Gamereactor’s Gamer Guides: Essential Roguelikes -.

Roguelike feels like a fairly new term, but the genre has been slowly building for quite some time, with the last few years seeing an explosion of games where you take a chance with each run, increasing your chances of success until you finally get a clear, only to do it all over again. These games are addictive in their simplicity, and they’ve made some of the standout hits of recent years, especially from indie studios that just manage to spin the genre the right way to make it feel utterly refreshing.

Again, as is the case with all these essential guides, we don’t have room to put every game we love, and instead try to focus on the genre’s main points. We should have a deck-builder here, and we should also have a co-op game, but we won’t fill the list with one or the other.

5. Inciscence

Speaking of deck-builders, oh look! Here’s one right now. Starting in a dank, dark cabin in the woods, sitting on a rickety table across from perhaps the scariest man I’ve ever seen in my life, it’s hard not to be immediately upset by Inscryption. The game has your neck hairs up from the first minute, and yet, like all good roguelikes, it’s almost impossible to put down. We can’t say much more without giving away the mystery hidden in Inscryption, and since it is well worth the price of admission, we can only recommend playing it when you can.

4. Dead cells

Nostalgic, pixelated images. Fast-paced battles. Bosses you can’t help but fight, even after dying to them fifty times. These are dead cells. Part metroidvania, part roguelike, the modern classic from Motion Twin and Evil Empire took the genre to new heights, offering an adrenaline-fueled shot of an experience that makes us wonder if life is really as cool as a mass of cells taking over an incorporeal corpse.

3. FTL: faster than light

FTL came out in 2012, a time when roguelike was not as heavily used as it is now, but looking at it again, it is very much a roguelike. The game relies on you taking a ship through the stars, upgrading it and trying to keep your crew alive through a series of randomly generated events. It requires very little dedication but a good amount of brain power to keep everything in ship shape while you play, and soon you may find yourself losing hours to FTL and about to be a ship manager with no sense at all while removing oxygen from all but the most necessary places.

2. Risk of rain 2.

I told you we’d have a co-op item here, didn’t I? Although Risk of Rain 2 can be played and enjoyed solo, nothing beats shooting down bosses while you and your friends collect as many upgrades as possible to explode your screens endless waves of lasers and bullets. At first, Risk of Rain 2 can seem a bit overwhelming. There are many items that each do different things, as well as different characters to choose from, but over time you get the hang of it and you can enjoy a third-person shooter with friends made even greater by a great soundtrack and mods that allow you to play as Goku (yes, he’s overpowered).

1. Hades

For many indie fans, Supergiant Games will have been on their radar for a while before 2020. However, once Hades 1.0 launched, it felt like the floodgates were finally, properly opened for Supergiant, and people woke up to how great this developer has been. No roguelike felt as polished and as instant classic as Hades, and while we have a sequel that wants to achieve even more than the original, at this point nothing beats escaping from the underworld like Zagreus. It has battles for the gameplay purists, a story for those who want to get lost in a tale worthy of the Greek myths on which it is based, and randomness for those who like to roll the dice. A true king in its genre.