Here is my roundup from last year in case you missed it: ua-cam.com/video/LKUhbXDXKWU/v-deo.html And you can check out my roguelite tier list video here: ua-cam.com/video/D2gaZuy94Ik/v-deo.html You can find longer reviews of most of these games on my channel as well. Thanks for watching and hope that everyone has a good holiday season!
You put a lot and I mean a LOT more effort into this video and really tested games that were not that popular. This just deserves more views thanks for the video man.
@@ryanzsg Thanks! I try to play a mix of more popular and more obscure roguelites depending on what catches my interest. Wish I had time to play even more lesser known ones, but only so much time to go around lol
I was looking at the likes and was like "Wth why does he only have 16 likes", then i realised you "only" have 7k subs. Like how? This is a 500k+ subs channel right here! Keep it up :)
Thanks, appreciate it! It's funny because 7k subs feels huge compared to where I was last year, but still so small compared to actual large channels. I've been having a lot of fun with it though
I got into Roguelikes with Dead Cells and three years later, I still can't get enough of the genre. Earlier this year, I discovered your channel and you've introduced me to so many new gems, thanks for that. If you ever feel the need to branch out and cover other genres, I'm sure you'd do a great job with that too. However, I will always treasure your roguelike content.
Thanks! Yeah I've been really into roguelites since I first played Nuclear Throne a couple years ago. Definitely have a lot more roguelite content planned for next year and beyond. Even ignoring new games, I think I have another 20 or so unplayed roguelites that I own. I used to do a lot more short random indie reviews, and I might bring some of those back. It mostly just depends on what I end up playing, which recently has most been roguelites and a couple multiplayer games.
Nuclear Throne got me hooked on roguelikes/lites. And in hindsight Dwarf Fortress as well, but back then it wasn't a conscious influence for the genre.
I got into rogue-likes with... Rogue. But I kind of hated it and only really played maybe 10 or 15 hours of it (I was like... 7 years old). I'm trying to think of the first one I really loved playing... I want to say it was Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja. But I've always really enjoyed the genre, outside of Rogue itself haha. Dead Cells is probably my absolute favorite still, with Hades close behind, and Curse of the Dead Gods (which I only just started) looking to be in that league for me. Bunch of honorable mentions, and some neat early access games with some promise (Both Deflector and Have a Nice Death look VERY promising).
I have over 500 hours in Noita, I am looking forward to your view on it, and hope you like it as much as I do! There is so much content in it and easily has the most replayability I have seen in any roguelike, between the "main" progression, parallel worlds, newgame, and the incredibly complex wand and spell-system.
Noita is one of the best roguelike game.. Kudos to the developers! The game is just big. I didnt even get to the moon yet.. I almost but failed miserably.
It’s cool that UA-cam push old videos from small channels, I watched one dead cells video and when it finished this video started, also respect for doubling your subscribers in 7 months or less, lots of respect man.
You sir, are an *absolute monster!* So I watch this video while eating breakfast and go about my day. I get off work, go out to eat, open my wallet to pay and what do I find? _I'm entirely broke?!_ I called my bank and they said I bought 14 "roguelites" today! This is your fault and I will be sending you an invoice for the appropriate sum. (In all seriousness though, awesome video dude, I really appreciate it! I thought I had found all the rogue's to be found and I am SO happy to be wrong!)
Hahaha even with a ton of games in my backlog I also bought 10 or so new roguelites this past week. It's a blessing and a curse truly to have so many options.
Thank you for this amazing video! I saw so many channels covering roguelikes, but none of them covered some of the games you mentioned. Keep up the great work!
Great content! Honest, to the point, and I feel like you balanced out recapping the good and the bad in a short summary. I've played some of these games (Loop hero, Skul, Undermine, Roguebook, For the King, Children of Morta) and agree with most of the points you brought up. Personally I love For the King, but I can see how some of the Board game elements I love can be a turn off for some people.
Thanks, appreciate it! Honestly I think For the King does what it wants to do (i.e. be a board game RPG roguelite) fairly well, but it just didn't fully vibe with me
I agree. I can't play for the king solo, but with two friends it's a blast. The game is extremely difficult, but it makes it that much more rewarding coordinating strategies with friends and working together towards a win, instead of everyone ending up overpowered and doing there own thing as almost all games do nowadays.
Skul is one of those games you don't really start to enjoy until you get better at it. I don't think I actually enjoyed playing it at first, I was so stubborn and I just wanted a single clear. I had just beat Hades and expectations were high. As I started to clear more and more bosses, the game grew on me. I got to the point of preferring some basic Skulls over the "Legendary" ones.
very good format, roughly one minute to describe a game and most of them are spot on however skull came a little short, when you upgrade basic skulls up to legendary they all become very unique and fun to play, and since your review the game got updated HEAVILY so i recommend to try it again, S tier in my book
So you're like the GOD of roguelikes! Saw also your "ultimate Tier List". Take pride in playing all games from S+ to A+ and half of A. I thought of starting to stream roguelike games, but having you around - I will leave it to you! If you need help with trying and reviewing roguelikes - just give the word! Already have a deck to differentiate different aspects of roguelikes to go with. Thanks for exposing us to all this! You're a source of pure fun and gaming longevity to us all. P.S - totally try Heroes of hammerfall. It's an S rank game!!
9:46 maybe i was lucky to realize that only going for hunter cards on that starter ranger is pretty much the only way to play the game, i finished all of the available stuff with just the ranger and did not bother with other classes that much, i just switched warrior for that inspiration leader class and it did do some good damage buffs but it was mostly for cc and mana reduction (i think the leader class had those skills if i recall correctly)
Yeah I think a couple classes just felt really bad compared to others? I don't remember what my best builds were, but I remember trying half the classes and being disappointed.
I love roguelikes, but no game has done for me what Binding of Isaac does, there is just so much content, so much to unlock and do, and so much variety in the floors, enemies and bosses. I know it's had a decade of new content which is a major reason, but the only roguelike I've found even scratching a similar itch is gungeon, which came out so long ago.
Just found your channel and absolutely love both your taste in games, your commentary, and your delivery / watchability for your videos so far. Can't wait to see more stuff from you as I subbed to your channel.
last i checked i’ve spent a little over a hundred hours on skul, your comments are pretty spot on. i would like to say that getting used to the gameplay loop takes a little while; even common skulls can become fun and viable if you upgrade them all the way to legendary. in that regard the skull choices feel more like what “class” you’d like the run to feel like, and synergies can definitely do a lot at that point too. but some skulls are definitely far better than others, and an incoming patch with reworks should hopefully address that balance issue.
I've still been having fun with it as whole! I definitely haven't fully mastered the build crafting aspect of the game yet, but I'm planning to sink a lot more time into it in the future. Hopefully those balance updates improve it
Children Of Morta is one of the best Roguelites I've ever played. Played it with my girlfriend and we both absolutely loved it and support the devs all the way.
Rogue Lords is a fun rogue like game from this year. Youre the devil and you are using well known legendary monsters (dracula, bloody mary, frankensteins monster etc) as minions to destroy goodness and niceness. Im not usually a fan of turn based battle games but this had some really interesting mechanics. You have an overall health pool that you must defend, but you can sacrifice health to destroy creatures, as well as using various powers and attacks you can upgrade by corrupting the world in various ways.
Glad you liked it! I was debating whether to put in the alpha games at all, but I thought they would work nicely at the end. Let me know what you think about Jupiter Hell if you end up playing.
nice vid! I love the genre and have some new ones to try now. Thanks! I recently was introduced to Slice & Dice on Android (no iphone afaik). It's a short and sweet little dice rolling roguelike. The first 12 or 13 levels are free, or you can pay $7 to unlock the full game of 20 levels. The full game just lets you build up to a higher level and get a better team. There's a surprising amount of content there for a little mobile game and it's great for killing a few minutes when you're away from PC or console.
I actually just tried the demo for Slice & Dice! It's pretty fun. It's on PC too actually, it's just currently only on itch.io and not steam. I'm planning to grab it eventually because the demo was pretty fun
Recently I've been hunting for rogue like games with how much I enjoyed playing roguelikes ever since I was 13 and lo and behold I got this on my recommended! So, congrats! Will def check out a lot of these. I'm surprised that for this level of quality that you're only on 8.95k subs! Honestly thought this was a 100k subbed channel! Threw a sub in too and I'll definitely look forward to your roguelike reviews! Im proud to be one of your before 10k subs man!
I love this list! The RL genre has become my favorite and go-to over the last year. Have you heard of/played these games? - Caveblazers - City of Brass - Dig Dog - Pac Man 256 (yes its a roguelite with progression!) - Colt Canyon - Downwell
I've played Downwell! It's a fun roguelite that's obviously fairly simple, but executes really well on its concept. I actually own Caveblazers but have never gotten around to playing it. I need to look into Pac Man 256 since that seems intriguing lol
@@InsertReviews Thanks for the reply! Yea Pac Man was a surprise for me; it has a great progression system where you get points each run, and you use those for new items that you keep. It's very addicting, and follows the RL formula nicely. Caveblazers is one of my fav games of all time! 150+ hours on it. Definitely give it a try, it is very deep with a lot to offer, and does not get repetitive to me at all.
One of my favorite rogue likes of the year has to be Super Auto Pets. The combination of rogue like and multiplayer elements by matching you against other teams on the same turn is really interesting, and despite its simplicity there is tons of room for fun and funky builds
I really liked Neon Abyss, but it quickly gets into a “where the heck is my character” situation. Between a long line of following eggs masking the unit, as well as weapons that cover 80% of the screen, it was frustrating to play. I really liked the concept and art style.
I'm probably not gonna play more than 3-4 games from this video, but it was really entertaining and you're really good describing how you feel while playing a certain game and explaining those emotions/experiences. That is something not everyone can do as well as you, definitely earned a sub with this one, cya soon.
Just to help out a small youtuber- you've hit the darkest dungeon algorithm. You show up for viewers of the game. Maybe a darkest dungeon video would give you some growth
If you want a beautiful story driven RPG card battler then Black Book is phenomenal, especially as it delves so heavily into Slavic folklore. I don't know if you've played Nova Drift but it is my absolute favourite roguelike/roguelite and has more content in early access than many full release titles and is constantly being updated and worked on. I've got over 1200 hours in Nova Drift.
awesome vid and super pumped to try many of these! Not sure if these were 2020 or 2021 - Monster Train, Nova Drift, and Monolith if you're looking for that spaceship vibe with the roguelike haha
@@InsertReviews For hours played, Nova Drift for me was Right behind Risk of Rain 2, apart from unlocking new weapons there's no grind, it's just oldschool arcade fun. It gave me what I was looking for in games like Breakpoint and #Funtime.
It's a very very good video and enjoyed a lot! By the way, I don't really feel that inscryption is a roguelike. It looks roguelike, but it is more like a storygame, imo you should play it without any spectations.
Thanks! Yeah I've heard it's more a standard game with roguelite elements? I've been avoiding most details about it since I don't want any spoilers before I play it lol
Without going into spoiler territory, I'm gunna have to disagree. Inscryption is predominantly a roguelike game, especially when you play the free addon Kaycee's mod which adds some roguelike progression.
Just discovered your channel, good stuff! I love trying to catch these games on sale. A couple of my favorites you might have missed in previous videos, “Death Road to Canada” and “Crypt of the Necrodancer” are both silly good fun with an addictive loop depending on if you like the style of games. As far as classics go “Downwell” really has that one more run hook. You can usually catch it on sale for like 99 cents. A few honorable mentions that are fun to play and maybe worth a look but aren’t going to win any awards are “Colt Canyon”, “Fury Unleashed”, “Rogue Stormers”, “Scourge Bringer”, and “Star Renegades” Sounds like we both already have a full backlog of titles to get through though!
Downwell is a fun little game! I forget if I've talked about it in other videos, but it's a nice simple roguelite. People often recommend Crypt of the Necrodancer to me, but I just have never enjoyed rhythm games, so I've always avoided it I'll have to add some of these to my list though! If only we had enough time to get through all of our backlogs lol
Discovered your channel a while ago, found a lot of gems through you. But you really really need to check out Inscyption if you didnt, missed it on the list too. It's, for me, the game of the year with a nice story implemented to the rougelite genre. It's a deckbuilding game and one of those unique games, with a lot of love from the developer. You need to play it by your own and dont stop early one or you'll miss a lot of good elements :)
I have it installed! I'm waiting for a good weekend to really dive into it. I've heard a lot of good things and have been dodging all possible spoilers lol
Children of Morta is probably my favourite. ARPG's are my favourite type of game though, so no big surprizes there. Also, you're not supposed to just play one character. You have to level them all to get then most out of the game (to get the family upgrades) And also there are animation cancels for every single character as well, you just have to figure them out. Granted the Father and the Cousin who are the heavier characters are not as nimble as the others, but I feel this adds realism. Especially with the Big guy with the hammer, He's all about just powering through attacks. The Father is all about using his shield though, this is how you cancel his attacks (if I remember rightly) you have to press shield up to cancel, where as the more nimble characters use dodge to cancel their attacks. I actually remember the cancelling being great, as often I would cancel out of a move before I'd even properly casted it. When this happens you don't waste the special though, and you can use it again right after. I think maybe you just didn't discover the animation cancels if you think you were being locked into attacks too much. I could be wrong, but I never had an issue with them. I did mostly play it on Switch though, so could be different to PC (I own it on PC now as well, but haven't played it much on Steam yet)
Honestly wouldn't be surprised if I missed some of the combat's skill cap. I got some animation cancels down, but some other characters just felt clunky to me regardless. I actually quite liked the ranged characters, but I never really felt great with a lot of the melee ones. I just felt like I would often attack and then immediately take damage from other enemies before I could do anything else or I would just find myself running around a lot to get space to complete an attack
@@InsertReviews Yeah I liked the ranged ones, too. I loved the little assassin guy and the kung fu one though. I felt the smaller melee ones were great. The little assassin guy especially could cancel out of any attack with his dodging. With the shield guy a lot came down to just speccing into him being a tank. He's great for multiplayer. Whenever you have the shield up this blocks damage from all angles.
If you haven't checked it out already, i would recommend trying out Revita. It's still in development, so it's not the most polished it could be, but the close listening to the community and its regular and impactful updates makes it definitely worth trying imo. It has an interesting mechanic that allows you to sacrifice health for items at altars, but also allows you to build up max health throughout floors that makes your health a ressource in a way that isn't commonly seen (at least i haven't seen it before). It also has a few secrets and cryptic puzzles hidden within for those who like that kind of thing. Overall a very solid game for being made by a team of two (a single developper and a musician i believe, correct me if i'm wrong).
FWIW, the most recent updates for Jupiter Hell did a lot to address some of your complaints - there's more interesting stuff going on in the early game and the skill tree has been changed so that you have more choices earlier rather than being locked into the prereqs for whatever master you wanted to do.
I'm not sure if you've played get to the orange door yet but you definitely should. it has so much potential to be a great game as it gets updated more
I was always wondering what the name of the genre was.. cuz I was always loving game like that.. started back then with Risk of Rain.. can highly recommend it.. even the 2nd game is nice but its in 3D this time
For me, replayability is a very touchy subject because I'm SUPER picky about it. I don't think having scaling difficulty fits what I want out of a games' replayability, for instance. A game will always have a limited lifespan for me because difficulty isn't what makes games fun for me. It's all about finding new and exciting things to play around with.
These are really good reviews! I'm getting a lot of good insight into each of the games even though I can tell we have somewhat different tastes. You got me to take another look at Against the Storm and Curse of the Dead Gods, and I hadn't heard of Tainted Grail before! As for recommendations, I can really second another comment I saw that recommended Slice & Dice! The full version is really worth it; the game design feels so crunchy and interesting, and I always appreciate when a small game has a really perfected aesthetic and attention to detail. The dev is working on a big content update, and looking into publishing on steam and porting to ios alongside that, so while I encourage playing it right away (because it is so good), you may want to hold off on a review for a bit. Also, everything Punkcake is doing (a monthly game via patreon + itch, a la Sokpop) seems to be some form of novel arcade-y roguelike. I would particularly recommend Scavenger of Dunomini and Metavaxx. (Alas, monthly games tend to leave you wanting more)
I got a couple other ones to recommend too, just to cover my bases: Kingsway only just passed 1k steam reviews, and has a really interesting operating system theming that informs a lot of the game design! It recently got a big final update/re-release, too! Another good roguelike with a recent big content update is atomicrops (which is too hectic for me...) And a few interesting and novel roguelikes, that may be less roguelike-like than the ones you usually review: ConnecTank is one designed more for a couch co-op experience and revolves around managing conveyor belts that supply ammo to a tank, and each run is part of a single story/campaign. Beast Breaker is similar in the roguelike mini-loop within a mostly linear story, and has some really fun pachinko-RPG gameplay and strategy. Sokpop did a tiny little RPG called Apocalich that isn't quite roguelike but has more of a "solve for the optimal path’ run-based game (also local multiplayer). World of Horror is a funky little retro visual novel RPG about solving a set of five persistent mysteries. Across the Obelisk is more the style of Slay the Spire, but you have four separate characters with their own decks, and again the world is consistent across runs (with alternative modes).
I'm so glad someone actually took time to differentiate roguelikes and roguelites because they are so entirely different genres that it's crazy people call everything a roguelike
@@archiewall582 a roguelike's core gameplay is usually very similar to that of rogue's, that means: turn based combat permadeath no unlocks completely random something like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a roguelike while roguelites like BPM, binding of isaac, and other similar games have systems that rogue had but are waaaaaay to different and besides very few systems, are nothing like rogue
Completely agree with Curse of the dead gods, tainted grail and gunfire reborn for some of the best new games I've played in their own catergory. Roboquest reminding you of overwatch is not very surprising as it's copying a lot of the visuals
Not too many actual roguelikes on this list, which I prefer than roguelites...Then again, there isn't much new "core" roguelikes out there, the newest one I played was probably Caves Of Qud which is amazing...I guess I am an old school roguelike purist, the closer to the original Rogue, the better.
getting into the genre right now with ror2, hades, and noita. mostly because i love terraria and hades and ror2 are on the top of the steam page, but your video helped me alot. i
These vids are super intersting. Your review styile is great. Even though it doesnt uee any numbers(1-10 something like that) i could pretty easily tell what you liked the most and what wasnt that great. keep up the fantastic work
I played neon abyss when it came out and had fun but the inability to exit and continue the game like binding of issac was a bummer and at the time it would crash randomly which for a game like that would end the run. Hopfully it’s better now I might give it another try.
About Jupiter Hell: I just wanted to shout out DoomRL, the original Doom roguelike. A freeware, classic roguelike made by the developers of Jupiter Hell.
Really good video. I found it looking for rogue like games, it being a genre I'm new to. I just played Archvale with game pass. I don't know if it's a rogue game per se, but I really enjoyed it and are looking for something similar. Subscribed
Thanks! I've not played Archvale myself, but I've seen some people call it a roguelite and some people not. There are definitely a lot of roguelite bullet hell games though. You should look into Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne if you haven't already
@@InsertReviews you should definitely give it a try, I wouldn't call it a rogueliite and it has its problems but I find it fun. Also hard mode kicks your ass but it's satisfying when you finally beat something.
![I Reviewed EVERY Roguelite & Roguelike I've Played [20+ Games, 1 Minute Each]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LKUhbXDXKWU/mqdefault.jpg)
![I Reviewed EVERY Roguelite & Roguelike I've Played [20+ Games, 1 Minute Each]](/img/tr.png)
![Rogue Legacy 2 Review -- Best Progression-Focused Roguelite? [1.0]](/img/n.gif)
Here is my roundup from last year in case you missed it: ua-cam.com/video/LKUhbXDXKWU/v-deo.html And you can check out my roguelite tier list video here: ua-cam.com/video/D2gaZuy94Ik/v-deo.html You can find longer reviews of most of these games on my channel as well. Thanks for watching and hope that everyone has a good holiday season!
You put a lot and I mean a LOT more effort into this video and really tested games that were not that popular. This just deserves more views thanks for the video man.
Thanks! This was my most time intensive video yet by a good amount, so I'm glad you enjoyed it
@@InsertReviews I could tell hahaha
As an indie developer making a roguelike, I appreciate the hell outta ya for covering games like Swordcery and Into the Pit with
@@ryanzsg Thanks! I try to play a mix of more popular and more obscure roguelites depending on what catches my interest. Wish I had time to play even more lesser known ones, but only so much time to go around lol
I was looking at the likes and was like "Wth why does he only have 16 likes", then i realised you "only" have 7k subs. Like how? This is a 500k+ subs channel right here! Keep it up :)
Thanks, appreciate it! It's funny because 7k subs feels huge compared to where I was last year, but still so small compared to actual large channels. I've been having a lot of fun with it though
@@InsertReviews Fun is important! Keep the vids coming. Happy New Year :)
@@InsertReviews I love your videos!
yea after watching the video I checked the subs and was shoked :D
wtf... you're right. That's so weird. It's up to 11.1k subs as of this writing... I'll just go ahead and add to that.
I got into Roguelikes with Dead Cells and three years later, I still can't get enough of the genre. Earlier this year, I discovered your channel and you've introduced me to so many new gems, thanks for that.
If you ever feel the need to branch out and cover other genres, I'm sure you'd do a great job with that too. However, I will always treasure your roguelike content.
Thanks! Yeah I've been really into roguelites since I first played Nuclear Throne a couple years ago.
Definitely have a lot more roguelite content planned for next year and beyond. Even ignoring new games, I think I have another 20 or so unplayed roguelites that I own. I used to do a lot more short random indie reviews, and I might bring some of those back. It mostly just depends on what I end up playing, which recently has most been roguelites and a couple multiplayer games.
@@InsertReviews I definitely vibe with your game plan. I'll definitely be looking for what to play :)
Nuclear Throne got me hooked on roguelikes/lites. And in hindsight Dwarf Fortress as well, but back then it wasn't a conscious influence for the genre.
Dead Cells is the reason I got into this genre too. One of favorite games of all time.
I got into rogue-likes with... Rogue. But I kind of hated it and only really played maybe 10 or 15 hours of it (I was like... 7 years old). I'm trying to think of the first one I really loved playing... I want to say it was Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja. But I've always really enjoyed the genre, outside of Rogue itself haha. Dead Cells is probably my absolute favorite still, with Hades close behind, and Curse of the Dead Gods (which I only just started) looking to be in that league for me. Bunch of honorable mentions, and some neat early access games with some promise (Both Deflector and Have a Nice Death look VERY promising).
I have over 500 hours in Noita, I am looking forward to your view on it, and hope you like it as much as I do! There is so much content in it and easily has the most replayability I have seen in any roguelike, between the "main" progression, parallel worlds, newgame, and the incredibly complex wand and spell-system.
over 150 hours here. nowhere near as impressive as you lol. By FAR my favorite game
Noita is one of the best roguelike game.. Kudos to the developers! The game is just big. I didnt even get to the moon yet.. I almost but failed miserably.
as someone who loves roguelikes and rougelites i really appreciate these videos as they are great help when it comes to finding new games!
Thanks, I'm glad that they're helpful!
It’s cool that UA-cam push old videos from small channels, I watched one dead cells video and when it finished this video started, also respect for doubling your subscribers in 7 months or less, lots of respect man.
You sir, are an *absolute monster!* So I watch this video while eating breakfast and go about my day. I get off work, go out to eat, open my wallet to pay and what do I find? _I'm entirely broke?!_ I called my bank and they said I bought 14 "roguelites" today! This is your fault and I will be sending you an invoice for the appropriate sum.
(In all seriousness though, awesome video dude, I really appreciate it! I thought I had found all the rogue's to be found and I am SO happy to be wrong!)
Hahaha even with a ton of games in my backlog I also bought 10 or so new roguelites this past week. It's a blessing and a curse truly to have so many options.
Thank you for this amazing video! I saw so many channels covering roguelikes, but none of them covered some of the games you mentioned. Keep up the great work!
Great video! Really enjoyed the 1-minute presentation about a genre that is wildly underappreciated. Keep it up!
Great content!
Honest, to the point, and I feel like you balanced out recapping the good and the bad in a short summary. I've played some of these games (Loop hero, Skul, Undermine, Roguebook, For the King, Children of Morta) and agree with most of the points you brought up.
Personally I love For the King, but I can see how some of the Board game elements I love can be a turn off for some people.
Thanks, appreciate it! Honestly I think For the King does what it wants to do (i.e. be a board game RPG roguelite) fairly well, but it just didn't fully vibe with me
I agree. I can't play for the king solo, but with two friends it's a blast. The game is extremely difficult, but it makes it that much more rewarding coordinating strategies with friends and working together towards a win, instead of everyone ending up overpowered and doing there own thing as almost all games do nowadays.
I'd love him to review my second favorite roguelike. Synthetik is basically a god tier Enter the Gungeon and it's amazing.
Quite a good video, thank you for the breakdowns of each one. I love the inclusion of luck be a landlord, it’s so unique
Thanks! Yeah Luck be a Landlord is a unique idea that the game executes really well on
Skul is one of those games you don't really start to enjoy until you get better at it. I don't think I actually enjoyed playing it at first, I was so stubborn and I just wanted a single clear. I had just beat Hades and expectations were high. As I started to clear more and more bosses, the game grew on me. I got to the point of preferring some basic Skulls over the "Legendary" ones.
Please try out Heroes of hammerwatch. Will love it and is my favorite of the hundreds I have tried
I think the coop experience of Children of Morta really adds a lot of fun to the experience and makes it much more enjoyable overall
Not with a kid though, way too hard for that
Very much looking forward to your review on The Last Spell if/when you play it.
I love that you have actual criticisms about games
very good format, roughly one minute to describe a game and most of them are spot on
however skull came a little short, when you upgrade basic skulls up to legendary they all become very unique and fun to play, and since your review the game got updated HEAVILY so i recommend to try it again, S tier in my book
So you're like the GOD of roguelikes!
Saw also your "ultimate Tier List". Take pride in playing all games from S+ to A+ and half of A.
I thought of starting to stream roguelike games, but having you around - I will leave it to you!
If you need help with trying and reviewing roguelikes - just give the word! Already have a deck to differentiate different aspects of roguelikes to go with.
Thanks for exposing us to all this! You're a source of pure fun and gaming longevity to us all.
P.S - totally try Heroes of hammerfall. It's an S rank game!!
9:46 maybe i was lucky to realize that only going for hunter cards on that starter ranger is pretty much the only way to play the game, i finished all of the available stuff with just the ranger and did not bother with other classes that much, i just switched warrior for that inspiration leader class and it did do some good damage buffs but it was mostly for cc and mana reduction (i think the leader class had those skills if i recall correctly)
Yeah I think a couple classes just felt really bad compared to others? I don't remember what my best builds were, but I remember trying half the classes and being disappointed.
I love roguelikes, but no game has done for me what Binding of Isaac does, there is just so much content, so much to unlock and do, and so much variety in the floors, enemies and bosses. I know it's had a decade of new content which is a major reason, but the only roguelike I've found even scratching a similar itch is gungeon, which came out so long ago.
try dungeon crawl stone soup lots of races, classes and spells to mix things up
Great video! Hope the algorithm is nice to you and your channel kicks off
Just found your channel and absolutely love both your taste in games, your commentary, and your delivery / watchability for your videos so far. Can't wait to see more stuff from you as I subbed to your channel.
Curse of the Dead gods might be one of the hardest games on here
It was abandoned by the developers. Not worth buying
@@skinnie2838it’s still a worthwhile purchase and play through
last i checked i’ve spent a little over a hundred hours on skul, your comments are pretty spot on. i would like to say that getting used to the gameplay loop takes a little while; even common skulls can become fun and viable if you upgrade them all the way to legendary. in that regard the skull choices feel more like what “class” you’d like the run to feel like, and synergies can definitely do a lot at that point too. but some skulls are definitely far better than others, and an incoming patch with reworks should hopefully address that balance issue.
I've still been having fun with it as whole! I definitely haven't fully mastered the build crafting aspect of the game yet, but I'm planning to sink a lot more time into it in the future. Hopefully those balance updates improve it
Children Of Morta is one of the best Roguelites I've ever played. Played it with my girlfriend and we both absolutely loved it and support the devs all the way.
Rogue Lords is a fun rogue like game from this year. Youre the devil and you are using well known legendary monsters (dracula, bloody mary, frankensteins monster etc) as minions to destroy goodness and niceness. Im not usually a fan of turn based battle games but this had some really interesting mechanics. You have an overall health pool that you must defend, but you can sacrifice health to destroy creatures, as well as using various powers and attacks you can upgrade by corrupting the world in various ways.
Noita has remained my favorite game for MONTHS (and that's saying alot since I've got ADHD) It's SOOOOOOOOO DARN GOOD
Really well done video. Genuine honest careful commentary. Not brainless spewing I see in so many other similar videos. Thanks for making this!
Nice video. Going to check out Jupiter Hell and Swordcery.
I liked your division in full released games, early access and alpha/beta.
Glad you liked it! I was debating whether to put in the alpha games at all, but I thought they would work nicely at the end.
Let me know what you think about Jupiter Hell if you end up playing.
nice vid! I love the genre and have some new ones to try now. Thanks!
I recently was introduced to Slice & Dice on Android (no iphone afaik). It's a short and sweet little dice rolling roguelike. The first 12 or 13 levels are free, or you can pay $7 to unlock the full game of 20 levels. The full game just lets you build up to a higher level and get a better team. There's a surprising amount of content there for a little mobile game and it's great for killing a few minutes when you're away from PC or console.
I actually just tried the demo for Slice & Dice! It's pretty fun. It's on PC too actually, it's just currently only on itch.io and not steam. I'm planning to grab it eventually because the demo was pretty fun
Help... I started playing Noita... and now I can't stop!!
Also.. Great video! Good flow, very informative & straight to the point. 10/10
Great video! Tainted Grail Conquest is an amazing title.
Recently I've been hunting for rogue like games with how much I enjoyed playing roguelikes ever since I was 13 and lo and behold I got this on my recommended! So, congrats! Will def check out a lot of these.
I'm surprised that for this level of quality that you're only on 8.95k subs! Honestly thought this was a 100k subbed channel! Threw a sub in too and I'll definitely look forward to your roguelike reviews! Im proud to be one of your before 10k subs man!
Thanks! UA-cam is a slow game at times, but definitely been growing more recently
I love this list! The RL genre has become my favorite and go-to over the last year. Have you heard of/played these games?
- Caveblazers
- City of Brass
- Dig Dog
- Pac Man 256 (yes its a roguelite with progression!)
- Colt Canyon
- Downwell
I've played Downwell! It's a fun roguelite that's obviously fairly simple, but executes really well on its concept. I actually own Caveblazers but have never gotten around to playing it.
I need to look into Pac Man 256 since that seems intriguing lol
@@InsertReviews Thanks for the reply! Yea Pac Man was a surprise for me; it has a great progression system where you get points each run, and you use those for new items that you keep. It's very addicting, and follows the RL formula nicely.
Caveblazers is one of my fav games of all time! 150+ hours on it. Definitely give it a try, it is very deep with a lot to offer, and does not get repetitive to me at all.
Hey. Nice Faxanadu profile pic.
@@marshallrash898 thank you!
Picked up as far as the eye after watching this video and it's a hidden gem! Lovely game.
One of my favorite rogue likes of the year has to be Super Auto Pets. The combination of rogue like and multiplayer elements by matching you against other teams on the same turn is really interesting, and despite its simplicity there is tons of room for fun and funky builds
I love SAP! I might do a review on it later this month. It's great for quick matches and some a surprising amount of depth.
The amount of work in this video is breathtaking. Nice !
So glad UA-cam recommended me this channel. Love your easy style, and I have a feeling this channel is going to cost me money, in a good way!
Thanks! Haha that's the blessing and curse of so many good games out there
Risk of Rain 2 is my most favourite roguelike of all time, absolutely worth checking out!!
I really liked Neon Abyss, but it quickly gets into a “where the heck is my character” situation.
Between a long line of following eggs masking the unit, as well as weapons that cover 80% of the screen, it was frustrating to play.
I really liked the concept and art style.
It is a crime not to be subbed to your channel. Such quality, underrated content.
Appreciate it!
I'm probably not gonna play more than 3-4 games from this video, but it was really entertaining and you're really good describing how you feel while playing a certain game and explaining those emotions/experiences. That is something not everyone can do as well as you, definitely earned a sub with this one, cya soon.
Thanks, really appreciate it!
This is really good content. I’m surprised you don’t have more subscribers. Really great work man :)
Big thanks for this roundup!
Just to help out a small youtuber- you've hit the darkest dungeon algorithm. You show up for viewers of the game. Maybe a darkest dungeon video would give you some growth
Oh interesting, appreciate this! I actually have a darkest dungeon review that I did a year plus ago.
If you want a beautiful story driven RPG card battler then Black Book is phenomenal, especially as it delves so heavily into Slavic folklore. I don't know if you've played Nova Drift but it is my absolute favourite roguelike/roguelite and has more content in early access than many full release titles and is constantly being updated and worked on. I've got over 1200 hours in Nova Drift.
awesome vid and super pumped to try many of these! Not sure if these were 2020 or 2021 - Monster Train, Nova Drift, and Monolith if you're looking for that spaceship vibe with the roguelike haha
Monster Train is amazing! I have both Nova Drift and Monolith lined up for me to try when I get a chance.
@@InsertReviews For hours played, Nova Drift for me was Right behind Risk of Rain 2, apart from unlocking new weapons there's no grind, it's just oldschool arcade fun. It gave me what I was looking for in games like Breakpoint and #Funtime.
Dreamscaper is criminally missing from that list. Best roguelite action RPG I've ever played.
30XX is very cool, try this one sometime
It's a very very good video and enjoyed a lot!
By the way, I don't really feel that inscryption is a roguelike. It looks roguelike, but it is more like a storygame, imo you should play it without any spectations.
Thanks! Yeah I've heard it's more a standard game with roguelite elements? I've been avoiding most details about it since I don't want any spoilers before I play it lol
@@InsertReviews yeah something like that, and you should keep avoiding tjode details! The first playthrough is very good!!
Without going into spoiler territory, I'm gunna have to disagree. Inscryption is predominantly a roguelike game, especially when you play the free addon Kaycee's mod which adds some roguelike progression.
Thanks. Good reviews. Different games. Quick but informative.
I appreciate the video.
Astronarch & Poker Quest FTW!
I recommend playing Streets of Rogue, it's a amazing game
Great video. It got me to wishlist a lot of action roguelikes I didnt know. Especially Rogue Star Rescue since im a huge EtG fan.
Just discovered your channel, good stuff! I love trying to catch these games on sale.
A couple of my favorites you might have missed in previous videos, “Death Road to Canada” and “Crypt of the Necrodancer” are both silly good fun with an addictive loop depending on if you like the style of games.
As far as classics go “Downwell” really has that one more run hook. You can usually catch it on sale for like 99 cents.
A few honorable mentions that are fun to play and maybe worth a look but aren’t going to win any awards are “Colt Canyon”, “Fury Unleashed”, “Rogue Stormers”, “Scourge Bringer”, and “Star Renegades”
Sounds like we both already have a full backlog of titles to get through though!
Downwell is a fun little game! I forget if I've talked about it in other videos, but it's a nice simple roguelite. People often recommend Crypt of the Necrodancer to me, but I just have never enjoyed rhythm games, so I've always avoided it
I'll have to add some of these to my list though! If only we had enough time to get through all of our backlogs lol
Discovered your channel a while ago, found a lot of gems through you. But you really really need to check out Inscyption if you didnt, missed it on the list too. It's, for me, the game of the year with a nice story implemented to the rougelite genre. It's a deckbuilding game and one of those unique games, with a lot of love from the developer. You need to play it by your own and dont stop early one or you'll miss a lot of good elements :)
I have it installed! I'm waiting for a good weekend to really dive into it. I've heard a lot of good things and have been dodging all possible spoilers lol
@@InsertReviews alright, tried to keep the coment spoiler free :D have fun with the game :)
Children of Morta is probably my favourite. ARPG's are my favourite type of game though, so no big surprizes there.
Also, you're not supposed to just play one character. You have to level them all to get then most out of the game (to get the family upgrades) And also there are animation cancels for every single character as well, you just have to figure them out. Granted the Father and the Cousin who are the heavier characters are not as nimble as the others, but I feel this adds realism. Especially with the Big guy with the hammer, He's all about just powering through attacks.
The Father is all about using his shield though, this is how you cancel his attacks (if I remember rightly) you have to press shield up to cancel, where as the more nimble characters use dodge to cancel their attacks. I actually remember the cancelling being great, as often I would cancel out of a move before I'd even properly casted it. When this happens you don't waste the special though, and you can use it again right after.
I think maybe you just didn't discover the animation cancels if you think you were being locked into attacks too much. I could be wrong, but I never had an issue with them. I did mostly play it on Switch though, so could be different to PC (I own it on PC now as well, but haven't played it much on Steam yet)
Honestly wouldn't be surprised if I missed some of the combat's skill cap. I got some animation cancels down, but some other characters just felt clunky to me regardless.
I actually quite liked the ranged characters, but I never really felt great with a lot of the melee ones. I just felt like I would often attack and then immediately take damage from other enemies before I could do anything else or I would just find myself running around a lot to get space to complete an attack
@@InsertReviews Yeah I liked the ranged ones, too. I loved the little assassin guy and the kung fu one though. I felt the smaller melee ones were great.
The little assassin guy especially could cancel out of any attack with his dodging.
With the shield guy a lot came down to just speccing into him being a tank. He's great for multiplayer.
Whenever you have the shield up this blocks damage from all angles.
This video was very entertaining and chill to watch. It is really noticable you put alot of effort into it. Keep up the great work!
Thanks!
If you haven't checked it out already, i would recommend trying out Revita. It's still in development, so it's not the most polished it could be, but the close listening to the community and its regular and impactful updates makes it definitely worth trying imo. It has an interesting mechanic that allows you to sacrifice health for items at altars, but also allows you to build up max health throughout floors that makes your health a ressource in a way that isn't commonly seen (at least i haven't seen it before). It also has a few secrets and cryptic puzzles hidden within for those who like that kind of thing. Overall a very solid game for being made by a team of two (a single developper and a musician i believe, correct me if i'm wrong).
It's on my list! I'll planning to really dive into it when it leaves early access
Check out Blade assault it comes out very soon and is in early access in steam. Def looks like a game you would enjoy. Thanks for the video!
CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED
FWIW, the most recent updates for Jupiter Hell did a lot to address some of your complaints - there's more interesting stuff going on in the early game and the skill tree has been changed so that you have more choices earlier rather than being locked into the prereqs for whatever master you wanted to do.
Oh really? I might have to check it out again. I played it mostly around the 1.0 release.
I'm not sure if you've played get to the orange door yet but you definitely should. it has so much potential to be a great game as it gets updated more
I'll add it to my list! I haven't heard of it before
I was always wondering what the name of the genre was.. cuz I was always loving game like that.. started back then with Risk of Rain.. can highly recommend it.. even the 2nd game is nice but its in 3D this time
For me, replayability is a very touchy subject because I'm SUPER picky about it. I don't think having scaling difficulty fits what I want out of a games' replayability, for instance. A game will always have a limited lifespan for me because difficulty isn't what makes games fun for me. It's all about finding new and exciting things to play around with.
Glad you mentioned robust it's one I enjoy even more than gunfire reborn
Your videos are really cool. I love roguelikes and your channel has introduced me to several games.
Thanks! Lots of great overlooked roguelites out there to experience
These are really good reviews! I'm getting a lot of good insight into each of the games even though I can tell we have somewhat different tastes. You got me to take another look at Against the Storm and Curse of the Dead Gods, and I hadn't heard of Tainted Grail before!
As for recommendations, I can really second another comment I saw that recommended Slice & Dice! The full version is really worth it; the game design feels so crunchy and interesting, and I always appreciate when a small game has a really perfected aesthetic and attention to detail. The dev is working on a big content update, and looking into publishing on steam and porting to ios alongside that, so while I encourage playing it right away (because it is so good), you may want to hold off on a review for a bit.
Also, everything Punkcake is doing (a monthly game via patreon + itch, a la Sokpop) seems to be some form of novel arcade-y roguelike. I would particularly recommend Scavenger of Dunomini and Metavaxx. (Alas, monthly games tend to leave you wanting more)
I got a couple other ones to recommend too, just to cover my bases:
Kingsway only just passed 1k steam reviews, and has a really interesting operating system theming that informs a lot of the game design! It recently got a big final update/re-release, too!
Another good roguelike with a recent big content update is atomicrops (which is too hectic for me...)
And a few interesting and novel roguelikes, that may be less roguelike-like than the ones you usually review:
ConnecTank is one designed more for a couch co-op experience and revolves around managing conveyor belts that supply ammo to a tank, and each run is part of a single story/campaign.
Beast Breaker is similar in the roguelike mini-loop within a mostly linear story, and has some really fun pachinko-RPG gameplay and strategy.
Sokpop did a tiny little RPG called Apocalich that isn't quite roguelike but has more of a "solve for the optimal path’ run-based game (also local multiplayer).
World of Horror is a funky little retro visual novel RPG about solving a set of five persistent mysteries.
Across the Obelisk is more the style of Slay the Spire, but you have four separate characters with their own decks, and again the world is consistent across runs (with alternative modes).
Astronarch is awesome. I will try some of the others on this list, in particular Trails of Fire. Great list and its earned a subscription.
Astronarch is great! He's working on another game right now also, so I'm curious to see if it's another roguelite like this.
I'm so glad someone actually took time to differentiate roguelikes and roguelites because they are so entirely different genres that it's crazy people call everything a roguelike
whats the difference?
@@archiewall582 a roguelike's core gameplay is usually very similar to that of rogue's, that means:
turn based combat
permadeath
no unlocks
completely random
something like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a roguelike
while roguelites like BPM, binding of isaac, and other similar games have systems that rogue had but are waaaaaay to different and besides very few systems, are nothing like rogue
Hi, ive just finished Hades and completed it 100%, because I love it. Any other games would you recommend to play now? Thanks
I'd highly recommend you check out Monolith and Heroes of Hammerwatch. They're both super fun and highly overlooked action roguelites.
I love this style of video. great job.
If you are interested in a new one. Tower Tactics: Liberation is worth a look. It's not super complex, but I really enjoy it.
i really recomend to everyone who likes roguelikes to play noita, it's a really fun and mindblowing game, also the aesthetic is incredible
For the King is maybe best seen as an RPG that happens to have a random map, over an actual roguelike.
my most anticipated roguelike is sifu next year
Completely agree with Curse of the dead gods, tainted grail and gunfire reborn for some of the best new games I've played in their own catergory. Roboquest reminding you of overwatch is not very surprising as it's copying a lot of the visuals
Not too many actual roguelikes on this list, which I prefer than roguelites...Then again, there isn't much new "core" roguelikes out there, the newest one I played was probably Caves Of Qud which is amazing...I guess I am an old school roguelike purist, the closer to the original Rogue, the better.
getting into the genre right now with ror2, hades, and noita. mostly because i love terraria and hades and ror2 are on the top of the steam page, but your video helped me alot. i
Hey man, maybe you could get a look on synthetik, caveblazers and bullets per minute
Definitely planning to play BPM and synthetik sometime soon
@@InsertReviews Synthetik 2 is out now as well. They both play quite differently as well.
Great list!
I would add in or mention the platform for each game.
I loved the quality of your content
I would recommend you try The Monster Within. It's a card game in early access on Steam.
These vids are super intersting. Your review styile is great. Even though it doesnt uee any numbers(1-10 something like that) i could pretty easily tell what you liked the most and what wasnt that great. keep up the fantastic work
Thanks! Yeah I've always shied away from numbers for a couple of reasons, so I'm glad that it still works without them
Have you checked out Exanima? It's a really unique physics based low magic medieval style dungeon crawler.
I played neon abyss when it came out and had fun but the inability to exit and continue the game like binding of issac was a bummer and at the time it would crash randomly which for a game like that would end the run. Hopfully it’s better now I might give it another try.
Curse of the Dead Gods is one of the best rougelikes I have ever played..Hades obviously wins with story/dialogue, but curses’ combat is unmatched
You must be crazy. That game was abandoned by the devs and its NOT worth buying in its current state.
I recommend 1 step from eden. It’s my personal fave card roguelike.
About Jupiter Hell: I just wanted to shout out DoomRL, the original Doom roguelike. A freeware, classic roguelike made by the developers of Jupiter Hell.
Really good video. I found it looking for rogue like games, it being a genre I'm new to. I just played Archvale with game pass. I don't know if it's a rogue game per se, but I really enjoyed it and are looking for something similar. Subscribed
Thanks! I've not played Archvale myself, but I've seen some people call it a roguelite and some people not. There are definitely a lot of roguelite bullet hell games though. You should look into Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne if you haven't already
@@InsertReviews you should definitely give it a try, I wouldn't call it a rogueliite and it has its problems but I find it fun. Also hard mode kicks your ass but it's satisfying when you finally beat something.
Hey, thanks a lot for the video mate, always good to see good indie games reviewed (considering the current AAA industry state)
Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah I agree. Still some great AAA games obviously, but it's sad to see how many popular AAA franchises have fallen.
@@InsertReviews true mate, any plans on covering upcoming indies? So many of them got delayed to 2022 like kingdom gun, there is no light, dwerve etc.
Definitely going to keep covering indies! Which ones exactly though is going depend on my mood at the time and how much time and money I have lol
This video was sooo good I pressed the like button twice
Jk it's a great video
Keep it up, man. You're crushing it and will hit 100k in no time. Definitely made me want to check out your other channels/subscribe.
a rogue like i really love and im hyped for its full release is kingdom gun
Hope you keep at it, your videos are awesome!
Thanks, appreciate it!
Love your reviews!!!!!
You should try Legends of runeterra : Path of new champions. One of the best roguelike deckbuilder i play this year
I think you should totally try One Step from Eden! I picked it up on a whim and I can't put it down.