Roguelike is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting their influence from tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.
Wizardry is a series of role-playing video games, developed by Sir-Tech, that were highly influential in the evolution of modern role-playing video games. The original Wizardry was a significant influence on early console role-playing games such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Originally made for the Apple II, the games were later ported to other platforms. The last game in the original series by Sir-Tech was Wizardry 8, released in 2001. There have since been various spin-off titles developed for the Japanese market.
Dungeon Hack is a 1993 role-playing video game developed by DreamForge Intertainment and published by Strategic Simulations for DOS and NEC PC-9801.
An action role-playing game is a subgenre of video games that combines core elements from both the action game and role-playing genre.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) is a free and open source roguelike computer game and the community-developed successor to the 1997 roguelike game Linley's Dungeon Crawl, originally programmed by Linley Henzell. It has been identified as one of the "major roguelikes" by John Harris.
Dungeons of Dredmor is a roguelike indie video game released on July 13, 2011, by Gaslamp Games. A downloadable content (DLC) pack, "Realm of the Diggle Gods", was released later that year. A second DLC, "You Have To Name The Expansion Pack", was released on June 5, 2012, and a third, "Conquest of the Wizardlands", was released on August 1, 2012. The game has extensive support for user-created modifications.
Desktop Dungeons is a single-player roguelike-like puzzle video game developed and published by QCF Design. Released in November 2013, the game underwent a lengthy public beta phase, during which it was available to customers who pre-ordered the game. In the game, players navigate a dungeon filled with monsters before battling a final dungeon boss. The game has qualities of a puzzle as players must find the best methods to use items, spells, and upgrades to reach the final boss without losing too much of their character's health. Desktop Dungeons has been compared to a roguelike but with condensed gameplay. Desktop Dungeons received an award for Excellence in Design at the 2011 Independent Games Festival. The game is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. A video game remake titled Desktop Dungeons: Rewind was announced in 2022 and released April 18, 2023.
Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike role-playing video game developed and published by Red Hook Studios. The game was first released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in January 2016, which followed a year-long early access development period. Later that year, it was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Linux, with a port for iOS being released in 2017, and ports for Nintendo Switch and Xbox One being released by 2018.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA) is an open-source survival horror roguelike video game. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a fork of the original game Cataclysm. The game is freely downloadable on the game's website and the source code is also freely available on the project's GitHub repository under the CC BY-SA Creative Commons license. The game is currently largely developed by its community. Rock, Paper, Shotgun named CDDA one of "The 50 Best Free Games on PC" in 2016.
Crawl is a brawler indie game by Australian developer Powerhoof. Up to four players and bots in local multiplayer advance through randomly generated dungeons with one player as the hero and the others as spirits who possess traps and monsters in the environment to kill and thus replace the hero. The game received a Steam Early Access release for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms in August 2014, and a full release for those three as well as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in April 2017 and a release for Nintendo Switch on December 19, 2017.
Overture is a roguelike adventure video game developed by Black Shell Games, a subsidiary of Black Shell Media LLC. The game was released on January 1, 2015 for Microsoft Windows. In the game, players select from one of 24 characters and travel throughout the game vanquishing enemies, collecting loot, and slaying monsters.
Brogue is a free roguelike computer video game created by Brian Walker. As in its predecessor Rogue, the goal of Brogue is for the player to descend to the 26th floor of the Dungeons of Doom, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and return to the surface. Players also have the option of delving deeper into the dungeon to obtain a higher score. This task is complicated by the presence of monsters and traps in a procedurally generated dungeon.
Enter the Gungeon is a 2016 bullet hell roguelike game developed by Dodge Roll and published by Devolver Digital. Set in the firearms-themed Gungeon, gameplay follows several player characters called Gungeoneers as they traverse procedurally generated rooms to find a gun that can "kill the past". The Gungeoneers fight against bullet-shaped enemies, which are fought using both conventional and exotic weapons. Enter the Gungeon features a permadeath system, causing the Gungeoneers to lose all obtained items and start again from the first level upon death. Between playthroughs, players can travel to an area called the Breach, where they can converse with non-player characters and unlock new items randomly encountered while playing.
Slay the Spire is a roguelike deck-building game developed by the American indie studio Mega Crit and published by Humble Bundle. The game was released in early access for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux in late 2017, with an official release in January 2019. It was released for PlayStation 4 in May 2019, for Nintendo Switch in June 2019 and for Xbox One in August 2019. An iOS version was released in June 2020, with an Android version released in February 2021.
A roguelike deck-building game is a hybrid genre of video games that combines the nature of deck-building card games with procedural-generated randomness from roguelike games.
Caves of Qud is an early access roguelike role-playing video game developed by American studio Freehold Games set in an open world that is partially pre-made and partially randomly generated. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic science fantasy setting and is inspired by the pen-and-paper role-playing games Gamma World and Dungeons & Dragons.
Mistover is a 2019 roguelike dungeon crawler role-playing video game developed and published by Krafton for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4. Mistover is set in a ravaged world recovering from a mass invasion of monstrous creatures from another realm, and its storyline follows the journey of a party of adventuring heroes who are on a quest to discover the source of the invasion. Players navigate environments from an isometric perspective with a party of procedurally generated player characters drawn from a roster of eight character classes to fight monsters and acquire loot recovered from the exploration of levels. A phenomenon known as "mist" is prevalent throughout the game world and negatively influences its characters, monsters, and items.
Cursed to Golf is a 2022 roguelike video game developed by Chuhai Labs and published by Thunderful Publishing. Based on an itch.io demo created two years earlier, it was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. The player plays as a golfer in Golf Purgatory, which they have to escape by completing eighteen randomly-selected holes in a specific number of strokes, with the aid of statues that grant extra shots when broken and powerups known as Ace Cards. Cursed to Golf received praise for its mechanics and art, though reviews were mixed on the game's difficulty.
Pixel Dungeon is a 2012 roguelike indie game created by Oleg Dolya. Through turn-based gameplay, the player must descend and battle through dungeon floors to obtain the Amulet of Yendor. Initially developed for Android, it expanded to iOS and PC platforms. Dolya stopped updating the game in 2015. Since it is open source, the game's small community have created mods and games based on Pixel Dungeon's code, the most notable of which is Shattered Pixel Dungeon. While it received little attention from game critics, the few who reviewed it found the gameplay addictive, striking a balance between approachability and roguelikes's defining difficulty.
