Hey, I'm often slow to get on board with things. I don't know if I'm too cool for school or just lame but I had a thought the other day and that was "what's the deal with Roguelikes?" lol

Some things just pass me by and I only really notice them until most ppl are super tired of them...

Anyway, what's your #1 recommendation for someone that's been living under a rock?

Spelunky is the only right answer.

Kinda depends on what other kind of games you like. If you like 2D action games then Dead Cells is great. If you prefer strategy then something like Invisible Inc, or Into the Breach would be good. You have Crypt of the Necrodancer if you like rhythm games, Enter the Gungeon if you like shoot-em ups, Slay the Spire if you like card-based RPGs. That's the cool thing about roguelikes, they can just be any kind of run-based game.

Rogue Legacy is one of the greatest games produced in the last 20 years. If you’re good at twitch-reflex platforming, it has got you covered, or, if like me you’re good at grinding your way to deity-like status, you can do that too.

Dead Cells is also great, but Rogue Legacy gives you the ability to get slightly better each run, which removes some of the frustration.

Dungeon of the Endless takes a while for you to wrap your head around the systems, but when you do it becomes THE THINKING MAN'S ROGUELIKE in which every door you open, every character you position, every resource you spend is important.

Every door you open is a 'turn' in which enemies can spawn in unlighted rooms. Lighting up rooms costs a resource (dust). Doing research costs a resource +time. Producing resources costs resources + time. At one hand, you want to stay as long as possible on each floor to generate all those resources & do research & find items. On the other hand, the longer you stay, the harder it is to stay alive. And the more resources you have to spend on static defenses. Eventually you need to make a run with your characters throughout the level while enemies continuously spawn from the dark rooms. Very cool game that is quite an outlier in the genre because of it's quasi-turn based structure and it's tower defense aspects. It's also a slower game than most roguelikes out there. One run could easily take multiple hours.

The Binding of Isaac! OG or Rebirth, they're both great.

The Binding of Isaac is one of the "purest" examples of the genre, in the sense that the things that make it fun (sheer variety of events and powers + sufficient challenge + permadeath) are the things that make roguelikes fun in general. So I think that's a good starting place. Other good roguelikes layer things on top of this basic setup. FTL adds amazingly fun ship combat. Slay the Spire adds collectible card battling. Into the Breach adds unique chess-like tactics. You can't go wrong with any of those four.

The Binding of Isaac (both the original and rebirth) and Dungeon of the Endless are the two that have really stuck with me over the years.

Dead Cells. I’m not into Rougelikes, but it hit Game Pass, and I’m completely sold. The flow is is unbelievable.

The major ones that are "must plays" have already been said here, so I'll say another one that kinda just came and went but I absolutely love.

Flinthook! Flinthook is super fun to me, very stylish, love the music, and just a joy to play. It's unfortunate it came out during a landslide of other games, and other rogue-likes, as I think it stands on it's own very well in the rogue-like arena

Oh one of the games that seems to fly under radars is Full Mojo Rampage

It's basically the same concept as Enter the gungeon. Top down shooter, you go across maps to kill off enemies, become stronger & challenge bosses. It's not very original but just an all around solid fun game that is a lot of fun to play together with someone in coop.

I had fun with Ziggurat as well. Putting Roguelike trappings in a FPS. Jeff G. has played it a few times on the site.

I think I...wouldn’t recommend Spelunky? Like, it’s a good game, but it’s just not representative of where the rogue lite genre went at all.

Binding of Isaac really feels like one of the first ones that captured the random dungeon and random item pickups and resource management and so on that defined how a lot of following rogue lites were made. Enter the Gungeon feels like BoI for people who really like bullet hell boss fights.

FTL/Into the Breach/Slay the Spire/Dicey Dungeons are all pretty fun examples of the branch of rogue lites that basically drop the dungeon exploration in favour of you advancing along nodes on a map where you vaguely know what randomized challenge/rewards to expect from each node.

For an actual roguelike, I tried Dungeons of Dredmor, and it was OK at best? I think I find typical rogue likes a little too dull. Tile-based dungeon crawls aren’t really my thing.

Deadcells is the only one I have liked so far.

Also agree with Dead Cells, I too am not a fan of rogue likes and did not engage with most that came out but Dead Cells is so much fun and gives you a real sense of progression.

Spelunky is a perfect game.

Prey: Mooncrash. It's the rare rougelike that treats "rougelike" as a noun, not as an adjective. That is, it feels built from the ground up to take full advantage of the rougelike (or "rougelight" if we want to be Genre Dicks about it) format. I think it's a far more more interesting take on the genre than say, the Dead Cells pitch of "[genre of game] with persistent unlocks."

I'd vote Rogue Legacy. It plays well, has decent progression, looks good, and is a pretty friendly introduction to the genre.

Spelunky and Rouge Legacy will always get my vote. Spelunky is basically the perfect 2D single-run style Rougelike, while Rouge Legacy is incredibly fun and has some persistent elements.

Rogue Legacy.

@therealturk: Great Choice. Rogue Legacy was my introduction to Roguelikes and it was perfect. The portability, D-pad, and OLED makes the Vita version is my favorite platform to play it on.

Pixel Dungeon on your mobile phone. It's free, so there's no excuse for not trying it.

Has anyone mentioned Galak-Z? Loved the game play but was just hopeless at it.

I used to be the kind of person who would say "there's no such thing as a perfect blah blah blah". But nah. Spelunky is perfect. So much so that it single-handedly changed what I look for in video games.

Bah, none of these are proper damn roguelikes! Where's my Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup or ADOM? Or at least Doom RL? All your newfangled platformers with permadeath get boring and repetitive super fast.

Not sure if these two count but I would suggest Into The Breach and Solitairica. Both of them are run-based, semi-random games that I've sunk a ton of hours into.

Also Dead Cells is a fun sidescroller, like others have mentioned. The variety of weapons is really good and it plays very fluidly. Progression starts to get a little tough as you get further along, though, and I quit playing it right around the third boss, but maybe you'll git gudder than me.

I haven't played a good Roguelike yet, i do need to try Dead Cells, but the repetitive "replayable by its very nature" design philosophy kills the genre for me.

Rogue Legacy is an ideal entry point. Fun and accessible and gives you a good taste of that style of mechanic.

Rogue Legacy is super accessible, but I think people undersell how hard it is. It's a very, very, very charming game but I never beat it and feel like I played it for around 20-25 hours; as best I recall, I only ever beat the first boss.

Dead Cells has a rougher on ramp and a less inviting visage, but its gameplay loop I find a lot more satisfying and more viscerally rewarding, with an upgrade path that relies just a little bit more on the player accomplishing things in the game rather than dying and hoping the subsequent dice roll offers you what you're looking for. The structure of the Boss Cells is also perfect for somebody like me, since I can say that I "beat" the game knowing full well there are four other levels of difficulty I'll never experience. Where Rogue Legacy pumped the brakes for me, Dead Cells let me get off the road when I was ready.

I haven't really gotten into any others.

Dead Cells and Crypt of the Necrodancer are pretty much the only ones I like. They are both really cool!

Rest of the genre is bad. Probably. I never got far in the other ones I tried.

I really liked Dungeons of Dreadmor as an introduction to the rougelike/light/whatever genre.

Totally with you. I really, really, really liked Rogue Legacy - and, before I finish this sentence, let me state I'm fully willing to admit I'm probably just bad at video games or whatever - but I sunk a lot of time into it and rarely made it past the second boss. Never finished it.

Back to the question, whether it's a "Roguelike" or not, you should absolutely play Into the Breach. I'm a complete homer for the game. It's probably amongst my ten favorites of the generation. And I'll recommend it to anyone with a heartbeat.

Out of all the ones I played, I liked Dead Cells the most.

On the off chance someone comes here looking for something closer to the Berlin Interpretation:

Tales of Maj'Eyal is probably the most balanced roguelike with a great sense of progression and a difficulty curve that takes you from newbie to considering rebinding your entire keyboard to support vimkeys.

And Dungeons of Dredmore is probably the single most approachable roguelike, but the skill ceiling is REALLY low.

Wow, there's a lot of love for Rogue Legacy here. I found it very mediocre. Pretty standard jumping and slashing bits with nothing unique to keep me going, other than the 'legacy' bit of changing up powers when you die, which I just found mildly annoying.

I also didn't get into Dead Cells. I played around three hours and it just didn't keep my interest. The combat and controls felt very nice and smooth, but slashing the same enemies over and over got boring quickly. I would be into a 'real' Metroidvania with these controls and art style, though.

So Roguelike games like any sort of genre vary widely and evolve. Just like with music genres. There are all kinds of blends of stuff.

Right out the gate I have to say Rogue Legacy. And great seeing the support here in the thread! I bought the game for like just under 3 bucks and ended up putting 27 hours in to it. At times I felt kinda gross addiction but overall I loved it. Such a strange game and you can really build up some skills in it.

Dead Cells is awesome! But I did finally wear out on that game (but after many many hours). I like it a lot but I find the design to be somewhat insidious. Some of the temperament of the game is not exactly my thing either but far from a deal breaker.

Also Nuclear Throne. Great game that I need to get back to playing. Pretty hard last I played.

Cellar Door games needs to make another Rogue Legacy.

dead cells is the best rogue lite ever. Its a master piece.

I'll add my vote for Rogue Legacy as well. FTL and Binding of Issac are also high on my short list of roguelikes I've played, but I've spent way more time with RL than anything else.

I think Rogue Legacy is the ideal entrypoint, because even when you die, you feel like you are progressing. There are a lot of really good roguelikes out there: Spelunky, Dead Cells, Enter the Gungeon, FTL... but many of them have loops that can be summarized as "I play for 1 hour, and I got no sense of progression", or are heavily dependant on RNG variables.

Hm, I'd say Spelunky and/or Enter the Gungeon. Ooh, yeah, Rogue Legacy is solid too.

No one's said Risk of Rain 2 yet? It's still in early access but I love the take of a fully 3D, third person shooter roguelike. The characters are all fun and play differently, and the stage design is great. You get to know all the different map layouts over time and can more effectively traverse them, but it doesn't get stale either. Can't wait for it to hit 1.0 and see what they add to it.