seen as your tutorial, so don’t be discouraged by being overwhelmed by things, and don’t be afraid to look things up if you need to!
I love the idea of these games, but I am terrible at them. I sat down with Dark Souls and played it until I got gud, but Caves and Tales and Dwarf Fortress all kick my ass. Even Dungeons of Dredmor, which I poured dozens of hours into and got pretty far in, would annihilate me before I got to the bottom floor. Any tips on how to not suck long enough to learn how to not suck?
All of the games you mentioned regularly destroy my characters and plans, but that’s part of the fun of them I think. Dwarf Fortress is one I haven’t put enough time into due to the sheer depth and confusion of learning everything, I do plan to revisit it when I’ve got the itch for a colony builder and want to fail horrifically.
For Caves of Qud and Tales, my best recommendation is to try out new things and builds and see what works. I had miserable luck in Caves with most of my melee focused builds, but using a ranged focused build (use your ammo semi sparingly until Grit Gate where you can buy 1k rounds per restock) was what got me further then ever before. There’s some abilities that help immensely with survival too, the Precognition mutation allows you to see the future and reset on a cooldown, even if you stumble into an unfortunate death for example. Also look at domination or proselytize/beguiling, as those will allow you to recruit or control other characters, even shopkeepers who you can then drop the full inventory on the ground for you to utilize (though be careful, failure may turn them against you). Using a zone tier map like the one found on the Qud wiki if you don’t mind knowing roughly how tough each over world area is also is a good way to avoid stumbling into an area you’re not prepared for.
Tome I have less advice for even after 100+ hours, I had a blast trying out all sorts of build combos, but a good way to get an idea of what builds work well is to check out https://te4.org/characters-vault and search for your difficulty and campaign, and filter it to only show winners. This will show you a list of characters who have cleared the game, and allow you to see what their exact build was upon winning, including stats, talent choices, gear, and a few other useful things. Having a zone order guide pulled up absolutely helps as well and is a decent way to get familiar with where to go when still starting out, especially if you want to see every zone the game has to offer.
Lastly, for Qud, ToME, and even Dredmor, don’t be afraid to turn on a difficulty that isn’t permadeath. I love the thought of only having one life, but for learning the game it’s never a bad thing to turn that off for your first run (or first few!), as it’ll allow you to retry the same scenarios with different approaches to see what works best. Qud I think does this the best with it’s Roleplay mode, checkpointing at settlements so you’re set back usually by dying, but you can still continue on to get a better understanding of all the game has to offer, making future runs that much smoother. Death is all part of the fun either way, sometimes you’ve taken a character to the point where it’s starting to feel stale and a new build can reinvigorate interest in wanting to continue exploring what the worlds have to offer!
Cogmind is what I mentioned too, the developer is borderline obsessive and somehow it never gets the attention that other roguelikes get. I’m always shocked to see that it’s still getting regular updates.
DCSS is my usual recommendation but you’re already playing it.
You would really enjoy Caves of Qud. It’s like DCSS but science fantasy in a crazy world instead of pure fantasy. Mechanically they’re fairly equivalent; both offer a lot of deep builds and complicated ways to solve the problem of “how do I survive this next turn?”
I like rogue-lites a bit more, so thethese games may or may not fit your interests.
If you’re into Pokemon, the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are fantastic. They aren’t the hardest roguelike in the world (still harder than a mainline Pokemon game though), but they’re fun. The stories are also incredible (can only speak for Rescue Team and Explorers, haven’t played the 3DS titles yet).
I’m currently playing Hades (a top-down, isometric brawler). The gameplay is really fun and with different weapons, skills & upgrades per run, it stays entertaining for a long time. The story is simple but engaging, and after almost every run, there are some characters with new dialogue that tells you more about it.
I was never really a roguelike fan but I loved Hades! The game always makes you feel like you’re making progress without feeling grindy, which I think is an issue that pushed me away from most roguelikes.
As a roguelike fan, I could not find a taste for Hades. A lot of roguelikes I play have a systemic nature to them where you can combine elements together to come up with creative solutions to problems, like making enemies attack each other because you triggered some criteria that allows that to happen. In Hades, all of the power ups just seemed to be a way to make you deal more damage and that was about it. Plus, out of four levels, I really wasn’t a fan of levels 3 and 4.
You’re right, Hades is not a very strategic game. There are some synergies between the power-ups, but mostly I just pick the ones that suit my playstyle. I’d also say that the power-ups in Hades are just there to mix it up a bit (and not really a core part of the gameplay loop).
I’d recommend: Hades, Dead Cells, The Binding of Isaac, and FTL
I think they’re looking for a roguelike and not a roguelite, but those are great roguelites!
What is the difference? I’m not familiar.
I did a small write-up off my understanding here, but that’s coming from someone that’s only dabbled in both and I may have missed some stuff.
There seems to be some disagreement over the term, but I have always liked the explanation that “true” Roguelikes are “like Rogue”, in that they have randomly-generated maps, permadeath, and nothing saved between runs; meanwhile Roguelites feature a “meta-progression” system that allows the player some kind of persistent progress that carries over between runs, and maybe other QOL features.
The ones I played and enjoyed:
Edit: woups was still editing the list and accidentally hit the post button… Added more
I’d like to add Enter the Gungeon to this list, as it fits thematically. It’s a roguelite with bullet hell aspects. In many respects very similar to The Binding of Isaac. And it has a great art style and humor.
I agree, totally forgot Enter the Gungeon…
Shattered Pixel Dungeon.
Binding of Isaac is my favorite.
If you are curious about a classic originator in the genre, and willing for a steep learning curve, I highly recommend to check out Nethack: “NetHack is a single-player roguelike video game originally released in 1987 with ASCII graphics. It is a descendant of an earlier game called Hack, which is a clone of Rogue” It’s still under development today! I prefer the tile-based versions over the ascii versions. And if you can play it on a touch-screen device, that can be an even better experience.
Nethack is an amazing deep system to explore and learn about… but it’s not that fun to play (at least once you’ve already been to the late game). It’s more fun to read NetHackWiki than to actually play the game IMO. It would be a huge downgrade from DCSS, which is carefully designed to be fun.
I can see that. It did take me a while to really appreciate Nethack even back in the day. TBH I haven’t played it in 10ish years so maybe my recommendation was made poorly.
Didn’t know about DCSS thanks.
Darkest Dungeon is a game I keep coming back to. Long story short, it’s a roguelike where you send a group of four heroes into a dungeon and you fight lovecraftian horrors there. It’s also really well narrated!
What a banger of a game, finished it 2 or 3 times. Can’t get into the second one tho…