Summary
- Some of the most popular Steam indie games are roguelikes like Slay The Spire and Hades.
- Classic roguelikes like Door In The Woods offer challenging, oppressive gameplay.
- 1 Bit Survivor is a stylish, addictive, and easy-to-pick-up retro roguelike experience.
Roguelikes and roguelites are some of the most popular games on Steam, with titles such as Slay The Spire, Hades, Balatro, and Risk Of Rain 2 being smash hits in the world of indie games. Traditional experiences such as Caves Of Qud and Cogmind have proven popular with the Steam audience, offering turn-based gameplay, permanent death, and procedural generation.
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Roguelikes in particular are notoriously challenging, thanks in large part to their lack of progression and permanent death. This often leads to harsh and unforgiving gameplay, a perfect match for the dark and dangerous undead.
1 Door In The Woods
A Classic Roguelike With A Dark And Creepy Atmosphere
- Platform(s): PC
- Released: 2019
- Developer(s): teedoubleuGAMES
- Genre: Roguelike
Door In The Woods is a traditional roguelike with a dark, creepy atmosphere. Despite its ASCII graphics, Door In The Woods does a lot with its limitations, coming across as almost stylistic. It's not an experience that players are likely to sink hours into, but the harsh and unforgiving gameplay combined with the tangible, oppressive atmosphere make for an experience worth having for any fan of classic roguelikes and horror games.
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The stark, limited color palette further adds to the dark atmosphere, and the atmospheric soundscape creates a surprisingly immersive environment despite the game's minimalist style. The zombies featured in the game are dangerous, and able to instill tension despite their minimalist representation, the letter Z. Door In The Woods won't convert those who don't already enjoy traditional roguelikes, but fans of both old-school gameplay and zombie games should consider an afternoon with this retro title.
2 1 Bit Survivor
A Stylish Roguelike That's Easy To Pick Up And Play
- Platform(s): PC, Mobile
- Released: 2023
- Developer(s): Chaz Acheronti
- Genre: Roguelike
For players looking for a quick game to play on a lunch break, or a palette cleanser between more demanding titles, 1 Bit Survivor is a perfect fit. A faithful retro style, complete with minimalist pixel art and crunchy sound design, combined with a brilliantly executed combination of top-down and first-person perspectives, results in an experience that's consistently pleasant to look at. However, 1 Bit Survivor also succeeds in its gameplay.
The game's simple but heartwarming narrative propels the player through the game, setting them the task of reaching a bunker within 28 days to save themselves and their newly-found cat from an impending bomb. The gameplay loop is simple but addictive, not to mention easy to learn, giving players a variety of combat puzzles to solve in a turn-based fashion. The zombies themselves are relatively basic, both in their depiction and mechanically, but they can be lethal. It's simple, but 1 Bit Survivor is stylish, satisfying, and easy to pick up and play at any time.
3 Terminus: Zombie Survivors
An Accessible, Traditional Experience With Multiple Endings
- Platform(s): PC
- Released: 2024
- Developer(s): Longplay Studios
- Genre: Roguelike
Though some may find Terminus: Zombie Survivors to be similar in many ways to the traditional roguelike, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, it stands on its own as an accessible roguelike with a competent pixel art style. As a result of this accessibility, Terminus: Zombie Survivors manages to be a great gateway into more traditional roguelikes, featuring elements of the roguelite genre with its permanent unlocks.
The game's combat is unique, simple, and easy to read, requiring a few more steps and a little more analysis on the player's part than similar roguelikes. Furthermore, the game's zombies have a variety of conditions, from limbless zombies that do little but block pathways, to the weaker crawlers, all the way to regular full-strength undead. Terminus: Zombie Survivors also features mechanics for crafting and cooking, and the variety of endings encourages players to beat the game multiple times.
4 Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
A Deep, Heavily Simulated Traditional Roguelike
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
There's a great deal to get up to in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, that is if players can survive long enough to do any of it. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a traditional roguelike, featuring turn-based gameplay and RPG character progression, but with a survival-horror flavor. Fans of classic roguelikes and harsh, unforgiving survival games will fit right in, but CDDA can be a somewhat inaccessible experience for those who are new to the genre.
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There's an abundance of enemy types in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and they aren't exclusive to zombies, but there's an intense variety of zombie enemies, from regular undead humans to gigantic zombie frogs. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead plays similarly to games such as Project Zomboid with its focus on survival gameplay and deep simulation. However, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead's commitment to old-school design and variety of unhinged gameplay mechanics make it worth playing in its own right, despite the relatively bare-bones visuals.
5 Death Road To Canada
A Fun, Fast-Paced Arcade Road Trip Through The Apocalypse
Death Road To Canada
Taking a great deal of inspiration from The Oregon Trail's core gameplay loop, Death Road To Canada is a road-trip simulator that tasks players with battling their way through a zombie-infested country on their way to a rumored safe haven. Death Road To Canada's violent, crunchy pixel art style and old-school arcade gameplay are a perfect and utterly charming match, and this is especially so when playing in local co-op with a friend.
Death is permanent in Death Road To Canada, and it's not hard to get surrounded by a horde or cornered by a group of shambling undead, which keeps the minimalist arcade gameplay thrilling. These zombies aren't the smartest, but their reactive behavior can be surprisingly deadly in chaotic situations. Death Road To Canada also features random generation, keeping each run fresh for a good while.
6 Dead Estate
A Stylish Run-And-Gun Action Roguelike With A Horror Twist
Dead Estate
- Released
- October 19, 2021
- Developer(s)
- Milkbar Lads
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Genre(s)
- Roguelike, Twin-Stick Shooter
This action roguelike is tinged with horror elements that take clear inspiration from survival-horror classics such as Resident Evil, primarily with the invincible monster that chases players should they dawdle too long, an antagonist that's familiar in purpose to the iconic Mr. X. The isometric perspective is hard to read at times, especially during some of the more chaotic combat encounters, but the simplistic architecture of the individual rooms helps to keep things manageable.
The gameplay is action-packed, and extremely run-and-gun, with players maneuvering around tight spaces and hopping over obstacles as they avoid various monsters and undead creatures. Dead Estate is further improved by its large variety of weapons, which helps to keep the moment-to-moment action from getting stale.
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