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.
Hades 10outta10
I don’t think anyone should play anything other than Hades.
Until Hades 2 is released, that is.
I’m so in love with this game it’s not even funny. Hated it the first time I played it on Xbox, got it on my steam deck and can’t put it down.
Dead Cells is brilliant
A personal favourite is UnReal World.
…into the far north we shall take you.
COGMIND.
COGMIND COGMIND COGMIND.
Cogmind is legitimately the most underrated “real” roguelike around. Everyone knows about CDDA and Caves of Qud or whatever, I never see anyone talk about Cogmind. It’s such a rabbit hole both gameplay and actually story-wise (because yeah, it actually has a story, despite being a traditional roguelike) that I can’t help but wonder how the hell it’s developer keeps going.
They have a blog where they talk about the game. It’s borderline obsessive.
If I look at any one aspect of it closely I inevitably end up going “wait, what the hell?” because it goes farther than I expected. In-game computer terminals, the way word of your presence travels throughout the caverns you’re in, each tile actually being a 3x3 space which affects how much “cover” you have… playing for quite a few hours before meeting other truly sentient robots and realizing that oh, there’s, like, lore. A lot of it.
COGMIND is, hands-down, the most beautiful Roguelike game I have ever enjoyed. I recommend this game as well! God, I wish it had a mobile port.
CoQ is indeed a quality game, that I would recommend. Another one, if you are interested in sci-fi, Cogmind. It has pretty amazing graphics, even if you use ASCII style.
CDDA, is fun sci-fi post-apocalypse, with zombies. But its complex. But real fun.
Man I’m sad we don’t have an /r/roguelikes here. Discussion of the genre has been clobbered by the much more popular roguelites and it was nice to have a forum focused on traditional roguelikes. There’s a discord but it’s not the same.
Some lesser known ones that I think are quite cool:
Shadow of the Wyrm, open world fantasy with a nice vibe.
Dawn of the Mexica, quite brutal lethal combat with an uncommon setting.
Forays into Norrendrin, traditional dungeon crawler setting with distilled gameplay systems. Brogue-adjacent.
The Ground Gives Way, also a traditional dungeon crawler but with a really interesting fatigue-based equipment system and non lethal combat options. Cool item effects and stuff.
Lost Flame, if dark souls was a roguelike. Quite involved combat where attacks are telegraphed and you can dodge them, use abilities for movement etc. Great atmosphere.
Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead/Bright Nights are the obvious recommendations I have, though they are more managing/survival games than a classic roguelike.
One that I come back every now and then and don’t see recommended often is Prospector, it’s about exploring space.
Also I try NetHack every three or four years but I can’t make it hold my attention long enough to learn it.
I highly recommend OneBit Adventure. It is available on mobile and Steam. The last time I checked it is still in active development, So you will see new features and improvements frequently.
Ancient Domains of Mystery is really really good if you can get into it. It’s available on Steam, but you can get the free version which is identical except for the UI from https://adom.de/
I didn’t see anyone recommend in the comments, but I very much enjoyed Dreamscaper. It has a nice story revolving around the main character confronting hwr psychological issues in the world of her dreams. Combat is fun, slower paced and a little more tactical than most.
Also, fwiw, I’m not generally a roguelike fan, but I liked this one. Whether that makes you more or less likely to take my recommendation is up to you lol.
Enter the Gungeon is fun if you like bullet hell And Spelunky 1 and 2 are nice if you want a roguelike as a jump’n’run Although if you want to play Spelunky, definitely start with the first game. The second game is more difficult and more complex.
I hate bullet hell games and I still absolutely adore Gungeon. I’ve got probably a few hundred hours in it and I still have never been able to beat it once, though.
Holy god, I never thought I’d see someone else mention DCSS in the wild!! I used to play that a bunch about a year or so ago. Truth be told, I kind of miss it once in a while. Devilishly hard, but I did manage to break into Hell once. Even killed one of the pandemonium lords.
Shit… I might start playing again.
It was updated recently!
Caves of Qud is AMAZING! You should buy it OP
I poured way too much time into Rogue, Moria, Angband and Zangband back in the day… Sad to see Zangband completely disappeared - no idea if there’s a similar flavour floating around.
Played a couple of newer more graphical (and probably better balanced games) but I actually found them less engaging.
My son was madly into Shattered Pixel Dungeon for a while.
I tend to play a lot of the old text-tile games that I cut my teeth on back starting with Angband. Any of those variants are enjoyable, but I pretty much stick to Zangband (Angband adding in the work of Zelazny) and frogcomposband (It’s a mouthfull, but FUN).