7 Hardest Roguelite Games

Highlights

• Action roguelites offer skill-based challenges with intense platforming and bullet hell battles.
• Risk of Rain 2
  requires efficiency and strategy to succeed with constantly ticking clock and tough boss fights.
• Streets of Rogue
  combines immersive-sim elements with high difficulty and variety of playable characters.

Although it could be argued that classic roguelikes and the original Rogue itself often offer more of a challenge than the modernized subgenre, roguelites can still offer their own unique challenges.

This is primarily the case in action roguelites, which ditch the traditional turn-based gameplay for an action-orientated approach to combat. This allows these games to be more skill-based, rather than emphasizing knowledge and strategy.

7 Rogue Legacy – A Roguelite Action-Platformer About Lineage

Steam User Rating: 92%

Rogue Legacy was one of the first roguelite games, and arguably played a large part in popularizing the subgenre. This game features some brutal platformer gameplay, often including traps and tough platforming challenges amid bullet hell action.

This combination of platforming, action gameplay, and bullet hell battles makes Rogue Legacy a tough experience that often fires on all cylinders. However, this challenge is somewhat alleviated by the game’s lineage system, which allows players to grow stronger across multiple runs.

6 Risk Of Rain 2 – An Action Roguelite With A Ticking Clock

Steam User Rating: 96%

This sequel takes the formula of Risk Of Rain, with its MOBA-inspired active abilities, constantly-ticking timer, and open biomes, and brings it into the realm of 3D. This third-person action shooter is a constantly chaotic roguelite with the potential for extremely OP runs, but the game’s variety of enemies and boss fights can often be a challenge.

Mastering each character’s kit of abilities, as well as understanding which upgrades to choose and where to spend money throughout a run, is a large part of being successful in Risk Of Rain 2. Most importantly, being efficient is integral, because the longer the player takes in a run, the tougher things get. This design heavily discourages grinding, and forces the player to keep moving at all times.

5 Streets Of Rogue – An Immersive-Sim Roguelite

Steam User Rating: 96%

This top-down indie game combines a roguelite structure with immersive-sim elements to create a uniquely challenging experience. In Streets Of Rogue, players will take on one of many playable characters, working their way through a variety of environments and completing missions in order to progress.

These missions, and how the player chooses to complete them, are part of what makes Streets Of Rogue so fun and challenging. The time-to-kill in Streets Of Rogue can be very unforgiving, and something as simple as a stray bullet hitting a generator can result in an explosion, dealing massive damage to anything near it – including the player. This, combined with the fact that each playable character encourages different play-styles and offers unique challenges, makes Streets Of Rogue a difficult roguelite with high replay value.

4 Ravenswatch – An Isometric Roguelite With Diablo-Style Combat

Steam User Rating: 78%

• Platform(s): PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
• Released: 2023
• Developer(s): Passtech Games

This unique isometric action game features MOBA-style active abilities and playable characters, with gameplay that centers around the interplay between characters in co-op, as well as the mastery of each character’s kit. The game features a ticking doom timer that forces players to play efficiently, happily plucking them out of the map and dropping them into challenging boss fights when time runs out.

The game shows influences from games such as Hades and Diablo, and the level system uses talents that feature rarities like Deepwoken. In the game, players explore an open map, completing events and quests while battling a variety of enemies. The game also features a day and night cycle, which switches up the gameplay throughout each chapter. Ravenswatch does feature a system that allows players to revive themselves on death, but these revives are limited. Furthermore, the game’s hard-hitting enemies and powerful bosses, combined with the unyielding doom timer, make Ravenswatch an often challenging experience, especially on harder difficulties.

3 FTL: Faster Than Light – A Sci-Fi Roguelite With Frantic Real-Time Combat

Steam User Rating: 95%

This modern-classic roguelite from Subset Games (the team that would later go on to develop Into The Breach) is a tough-as-nails game that constantly asks the player to make tough decisions. Although its real-time-with-pause gameplay allows players to think over each and every choice, the game’s methods of exploration, along with its strategic real-time combat, make it a tough game to come to grips with.

In FTL, players must manage the crew of their space ship, choosing which stations to man and which weapons to fire. On top of directing their crew in real-time, players must also constantly decide which part of the enemy ship to target, all while worrying about which of their own ship’s systems are damaged and/or in need of repair. Furthermore, the game also features rules for boarding, meaning that players will often have to fight off invaders all while putting out fires left, right, and center. This frantic gameplay is often challenging, and the frequency of decisions the player has to make offers plenty of opportunities for catastrophic mistakes.

2 Noita – A Heavily Simulated Roguelite About Creating And Casting Spells

Steam User Rating: 95%

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 2020
• Developer(s): Nolla Games

This roguelite features pixel art graphics with deeply-simulated physics that feature spreading fire, freezing water, and falling particles. The game’s systems rely heavily on this simulated physics, and many of the game’s spells play around these systems.

In Noita, players battle deeper and deeper into a cave that features a variety of biomes, fighting challenging enemies and constantly interacting with (and fighting against) the environment. What makes Noita so difficult is the brutal enemies and unforgiving environment, as it’s extremely easy to burn to death in a flash-fire, or get trapped underwater when the surface freezes over.

1 Spelunky 2 – Exploring Caves With Deadly Traps

Steam User Rating: 93%

This roguelite puts players in the shoes of explorers delving down into a variety of procedurally generated, extremely dangerous caves. The game features action-platformer gameplay and a variety of fun items to acquire, as well as an ensemble cast of dangerous enemies.

Spelunky 2 is ridiculously difficult thanks to its unforgiving time-to-kill and abundance of one-shot enemies and traps. The game features dart traps, instant-kill spike traps, hard-hitting enemies, and tough bosses. Not to mention the fact that players could simply whiff a routine jumping puzzle and fall to their deaths. Thankfully, Spelunky 2 is as fun as it is challenging, but there’s no mistaking that it’s one of the hardest roguelites on the market.