Awesome Roguelikes

 

The roguelike genre continues to grow and thrive, with new ideas and twists on old formulas springing up all the time. Here are some other excellent ones that are stellar examples of the sort of enjoyment the genre can provide.

Tales of Maj’Eyal

A long running, highly polished adventure with terrific fantasy elements and a great community. ToME is a great example of the genre’s continued evolution: a crisp user interface, plenty of creative powers, and even some online features to mix things up. There’s a lot to discover, including new classes that you unlock while playing. You can’t go wrong with ToME. Once you’re done voting for Dungeonmans on Greenlight, you should probably swing by their page too.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Crawl is a focused dungeon crawler that has been tuned and honed to a razor edge over long years of developer and community support. Creative races and classes combine with ever more interesting environments, and it is the gold standard for balance and challenge. Crawl continues to grow, and can even be played online via telnet if you want to display your clumsy deaths for the amusement of others. Highly recommended.

Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space

A pleasant and intelligent twist on the genre, Weird Worlds is a space exploration adventure with real-time ship battles and a host of unique encounters. The ship customization is thourough without being overwhelming, and the game is designed to run start to finish in under half an hour. Fire it up on PC or your iPad, blow up tentacled villains and rack up a high score, all before your lunch hour is up.

DoomRL

A roguelike inspired by Doom. Yeah, that Doom, with the music and the rocket launcher and cyberdemons. The game is incredibly smart, fast paced, and brings in all the danger and tension of playing actual Doom while still standing true to roguelike ideals. DoomRL excels in terms of presentation, with an absolutely gorgeous tile set and authentic doom music and sound. A must-play.

  8 Responses to “Awesome Roguelikes”

  1. Im kinda sad that Dungeons Of Dredmor isn’t on this list. Its probably one of my favorite new rougelike with more things to do than you can shake a stick at and huge levels. Couple that with the Steam Workshop and you have a rougelike that is always being added to while under an easy to access shell.

    • Dredmor is a great game and shows a lot of hard work on behalf of the developers. The list on this page will grow from time to time, I was just thinking about roguelikes that I found inspiring that were not as easy to find as games on Steam are.

      • That makes sense, and with that being the case, I hope you’ve gotten a chance to check out “100 Rogues” on the iDevices. I feel it was one for the first games to prove that a rogue like could be done on a touch device without having to make any sacrifices in the genre.

  2. I’d also recommend Claustrophobia – The Downward Struggle. I just started playing your game today, and it’s quickly overtaking my two favorites–the one I just mentioned and Tales of Maj’Eyal, which you’re already recommending.

    A quick Google search will lead you to Claustrophobia, or you can head to Desura for more info.

  3. I would strongly recommend Powder, a roguelike that can be played on almost any device but is still not as known as it should be : http://www.zincland.com/powder/?pagename=about

    • I second this. Powder should be on every viable game platform — PCs, Android, IOS, consoles, the Ouya, everything. I even went so far as to buy one of those homebrew DS cartridges. Not to run bootleg ROMs as some people do, but to play Powder on my DS.

  4. What about Caves of Qud?

  5. Here is a link to Caves of Qud

    http://forums.freeholdentertainment.com/

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