Best Roguelike Games of 2026
Action, deckbuilders, classic dungeon crawlers, and open-world sandboxes. Features Hades 2, Balatro, Monster Train 2, and upcoming hits like Enter the Gungeon 2.
2026 has been a great year for Roguelikes.
The genre’s unique ability to randomly generate runs gives the games an everlasting gobstopper style gameplay loop that makes their value proposition quite mouthwatering.
Lets take a moment to highlight many of the amazing games in the genre up till now as well as some of the amazing demos that foreshadow things to come!
Action Roguelikes / 2015-likes
This genre to me is characterized by fast paced top-down / 2d side scrolling action prioritizing quick reflexes and good decision making when it comes to choosing new power-ups and weapons. The name of the game is learning how every enemy works to work your way down (or up) and through the bosses you face.
Hades 1 and 2
Binding of Isaac (Literally whatever version)
Spelunky 1 and 2
Enter the Gungeon 1 and 2 (Upcoming)
Rogue Legacy 1 and 2
Noita
Nuclear Throne
Risk of Rain 1, 2, and Returns
Dead Cells
Deck Building / Combo Stacking
A genre (somewhat) inspired by the Dominions card game, this shifts the focus to smart combo building. The puzzle is to collect just the right set of cards in order to overpower the system so hard that you win by default.
Slay the Spire 1 and 2
Balatro
Monster Train 1 and 2
Clover Pit
Raccoin
Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors (Upcoming)
The Special Ones
I made this a special category because these roguelikes don’t quite fit in with all the others. They obviously have some similarities, but the lineage is less cut and dry.
Streets of Rogue / Streets of Rogue 2
FTL: Faster Than Light
Darkest Dungeon 1 and 2
Against The Storm
Realm of the Mad God (MMO)
Realm of the Mad God Exalt (Free)
Titanium Court (Upcoming)
Genuinely good luck figuring out what this one is about.
Math Homework!
Now we get into the games that had me fall in love with the genre initially. These games don’t end, are turn based, and look like you’re doing math homework. This made them the perfect option for me to play during school without. Even teachers looking directly at the screen couldn’t tell what was going on.
Also it should be known that despite the math homework joke, in this day and age most of these games have actual art with the option to play on calculator mode.
Plus most of these are free!
Many of them have steam versions as well, but start with the given link. The steam versions are paid, and are usually of similar quality.
Classic Style Roguelikes / Dungeon Crawlers
The second hominid on the Roguelike evolution chart are the Dungeon Crawlers. The original rogue (Mandalore Gaming’s video linked) was a randomly generated dungeon escape game and so too do these bear the marks of their lineage.
Cogmind
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Brogue
Open World Sandbox Roguelikes
Caves of Qud
Cataclysm DDA
Dwarf Fortress
Elin
I hope you found something new to play! Have a good one!
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Got a game I missed? Reply and tell me! Reader suggestions have made it into past articles.