As a self-proclaimed roguelike veteran, I think it’s finally time to throw my hat into the ring and definitively rank some of the best roguelites I’ve ever touched.
First, a quick public service announcement for the inevitable comment section purists: 99% of these are roguelites, not roguelikes. The difference basically comes down to the fact that roguelites have some form of permanent meta-progression that carries over between runs, whereas with a roguelike, you’re starting from a blank slate every single time. I make this distinction now, but let’s be honest—I’m still going to title things to rage-bait the people who love to scream “Actually, it’s a roguelike!”
Looking at my Steam library, I own about 36 of these games but I’ve only actually played 23 of them. The hours-played difference across this list is massive. Here is my completely subjective, arguably flawless tier list.
The S-Tier: The Ultimate Time-Sinks
If you value your productivity, relationships, or career, stay far away from these games. They are absolute masterpieces.
Balatro
The poker roguelite that single-handedly disrupted global Steam Deck sales. In Balatro, you are essentially playing poker hands to score enough points to beat the “blind,” which sounds easy enough, except you’re using broken combinations of Jokers and special effect cards to scale your score so high you literally start needing scientific notation.
It is easily an S-Tier game and one of the best roguelites in history [00:52].
Hades
This game has gotten stroked off so hard by critics that I’m surprised there isn’t an X-rating on every review. IGN put out a “Best Roguelikes of All Time” list where Hades 2 was number one and Hades 1 was number three… mind you, the sequel was still in Early Access. But as a kid who grew up obsessed with Percy Jackson, this isometric underworld escape simulator is basically crack. The gameplay, the visuals, the soundtrack, the story—it’s a masterpiece. I begrudgingly put it in S-Tier because I’m a contrarian, but it completely deserves it [06:26].
Inscryption
A deck-building, escape-room, puzzle-style roguelite wrapped in layers of psychological horror that will leave you staring at your screen, wondering, “What the absolute hell is happening right now?” I will keep this description brief because it’s a game like Outer Wilds—the first playthrough is the peak experience, and going in completely spoiler-free makes or breaks it. It gets an S-Tier with a giant asterisk: it’s an S-Tier the first time you play it, but subsequent replays lose a bit of that magic [07:12].
Mewgenics
The newest creation from Edmund McMillen, the literal “trash cow” himself. It’s a turn-based roguelite centered around… cat breeding. In classic McMillen fashion, it is gross, completely over-the-top, and filled with pitch-black humor. You send your cats into turn-based battles throughout a campaign where they get traits, mutations, and scarring that they pass down to their offspring to create literal biological abominations. It’s an easy S-Tier for me, and I don’t care if Isaac purists come for my throat [08:53].
Risk of Rain 2
Developed originally by Hopoo Games (who sold the IP to Gearbox so they could go work on Deadlock), this is a third-person action shooter where you stack items until your run becomes so chaotic you can’t even see what’s on your screen. Is it wrong for a roguelite YouTuber to put their “own” game in S-Tier? Look, I’m a totally objective third party here, and Risk of Rain 2 earns it. The modding community gives it infinite replayability, and that soundtrack by Chris Christodoulou? Chef’s kiss [10:37].
Slay the Spire 1 & 2
- Slay the Spire 1: Commonly referred to as THE roguelite deck builder. It is easily one of the most balanced games in existence because the developers used actual player data to balance the cards (though they still created the Watcher class, so nobody’s perfect). It’s criminal that this game is only $25 on Steam; it should be priced like a Toyota Camry [12:04].
- Slay the Spire 2: The sequel had the largest roguelite launch in history and literally outsold Silksong. It removed the Watcher, added co-op, added a summoner class, and made the Defect thick. I rest my case. It’s a low S-Tier for now because it’s slightly imbalanced compared to the first, but I have total confidence it’ll get there [12:41].
Uma Musume Pretty Derby
Yes, this is a gacha mobile game about horse girls that somehow made its way to Steam. I only ever played it because a bald man in his 30s on Twitch liked playing it. You take anime girls named after real Japanese racehorses, train them up to win races, and then watch an anime concert.
As a gacha game, it’s only slightly more expensive than buying a real, breathing horse, but it’s 10 times more kawaii. S-Tier purely because it got me interested in Haru.
[13:10].
The A-Tier: Genre Royalty
Excellent games that narrowly missed the absolute top spot, usually due to personal preference.
The Binding of Isaac
The granddaddy of modern replayability. To get the “Dead God” achievement, you have to 100% everything and touch every item, which takes hundreds of hours. Even the fastest speedrunners in the world take 100 hours to do it. However, until very recently, the game never actually told you what the items did inside the base game.
If I hadn’t downloaded the External Item IDs mod, Isaac would have been a D-Tier for me. Now that it’s in the base game, it’s a solid A-Tier [02:09].
Darkest Dungeon
A dark, gothic, turn-based RPG where your characters will literally suffer psychological breakdowns in front of your eyes. It features Eldritch horrors, a spooky atmosphere, and an absolutely legendary voice-acting job.
It is unfair in a way that can sometimes not be fun, but it scratches a turn-based dungeon-crawler itch I didn’t even know I had. A-Tier [04:12].
The B-Tier: Good Fun, Less Replayability
Great mechanics and distinct art styles, but they don’t quite have the infinite hook of the S-Tiers.
- Ball X Pit: A brick-breaking, ball-fusing, base-building survival roguelite. If that sounds like a bizarre sentence, it is. You pinball your attacks against walls to defeat enemies, and then head back to your settlement to base-build. Super unique, very fun. B-Tier [02:36].
- Clover Pit: A slot machine roguelite that proves the Moore’s Law of gaming: the number of gambling-like roguelites doubles every two years. You’re trapped in a room with a slot machine, a toilet, and a literal pit under your feet that opens up if you can’t pay your rent. It has the serial-killer aesthetic of Inscryption combined with the dopamine-filled gambling of Balatro, though with less replayability. B-Tier [03:11].
- Cult of the Lamb: You play as a lamb starting a cult. You fight monsters, gather followers, deal with romance, clean up poop, and experience a shockingly good Twitch integration. It essentially allows you to roleplay as a Minecraft YouTuber, except with much more appropriate fan interactions. B-Tier [03:45].
- Gunfire Reborn: Think Borderlands but with furry anime heroes. It’s a first-person shooter where guns drop with random modifiers. It has heavy meta-progression and is a blast to play with friends or solo, putting it in a solid B-Tier [05:40].
- Mega Bonk: Essentially Vampire Survivors meets Risk of Rain 2 in 3D. You take a teleporter through different stages to fight big bosses, using a roster of juvenile characters like a Tony Hawk skeleton. It’s a high B-Tier for being the most unique survivor-like on the list [08:13].
- Nova Drift: An ARPG and an arcade space shooter bullet-hell baby. You kill enemies, upgrade your ship, or just become an engineer and let the AI play the game for you. It’s incredibly well put together, but I’d just rather play other things. B-Tier [09:40].
- Risk of Rain 1 / Returns: The 2D platformer versions of the franchise. They are significantly harder, the items feel less meaningful, and I’m just not a huge platformer guy. The soundtrack (Coalescence, my beloved) and the Starstorm modding scene carry it to a high B-Tier [11:22].
- Vampire Survivors: The literal progenitor of an entire sub-genre. You move, the game automatically shoots, and you combine weapons to clear the screen. While it deserves historic credit, survivor-likes quickly become boring for me and lack long-term replayability. Top of B-Tier [13:52].
The C-Tier, Forgettable, and Dropped
- Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor (C-Tier): It has some unique mining mechanics, but at the end of the day, it is just Vampire Survivors with a DRG coat of paint [04:51].
- Lort (C-Tier): An insanely goofy, irreverent co-op game with Australian goblins and jacked elves with guns heavily inspired by Risk of Rain 2. Fun with friends, but not a heavy hitter [07:38].
- Realm of the Mad God (Forgettable Tier): I played this a long time ago with a friend. I legitimately couldn’t tell you a single thing about it, good or bad [10:01].
- Noita (Unranked/Have Not Played): I have less than 90 minutes in Noita, so it wouldn’t be fair to rank it [09:16].
The Verdict
If you look at the top of the board, it’s pretty obvious I have a massive bias toward deck builders and high replayability. While games like Inscryption break the rule by being S-Tier purely off the back of a magical first playthrough, replayability is king in this genre.
All tier lists are subjective, but I am absolutely willing to bare-knuckle brawl anyone who tries to tell me that Slay the Spire and Balatro aren’t the absolute goats of the genre [14:34].
What do you think? Did I disrespect The Binding of Isaac too much? Drop your recommendations in the comments below!