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Guides & Editorial
A guide to the best Roguelikes on PS4 and PS5
You’ll never play the same game twice with this selection of the finest procedurally generated adventures available on PlayStation Store.
Action roguelikes
Thrilling adventures
Experience death-defying runs that get your heart racing
Returnal
From the developer of SAROS, unravel a cosmic horror story in this third-person roguelike shooter that traps an astronaut in time loop on an ever-changing planet.
- Take on ruthless enemies in bullet-hell-style combat, switching between firing modes at the pull of an adaptive trigger.
- Manage your limited resources carefully and scavenge for tech to improve your abilities in future loops.
Absolum
Exciting combat and cutting-edge roguelite elements are what sets beat 'em up Absolum apart, evoking fantasy adventure and the thrill of arcades.
- With three islands to conquer and a fourth that's hidden, randomized dangers and diverging routes take you on a unique path every time you go toe to toe with the villains of the story.
- Rituals – evolving gameplay upgrades for your character that strengthen your run and reward your skill – gives you the edge over the Sun King Azra and snatch victories for the small but mighty rebels.
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Elden Ring: Nightreign
In an alternate Elden Ring timeline, where the Lands Between became suffocated by a ravenous Night, two to three players step forth as Nightfarers, ready to rise against the apocalypse.
- A volatile world filled with enemies and environmental modifiers push even the most seasoned FromSoftware players to their limit.
- Sink into the darkness with even more content with The Forsaken Hollows DLC, adding two new Nightfarers, two new Day Three Bosses, a new Shifting Earth, and more.
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Hades
Hack and slash your way out of Hades to defy its namesake, the lord of the underworld – who also happens to be your dad.
- Enjoy a highly stylized take on Greek mythology as you encounter many gods and benefit from their powers.
- Developer Supergiant (Bastion, Transistor, Pyre) showcases its pedigree by weaving compelling narrative threads through richly atmospheric levels full of fast-paced action.
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Risk of Rain 2
Work your way through a series of stunning alien landscapes full of fearsome monsters and powerful loot, fighting both scaling difficulty and the always-ticking clock.
- Play solo or with friends and battle through hordes of frenzied monsters across a diverse series of handcrafted environments.
- Beat bosses to escape – or loop your run indefinitely to see how long you can survive as foes increase in power across the course of your game.
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Roguelikes are games characterised by levels that are procedurally generated - that is, created by clever algorithms rather than manually designed - meaning that no two playthroughs are ever the same. Level layouts, enemy placements and the weapons or upgrades you encounter change every time you restart, creating an irresistible challenge that demands hundreds, if not thousands of replays.
The name pays tribute to Rogue, an early dungeon crawler from 1980. The game used procedural generation to create an entirely new dungeon for every playthrough, meaning players could never anticipate the dangers ahead. Through this, Rogue also introduced the enduring concept of ‘permadeath’.
There’s a lot of debate on this. Purists argue that a roguelike must mirror Rogue’s turn-based, dungeon crawler RPG approach to qualify.
Another school of thought is that a roguelike can refer to any game with procedural elements that will reset your progress completely after each playthrough, whereas a rogue-lite retains some elements of character progression, such as upgraded stats or unlocked weapons and abilities. Because of this, some consider that a roguelike is about the journey, whereas a rogue-lite is about the destination.
There are plenty of roguelikes that can be enjoyed with other players as cooperative experiences. Some of the games that support multiplayer in this curated selection include Spelunky 2, Enter The Gungeon, Absolum, Elden Ring: Nightreign, and Vampire Survivors.
Classic roguelikes
Live to die another day
Perfect your escape strategy across diverse environments.
Spelunky 2
A sequel to the classic indie cave crawler, Spelunky 2 lets you loose on a hazardous underground world teeming with loot, enemies and traps.
- Experiment with the game’s physics and use a wide array of gadgets to go deeper and deeper into the cave network.
- Randomly generated layouts mean no run is the same as the last and diverse environments, including lush jungles and lava-filled hollows, ensure visual freshness throughout.
Dave the Diver
Join Dave, a professional diver, as he catches unique and delicious fish by day and serves hungry patrons at a seaside sushi restaurant by night.
- Dive into the Blue Hole, where the ecology and terrain is always changing, and discover that there’s more in its depths than sushi ingredients.
- Use your restaurant profits to upgrade your equipment between dives and enjoy minigames like seahorse racing and underwater photography when you’re not focused on the menu.
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Dead Cells
Become an immortal blob capable of possessing the bodies of dead prisoners and fight your way out of a plague-ridden island kingdom in this lightning-fast action experience.
- Explore every corner of a vast and interconnected world, picking up permanent upgrades on your runs to improve your future chances of escape.
- Tough-but fair-combat will keep you – or rather, your borrowed body – on your toes, and if in doubt roll yourself out of harm’s way.
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The Rogue Prince of Persia
This 2D-side scrolling entry into the series challenges the character to turn his regret into resolve, trying again and again to perfect the skills needed to protect his people.
- Procedurally generated levels, modifiers, surprise events and more ensure each run stokes your ambition and curiosity to go further than the last.
- An odd artefact allows the Prince to time travel and reappear in The Oasis after each failure – a haven that stocks potions, upgrades his skills and sharpens his weapons for your next venture.
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Vampire Survivors
This multi-award-winning time-survival experience mixes minimalistic gameplay with rogue-lite elements to deliver compelling one-more-run appeal.
- Survive a cursed night and get as much gold as possible for the next run, balancing offensive play with retrieving loot.
- Death is inevitable and there’s no place to hide, so level up your weapons to ensure maximum carnage against the onslaught of enemies.
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Genre-pushing roguelikes
Find a new beginning
Explore the boundaries of the genre where no playthrough is the same.
Blue Prince
As the heir to the mysterious manor of Mt. Holly, you have the ability to reposition and shuffle the rooms of this sprawling house. Draft different blueprints every day in surprising, strategic combinations that lead you to the heart of the residence, the elusive Room 46.
- Each day, the floor plan resets: choose which rooms open and close, collect their items and combine your knowledge to solve the puzzle and dive deeper into this strange estate.
- The mystery reaches beyond more than a "missing" room, as your journey through the shifting halls uncovers not only solutions, but dark secrets too.
Balatro
Play illegal poker hands, discover game-changing jokers and trigger outrageous combos in this roguelike deckbuilding strategy experience.
- Combine valid hands with unique jokers to create wild builds that can earn you chips and uncover hidden bonuses.
- Immerse yourself in a distinctively psychedelic world set to a synthwave soundtrack, chasing cards until you find your flow state.
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Ball X Pit
Ball X Pit mixes brick-breaking, bullet-hell and base building together with a fantasy flair, becoming a roguelike medley of mechanics that satisfies in both construction and destruction.
- Carnage and chaos are your tools to rebuilding what remains of Ballbylon, and the Ball Fusion system allows you to combine more than 60 balls to create overpowered combos to explode, sear and slice your enemies.
- An upgradeable and colorful cast of characters seeking their fortune offer unique quirks on builds and runs that radically change your expedition.
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Slay the Spire
A fusion of card game and roguelike, this single-player deckbuilder is set in a unique fantasy world and offers compelling risk-versus-reward gameplay.
- Choose your cards wisely, evolving your decks with hundreds of cards, using complementary powers to effectively dispatch foes and reach the top of the Spire.
- The Spire is always changing, its layout different on each run, but there’s always the choice between a simple path and a riskier one – but to the brave go the greater spoils.
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PS VR2 roguelikes
Immerse yourself in the loop
Get even closer to the action in roguelikes designed exclusively for VR.
The Light Brigade
This magic-infused shooter sends you on an atmospheric journey to defend humanity from encroaching forces of darkness.
- Begin each run with a standard rifle and upgrade your arsenal as you progress, and if you fall attempt to retrieve items from your previous run.
- World War-inspired weaponry grounds the experience in realism while immersive features make reloading and shooting feel incredibly tactile.
Until You Fall
This neon-soaked arcade rogue-lite tasks you with striking down legions of magic-infused monstrosities across ever-changing runs.
- Play as the last remaining Rune Knight, hacking and slashing your way through a synthwave-soundtracked fantasy world.
- Attack, block and dodge in intuitive VR combat, swinging your blade for kinetically frantic (and energetic) fun.
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Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder
Play as a pioneering prospector exploring randomized networks of ancient mines and perilous caves in this single or multiplayer VR adventure.
- Start each run with nothing but a pickaxe and head down into the earth and rock below, recovering rewards to exchange for new gadgets and other upgrades.
- Use dynamite to blast yourself towards new discoveries, a shovel to clear dirt in multiple directions, and keep a six-shooter handy for any nasty critters lurking in these ever-shifting caves.
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Synapse
Enter a hostile, surreal world and overcome its deadly defences using telekinetic powers and a range of tactile weaponry in this roguelike first-person shooter from award-winning studio nDreams.
- Enter the twisted subconscious of an enemy of the state and wreak havoc across their mind, developing your abilities into an unstoppable force.
- Created exclusively for PS VR2, Synapse’s mesmerizing landscapes come to life in its 4K HDR display, while the Sense controllers put the game’s powers in the palms of your hands.
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