Roguelike Games, Ranked

Supergiant's action-roguelike won the first-ever Hugo Award for Best Video Game and swept multiple 2020 Game of the Year honors, fusing tight combat with story that advances every death.

MegaCrit's 2019 release essentially defined the roguelike deckbuilder and spawned countless imitators, praised for near-endless card synergy across its four characters.

LocalThunk's 2024 poker roguelike won a BAFTA (Best Debut Game) and a Golden Joystick award and was a Game of the Year nominee at The Game Awards, selling millions on jokers-and-hands math alone.

Edmund McMillen's 2014 remake stacks hundreds of items into absurd synergies and remains one of the most-played roguelikes years after launch thanks to sprawling expansions.

Motion Twin's 2018 hit blends fast 2D combat with permadeath progression and earned wide acclaim plus years of free content updates.

Derek Yu's game turned handcrafted-feeling procedural caves into a genre landmark; its 2020 sequel Spelunky 2 deepened the systems to more acclaim.

Hopoo Games' 2020 shift to 3D kept the escalating item-stacking chaos, where difficulty scales with the clock and builds snowball into screen-clearing madness.

Dodge Roll's 2016 shooter is a dense bullet-hell roguelike stuffed with pun-heavy guns, widely praised for tight controls and secret depth.

This 2012 Kickstarter breakout made real-time spaceship management a nail-biter and is credited with helping revive the roguelike genre for a wide audience.

Cellar Door's 2013 game popularized persistent meta-progression, letting each descendant carry traits and upgrades that soften permadeath's sting.

Red Hook's 2016 gothic RPG layers a punishing stress-and-affliction system over party roguelike runs, beloved for its narrator and brutal tone.

Supergiant's 2024 sequel entered early access to strong reviews, expanding the formula with a new witch protagonist and dual-realm structure, though still unfinished.

First released in 1987 and still updated, it is one of the deepest traditional roguelikes, famous for the mantra that 'the dev team thinks of everything.'

Brace Yourself Games' 2015 title fuses roguelike dungeon crawling with rhythm mechanics, a clever hybrid that later powered the official Zelda spin-off Cadence of Hyrule.

A frantic top-down shooter roguelike from Vlambeer that left early access in 2015, well regarded for punchy gunplay and mutant builds but notoriously unforgiving to newcomers.

The 1980 dungeon crawler that gave the entire genre its name, with procedural levels and permadeath that every entry here still descends from.

This 2022 auto-attacking horde survivor won the BAFTA for Best Game and launched the whole 'survivors-like' wave, though its minimal-input loop stretches the roguelike label.

Digital Sun's 2018 game pairs dungeon runs with a shop-management sim; a charming idea, but combat and dungeon variety drew middling criticism.

The 2016 action roguelike from Harebrained Schemes drew mixed-to-negative reviews (Metacritic in the high 50s) for clunky combat and repetitive environments, a notable stumble for the studio.