Updated by Ivan Spasojevic on December 28, 2023 – 3 games swapped, made some changes to the text.
Roguelite or roguelike? Potato pot-ah-to. It’s all the same to us.
Both terms stem from the original Rogue, Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman’s seminal 1980 dungeon crawler. In it, for the first time, players encountered the concepts of procedurally generated levels that never played the same way twice.
They also encountered the concept of permadeath, whereby one hit would end their run. No saves, no restarts.
This brutally random approach, it was discovered, made Rogue way more replayable and considerably more satisfying to play than most contemporary adventures.
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These days, games have moved on from Rogue’s rudimentary graphics and staccato rhythm. But in recent years, plenty of games have rediscovered the joys of random-level design and permadeath.
Those that stick closely to the Rogue playbook get labelled ‘roguelikes’. Those who play fast and loose with the original template sometimes get the ‘roguelite’ moniker.
We’re not fussed which gets used for the following Android games. We just want to play them again. And again. Oh, and again. In case you are hooked up to any of these, you can download them from Google Play. Without further ado let’s dive into the list of best roguelikes for Android phones!
