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Recommendations, reviews, screenshots, and WIPs for cool indie games. I also interview indie devs I find around here.

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To find Indie Interviews and New Release posts, toggle "Hide Shares" at the top of the page, or browse the #igoc tag.

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admin: @kylelabriola


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New survey! So far we've talked about card games, visual novels and hidden gems. Folks have added great games in the shares and comments sections. Eventually, I'd love to start compiling some of these into some posts highlighting some lesser-known gems.

Here's a new informal survey for you all: what are some indie games you love that have roguelike (or roguelite) elements? Which ones use permadeath, procedural generation, or run-based structures in interesting ways?

There's a lot out there these days. Curious to see which ones people feel are cream of the crop, or just do something bizarrely interesting.

What counts as a "roguelike"? Great question! Whatever you think makes the cut on that, we can all be a little loose with it.


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in reply to @IndieGamesOfCohost's post:

certainly not unknown, but i really like rouge legacy 1 and 2, crypt of the necrodancer, and vampire survivors. the element i like about all of these is that they feel like they hit what i like about rouge-likes the most, which is that the player does actually get better at playing it when you do more runs. each of those games have mechanical unlocks that can ease the gameplay, rewarding you for playing more of it, but things like crypt of the necrodancer, you just have to keep getting better at the rhythm game aspect of the game in order to be competent at it. i think that rouge legacy does well with procedural generation, making core areas that are always in one specific cardinal direction, so you can approach each biome at your own pace, regardless of plot progression.
the rouge-like that got me into the genre were the pokemon mystery dungeon series of games and i haven't found any indie games yet that i feel satisfy the mechanical satisfaction i feel when playing the mystery dungeon games.

Not sure if this is your area but the fan ROM hack "Pokemon Emerald Rogue" is really really amazing.

In terms of indies its odd for me since I'm oddly picky (not sure how to describe)

"Noita" is quite some fun. Very brutal but some amazing systems. (87hrs still havnt beaten it)

Main thing close I have the most time with them was Pokemon mystery dungeon which varies a lot of when / where you could call it a roguelite or roguelike. Though that isn't indie persay.

Occasionally on my mind sometimes how older games had smaller teams & if those would fall under indie today to some extents.

Edit:
Just remembered the Major one of "Inscription" & it's extra content "Kaycee's mod" (part of the base game)

Ones that remind me of actual Rogue and i like them:

  • Desktop Dungeons (hard, kinda complex)
  • Dicey Dungeons (difficult, but with more manageable set of rules)

Liked Rogue Legacy, but it's a grind-fest if you're bad at platform games (i am).

Crypt of the Necrodancer is great, but i enjoyed Cadence of Hyrule way more <3 (and it has dungeon mode which plays closer to original CotN if that's what you like)

Project Zomboid works as roguelike and is pretty customizable.

And from action r-likes: Going Under by Aggro Crab. I liked the gameplay and presentation (and its setting, and its writing, oh yeah).

Oh, I love rogue{like,lite}s!

Here are my favourites:

  • Slay the Spire
  • Into the Breach
  • Monolith (!)
  • Enter the Gungeon

StS and ItB are just perfect1, EtG2 was my first game in the genre and it's awesome too.

Monolith is less known, so I'll talk a bit more about it. Monolith is something like Binding of Isaac (screen = single fixed room, secret rooms, bombs, etc) meets Enter the Gungeon (bullet hell-ish, finite ammo, room teleports, etc), but also completely unique3. One fun and easily noticeable feature of Monolith is that the rooms are all square; this means that you always have unused space on the sides, but adds a unique feeling to the game. And then there are bosses… Monolith is a very hard game, it just is, and the bosses are the main thing here, they are all just awesome and hard to beat,,, Idk! Monolith is a cool, complex, yet kind-of-minimalist game, I'd recommend it a lot, if you up for the challenge.

  • Noita
  • Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
  • Iris and the giant
  • Wizard of Legend

Noita is hopefully known by everyone, a "world where every pixel is simulated", a completely chaotic rougelike (not my favorite only because I can't really play it on my current laptop ;-;). Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate is an interesting twist, combining chess and rougelike, cool thing, although annoying in some aspects. Iris and the Giant is an interesting twist on the card-rougelikes where the cards are finite and you need to get new ones constantly, very interesting mechanic wise, has a touching story too! The only downsides are that it's a bit short and underpolished in some places. Finally Wizard of Legend is simply a rouglike where you have magic skills and beat up other mages.


  1. well, not really4

  2. why 3/4 of my favorites have "the" in the middle lol?

  3. describing it as similar to binding of isaac/etg seemed bad, but it's easier to compare to something you know...

  4. I should write down that critic of ItB's pilot mechanic...

Brogue and the Shiren The Wanderer series are my favorite roguelikes, although the latter isn't indie.

As for action games with roguelike elements, I tend to enjoy ones that force you to interact with the environment in interesting ways, like Spelunky or Noita, instead of just being a straightforward action game that doesn't let you select your weapon loadout or learn the level layouts.

Most of my faves have already been mentioned, but I need to give a shout out to Path of Archra. It's a wonderful character building roguelike based heavily on Rift Wizard, but much more streamlined.

Their Discord even had the dev of Rift Wizard pop in to ask for some advice on Path, at which point the dev of Path just geeked out completely. It was so neat to see. Sometimes these solo/small dev projects are just so great to see.

The roguelites of note I have played are "Have a Nice Death", "Roboquest", "Deadlink", "Dreamscaper", and this new "Liberté" game.

"Have a nice death" has such a charming art-style and sort of Adult Swim cartoon feel to I have to love it. "Roboquest" and "Deadlink" both have a great balance between player skill and powerful items which allow for interesting builds. "Dreamscaper" feels like really well polished and has a tight focused gameloop that's feels like a smaller version of Hades actually. "Liberté" is very interesting but flawed new release I just picked up. It just got out of early access and seems like it had some development woes but overall it's got a fun card based system and interesting setting I don't think I have seen before.

I know they are more "roguelites" rather than "roguelikes" but the only real roguelike I have played has been "Jupiter Hell". I want to give more traditional style roguelikes a try this year. I think have a lot of offer design-wise. I think roguelikes really make you think about systems, mechanics, and the interaction between the two.