Roguelike games are typically short in terms of completion time, focusing on long-term replayability; here are some of our favourites.
Roguelikes and roguelites have intriguing playtimes. While they tend to be on the longer side due to how difficult they are or how many items there are to unlock, a successful solo run might be rather brief. Even a single run may be quite fulfilling, especially with roguelites because you gain power incrementally even if you restart.
However, when the sessions accumulate and you begin to feel the losses more than the wins, even the brisk roguelike/lite format can feel like a long campaign. If you want to take a break from the never-ending struggle, try some of these shorter roguelikes and roguelites with brief campaigns (according to howlongtobeat.com) or short sessions.
Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
| Roguelike or Roguelite? | Roguelike |
|---|---|
| Session Times: | Short |
| Estimated Time To Beat: | 1 Hour |
Almost the whole plot of Shotgun King is revealed before the game begins, so there isn’t much else to discover as you fire your way through the chessboard. You’re a lone King armed with a shotgun, and you’re furious. You’ll either make it to the end or die trying.
Successful runs are brief, whereas failure runs are frequent and brief. It’s a roguelike, thus it’s quite easy, with no meta unlocks. While this reduces replayability, it also makes the game easy to pick up and play whenever you want.
Cult Of The Lamb
| Roguelike or Roguelite? | Roguelite |
|---|---|
| Session Times: | Short |
| Estimated Time To Beat: | 14 Hours |
Cult of the Lamb is a part action game, part management sim that puts you in command of a blossoming cult as you fight your way through the ranks of opposing heretic cults. Attempts are uniformly brief, bringing you through a few stages before facing a mid-boss or one of the Old Faith’s Bishops.
Building and managing your cult will take time, but not nearly as much as a dedicated management sim. The number of upgrades available through the management component is reasonable, but you’ll likely run out of options before you’ve beaten even half of the monsters. Once the managerial stuff is maxed up, you can just focus on beating the dungeon part again and over again.
Dome Keeper
| Roguelike or Roguelite? | Roguelike |
|---|---|
| Session Times: | Variable |
| Estimated Time To Beat: | 5 Hours |
Dome Keeper is a roguelike base defence and mining game mix in which you battle waves of increasingly powerful monsters. In between waves, you mine for resources to increase your defences and mining powers in order to uncover and extract a relic that will grant you a new, permanent improvement.
The length of any run is governed by the map size, which you can select, with larger maps resulting in longer attempts. Because there isn’t much of a plot, your main motivation will be to obtain new devices to adorn your Dome. If you’ve unlocked everything or simply want a change of pace, Prestige mode is a high-score-focused game featuring a Leaderboard.
Gunlocked
| Roguelike or Roguelite? | Roguelike |
|---|---|
| Session Times: | Short |
| Estimated Time To Beat: | 3 Hours |
Gunlocked is a top-down arcade shooter with a bit of Vampire Survivors DNA that has you fighting against waves of opponents with a changeable and developing arsenal.
There is no story or campaign to complete, keeping the game true to its arcade beginnings. Progression grants access to new pilots, game variables, and levels. Each run consists of five minutes of increasingly challenging waves of attackers, punctuated by a boss fight that becomes more harder as you progress through the game.
Vampire Survivors-Likes
| Roguelike or Roguelite? | Roguelite |
|---|---|
| Session Times: | Short |
| Estimated Time To Beat: | Variable |
With the debut of the unexpected hit Vampire Survivors in 2021, this sub-genre of game was undoubtedly invented. Since then, waves of similar games have been launched at a continuous rate, and while their settings may differ, they share striking similarities.
They are often top-down, pit you against hordes of adversaries, and gradually increase your power as you fight. Most of them are roguelikes that require you to survive for a specified amount of time – usually between ten and thirty minutes – and offer a plethora of meta-progression awards to unlock. They also rarely contain any kind of story or campaign other than pieces from item or character unlocks.
Children Of Morta
| Roguelike or Roguelite? | Roguelite |
|---|---|
| Session Times: | Medium |
| Estimated Time To Beat: | 14 Hours |
Slope Game is an action RPG in the spirit of Diablo 3, placing you in command of the Bergson family as they battle the Corruption that threatens to take over the world. Unless you die early, your typical run takes a reasonable amount of time, yet the campaign itself isn’t particularly long.
Whether you succeed or fail, your attempts provide lots of storyline and development, however you’re more likely to advance the story if you successfully complete an area. Beating the narrative is enjoyable in and of itself, but if you can’t get enough of the Bergsons, there’s lots of lore to unlock, as well as the more typical roguelike Family Trials mode.
Wall World
| Roguelike or Roguelite? | Roguelite |
|---|---|
| Session Times: | Variable |
| Estimated Time To Beat: | 11 Hours |
Wall World is similar to a sideways Dome Keeper in that you must navigate a mechanical spider to the top or bottom of a purportedly infinite wall. The gameplay consists on mining for minerals to improve your mining capacity and surviving recurring waves of foes.
Your runs may vary in length, but will typically be in 20-minute chunks, increasing in length as you obtain meta upgrades for your spider. Every 20 minutes, a boss appears to put your skills to the test, and your ability to deal with them is the most significant aspect in determining how long your runs last.
