The Most Complex Roguelike Games

The roguelike genre is a complicated thing. There’s some disagreement over how exactly to define a roguelike game, but permanent death and procedural level generation are generally held up as two of the most vital features of the genre.

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Developers can layer a lot of other mechanics onto these two simple qualifiers. Older roguelikes are infamous for their difficulty and complexity, generating vast interconnected dungeons for players to navigate. However, some modern roguelikes crank up the complexity as well. Here are ten of the most complicated roguelikes on offer for genre fans who want a challenge.

10

Crypt Of The NecroDancer

Feel The Rhythm

The core conceit of Crypt of the NecroDancer is deceptively simple, albeit considerably difficult. The game combines dungeon crawling with rhythm gameplay. Players must match the beat of the background music in everything they do, from movement to combat.

The complexity of Crypt of the NecroDancer comes as players realize just how many aspects of the game are dependent on rhythm. Fans must memorize enemy attack patterns, activate special abilities and items, and dodge special moves from bosses, all without losing track of the rhythm underpinning everything.

9

Hades

The Power Of The Gods

The fast-paced action gameplay of Hades is not complicated by any means, but the systems and mechanics that are layered underneath it certainly are. No two runs of this game are similar, as they’re altered by weapon choice, permanent upgrades from the Mirror of Night, and, of course, the boons Zagreus selects during a run.

Each of the gods players encounter during a run of Hades will offer a wealth of different powers based on numerous different mechanics in line with their godly domains. Creating an ideal build in Hades requires no small amount of luck, but with ingenuity and strategy, fans can put together some truly devastating combos and synergies that can tear bosses apart in a matter of seconds.

8

World Of Horror

A Gruesome Gauntlet

As the name suggests, the sinister World of Horror is a frightening game. Its vivid 1-bit art style pays homage to the works of masters of the genre like H.P. Lovecraft and Junji Ito, while its gameplay tests the limits of players’ sanity in order to accurately depict the difficulties of surviving against the old gods themselves.

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World of Horror uses turn-based gameplay as players contend with mutated and afflicted fiends. The title’s elaborate menus let players guide their investigations wherever they’d like within the confines of the game’s ever-declining seaside town. Players will have to keep meticulous track of their inventories and leads if they want to uncover the truth before the madness of World of Horror claims them.

7

Rogue Legacy 2

A Twisted Family Tree

As with its predecessor, the core conceit of Rogue Legacy 2 is the fact that, each time the player dies, they must start a fresh run in the body of their previous character’s heir, with randomized classes and stats. The moveset of these procedurally-generated relatives is pretty simple, but there are plenty of other mechanics built in around them to keep things complicated.

As players venture into the game’s randomized dungeons, they’ll have to keep track of things like Resolve, which determines how many relics they can pick up, and their Runic Weight, which determines how many mystical runes they can equip to enhance their abilities. Players will also have to unlock and upgrade new armor and weapons as they go, and manage the game’s truly colossal skill tree, which offers buffs that persist between runs of the game.

6

Dicey Dungeons

Beating The Odds

Dicey Dungeons is a tricky little roguelike that combines deckbuilding with dice rolling, creating a challenging experience where players must rely quite heavily on luck. Fans get a random assortment of dice rolls that they must carefully and strategically assign to cards and abilities in order to overwhelm their opponents.

The game features an assortment of player characters that can help stack the odds in the player’s favor, each with different abilities and traits. In order to prosper against Lady Luck, fans must play the odds carefully and repeatadly put their faith in a roll of the dice.

5

FTL: Faster Than Light

A Treacherous Voyage

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FTL: Faster Than Light

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Released

September 14, 2012

Developer(s)

Subset Games

FTL: Faster Than Light tasks players with commanding a spaceship on a harrowing journey through a hostile galaxy, with an implacable armada of enemy vessels hot on their heels. Fans must carefully manage their ship’s systems and assign crew members to specific duties in order to deal with random encounters and ship skirmishes.

Stakes are high in every encounter, and, as one might expect, an interstellar spaceship is a complicated machine. Players have a lot to manage in order to keep their vessel together, and one wrong move can spell ultimate doom in the depths of space.

4

Slay The Spire

The Whims Of The Cards

Slay the Spire is often called the definitive deckbuilding video game, and it’s easy to see why. With over 730 cards spread across four playable characters, fans have almost limitless options for strategies and loadouts.

Players must carefully consider the sort of deck they want to build as they make every decision in Slay the Spire. The small selection of cards fans are offered after every encounter can help them take their deck in whatever direction they’d like, but, as with all card games, the luck of the draw always has the final say.

3

Cogmind

Iterating On The Classics

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Cogmind

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Released

October 16, 2017

Developer(s)

Grid Sage Games

Unlike most modern games that bear the roguelike moniker, Cogmind was inspired by the classic, old-school dungeon crawlers that established the genre. This procedurally generated gauntlet casts players as a robot, slowly improving and iterating on themselves by collecting spare parts to unlock new abilities.

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The variety of robot parts players can use to enhance their build is staggering. As with any classic roguelike dungeon crawler, players are limited in their problem-solving approach by nothing but their own imagination and the parts and resources they’ve been able to claim. In the vast world of Cogmind, no two runs will ever be the same.

2

Darkest Dungeon

Endless Suffering

Darkest Dungeon is infamous for its difficulty, and this reputation is extremely well-earned. The game tasks players with assembling strike teams of hardened but fragile adventurers, each of whom comes with a randomized selection of traits and a rapidly-building stress meter that can drive them over the edge and end them, either in body or in mind.

Success in Darkest Dungeon requires players to carefully manage their heroes’ stats, equipment, abilities, and, of course, their stress levels. At the same time, fans must also build up the wretched little hamlet they call home in order to better improve their adventurers. Neglecting any one of these complicated mechanics can and will spell disaster.

1

NetHack

Limitless Possibility

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Released

August 10, 2018

Developer(s)

FrozenCrate, LLC

The early dungeon-crawling roguelikes of the 1980s took complexity to a whole new level, and there is perhaps no better example of this than NetHack. The game is built off of Rogue, the namesake of the genre, but it introduces a wealth of features and mechanics, all of which can interact with each other in staggering new ways.

The complexity of NetHack is perhaps best exemplified in the saying passed around by its fans: “The dev team thinks of everything.” Any item or ability interaction fans could think to attempt, no matter how bizarre and off the cuff, has likely been accounted for by the developers. Few games can offer a system as comprehensive, intricate, and massively complex as NetHack.

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