Best Roguelike FPS Games, Ranked

Highlights

• Roguelike FPS games bring a unique mix of genres, appealing to gamers seeking new adventures.
• These games offer a throwback to the blood-soaked FPS games of the 90s with a roguelike twist.
• Despite some flaws, the best roguelike FPS games successfully combine accessibility, fast-paced action, and innovative mechanics.

The Roguelike genre has always managed to survive in the video gaming industry, from some of the earliest years of the gaming world. While they are generally less popular than other genres in the modern day, the dungeon-crawling style of many roguelike games still holds a lot of charm for many gamers.

For anybody constantly seeking another roguelike adventure, some recent FPS games that have stayed in the roguelike style have made a great impact. It is an uncommon mixing of genres, but the crossover is picking up some steam and popularity due to some of these extremely well-made games.

Updated December 2, 2023, by Christopher Harkin: The roguelike genre continues to be one filled with experimental new ideas, particularly since it is an easy genre of game for indie developers to create. It is unsurprising to see more attempts at first-person shooter games within the genre, and this is likely to continue as the video game industry becomes even more accessible.

10 Strafe

Metacritic Score: 64/100

Gamers might have been surprised to find the type of experience they got in Strafe a game that was released in 2017. The point of Strafe was a throwback style to the overly bloody FPS games of the 90s like the Doom series, but in a roguelike FPS format instead.

The player is simply known as a scrapper who has been sent on a mission to collect materials from a ship in the far reaches of the known galaxy. Strafe only uses semi-procedural generation for the levels, making it more of a rogue-lite in some aspects. However, it is hilariously fun and completely over-the-top in terms of the blood and violence used throughout.

9 Into The Pit

Metacritic Score: 67/100

Casting the player as a member of a family of mystics, Into The Pit sends players on a mystical, fast-paced journey which is surprisingly good as an introduction to the roguelike genre for players who haven’t experienced it before, bringing a fun retro art style to a roguelike FPS game.

While there are some strange mechanic choices in Into The Pit, the difficulty of bringing the roguelike style to an FPS game is a challenging task, one which has been accomplished here to a fun degree in a game that feels highly accessible and consistently entertaining. The most glaring issue with Into The Pit is a lack of replayability due to the procedural generation not being advanced enough, but for an introduction to the style, it is a great choice.

8 Immortal Redneck

Metacritic Score: 70/100

A game with Redneck in the title doesn’t sound like it should be set in Egypt, but Immortal Redneck is a roguelike FPS that introduces a world of frantic gameplay and an arcade feel to a strange story about a redneck tourist who wakes up, having been mummified, in Ancient Egypt.

Making his way through a variety of pyramids which were all procedurally generated and filled with monsters and bosses, Immortal Redneck includes plenty of familiar elements such as a skill tree and perma-death.

7 Mothergunship

Metacritic Score: 72/100

Mothergunship is a roguelike FPS game with bullet hell elements that feels truly unique in a number of ways, besides the already eye-catching name. Mothergunship allows players to build their own guns, making for a truly fun and singular mechanic that hardly any other game has replicated to such a degree.

Beyond that, and unlike many of the roguelike FPS games made by indie developers, Mothergunship has some great voice acting and a fantastic soundtrack which helps make the game a very welcoming environment for players. It does all this while retaining the fast-paced sense of freedom and action that the genre is known for.

6 Heavy Bullets

Metacritic Score: 72/100

Heavy Bullets brings an unusual mechanic to a roguelike FPS game that isn’t normally so common in the genre. That mechanic is retrieving ammunition and re-using it. Players begin the game with an extremely short supply of bullets, and they have to get it back after using it throughout the game.

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With significant roguelike aspects like procedural generation and permadeath, Heavy Bullets is a great example of how to keep a simple story in a fun roguelike FPS environment, while bringing something new to the table. The story involves trying to reset a security mainframe after breaking through eight different levels.

5 Gunfire Reborn

Metacritic Score: 75/100

Gunfire Reborn is a lesser-known gem that fans of the roguelike genre should check out. Released in 2014, Gunfire Reborn features a great procedural-generation system for the levels that include a variety of different characters to meet on different runs through the game.

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Gunfire Reborn can also be played alongside up to three other players for a friendly co-op experience in a fun world that manages to fit the roguelike style and the FPS style. It even includes RPG elements for an added world-building experience.

4 Prey: Mooncrash

Metacritic Score: 75/100

The Mooncrash DLC for Prey took gamers in an unexpected direction, as the new campaign was in the roguelike style whereas the original game wasn’t. Adopting several roguelike elements to this story about escaping a TranStar base on the moon, Prey: Mooncrash made something controversial but very fun.

Mooncrash pits the player against a number of enemies while trying to uncover the secrets of the moon base. The time pressures were the most interesting roguelike element that the game adopted for this campaign, as the number of enemies goes up depending on how much time the player spends in each area.

3 Tower Of Guns

Metacritic Score: 76/100

There is a simplicity to a game that manages to tell players everything they need to know about it in the title. Tower of Guns sets the player in first-person inside a tower filled with a great number of guns. Players simply have to ascend the tower and kill the enemies in each area along the way.

The simplicity of this fun roguelike is in the story being randomly selected from a number of options at the beginning of the run. Beginning with one gun, one perk, and having to collect more as they go through whatever story has been chosen, Tower of Guns produces a fun experience with a lot of replayability.

2 Ziggurat

Metacritic Score: 80/100

Ziggurat was a plain FPS dungeon crawler roguelike released in 2014. Everything about the game, besides it being an FPS, was exactly a traditional roguelike in nature. Players took on the role of a neophyte sorcerer entering their rite of passage in a dangerous labyrinth.

The laundry list of abilities, gear pieces, and bosses in this old-school game made for something hugely fun. Players didn’t have to do much by way of inventory management or class choosing, enabling the sort of fast-paced FPS experience many were looking for in such a game. It even managed to get itself a sequel.

1 Void Bastards

Metacritic Score: 81/100

One of the more recent FPS rogue-likes available today, Void Bastards was inspired by games like Bioshock and System Shock to create a sci-fi game with a fun, simple world. The player character is a prisoner on a spaceship who has to help the ship’s AI create enough fuel to get to their destination after becoming stranded.

Void Bastards is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be. The style is completely set and very fun, and it garnered a lot of praise from critics for the comic-book art style and the gameplay. For a roguelike, Void Bastards falls a little short in replay value, but besides that, it does a great job.

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