After thousands of “Overwhelmingly Positive” Steam reviews, Caves of Qud dev says the roguelike RPG has done “100x better than anything we ever expected”

After over a decade of grueling development, Dungeons & Dragons-inspired roguelike Caves of Qud has finally left early access and boasts a recent 1.0 release – and according to Freehold Games co-founder Brian Bucklew, the game’s success is already exceeding all expectations and then some.

Speaking in a recent thread online, the roguelike’s co-creator explains how different Caves of Qud’s launch has been and how mind-boggling its immediate success is. “There are just no comparable [games] to Caves of Qud,” writes the developer, as “nobody launches out of a decade-long early access into a launch quite likes this.” That’s why “there’s no way at all to tell if this is all the units we will ever sell again or the start of a long success.”

According to Bucklew, “most games sell like 95123412354123 units in the first day and then trail pretty predictably” – unlike Caves of Qud, and that’s why Freehold Games doesn’t know “how things will be going in 18 months.” As for why it’s so successful after so long? The dev explains that the unique roguelike is “chasing absolutely no trends” and has likely snagged the attention of both old and new audiences used to “the modern game.”

As Bucklew says, “people are buying it today that weren’t alive when the first people started playing it.” Overall, however, the lead admits Caves of Qud “has already, even before launch, done 100x better than anything we ever expected in our wildest dreams.” Anything beyond launch “is just a cherry on the sundae,” with Bucklew stating he’s simply “immensely grateful for it and the players and the possibilities it opens for the future.”

After 17 years of work on D&D-inspired roguelike Caves of Qud, co-creator says “I personally have lost my mind and started posting about my dark desires to drop off the grid”