Gamereactor's Gamer Guides: Essential Roguelikes

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Roguelike feels like a fairly new term, but the genre has slowly been building for a long time now, with recent years seeing an explosion of the games where you take a chance on each run, building 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 have made some of the stand-out hits of recent years, especially from indie studios that just manage to twist the genre in the right way to make it feel utterly refreshing.

Once again, as is the case with all of these essential guides, we don't have space to put every game we love, and instead try and focus on key points of the genre. We've got to have a deck-builder on here, and we've got to have a co-op game too, but we won't fill out the list with one or the other.

5. Incscryption

Speaking of deck-builders, oh look! Here's one now. Starting off in a dank, dark cabin in the woods, sitting on a rickety table opposite perhaps the creepiest man I've ever seen in my life, it's hard not to be immediately unsettled by Inscryption. The game has your hackles up from the first minute, and yet like all good roguelikes, it's near impossible to put down. We can't say much more without spoiling the mystery hidden within Inscryption, and as it's more than worth the price of entry, all we can recommend is playing it when you can.

4. Dead Cells

Nostalgic, pixelated visuals. Fast-paced combat. Bosses that you can't help but love to fight even after dying to them fifty times. That's Dead Cells. Part metroidvania, part roguelike, Motion Twin and Evil Empire's modern classic took the genre to new heights, providing an adrenaline shot of an experience that makes us wonder if life really is that cool as a mass of cells taking over a disembodied corpse.

3. FTL: Faster Than Light

FTL came out in 2012, a time when roguelike wasn't really used as heavily as it is now, but if you take another look at it, 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 commitment, but a good amount of brain power to keep everything ship-shape as you play, and soon enough you can find yourself losing hours to FTL and on the verge of being a ship manager devoid of all feeling as you remove oxygen from all but the most necessary of places.

2. Risk of Rain 2

I told you we'd have a co-op entry on here, didn't I? While Risk of Rain 2 can be played and enjoyed solo, there's nothing like blasting bosses down as you and your friends collect the most amount of upgrades possible to make your screens endless waves of lasers and bullets blasting. At first, Risk of Rain 2 can come across as a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of items that each do different things, and different characters to choose from as well, but in time, you get the hang of it, and can enjoy a third-person shooter with friends that is made even greater by a stellar soundtrack and mods that let you play as Goku (yes, he is overpowered).

1. Hades

For a lot of indie fans, Supergiant Games will have been on the radar for some time before 2020. However, once Hades 1.0 launched, it felt like the flood gates finally, properly opened for Supergiant, and people woke up to how amazing this developer has been. No roguelike has felt as polished and as much of an instant classic as Hades has, and while we have a sequel looking to accomplish even more than the original, right now nothing beats escaping the underworld as Zagreus. It has combat for the gameplay purists, story for those looking to get lost in a narrative worthy of the Greek myths it's based on, and randomness for those who love to roll the dice. A true king of its genre.