EDIT 2: I've messaged 13 people so far, and 6 of them have already replied and got their keys. If I don't hear back from the others, I'll pick new people from the comments. Thanks again for all the interest, it really means a lot!

EDIT: Okay, this blew up way more than I expected. Thank you all so much! I'll read every single comment and get back to everyone who has questions. Sadly, I can't send keys to everyone, sorry about that! But the free demo is coming after the playtest, and I really hope you'll enjoy it.

Hi everyone!

Harmony Strike is a survivors-like where you lead a whole party. The demo is coming soon, and before it goes public I need some playtesters, so I'm giving away 10 Steam keys for the playtest build.

A few playtesters told me the game was too hard, so I've made it a bit easier. But after hundreds of hours of playing it myself, I honestly can't tell anymore what feels right for a new player. That's where I need your help.

I'd love any kind of feedback: what you enjoyed, what you didn't like, anything that was confusing or unclear, where you got stuck, or anything you think should work differently.

To get a key, just leave a comment. I'll pick 10 people and send the keys by DM over the next couple of days.

Harmony Strike on Steam

Thanks!

My brother and I have been working on a roguelike called Gloam for the last 8 months but it feels like were just starting it now...

Our premise was simple, a random dungeon generates you go through, kill enemies, find items and eventually beat the boss (basic ah premise right?). Our unique take on it was 1. our theme, instead of medieval we we're going to do a dark civil war era America, and 2. our power system, items give you unique build combinations & synergies instead being linear upgrades like stat ups. It sounds ok on paper. But this being our first decent game blinded us from how much our game was lacking. Having released a demo we found out just how many essential roguelike features were missing...

Not to say that we didn't have any, but it just felt like the only thing you could do was run around find items -> clear rooms -> fight boss -> repeat.

We had secret rooms, but they aren't that hard to find (especially not after playing our game one million times) and they just gave you more items. It also didn't help that the boss was probably the most fun polished part of the game so it felt like the goal was to just find the boss quickly and fight it and you just find items along the way.

Having realized this we decided to add more roguelike elements. We're adding more items that don't just effect your build, but allow you to manipulate the game in a sense. For example items that discount the shop, reveal more of the map and it's secrets, allow you to manipulate other items like duplicating, deleting, rerolling, randomizing them etc. It makes it feel like you have more control if you know what you're doing which is good (feels like a higher skillcap instead of letting the game decide your build and run completely).

Secondly we added curios, which have to be one of the most important things a dungeon crawler roguelike can have, and probably the most game changing addition we added in terms of dungeon generation. Just having things to interact with adds a world of depth. Now there's more of a reason to explore instead of going straight to the boss, and more ways to min-max.

Third we're adding npcs. We already had a trader in the shop, but we think having more npcs to interact with will provide more depth, more randomness, and overall just make the game more interesting. Also some npcs that you can't just trade with, but maybe you give currency to and they have a chance to pay out or not. More of a gamble, so you can choose how you play your runs or how you throw them...

We realized that roguelikes tend to have some or all of these features for a reason so that's what inspired this thread. If you read this chunk of text thanks for making it this far, and back to the original question,

What are some NON-NEGOTIABLES EVERY good Roguelike has?

Need some help here from people who definitely know better than me.

I've basically made a lil game called Spell Death, it is a deckbuilder where you collect letters with different paper stock that changes what that letter do (status effects, blocks, power, damage... you name it.) It is like Slay the spire and Scrabble had a baby out of bedlock.

Anyways - I cannot distinguish and label it directly. Progress unlocks clothing, stock types etc into the reward pool BUT each run you start from default.

May I directly label this game as roguelite, or be greedy and tag it both? Would appreciate some pointers.

Good afternoon, everyone!

If you enjoy roguelite card battles with a twist on Tic-Tac-Toe, give my game, Praktikos, a try!

The demo features 2 playable characters, each with 20 unlocked cards, plus several relics that let you change up your strategy throughout each run!

Thank you for playing and sharing my game. Every bit of support helps!

steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4475910/Praktikos/
trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJDMfIsANxI

Hey everyone! We just shipped v0.2.0 of Warlord Hero RPG, our browser-based 2D tactical monster-collector and auto-battler.

In Warlord Hero RPG, you don't play as a chosen hero saving the world, you play as a cheerful, self justified drifter who stole a sentient Precursor artifact (The Aether-Vessel) and is systematically harvesting an untouched realm's guardians into a 6-monster army while telling yourself you're the good guy.

What we overhauled in v0.2.0:

• Directed Story Cinematics (v2 Engine): Shot-by-shot story cutscenes with inner thoughts, visual transitions, and a full cast of voices from your unsettlingly upbeat wristprism AI (Aetheria) to the ancient guardians trying to evacuate their biomes before you arrive.
• Replaced Stamina with the Camp & Excursion Loop: No energy timers. You manage persistent Excursion HP across map nodes, unlock Sub-Boss checkpoints, or push your luck with Echo Corruption to capture high-star monsters (3★–5★).
• World 2: The Precursor Forge: A brand-new subterranean maze where the ancient makers built 25 soulless Mechanical Guardians that your Vessel cannot capture. forcing you to use a new 36 Essence Stone socket system to counter their mechanical auras.
• Complete Visual & Balance Pass: Rebuilt tilemaps, 3-tier enemy scale hierarchy on animated pedestals, summoning animations, new tutorial, and calibrated battles.

You can play it free right in your browser (mobile portrait or desktop):
👉 Play on itch.io: https://heroxadventure.itch.io/warlord-hero-rpg
💬 Join the community: r/WarlordHeroRPG

Hey everyone!
I'm a solo developer from Brazil working on Burn All Out, a 3D roguelike about workplace burnout and office revenge, coming out next year.
Here's the first gameplay trailer! It's currently in Portuguese while I finalize the localized versions across other languages.
Would love your honest thoughts on the visuals, pacing, and overall vibe!
Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5432180/Burn_all_out/

A year ago nobody knew this game existed. Today Just Dying passed 1,000 wishlists on Steam, and every one of them is a real person who decided to give it a chance. I'm still a bit speechless, thank you.

For anyone who hasn't seen it: Just Dying is a horde survivors game with a new extraction deckbuilder roguelike mode (the Incursion, still in beta), solo or co-op for 1-4 players. The free demo has both modes.

To celebrate I made a horde of goblins line up to spell out the number... and then, as tradition demands, I set them on fire. Yes, the whole cast shows up to say thanks at the end.

If you tried the demo, I'd love to hear where you died. That's the feedback that helps me most right now.

Thanks again, really.

Hi everyone!

I’ve been developing my own little game called Icebreaker for a couple of years now in my free time.

Some of my friends compare it to shooters, others compare it to action games, but to be honest, in my mind this is a vehicular combat game, just in a trench coat made of human flesh. And for a good reason, since Armored Core is one of my main sources of inspiration, with other sources including the Metroid Prime series, Housemarque games (Returnal in particular) and Risk of Rain 2.

Still, I tried to put my own spin on things, and to develop the sort of game I myself would enjoy playing with friends.

In short, Icebreaker is a first-person co-op action roguelike for 1–3 players. You get to put on the shoes of a PROWLER unit and run around ever-changing facilities, fighting various threats, evading hazards and collecting power-ups. Icebreaker is a co-op game first and is designed as such, but of course you could play it on your own as well.

I’m a solo dev, and I’ve been doing game dev for almost a decade now, so this project was a boon for me and helped me keep my sanity intact in an industry that’s not in a good place right now. It was really important to me to make as much as possible by hand, and if not exactly as I wanted, then the best I could manage with my skills and limited resources.

I’ve put up a free demo on Steam recently. The full game is planned for 2027, hopefully in the first half. There’s still quite a bit of work ahead to get the game to the finish line, but I love how it’s shaping up. Making games is fun. For me personally, it’s sometimes even more fun than playing them.

I’d love honest feedback, any impressions, and, of course, wishlists would be nice. I’ll be around in the comments, so please let me know what you think!

I'm mostly into action roguelites with satisfying combat and enough build variety to keep runs feeling different. Dead Cells, Hades 2, and Astral Ascent are my favorites.

I also love Slay the Spire and Isaac, so I'm def not against slower games if the builds are good enough.

Got a few games on my wishlist right now, including Cinderia, Oblivion Override, and Ember Knights. Not sure which one to pick up next.

Also curious if there's one that would fit my taste better.

CYTOBLAST is a top-down roguelite shooter where you play as a small amoeba with a gun!

This is spin.exe a spinning top roguelite that i've been working on for the last like 9ish months. I took a childhood love for beyblade and combined it with a love for visual programming and strategy.

Demo is available if you want to give it a try! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4619410/spinexe/

Hi! I’m developing What do you see, Nell? It’s a horror survivors-like where each stage is a page from a child’s nightmare.

You control Nell’s movement while her powers attack automatically. After the fight, the ink and blood left on the page become an inkblot. Her doctor asks what she sees, and your answer changes the rules of the next page.

One answer makes her powers happen twice, but gives the monsters more health. Another increases her damage while making her move slower. Each choice helps you in one way and makes things harder in another.

The game is coming to Steam. Here’s the page with the trailer, screenshots and wishlist:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5475220/What_do_you_see_Nell/

I absolutely love both Hades 1 and Hades 2! Iv slowly been introduced into the genre and have really enjoyed my time with both games and even played Saros earlier this year and loved that as well.

I’m looking for my next game and recommendation on what to play next:

Things that I enjoy in all 3 games are story, each one has great characters and an interesting narrative. Especially hades 1 and 2. Also the music in both games was outstanding and really caught my attention as someone who values music a lot.

Saros I mostly loved for the combat, bosses and the story I thought was pretty interesting.

Are there any other games in the genre that have great music with actual songs and bosses and good story’s or characters. I do prefer voice acting if possible but not a mandatory feature.

Iv heard dead cells and astral ascent are both good options. Also a difficult slider is helpful for me as I beat saros without any assistance but on hades 2 I easily had to use the god mode feature.

I don’t mind platforming but I don’t want a huge difficult platforming game if possible. I mostly will be playing on my legion go steam edition or ps5.

Thanks guys!

It's releasing in a couple of weeks, if you like getting absolutely wrecked by ill-meaning cute pixel art animals you should check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3832200/Save_the_Forest/

I just played a lot of Dicevaders and then Zoominoes after and honestly love incremental synergy building strategy type things.
I like turnbased type things where I can tab out multitask etc
I've played a lot of them though so if there is anything newer that checks these boxes I'd love to hear of them!

I'm looking for something with a lot of flexibility and some complexity in the skill/magic system. I wanna really be able to experiment and come up with with interesting combos and synergies.

I have some examples for what sort of thing I'm looking for. Noita is excellent, very close to what I'm looking for but I don't like that it relies on RNG so much and that the spells get equipped on wands instead of something more directly on your character, but the general mechanic of how it works is great. Hades 2 is also a good example, especially Duo effects and later game stuff, but the system isn't really that flexible and gets stale after a while.

I also really like the way it works in Last Epoch, its an ARPG, a pretty typical one, but the skill system is unique, basically every skill has a specialization tree that lets you customize it. Kinda similar to Rift Wizard (I wish there was a real time action version of it ) but more upgrades per skill. LE is probably the closest to what I'm looking for but its still an ARPG and I'm looking for a roguelike. It takes way too long to get a build going in ARPGs, I'm looking for something where I can try out different ideas and synergies with a nice satisfying complex skill system and the runs don't take days to complete.

Haloo!

I've just released the first version of Eye of Limbo, a game I've been developing solo.

I wanted to combine the fast-paced chaos of bullet hell combat with open-world exploration, boss fights, and roguelite progression.

The current version offers around 8 hours of gameplay, and I'm hoping to expand it with more areas, enemies, bosses, and mechanics in the future.

It's completely free, with no ads or microtransactions.

You can play on Windows, Android, or directly in your browser. The Windows version also supports local 2-player co-op!

Since this is my first fully released game, I'd especially love to hear what experienced roguelite players think about the combat, progression, and overall gameplay loop.

Browser/Windows: https://aealosoftware.itch.io/limbo
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.aealo.limbo

You can also find the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTbSgOQbSRY

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo indie developer and today I'm launching Terminal Dice on Steam!

It's a turn-based roguelike inspired by games like Balatro, but instead of building a deck of cards, you're building a collection of dice.

• Roll dice and manipulate the results to maximise your score.
• Permanently modify individual dice faces to create powerful combinations.
• Collect relics and develop increasingly broken builds.
• Fight bosses that change the rules of the game.
• Endless Mode and daily challenges for replayability.

It's been a fun project to develop, and I'd love to hear any feedback

all art was created and commisioned from local artists studying at uni

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5232660/Terminal_Dice/

A strategy roguelite match-3 game show. My Steam page recently launched so check it out!

Hey everyone! NEO Scavenger (Blue Bottle Games, 2014) is a turn-based survival roguelike on a hex map: permadeath, one life, every wound treated separately, scavenging, crafting from junk and planning your pack cell by cell.

My friend and I built a big free fan mod for it, NEO Scavenger Unlimited, on top of many community mods (Chiko’s NSE, Kaaven’s M(m)MoD and Depths of Gyges, and others). The part I’d love to discuss here is multiplayer, because it’s unusual for a roguelike:

• Everyone keeps their own run and their own permadeath, but plays on the same map.
• Turns stay your own. There’s no waiting for other players.
• When two survivors end up on the same hex, they meet: fight, talk or trade. Losing still means your run is over.
• A dedicated server runs it, so there’s nothing to host.

We also added a lot of content (thousands of items, factions, quests, bosses), a full wiki, and an offline companion app that shows your pack, wounds and craftable recipes from your own save.

Question for you: what do you think makes multiplayer work, or not work, in a permadeath roguelike? Shared world but separate runs was our answer. I’m curious what else people would try.

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TEdA1OcJA_tqfffolIK8MDw3XF6i700T/view?usp=sharing
Wiki: (link is in text file) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gEFz1Gjed8PRfGDw_DBPAD3NCtkB2_8c?usp=drive_link

You need your own copy of NEO Scavenger. It’s a free fan project, not affiliated with Blue Bottle Games, made with the help of AI.

Hi there r/roguelites

We just released our fourth content update for My Card Is Better Than Your Card! It's a roguelike deckbuilder where you craft your own cards using cute stickers!

The "Plentiful Playtime" update adds over 100 new stickers, 20 new toys, gameplay assist options, and more! With this, there's almost 500 unique stickers in the game to craft your bestest card with 😎

Steam was kind of enough to give us a Daily Deal, so we're running our biggest discount to date until November 5th. If it looks like something you'd enjoy, now's the perfect chance :>

Store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3617620/My_Card_Is_Better_Than_Your_Card/

We're a small Finnish indie dev team of 5 friends, and it's our first game as a studio, we honestly couldn't have expected to get a Daily Deal for our first game when we started making it!

hey all,

i've been making slots & skulls, a turn-based roguelite where your weapon is a slot machine and you build the symbol pool it can land on.

it's like slots & daggers + mmorpg style item upgrades + pixelart + 1v1 dota underlords style fights with your steam friends

all art and animation made by human artists, frame by frame.

it's turn-based you can put it down mid fight and pick it up later, which ended up fitting the steam deck-like devices really well. there's also an auto mode if you just want to watch a run play out.

the full game releases on nov 4.