"We are thrilled to announce that our latest game, Saros, is launching next year on PS5 and enhanced for PS5 Pro," creative director Gregory Louden said during today's State of Play broadcast. "Saros is the ultimate evolution of the Housemarque gameplay-first experience. It's a new single-player IP that builds on Returnal's award-winning third-person action.“

The cinematic announce trailer gives us our first look at protagonist Arjun Devraj, portrayed by Rahul Kohli. The game takes place on a "hostile, shape-shifting planet haunted by an ominous eclipse." If that sounds like a roguelike to you, you're not far off - but Saros offers more long-term progression systems, so the pendatic among you might want to call it a roguelite instead.

"A key gameplay distinction between Saros and Returnal is permanent resources and progression making every death valuable," according to a post on the PlayStation blog. "After every death you will face a changed world, but in Saros you will be able to choose and permanently upgrade your loadout from an evolving set of weapons and suit upgrades to 'come back stronger' to overcome the challenges you face on Carcosa."

That's all Housemarque is revealing about the gameplay in Saros for now, but a proper look at gameplay is coming later this year, ahead of the game's actual launch in 2026.

If Saros even comes close to Returnal, it'll be a strong candidate for our list of the best roguelike games.

Every Nightfarer in Elden Ring Nightreign explained

Before starting your run, you and your co-op allies need to pick one of the eight Elden Ring Nightreign characters to play as. Each one comes with a passive bonus, a skill with a relatively short cooldown, and a powerful ultimate ability. Their armor can be visually customized but is otherwise fixed, so you can't alter their defenses. However, any character can wield any weapon, although obviously some weapon types will be better suited to certain characters than others.

Regardless of who you pick, you'll have to face all sorts of Elden Ring Nightreign bosses over the course of a single run too. To help you figure out who your main might be, here are all the characters we know about, some you'll be able to play as in the Elden Ring Nightreign beta:

Elden Ring Nightreign Wylder

Wylder is the generic knight class in Nightreign, though that doesn't mean they don't have a few cool tricks up their gauntlets not seen in Elden Ring before. Their skill utilizes a special crossbow to reel in small enemies or pull themselves toward larger foes, while their ultimate ability fires a high-damage and high-stagger explosive shot that can be charged up.

Elden Ring Nightreign Guardian

Guardian is a more heavily armored eagle man capable of launching enemies into the air with a fancy whirlwind attack, leaving them vulnerable. However, their ultimate ability sees them briefly soaring into the air with their wings before slamming down to deal big area-of-effect damage.

Elden Ring Nightreign Duchess

Duchess is the nimble assassin class of Nightreign, packing a unique Bloodborne-style quickstep instead of a dodge, as well as her skill and ultimate. Their skill allows them to repeat any damage dealt to nearby enemies in the past two seconds or so while their ultimate makes them and nearby allies undetectable for about eight seconds, even while attacking!

Elden Ring Nightreign Recluse

Recluse is a sorcerer, so spellcasting is their deal. Their skill gathers elemental essence for a big hit, while their ultimate applies a curse mark to nearby enemies that regenerates health and mana for all allies attacking them. These siphoning powers sounds quite helpful, as Recluse is also very fragile.

Other unnamed Nightfarers in Elden Ring Nightreign

The four Elden Ring Nightreign characters above are just the ones that were available to try out in our recent preview, but we know there will be at least four others in the final game, and some of them were visible in the debut gameplay trailer:

• There's a sort of big barbarian-type character wielding a massive hammer/axe hybrid weapon, who is visible in a couple of sequences in the Nightreign gameplay trailer. They also appear to have a big leaping attack where the ground explodes, launching them into the air so that they can come crashing down to knock enemies over.

• A katana-wielding knight character is also shown off in one brief sequence in the gameplay trailer, where they are repeatedly deflecting and parrying blows from an enemy to great effect. Their katana glows with a golden light and appears to have vines wrapping around it. This golden glow effect also vanishes after an attack, so it might be that the katana can be briefly powered up for increased damage in some way

• Several sequences also show a lightly armored archer character, who appears to be able to pull out a massive greatbow to fire powerful arrows. In a preview from IGN, game director Junya Ishizaki teased a character who could summon a rock pillar to climb and "snipe arrows from" so that sounds an awful like this archer character.

• Finally, from the same IGN preview, Ishizaki mentions a character who can command their own Spirit Ash, though I can't see anything of the sort in the gameplay trailer, so this character remains a mystery.

We already know that Elden Ring Nightreign has plans for DLC which should hopefully include more characters to screw around with too. We'll be sure to update this guide with the latest information when we have it.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Every boss in Elden Ring Nightreign

Before starting a run, you first need to choose which of the Elden Ring Nightreign characters you'll play as and which boss you'll face on day three of your run – a run constitutes three in-game days with a big boss battle at the end of each one. Since you only choose the final boss you face, the day one and two bosses are randomized, so you're far from certain of what's ahead.

Additionally, as in Elden Ring, Nightreign features plenty of world bosses and evergaols you can just happen across, giving you a chance to get loot and help you level up - there should be plenty to face in the Elden Ring Nightreign beta.

Here are all the Elden Ring Nightreign bosses we faced in our Nightreign preview session:

• Centipede Demon from Dark Souls: Appearing as boss at the end of day one, the Centipede Demon has some ludicrous new moves while still being quite similar to its Dark Souls 1 appearance. It's fireball attack is bigger and it can split off centipede heads that squirm around and try to bite you.

• Demi-Human Queen and Demi-Human Swordmaster from Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree: Also appearing as a day one boss, the Demi-Human foes will be familiar if you've played Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree.

• Draconic Tree Sentinel from Elden Ring: This horseman appeared as a day two boss, flanked by two weaker horseback sentinels.
• Morgott from Elden Ring: Invaded as a world boss on day two but can appear as a day two boss instead if he doesn't invade, so there's a high chance you'll face Morgott on your runs.
• Tricephalos: A new three-headed wolf Cerberus boss we faced on day 3. It wields a gigantic flaming sword, it can split its heads into three separate wolves, and each one can turn into a fireball.

• Golden Hippopotamus from Shadow of the Erdtree: Appeared as a world boss.
• Wormface from Elden Ring: Appeared as a world boss.
• Flaming Chariots from Elden Ring: Appeared as a world boss.
• Fire Monk from Elden Ring: Appeared as a world boss.
• Flying Dragon Agheel from Elden Ring: Appeared as world boss.

Outside of our preview, it's hard to tell what is and isn't a true boss just from trailers, b-roll, and images, but we've also seen glimpses of a giant spider boss akin to the Duke's Dear Freja from Dark Souls 2, the Nameless King from Dark Souls 3, and two more beasties I don't recognize – a large wyvern-like creature with huge vertical jaws that can snap you up and a colossal centaur-like creature that appears to be missing an arm. It also looks like Elden Ring foes, such as the Leonine Misbegotten, Lion Guardians, and Omens can all appear as world or evergaol bosses too.

There are already DLC plans for Elden Ring Nightreign and those will almost certainly include more bosses from across FromSoftware's repertoire. We'll update this guide with the latest information when we have it.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Depending on how much time you spend online, you may or may not have a strong reaction to the word "loss." Back in 2008, a four-panel comic – part of the Ctrl+Alt+Del (or CAD) webcomic series – was posted online, depicting protagonist Ethan rushing into a hospital to find female lead Lilah in a bed after having suffered a miscarriage. It should go without saying that this situation and plot point obviously isn't funny, but the internet being the internet had a rather surprising reaction to it, largely spurred on by the fact that the tone of this particular comic was so wildly different to what had come before it in previous CAD instalments.

One thing led to another, and for some baffling reason, 17 years later, minimalist recreations of the four panels are still being created and shared. If you've ever seen a two by two grid with a few strangely placed lines or images inside it, it was probably a Loss reference. This whole thing has taken on a life of its own beyond the original tragic subject material, and that brings us to today. Over on Reddit last week, user potatolad6698 shared a screenshot of Balatro's Four Fingers Joker (which lets you pull off Flushes and Straights using four cards) alongside a mirrored screenshot of Ethan's raised hand in the first panel of Loss. "Is the Four Fingers hand a reference to Loss?" they ask.

There's a definite similarity with how the fingers are placed (although again, it's worth keeping in mind that the comic panel has to be flipped for it to match up with the card), and LocalThunk has now weighed in on the matter. How? By sharing the post along with a bunch of very specifically placed lines, referencing… well, you already know.

Responding to one fan claiming that this reply means the reference is "confirmed," LocalThunk says: "This is less of a 'confirmed' and more of a 'lmao it is now.'" So, it definitely wasn't an intentional reference LocalThunk had in mind when the Four Fingers Joker was created, but the dev seems happy enough to call it one in retrospect.

"I still have a job to do": Balatro creator says selling 5 million copies hasn't really changed his lifestyle, and he's focused on updates instead of new games.

Talking to Bloomberg, the solo developer who goes by LocalThunk revealed he's been able to quit his job in IT and buy a house with his partner thanks to the success of Balatro, but, otherwise LocalThunk's life has been relatively unaffected by his newfound wealth.

"It's been a lot of stress, but very fulfilling, being able to walk on something that I love all day, every day, as long as I want," LocalThunk said. "We'd been living below our means anyway when I had that IT job, so our lifestyle hasn't changed all that much. I travel a little more so I can visit friends. I'm just trying to be responsible right now with anything. I still have a job to do."

Without a day job keeping him preoccupied, LocalThunk is able to dedicate his work day to making updates for Balatro. In the same Bloomberg interview, he revealed he's working on Balatro update 1.1, which will add new Jokers and a revamp of the confusing Matador Joker. That, he hopes, will be out sometime this year.

As for what's next for LocalThunk post-Balatro, he's not quite there yet, telling Bloomberg he gets "obsessed with something for a long time." Although he admitted he's had ideas for other games, he said, every time his mind goes to new games, he thinks, "'you can't do that right now, you're in the middle of something else.'"

After an unbeatable year for Balatro, we asked a professional poker player to break down what makes the indie roguelike so good.

"The last few weeks have been pretty wild," the official Balatro Twitter account said. "To everyone who picked up Balatro after seeing it at [The Game Awards], we hope you're having an amazing time with it! If this is your first time picking up an indie title, try to make it a habit! There's some amazing stuff out there!"

Wout van Halderen of Balatro publisher Playstack put the numbers into perspective: "We hit 3.5M in the first week of December, this is where we are today. Love it when hard work pays off!"

When Balatro was first nominated at The Game Awards, Localthunk was quick to champion his fellow indies. "I feel uncomfortable treating the nominations and awards for Balatro as 'my' awards or nominations because I feel like my game just happens to be the current face of this beautiful and passionate corner of the industry," he wrote in November. "I just happen to be the lucky one to be propped up." His post concluded with a "go support an indie" rallying cry featuring Arco, Ballionaire, Nova Drift, Animal Well, StarVaders, Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, and Rack and Slay.

Many of these games also appeared in Localthunk's own personal "Golden Thunk" awards, with cryptic Metroidvania Animal Well taking the top honor for being so good that it made the wildly successful dev "feel like an imposter in this industry."

"These indies deserve some more attention!" he added in a January post.

After winning two awards, Balatro dev reveals they only started making their hit roguelike "because I had a few weeks of vacation to burn" and thought it would be "a fun little project."

I mean, what greater power is there for a cult leader than the ability to help my flock cheat death? Surely it's what every self respecting lamb aspires to. After my dear fox friend finally dies of natural causes, I pop their wrapped corpse into a nearby tomb and race to my temple to put the ritual to the test. The results do admittedly leave me feeling a little sheepish, because while my beloved follower does technically come back, they're, well, undead. It's a slight snag to be sure, but I'm relieved to discover a quick visit to the healing bay will make them feel right as rain again. Not everything pans out the way I'm expecting it to, but therein lies one of the greatest joys of Cult of the Lamb.

Part roguelike, part management sim, with a dash of dungeon crawling strategy mixed in, Massive Monster's adventure is an adorably violent, satisfying cocktail topped off with a dark sense of humor that I just can't get enough of.

As one of the gems I was gifted for Christmas, I'm honestly kicking myself for not playing Cult of the Lamb sooner. If you haven't tried out Massive Monster's adventure already, it humorously turns the sacrificial lamb on its head by making you become a possessed woolly leader who can do the sacrificing instead. As the lamb, you set about building up your own base and growing your following by recruiting cute woodland animal followers and adorably weird-looking creatures to do your bidding.

Right off the bat, I'm pleasantly surprised to discover that there's actually quite a bit of depth to the way I can progress in just my base alone. With doctrines to set that will affect my cult members, new abilities to unlock as I build up faith, and all sorts of buildings to unlock that will improve the quality of life for my cult and give you access to new features, everything I can either earn or discover makes my experience as the lamb feel consistently rewarding.

On top of that, I'm also working towards casting down the false prophets of the land, who each lord over their own dungeon. Each dungeon is randomly generated, which means that every excursion offers up something different, and damn if it isn't downright fun to tackle every one multiple times until I can take on one of the big bosses.

It is so satisfying to play, in fact, that tending to my flock has become my new hyperfixation of late. I know I'm late to the party here, but it really is the perfect pick-up-and-play-in-short-bursts game. But more than that, there's something about its blend of action and management elements that perfectly clicks with my brain, making it easy to switch off and get lost in the trials and tribulations of leading a cult.

What's more, I love how its base-building and dungeon-crawling is wrapped up in a deceptively cute package. The lamb might look very sweet, but I can be anything but if I so choose. There's so much freedom given to let me lead my cult my way. If I want to sacrifice followers to become more powerful I can… even if they look like friendly little donkeys or giraffes that dutifully gather up wood and stone for me. As it is, I've actually opted to let many of my loyal group die of natural causes after years of service - with the occasional resurrection for those I become overly fond of.

I really didn't expect to enjoy Cult of the Lamb quite as much as I have, nor did I think it would become my new go-to game to unwind. But the wool is no longer over my eyes and you better believe I'll continue to tend to my flock and fight against all those pesky false prophets and heretics.

Check out our pick of the most exciting upcoming indie games for 2025 and beyond.

Thankfully, the developer was a lot more generous in sharing plans for 2025 than that awfully cryptic roadmap from November, but still didn't get into a lot of specifics. In terms of new paid Vampire Survivors content, Poncle definitely isn't done despite the daunting task of following the "full circle" moment that was the Castlevania crossover DLC. Poncle didn't reveal anything about the next Vampire Survivors expansion, but said there's one more being planned "at the very least."

Poncle said it's focused on free updates for 2025, but bigger ones that release less frequently. Specifically, "more Adventures are on the way too, including one for Tides of the Foscari. We are also considering an Adventure for Ode to Castlevania since we got some ideas to make it feel different than the standard expansion."

Additionally, it sounds like there could be a whole new project in the works at Poncle that isn't related to Vampire Survivors. "We have a few not-Vampire-Survivors-but-totally-poncle things to talk about this year, but all I can say now is: please stay tuned," the developer said. "We're still cooking, but 2025 is shaping up to be our biggest, chaotic-est, surprising-est, and other made up word-est year yet!"

Poncle also said it has some "experiments" with other indie developers "on some VS-adjacent things," and that, of the six original concepts, two have been greenlit and two are "still ongoing." Again, this is all very vague and I haven't the slightest idea what Poncle could be alluding to, but there you have it.

Finally, online co-op. Vampire Survivors added couch co-op back in 2023, but there's still no way to blast through baddies with friends online. Thankfully, Poncle said it's "sorting out the last few problems and scratching our heads a lot about user interface." The dev added that it's working with the multiplayer engine Coherence and "there's hope we'll be able to launch it this year."

In the meantime, here are the best Xbox Series X games you can play today.

Hollow Knight co-creator William Pellen has changed his Twitter account details and seems to be sending us on an ARG Easter egg hunt that fans believe is hinting we'll get more Silksong news at the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct that's coming April 2, 2025.

First off, he tweeted "something big is coming. keep your eyes closed tomorrow," ahead of the Switch 2 announcement yesterday. It's already been suggested by journalist Jason Schreier that the Switch 2 was announced months ahead of its Direct to "allow third-party companies to start officially announcing their games for the system." So, the Silksong devs over at Team Cherry could have known this reveal was coming and prepared a little game for us.

If you reverse image search the profile picture of Pellen's account, you find a recipe posted April 2, 2024. That's exactly one year before the upcoming Switch 2 Direct. This was spotted by Twitter user Penkaru, but there's more to it than that.

Over on Reddit, fans noticed that Pellen's new Twitter handle, Little Bomey, was very similar to Little Boomey, which is a wine made in Adelaide Hills. Team Cherry is based in Adelaide, and the wine appears to be from April 2024, also a year before the Direct.

We're still not done, though. TheGamer notes that the phrase "eyes closed tomorrow" was also used by Imagine Dragons to tease their song Eyes Closed, and their teaser was posted April 2, 2024 as well.

It's pretty clear Pellen is trying to tell us something is coming April 2, and since that's the date of the next Direct, the assumption is we'll get Silksong news then. It stands to reason that some launch titles would be announced for the Switch 2 at its showcase, so could this long-awaited sequel be one of them?

As a Bloodborne enjoyer, I'm no stranger to clinging to the smallest morsels in the hope that a remaster or sequel is coming, so while I've not gotten stuck into Hollow Knight myself, know I feel your pain and I'll be here for you if there's actually no news at all come April 2.

While you're here, check out our Nintendo Switch 2 live blog to see everything that's being revealed.

In a tweet chain, Heart Machine acknowledges the fact that not everyone's happy with Hyper Light Breaker in its current state and suggests it's simply a product of launching in Early Access. It's a valid argument; the whole point of Early Access is to release an unfinished game into the wild, usually with the intent of receiving constructive criticism in the form of player feedback, i.e., reviews.

"Part of releasing the game in Early Access means we do take on the risk of negative early reviews and feedback," Heart Machine says. "Everyone has different expectations for an Early Access game."

At the time of writing, Hyper Light Breaker has 1,276 Steam reviews and 55% of them are positive. A quick scan of the reviews suggests the majority of complaints are about bugs, balancing, lack of polish, and quality of life stuff, which seems pretty in line with what you'd expect from an Early Access game. That said, it also sounds like there are some legitimate concerns around accessibility, something Heart Machine addresses in its response.

All in all, the developer sounds confident in its ability to patch things up and turn things around.

"All the feedback about the lack of keybinding and sensitivity controls, FPS drops, etc. is extremely reasonable. And, receiving large quantities of the same actionable requests actually helps us determine how to prioritize future updates.

"It's encouraging that these are the issues folks are pointing to as a) it's stuff we were already planning to add in, b) accessibility advocacy is important and good to see in the industry, and c) they are straightforward fixes!"

Heart Machine assures it's working on Hyper Light Breaker issues "immediately" and that "performance / accessibility improvements" are coming "ASAP." There's no official timeline on all of that just yet, but the dev says we'll learn more tomorrow.

Honestly, I'm not much of a roguelike guy myself, but Heart Machine's response to early negative feedback makes me want to give it a shot. That, and my colleague Austin's glowing Hyper Light Breaker hands-on preview from last year.

Or maybe, but probably not, I'll pick something from our guide to the best roguelikes, which I most definitely didn't write.

Last year's early access release of Palworld might have been the thing to really throw Pocketpair into the spotlight, but the studio had released a handful of games before that, including Overdungeon, which combines card game, tower defense, and roguelike elements. As reported by Automaton, Overdungeon first released in early access on PC in 2018 (before its full release the following year), and has now made it onto the Switch with seemingly no prior announcement, which is quite a surprise on multiple levels. 

Obviously, there was no reason for Nintendo to have anything against Overdungeon, but considering the ongoing legal situation with its studio, it seems a little strange it'd want to host anything from it at all. Lo and behold though, the game is out now – you can check out its release trailer below.

As for Palworld, the survival game is still going strong even amid the lawsuit. At the end of last year, it got a massive new update – titled Feybreak – which added randomizer modes, a Nuzlocke-esque challenge mode, as well as new areas, Pals, and more. This all went down incredibly well – so well, in fact, that it even drove the game to hit its highest concurrent player count since its impressive launch. 

Things have been pretty quiet on the lawsuit front since November, when Pocketpair revealed the exact three patents it was alleged to have infringed upon. It's still not clear how it'll all end, but one IP expert previously suggested that it's "more likely to last five years" than be sorted out within one. 

Palworld dev tells haters to "do yourself a favor" and "stop thinking" about the survival game: "Who wants to dedicate time and energy to things they don't like?"

Balatro is a deckbuilding roguelike where you're chasing high scores with poker hands, while modifying your deck and buying upgrades along the way. Jokers in particular will stick with you and add unique effects to you hands - they might multiply your score if you play a full house, for example. 

But one card, called Wheel of Fortune, claims that there's a 25% chance it'll add a modifier to a Joker when used. This might include making a random Joker a Foil (where it'll dish out 50 chips each hands) a Holographic card (that'll add a +10 multiplier every hand) or a Polychrome card (which adds a 1.5x upgrade.) Though, when you actually play the game, it can feel like you get unlucky way more often than not. 

"Looks like a few of you jokers got Balatro for Christmas," Balatro creator Localthunk recently tweeted. "I’ll answer what surely is your first question about the game: Yes, Wheel of Fortune really is 1 in 4." I don't quite believe him but maybe lady luck isn't on my side. 

The PSA is probably needed as Balatro recently hit a new all-time peak on Steam, months after its launch, possibly due to its multiple Game Awards, countless GOTY nods, and continued virality over the last year. Localthunk hasn't let the success get to their head, though. The breakout developer recently shared the GOTY love with his absolute favorite indie games of 2024. 

In the meantime, check out some of the best roguelike games you can play right now.

On social media, Localthunk announced his "very prestigious Golden Thunk award for Game of the Year 2024" that'll hopefully become an annual tradition, and this year it went to a metroidvainia that packs secrets upon secrets: Animal Well. "Animal Well was an engrossing experience," he tweeted. "Dripping with style, secrets, and making me feel like an imposter in this industry as a dev, Billy Basso created a true masterpiece." Animal Well creator Billy Basso then shared his own "Nicest Most Humble Dev of the Year award" right back.

Runners up include Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, a game which "people mistakenly wrote this off as a Balatro clone but this was announced before my game ever was," Localthunk wrote. "A beautifully synergistic and strategic deckbuilder I have sunk dozens of hours into."

The famed developer has gushed about RPG Arco in the past, so it's no surprise to see it show up in his year-end list as well. "Play Arco already, it's incredible."

The developer behind Balatro clearly has an affinity for roguelikes, though, and he gave a shoutout to two special ones in his list. Space shooting roguelike Nova Drift was highlight for Localthunk as it's "a perfect game for the Steam Deck," while Ballionaire was another game where "the vibes are great, the synergies are poppin, it simply deletes time; it's a certified banger."

And, finally, Localthunk was just as enamoured with the horror indie that's sunk its claws into all of us, Mouthwashing. "I didn't even know this was a horror game when I started playing it at 11pm one fateful night," he said. "I was hooked instantly, and both the world it created and the poignant message woven into the game stick with me vividly months later."

In the meantime, check out some of the best roguelike games you can play right now.

"We wanted to inform you that Realm of Ink has been removed from the Steam store," developer Leap Studio says in a blog post. "Unfortunately, we are currently unaware of the specific reason for this action, but we are doing our best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We understand that this may cause confusion and concern, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Please rest assured that we are doing everything we can to get the game back online. We would also like to reassure you that the development of Realm of Ink will continue as planned."

Realm of Ink had been in Steam Early Access since September 26, and while the 1.0 launch was initially scheduled for January 2025 - that's this month, folks - it was recently delayed to March "to deliver a game worthy of your trust and enthusiasm," as Leap Studio put it.

There's no immediately obvious reason why Valve might have pulled down Realm of Ink, but it seems Leap Studio's entire developer page has been pulled down as well. As of this December archive of the Steam page it had 92% positive reviews, and with its beautiful art and tried-and-tested action mechanics, it's easy to see why. "Hades with Okami visuals" is not a pitch you've got to work too hard to sell me on. Here's hoping the situation gets resolved - and soon - because it'd be a shame for a game this cool-looking to get lost in a bizarre Steam delisting.

These are the upcoming indie games you need to know about.

Elin, not unlike fellow roguelike RPG Caves of Qud, which was also officially released last year after a 17-year wait, is one of those games that combines so many genres and experiences that it can be hard to describe succinctly. It is loud-and-proud weird, dense as a neutron star, and almost competitively Japanese.

The topline on Steam is this: "A sandbox, open-world RPG based on roguelike gameplay." That gets you most of the way there, but the next bullet is also important: "Live your life, survive, craft, build and manage bases and towns, enjoy housing, fishing, theft, music, farming, livestock breeding, childbirth, setting up shops, tourism, and much more."

Ignoring the fact that I don't know if childbirth is something you necessarily enjoy, we can reasonably call this a tile-based life sim with heaps of procedural and handcrafted content split between all walks of life, from adventuring to farming to shop management to base building. I told you it wasn't going to be succinct. It's a seemingly boundless creativity toy set in a charming but dangerous fantasy world rendered in endearing pixel art, and it has a Dwarf Fortress-rivaling ability to generate absurd new sentences. Naturally, this makes for primo Steam review reading.

"10 minutes in, I accidentally ate the corpse of my kitten and now have -5 karma," writes haybug.

"They had to nerf breastfeeding because at some point the meta was to start a war quest, milk the boss mid-combat, and feed it to your pets for an insane amount of levels and stats," reports Minkyew. I looked this up, obviously, and it is at least partly true. "The level used to calculate effects during breastfeeding has been changed from (50 + training skill) to (20 + training skill)," a previous patch explains. Of course. Carry on.

"If you like Stardew Valley but hate yourself then this is worth a shot," as Coley D puts it.

"Here's a breakdown of all the mechanics I completely understand," quips TrustworthySpy, followed by a telling chasm of emptiness.

Elin was technically released in alpha at the end of 2023 following a Kickstarter campaign which raised over $400,000 (by current Yen to USD conversions). Somewhat confusingly, that Kickstarter called Elin a prequel, while its Steam page bills it as a "successor" and "sequel." It is, as I understand it, technically a prequel. A pre-squel, if you will.

The game's Steam page lists a November 1, 2024 launch, which is when it came out for real, contrary to what the 30-odd patches preceding its February 1, 2024 alpha status report might suggest. Since that last dev update, according to the game's Steam news feed and SteamDB records, nothing of significance has changed, with no major posts or updates since November 1.

But that's only in the main game. In that November post, Lafrontier said "we look forward to continually updating and refining the game as we work toward its full release," with updates coming to the "Nightly" beta branch first and then the main game "as they're ready." Sure enough, Nightly has gotten so many updates that there's a whole changelog archive collating them, including the aforementioned critical nerf. Elin is notably expected to stay in early access for "approximately one year, two years at the most."

One thing that made Elin's road to launch a bit rockier was the reveal of Elona 2, a self-described "pixel art x isekai x adventure RPG" from publisher Hong Kong Kunpan Culture Entertainment, which Noa says had no right or permission to use the Elona IP. In August, as Automaton reported, Noa said Elona 2 is not related to Elona and that he declined a request from Kunpan to use the name. "I’m an independent developer and have no strength to fight this," Noa said. This is not to be confused with Elona Mobile, a legitimate mobile port created separately with Noa's blessing.

Meet the Japanese solo dev who spent 15 years making the bizarre game that's secretly one of the highest-rated JRPGs on Steam and a personal favorite of mine.

Balatro first reached a concurrent player peak of around 37,000 Joker-chasers when it came out earlier in the year, but just yesterday, the game broke its own record and had more than 38,000 people in-game at the same time, 10 entire months after its debut, according to SteamDB.

The game's creator LocalThunk celebrated the news on social media. "Thanks to a crazy December with the Game Awards, two Steam sales, Christmas, and a Markiplier video, we surpassed our all time concurrent player peak on Steam," they tweeted. "The previous peak was around launch in February." Balatro won big at The Game Awards, taking home three trophies, and that aforementioned Markiplier video - "My New Crippling Addiction" - has amassed 2.5 million views in less than a week, obviously pushing the game to new heights. 

That's Balatro's biggest advantage, I think. It's a card game, so it's obviously hard to get anyone on board just by showing them a trailer. But LocalThunk's phenomenon has spread so far and wide because everyone who's infected by its touch can't help but spread its gospel. I've seen people play this thing on their iPads on a plane, on their Switches on the train, I've seen videos of Balatro runs happening in the middle of concerts. So, realistically, this probably isn't the last time Balatro will surpass itself.

In the meantime, check out some of the best roguelike games you can play right now.

I remember the first time I got a decent hand and saw the flames, I was so confused. I didn't know if I'd screwed up and my score was going to burn away into nothing or what. But then I noticed my hand was worth more than the total ante score and the pieces started clicking into place. This was a good thing, a great thing.

Turns out, it only took LocalThunk one night to make the effect, and they dub it "the most productive night of my life." In the GIF, you can see the flames rise from small and centred on the score boxes to roaring, erupting all across the boxes and causing the numbers within them to shake.

It's all the little sound effects and jiggles that make Balatro such a sensorial delight to play. Every time you get a great hand, the game provides you with such wonderfully kinetic feedback to encourage you to reach for those high scores again. It's why I keep playing the game on endless mode even after I've beaten ante eight, I just want to feel more of those satisfying effects. No wonder our team has been (not) playing it during meetings and it won three times at The Game Awards.

There's still more to come in Balatro. There's a huge update planned for 2025, and industry darling Ben Starr has become the live-action version of Jimbo the joker, disturbingly munching on bananas to advertise new skins in the game.

While you're here, check out some of the other best indie games of 2024 you may have missed. If you're off work for the holidays, now is the perfect time to get stuck in.

Part unpolished medieval fantasy in the vein of Skyrim, part cooking sim, and part Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, Abyss Ring is an upcoming survival adventure that locks the player in claustrophobic dungeons filled to the brim with enemies to kill, cook, and eat up. Basically, it's a literal buffet for those with an iron stomach to match their nerves of steel.

The recently launched trailer shown above gives us a closer look at what we can expect from the hack, slash, and sautée-fest, from Dark Souls-like bosses sporting alarmingly chunky health bars to snivelling little goblins clawing for a taste of your heroic flesh. Unfortunately for them, meat's back on the menu. Goblin meat, that is. Food is scarce in these hellish bowels, meaning our intrepid player character has no choice but to chow down on the sinewy corpses of those they cut down in battle.

These organic, home-cooked meals seem to presented as actual recipes, each with a lovingly hand-drawn image of what the perfectly cooked dish might look like. If the decidedly Hannibal Lecter undertones of Abyss Ring have your stomach in knots, try to look at it from the perspective of ethical farming. Waste not want not, right?

As for when you might be able to dungeon delve for your next meal, we could be waiting for some time yet. Indie developer Northern Studio LLC has yet to announce a firm release date for Abyss Ring, though with a vague window of "Q2 2025" signposted on the Steam page, this quirky roguelike is one of the refreshingly weirder upcoming PC games to watch for in the new year.

Read on for the best survival games to play while you wait for Abyss Ring.

Balatro has become an absolute sensation, causing our team members to definitely (not) play it during meetings and winning some Critics' Choice awards, too.

The voice of Clive has become somewhat of an industry darling in recent years, and most recently used his talents to play a live-action Jimbo, the funny and slightly disturbing jester that's become the mascot for the game.

Starr features in an advert that promos the new card themes in Balatro, allowing you to change the face cards in your deck to cards inspired by Don't Starve, 1000xResist, Divinity Original Sin 2, Shovel Knight, Enter the Gungeon, Warframe, Potion Craft, and Cult of the Lamb. It's already a little unhinged, showing him swiveling around in full harlequin makeup, laughing maniacally, and chomping down on some bananas. The outtakes are even more baffling.

"Behind the scenes insanity of Balatro," Starr tweets alongside a video of himself tonguing a banana he's dangling above his mouth and gobbling down on it in a truly, truly horrifying manner.

He says in a sing-song voice, "there are two bananas in my hand, would you like to see me eat them?" while silhouetted in the dark studio. He continues, "bananas in Ben's mouth."

It's no surprise these are the outtakes because, as I said, they're disturbing. Incredibly funny, though. It's good to see Starr hasn't let the stardom get to his head, and I hope he continues to play the role of Jimbo in all Balatro's adverts to come. There's a big Balatro update set for 2025, so we could see more of him then.

In the meantime, check out some of the best roguelike games you can play right now.

Desktop Survivors 98 is the name of maybe the whackiest Survivors-like yet, though it still follows the subgenre's main tropes. It's chaotic. There are projectiles and little enemies flying about the screen. You'll get random upgrades and screen-filling new abilities in between rounds. And the 'dungeons' are randomly generated, too.

But this time, the so-called dungeons are laid on top of your desktop. An off-brand Clippy will stare at you with goggly eyes at the bottom of your screen, alongside your health bar and other handy UI bits, while enemies, torches, barrels, and gems will begin to spawn on top of whatever apps or tabs you have open at the minute. I had tiny gems falling on top of the tab I'm literally using to write this very article, so in a sense, Desktop Dungeons 98 can even gamify your work life. Hurray. After each wave, you can then click on some doors that show up to move one spot on a map full of tiles, which is where the "dungeon-crawling" comes in. 

Dungeon Survivors 98 is due to come out sometime in 2025, but there's currently a free demo available on Steam if you're at all interesting in another really cool take on an endlessly exciting formula.

For more, check out the other upcoming indie games of 2025 and beyond. 

"Talked with PEGI and they do not see anything wrong [with] Balatro being rated 18+, nor with EA Sports FC (and similar games) having a 3+ rating," LocalThunk shares on Twitter. Balatro is a card game that features no active gambling premise, lootbox, or other microtransactional content, but PEGI is "blaming EU laws" and "storefronts" as the key, binding reason for its decision. "[They're] sitting on their hands. I thought some good might come of this, this sucks."

It's a miserable situation for LocalThunk, whose game ironically shines a pretty wholesome light on card gaming that does away with the gambling-minded symbolism usually applied to poker. Understandably, LocalThunk has drawn contrast here and in the past to EA Sports FC's randomized lootboxes, which serve the basic function of a blind goodybag to be purchased over and over again as players search for specific items.

The developer might not have succeeded in changing PEGI's mind right now, but that doesn't take away from the clean sweep of awards Balatro has netted over the last weeks at The Game Awards and Golden Joysticks alike, proving that LocalThunk has the support of a now passionate fanbase rooting for them despite regulatory decrees. Looks like this bet paid off after all.

Check out the best games of 2024 for a highlight reel of another great year for video games

"Qud [...] has an extremely disorienting world, by design," says Caves of Qud co-creator Brian Bucklew during a recent Reddit AMA. "It doesn't lean on existing semiotics. Do you know what a snapjaw is? A decarbonizer? A galgal? Crysteel? The problem with starting with a very complex character is that you're doubly disoriented, and that can make the game really hard to get your footing in!"

Bucklew recommends players begin Caves of Qud with what I like to call the "Braveheart mindset." I use it nearly every time I begin a complicated RPG like Baldur's Gate 3, or even step foot in one of FromSoftware's ghostly action RPG worlds. First, I clear my mind of any image other than of abs. Then, after spending six hours or so in the character creator making my protagonist as gorgeous as possible, I prioritize getting her jacked and giving her a sword that's bigger than Saturn. 

Or, in Caves of Qud language, Bucklew says "I always suggest playing a really basic true kin praetorean with high toughness and just hit stuff with your big sword while orienting yourself to the world.

"Then try to loot armor and get your AV up to 6 or 7 as fast as you can," he continues, "which will help a lot with survivability."

Legendary roguelike RPG's 9 years in Steam Early Access was possible as devs wanted a "positive lifestyle and great game, rather than maximum profit."

"Since PEGI gave us an 18+ rating for having evil playing cards," writes LocalThunk on Twitter, "maybe I should add microtransactions/loot boxes/real gambling to lower that rating to 3+ like EA sports FC." These scathing words point out the apparent hypocrisy at play from the European regulatory body, with Balatro assumedly receiving an adults-only rating purely on the basis of it involving card games typically associated with casinos and gambling.

On the other hand, LocalThunk seems to be calling out EA Sports FC as an example of games with microtransaction-based business models that playing off supposed real-life gambling scenarios. In this case, the culprit is the football game's randomized loot boxes, promoting a scratch card-esque purchasing pattern that could, theoretically, lead to addiction. Alas, the game is still rated 3+ by PEGI.

It's been an awards season peppered with glittering trophies aplenty for Balatro, but LocalThunk doesn't look ready to back down from PEGI's decision to raise its rating just yet. How will the ratings board react? Especially when, you gotta admit, LocalThunk makes a pretty good case in very few words?

Here's everything announced at The Game Awards 2024 if you want to see how many awards Balatro managed to scoop.

If you've had your eye purely locked on this year's big blockbusters, this list should help you find indie gems that may have slipped through the cracks. So good are most of these releases, that there's plenty of crossover with our full best games of 2024 picks! For those who keep up with our Indie Spotlight initiative you'll also see some familiar faces. After all, the picks below are the ones that have captivated us throughout the year and kept the conversation flowing throughout that whole time. We've played a hell of a lot of amazing indies this year, making this one of the hardest lists for us to assemble, but after some heated discussion, we've chosen a top five. So, please join us in celebrating our picks for the best indie games of 2024.

5. Thank Goodness You're Here

Developer: Coal Supper
Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Switch

Comedy slapformer Thank Goodness You're Here may be the funniest game of 2024. Playing as a teeny tiny salesman, you've traveled to the fictional town of Barnsworth for a meeting with the mayor but decide to have a nice romp around the town and help the locals with their problems. This unassuming Yorkshire town becomes the perfect stage for an absurdist comedy where grocers are engaged in fruit-based warfare with their customers, one chap has his arm trapped down a drain grate, Big Ron the pie maker has run out of ingredients, and Matt Berry's having a barney with a garden mole – and you're the only one who can help them all. The Yorkshirisms and Northern charm are out in full force in this love letter to British comedy. Thank Goodness You're Here is hilarious, absurd, and a fantastic debut from Coal Supper.

Learn more in our Thank Goodness You're Here spotlight where we said it shows "the side of England you won't get from Downton Abbey"

4. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Developer: Simogo
Platform(s): PC, P55, PS4, Switch

With a stylish noir design stuffed to the brim with captivating puzzle designs, all wrapped up with an intriguing and mysterious storyline, once Lorelei and the Laser Eyes has its hooks in you, you won't be able to break free. Invited to the Letztes Jahr Hotel, a sprawling building with endless rooms and impossible architecture, everywhere you explore is home to strange and interconnected puzzles that tease out the larger narrative. Keypads with odd symbols, math problems, wordplay, riddles, hidden symbols, cipher decoding, the moon phases during one week in 1846 – you're bombarded with information at a rapid pace, and untangling this web of information as you head deeper into the jaws of the hotel is wholly satisfying as it all feels important and relevant. Keep a notebook to hand! A haunted house ride meets puzzle box, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a compelling and enthralling puzzle adventure.

Learn more in our Lorelei and the Laser Eyes review where we called it "totally engrossing" and "effortlessly stylish"

3. Tactical Breach Wizards

Developer: Suspicious Developments
Platform(s): PC

Tactical Breach Wizards isn't just about wizards with guns – it also manages to be a deep strategy game that's able to carefully onboard those who often find the genre intimidating. In this world, spellcasters have replaced staffs with modern-day tactical gear, and must take on similarly supernatural enforcers. There's a focus on puzzle solving challenges here rather than brute force, as you're encouraged to use your squad's magical abilities to reach peak room clearing efficiency. Fiddling with different combinations of moves until you're happy with the plan is all part of the fun, though booting an enemy out of a 4th-story window is still very much an option. With a genuinely captivating and funny cop drama storyline,Tactical Breach Wizards manages to put its own spin on the genre, while appealing to newcomers at the same time.

Learn more in our Tactical Breach Wizards spotlight where we called it "a hilarious blend of Harry Potter and Into the Breach"

2. Animal Well

Developer: Billy Basso
Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch

With multiple "layers" of puzzles (as developer Billy Basso describes it), Animal Well is an enigma that's full of "aha" moments right up until the very end. What begins as a retro-style metroidvania quickly becomes more as you come upon cryptic symbols in the background, discover new uses for items that were always possible, and learn new ways to approach rooms you've already navigated. Spelunking through an ancient, underground cavern solving devious platforming puzzle rooms, and surviving deadly encounters with the cave's unwelcoming animal dwellers (often rendered in an almost creepily realistic style), Animal Well always rewards really taking in the details of every screen, and pushes you to dismantle it a little more at every turn. Simply hitting credits for the first time is satisfying enough, but for those looking to unpack a much bigger mystery, Animal Well becomes a true must-play.

Learn more in our Animal Well review where we called it "an endlessly inventive Metroidvania with unfathomable depth"

1. Balatro

Developer: LocalThunk
Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Switch, Mobile

A winning hand indeed! Balatro is a twisted rougelike that's become a dominant talking point for good reason. Deviously playing with the scoring rules of poker, your task is to rack up points to pass challenge blinds. The trick comes in how you must bend the rules to keep up with the challenge curve. Between rounds, you add special cards to your deck, altering their properties in unique ways. Tarot cards, planet cards, and special seals add new ways they're scored, while the fiendish joker cards completely rewrite the rules of the game, almost all of which can combine with one another to enhance their effects. You're building one big, well-oiled machine, the highs of seeing everything ding-ding-ding and coming together to deliver massively inflated numbers only matched by the lows of making a devastating miscalculation that has you bulldozed by a particularly tricky challenge. It feels hypnotizing, cursed, and oh-so moreish all at once. Why not deal us in for one more go-around?

Learn more in our Balatro mobile Now Playing where we said that "chasing new ideas as you stumble upon new cogs for your great big scoring machine is all part of the fun"

What's next on the horizon? Check out our upcoming indie games list to add new favorites to your calendar!

Much has been said about Balatro's humble origins, as a side project for solo dev LocalThunk, with an expectation of single-digit sales and a few, semi-entertained family members. Now, with critical acclaim, huge sales, various cross-game tie-ins, a Critics' Choice Breakthrough Award, and a multi-platform royal flush, Balatro is undoubtedly one of the biggest success stories of 2024.

How did this happen? Developer LocalThunk, who we interviewed at launch, is as bewildered as anyone else, having worked on various solo projects for himself and a close circle of friends. After making a game he quite liked – Balatro – he figured it was best to publish it in some form in case it helped his CV, which it certainly did. With a bewitching core loop, a punchy art style, and a sense of mischief to its 150 joker cards, millions of players around the world were hooked even before it came to mobile and truly ruined our lunch breaks forever.

Balatro is just the latest in a string of the best roguelite games – or deckbuilders – combining luck, strategy and randomised elements with persistent progression systems. Even if you lose, or die, you'll carry some benefit over to the next 'run', allowing you to slowly accrue experience and new items/abilities to try out each time.

It's a growing genre largely kicked off by 2017's Slay The Spire, which has seen countless imitators, from Wildfrost and Monster Train to Cobalt Core and Roguebound. More than any of them, Balatro feels like a real step out of Slay The Spire's shadow: one of the most interesting things about Balatro is that its dev hadn't played any of these roguelite deckbuilders before making his own, ensuring his own twist on the genre felt sufficiently fresh.

However, it's obviously still heavily indebted to another card game – poker.

Poker faces

To get a sense of how Balatro riffs on its source material, we sat down with professional poker player and comedian Ken Cheng, star of the BBC Radio 4 show, Chinese Comedian, and the host of Game Over, Humans, a documentary about AI and gaming.

Cheng dropped out of university at the age of 19 to pursue a poker career, and has a strong affection for the “strategy, risk and people reading” baked into the classic card game – as well as its latest iteration in Balatro.

“Poker is a beautiful game”, says Cheng. “It was played centuries ago. And it's a very well-designed game for a game that hasn't been designed by anyone [in particular], and it's still very interesting now. It's a very deep strategic game, but can still be played with a deck of cards. And that is the simplicity of Balatro, that you're just dealing with a deck of cards.”

Balatro starts you off with a classic 52-card deck, with a number of joker cards that change the way that your high score is calculated each round, alongside other augmentations, removals, multipliers, and a secondary system of tarot cards. (We're not in Vegas anymore, Toto.)

It's a curious remix that breaks many of poker's rules, while also feeling like an accessible way into the deckbuilder genre. “Even if you don't know the rules of poker, you've probably heard of a Royal Flush, or a Full House, or watched a movie like Casino Royale, where there's a poker scene,” says Cheng. “It's there in our culture, and it's so recognizable. I think what Balatro does very well is to put all that together in what is a really nice art style. It's very simple to read.”

But Cheng also argues that part of Balatro's success is its willingness to be different, not sticking too close to poker's standard rulesets: “I think it's great that some people have tried to make poker-based video games; they failed because they've tried to make it too similar to poker, whereas Balatro went outside the box. So it's very different to poker, but it's clever in that it maintains what people know about poker, like the basic hands and cards.”

Rolling the dice

LocalThunk has made it very clear that this gambling simulator should never incorporate real-life gambling into it. In a post on X, the dev wrote that “when I recently created my will I stipulated that the Balatro IP may never be sold or licensed to any gambling company/casino,” ruling out the possibility of seeing Balatro mascot Jimbo on a Las Vegas slot machine anytime soon.

But one of the biggest insights I get from Cheng is how Balatro recaptures something of the thrill they felt when first entering the poker scene.

“Poker right now is very boring, because optimal play is very boring,” says Cheng. “It's just folding a lot of the time. When I first got into poker, it was so exciting and so riveting, like the hands you make, the situation players get. And I think Balatro has that same kind of magic to it, that hasn't really been felt with real poker for a long time.”

Games are at their best when it feels like something new is being invented before your eyes, much like each run in a roguelite deckbuilder, remixing the game over and over in order to make it feel fresh each time. And in a games landscape full of safe, iterative AAA games, it's thrilling to see a solo dev stumble onto one of the year's biggest hits – by rolling the dice on something new.

I've never played Balatro mobile during a meeting – but if I had, I would love it almost as much as I love my job

Streamer Nandre broke the "high score limit" in the game a few days ago, but he's more recently one-upped himself while on stream. In the clip below, after passing ante 39, you can see Nandre reach a score so high that it forces the screen to glitch and white-noised cards to fly about the screen. I'm not good enough at Balatro to know what build he's rocking, but whatever it is, Nandre's hand of cards is too big to even be visible. The glitch continues until the game properly crashes and leaves us all staring at a blank screen.

"You cannot go any higher than this," Nandre says on stream. "This is literally the maximum ante you can go in the game without mods. The true ending of Balatro has been claimed. Now I can rest..."

Balatro's 'true ending' echoes what happened with Tetris NES recently, which didn't have any proper finale coded in the form of credits and a congratulatory message. Instead, 34 years after its release, a 13-year-old block-turning prodigy made history when he became the first person in the world to reach Tetris' kill screen by obtaining a score so high, the game's code becomes too unstable too even continue running. Balatro's ending is weirdly poetic in that way.

Developer Localthunk's surprise hit made headlines recently for more than its ending, though. The Game Awards 2024 might have predictably given most of the trophies to games with millions of dollars behind them, but Balatro took home the gold in three categories regardless: Best Indie Game, Best Debut Indie, and Best Mobile Game. As of this week, Balatro's crossover cosmetics now also includes everything from Divinity: Original Sin to 1000xResist.

Balatro creator says the business aspect of making his hit roguelike is still something he’s “learning the ropes” of. 

Developer Mega-Crit celebrated the news in its most recent blog, posted two days before the awards show aired. "We recently topped 1 million wishlists on Steam and it's maddening to see so much faith in the sequel and us as a company," it wrote. "The only way for us to thank you is to do our best every day and make a good video game so that's what we'll keep doing next year. It's truly a privilege for us to be independent game developers and I'd like to keep saying, 'I make video games for a living.'"

According to SteamDB, Slay the Spire 2 is the 13th most wated game on the digital storefront, beating out the heavyweight likes of Borderlands 4, Subnautica 2, and Avowed - and we've only just seen what the new Spire looks like in action. 

The feat isn't really too surprising, in all honesty. Mega-Crit have been pretty vocal about the fact that Slay the Spire 2 is only happening because fans went "the extra mile" for the first game. "It sounds corny, but the extra mile many of you went to report issues, translate content/announcements, create long video essays, make excellent (lol) tier lists, and draw goofy or gorgeous fan art is the reason we're doing it all again," it said at the time.

Slay the Spire 2 should start its early access climb on Steam sometime in 2025.

Check out some other upcoming indie games to not miss a single release. 

Hyper Light Breaker has been at the top of my list of most-wanted open-world games and roguelikes for ages now, owing to an unusual combination of elements which creator Heart Machine reckons is first-of-its-kind. To recap my hands-on preview from earlier this year, you (and up to two friends) play as a Breaker and generate a new version of the Overgrowth map with each cycle. Embark on PvE extraction-like expeditions out into that world to collect Prisms which unlock bosses called Crowns. Defeat all the Crowns on the map to face the big bad Abyss King. If you lose all your lives, the cycle resets and you start again.

Along the way, you'll meet and befriend new NPCs, discover and corroborate lore, upgrade your stats permanently, budget items like med kits, and discover new guns and blades to wield – or store in your vault for later.

The home base city evolves as you do, with folks moving in and offering new services. In the Overgrowth, you'll hunt for secrets and resources while under the watch of the Abyss King, hoverboarding and gliding between points of interest. Once you've had enough or completed your immediate objective, you have to extract back to base to recover the limited life spent on that excursion, not unlike the way Risk of Rain makes you clear out level teleporters.

The early access version of Hyper Light Breaker will only have a few playable Breakers, two Crowns to fight, and no Abyss King. More enemies, Crowns, Breakers, gear, and a true ending will be added throughout early access, with Heart Machine expecting to hit 1.0 after "about a year," with wiggle room "depending on the community's response and feedback."

Hyper Light Breaker takes the world and feel of Hyper Light Drifter, Heart Machine's first game, and combines it with the 3D movement demonstrated in 2021's Solar Ash. It's all filtered through an extraction-y action roguelike loop that I found immediately compelling, so this is poised to become my first gaming rabbit hole next year.

This news notably follows layoffs at Heart Machine, which studio community and PR manager Yiyi Zhang said won't affect Hyper Light Breaker. "In fact, a strong and timely launch will rekindle opportunities for those affected as we look to evolve and grow the game throughout Early Access. Our other projects, including Possessor(s), will also remain unaffected," as Game Developer reported.

It ended up getting delayed, but with bottomless open-world combat, Hyper Light Breaker could now be the biggest roguelike of 2025 in more ways than one.

Speaking in a recent thread online, the roguelike's co-creator explains how different Caves of Qud's launch has been and how mind-boggling its immediate success is. "There are just no comparable [games] to Caves of Qud," writes the developer, as "nobody launches out of a decade-long early access into a launch quite likes this." That's why "there's no way at all to tell if this is all the units we will ever sell again or the start of a long success."

According to Bucklew, "most games sell like 95123412354123 units in the first day and then trail pretty predictably" - unlike Caves of Qud, and that's why Freehold Games doesn't know "how things will be going in 18 months." As for why it's so successful after so long? The dev explains that the unique roguelike is "chasing absolutely no trends" and has likely snagged the attention of both old and new audiences used to "the modern game."

As Bucklew says, "people are buying it today that weren't alive when the first people started playing it." Overall, however, the lead admits Caves of Qud "has already, even before launch, done 100x better than anything we ever expected in our wildest dreams." Anything beyond launch "is just a cherry on the sundae," with Bucklew stating he's simply "immensely grateful for it and the players and the possibilities it opens for the future."

After 17 years of work on D&D-inspired roguelike Caves of Qud, co-creator says "I personally have lost my mind and started posting about my dark desires to drop off the grid"

To celebrate Caves of Qud's release, the team held a question-and-answer session where a fan simply asked how much of a break the team is taking as getting here has nearly taken two decades. An answer they certainly got.

"The team will be taking a few months at the beginning of the year to rest and recuperate," co-creator Brian Bucklew says. "I personally have lost my mind and started posting about my dark desires to drop off the grid and start working on an aurora4x/dominions/Crusader Kings-inspired sci-fi mech game but Jason and Tanya keep yelling at me to take like two weeks off so we'll see how it goes!"

If you're curious about what Bucklew is actually doing, he has turned to Dragon Age 2 to "chill out."

"I really bounced hard off of it on PC trying to play it as a hard tactical game, but really enjoying it on a gamepad with the combat dialed down to 'joke combat,'" he adds. But hey, I'd happily wait another 17 years for a sci-fi mech game from the Caves of Qud gang.

The wait for Caves of Qud has been long – the roguelike has been in early access for 15 years and in development for 17. Thankfully, that's plenty of time to pick up a solid following among fans. The roguelike RPG takes notes from a post-apocalyptic derivative of Dungeons & Dragons called Gamma World, focusing on player agency and emergent narrative. Whether it's the story of the world or the physical properties around you, things are deep and rarely the same on each new save file. And now that the game has hit 1.0, the final quest to the main storyline is here, so you can actually finish the game after 15 years. 

Having taken so long to make, how could we not add Caves of Qud to our best roguelike list?

Some fantastic games started off in early access, with Minecraft (technically), Subnautica, Kerbal Space Program, and Baldur's Gate 3 being some famous examples. When done right, it's the perfect way for developers to expand, polish, and refine their games by building on player feedback. These are the games that have done the best job of releasing an early access version in 2024 that is immediately enjoyable, while promising to blossom into something even bigger and better. Naturally, as they're not done yet, they didn't fit our conditions for the full best games of 2024 list. Yet, the following five titles are worth championing now, as they're already bulging with hours and hours of fun – and we're glad that we didn't have to wait any longer to start playing them.

5. The Rogue Prince of Persia

Developer: Evil Empire
Platform: PC

You'll already know this is a good year for fans of the Prince of Persia series if you've checked out our full games of the year list. Where Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown keeps you coming back by slowly opening up a metroidvania map, however, The Rogue Prince of Persia pulls you in again and again with roguelike elements (clue's in the name). From the developer that gifted the world Dead Cells, it's a story about the Prince trying to repel an invasion of his homeland. Death is not a problem, as every time he fails, time is reversed and he can give it another go. Movement and combat are as acrobatic as you'd hope (there's even wallrunning!), while unlockable weapons and buffs keep runs fresh. We look forward to seeing this tale completed.

Learn more in our The Rogue Prince of Persia review, where we noted that it has "a strong foundation to be built on"

4. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

Developer: Funday Games
Platform: PC

How do you capitalize on the popularity of your co-op FPS? With a single-player, top-down survival shooter, apparently. It's an unusual next step, but one that we're glad was taken for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. It's tempting to say that it's Vampire Survivors with dwarves – and it kind of is – but there's more to it than that. Mining and resource collection is still part of the loop, for example, important considerations if you want to unlock those all-important upgrades. Also, while weapons fire automatically as is typical for the "survivor" genre, here they need reloading – which, just like firing, happens automatically. Keeping an eye on your magazines therefore is crucial. Four distinct classes, short runs, and plenty of potential for varying our build keep us coming back, and we're itching to see what comes next.

3. Manor Lords

Developer: Slavic Magic
Platform: PC

This list would not be complete without Manor Lords. Early access it may be, but the depth, breadth, and quality of content already available is truly impressive. This medieval city builder allows a refreshing level of freedom in where and how you build, and once you have a settlement going, you can do more than simply look down upon it like a bored god while you wait for numbers to go up. You can wander your creation at ground level as a visiting noble, but don't spend too long admiring your handiwork. There are jobs to assign, nearby lords and bandits to negotiate with and/or fight, and seasonal resources that need to be harvested on the clock. Pre-built scenario or customised setup, Manor Lords offers a deep and rewarding experience.

Learn more in our Manor Lords review, where we said it's "brimming with the potential to exceed its already broad horizons"

2. Palworld

Developer: Pocketpair
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

Palworld has already seen phenomenal success and a lawsuit from Nintendo; and on both counts, it's easy to see why (don't hold your breath for a Nintendo Switch version). It's very much its own spectacularly popular game, but the brightly coloured, cutesy creatures you encounter are at least vaguely reminiscent of… something else. Anyway, unlike That Game, Palworld is a survival game set in an open world, with crafting elements. It's actually more like Ark: Survival Evolved in terms of what you (don't) start out with and how long it takes to get to the best stuff. Once the game is dancing to your tune though, you'll have a range of guns and monsters under your command that make the world your oyster. It's an odd one, but despite its clear influences manages to feel like little else. Gotta acquire each available one!

Learn more in Palword review, where we called it a "strange and obliviously cruel game that nonetheless shows effort and some real thought running through its core design"

1. Hades 2

Developer: Supergiant Games
Platform: PC

Come on. You and I both know that it was always going to be Hades 2 at the number one spot here. Just like the first game, it's starting in early access – and just like the first game, pretty much everybody fell in love with it immediately (you do not want to see our playtime hour count here – ouch!). Zagreus has been replaced by his sister Melinoë, but the experience is like slipping into a wonderfully designed pair of familiar gaming slippers. Movement and combat don't stray too far from the winning formula of the first game, nor does the fundamental idea of gameplay-twisting boons from the gods. It's no lazy retread though. New skills and abilities allow for tactics Zagreus never had access to, mostly revolving around charging up attacks to alter their properties, and the storytelling is even more ambitious than before. Hades 2's escape from early access can't come soon enough.

Learn more in our Hades 2 review, where we called it an "astounding early access success"

There's a lot of great ones in this list already, but if you want to check out the best roguelike games that are fully released then check out our list!

Set to release next year, Moonlighter 2 is a sequel to 2018 indie hit, which combined its dungeon-crawling roguelike gameplay with some light store management - protagonist Will would venture into the depths to find rare artifacts to sell in his store, using the money he made to enhance his own gear. Six years later, and with several other games that I've enjoyed under its belt, developer Digital Sun is back.

Will is still manning his shop, but now he's found himself in a mysterious new dimension. His task in the sequel is not just to increase the renown of his store, but also the village around it. As you invest in the village's development, its inhabitants will see their fortunes increase - fortunes that they can then spend on your wares. 

Digital Sun is fast becoming an indie studio to play close attention to. Moonlighter is a roguelike gem, for sure, but the studio has also brought some dramatically different games to life in a very short space of time. In the five years since the original Moonlighter released, it's also developed League of Legends hack-and-slash spin-off The Mageseeker, and the excellent blocky RTS Cataclismo. Putting out just one game as acclaimed as any of these in a five-year timeframe would be pretty impressive, but Digital Sun has managed three, and is already back for more.

The Moonlighter 2 trailer above doesn't give away too much, but it does confirm that you'll have several friends by your side, and that you'll be able to play on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam.

While we wait for next year's release, check out our list of the best roguelike games.

I reached out after his Golden Joysticks wins to ask some questions, and he told me "Before the game went public there were very few issues. It was just a hobby and was a really rewarding way to unwind after a day of work." We already know he started the game when he had a few weeks of vacation, and he's also said before he never expected anyone other than his friends to play it.

"Originally I started making the game as a hobby project, just like all my other games before," he explains. I asked, and unfortunately those other games aren't available anywhere.

"After the store page went live, it became much more stressful to deal with," LocalThunk says. "Much of the PR and business side does not come naturally to me so I think the hardest part was trying to pick these things up on the fly. I still feel like I’m learning the ropes even now."

It's safe to say he's doing a good job, as the game is selling well everywhere, it's the fourth most-played game on Steam Deck. "This game is the culmination of a deeply personal process with a tiny target audience and the reception almost seems arbitrary to me, like how could my weird little game earn these honors," he asks.

LocalThunk "worked on the game for about 18 months before taking the store page public, and in total just over 2 years from start to release," but he has no plans to stop now. "I plan to work on Balatro for the time being, but I am keeping a list of other game ideas for the future," he tells me.

With the success of Balatro, he'll likely be able to work on whatever he wants next. It will be interesting to see if he remains a solo developer or if he decides to open his own studio. Since he says he's still figuring out the business side of things, my guess would be he'll stay a lone wolf, but only time will tell. Whatever he makes next, I'm excited to see it.

In between rounds of Balatro, you should check out some of the best upcoming indie games to keep your eyes peeled for.

Is there nowhere we can hide from the viral sensation that is Balatro? No, is the short answer. It's on consoles, PC, Steam Deck, and mobile – GamesRadar+'s Oscar swears he doesn't play Balatro on his phone during meetings, but we don't believe him. To be fair to solo developer LocalThunk, they did say "I'm sorry" when they released it on mobile.

By now, we should all be used to Balatro going up against gaming juggernauts. It won two Golden Joysticks last week, Critics Choice and Best Indie, so it's not surprising it's selling well. What is impressive is that two indie games made by solo devs are on par with two of the most critically acclaimed RPGs to come out this decade, with Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 both being previous Game of the Year winners at The Game Awards. Balatro is also up for Game of the Year this year, so it's already proven to be tough competition.

LocalThunk shared a screenshot of the Steam Deck charts on their Twitter account, showing that while Elden Ring had climbed three places on the leaderboard and Stardew Valley had gained eight, the poker roguelike was a new entry entirely. So, it got just shy of the podium in its first year of release. Not bad for a "fun little project" started during a few weeks of vacation.

At the moment, I only have it on my laptop, but my phone is calling to me like the Green Goblin's mask, begging me to make myself even less productive.

If you're weaning yourself off of Balatro and want something else to play, why not check out some of the best upcoming indie games? One of them could be the next big hit.

"Vampire Survivors isn't over," Poncle writes on Twitter about the 2022 game. "We have more content on the horizon. Here's our highly cryptic, chaos roadmap update; good luck working out what's next." 

The luck is appreciated — Poncle's roadmap kind of looks like a jar of blobby jam. Rotating circles, held together by garlic placed in their shared center, spin tiny assets around on a confusing carousel. But, from what I can see, there will be at least two more updates by the end of 2024, Pyroclasm and West Woods, which sounds like it could be a new stage. 

Larger updates 1.9 through 1.12 appear to be confined to 2025. 1.9 apparently impacts Space 54, Vampire Survivors' interplanetary bonus stage. 1.10 possibly toys with both the industrial Laboratory and the Operation Guns DLC, which adds all kinds of bombs and explosives inspired by Konami's testosterone-powered run-and-gun game Contra. 

Then, 1.11 is dedicated to the relic Darkasso, which permanently allows you to collect more Arcanas, and 1.12 potentially alters Vampire Survivors' ghoulish Ode to Castlevania DLC. 

New content seems to be surreptitiously sprinkled in around all these shadowy updates, though their names don't reveal much: "Final Flight," "House," "The Coop," and "Mazerella," which I have to assume isn't a mozzarella typo. The important thing is, whatever's in store for Vampire Survivors, it's sure to be spooky. 

After 3 years and over 30 updates, Vampire Survivors finally has vampires - and even Baldur's Gate 3's Astarion actor is here as Dracula.

Balatro won the Critics' Choice Breakthrough Award at the Golden Joystick Awards yesterday, which is given to the game that surprised the most. It also picked up a well-deserved win for Best Indie Game. Balatro's roguelike take on poker certainly was unexpected, and although it took me a while to unlearn real poker so I could fully enjoy it, I've now spent an embarrassing amount of hours with it. Our games editor, Oscar, swears he has never played it during a work meeting, but I smell lies.

Following the big night, LocalThunk reveals on Twitter that "Almost exactly three years ago, I started making a weirdo card game on my laptop because I had a few weeks of vacation to burn and thought it'd be a fun little project for me and my friends." 

We already know just how low their expectations for Balatro were, as the game does not occupy a prestigious place on LocalThunk's hard drive. "My actual production project folder is called 'CardGame' and is still in my 'Learning' directory if that tells you anything about the expectations I had for the game," they said.

Obviously, Balatro took more than a few weeks to become what we know and love today, but its origin is a testament to what can be done with a cool idea and some time and effort.

As well as its wins at the Golden Joysticks, Balatro has been nominated five times at The Game Awards. It could win: Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best Mobile Game. That's right, Balatro is on mobile, too, so you really can't escape it anymore.

If you can tear yourself away from Balatro, why not check out some of the next upcoming indie games that could be your new favorites?

The Breakthrough Award is judged by a panel of critics, and celebrates the developers who create unexpected masterpieces that are genuinely surprising and keep us coming back for more. If you've spent any time this year juggling Balatro's selection of jokers then you'll know why it deserves this honor – I myself am writing this in somewhat of a haze after sailing into the wee small hours once again last night, when 'a quick round' escalated into a blur of cards feeding back off each other and propelling me to a satisfying victory.

For the uninitiated, Balatro is a simple poker game at its core, where you need to play the best hands you can make to win chips and defeat the increasingly large 'blinds' to move on to the next level. However, the genius lies in what solo developer LocalThunk did to this format, adding in jokers that award bonus chips, multipliers, or completely change how the cards interact with each other.

On top of this there are ways to add, remove, and modify the cards in the deck itself, opening up new strategies and even the opportunity to play 'secret' poker hands that would normally be illegal – Five of a Kind or a Flush House, anyone? As this is a roguelike, the jokers and modifiers available to you are randomized for each playthrough, with fresh cards unlocked as you progress, creating an endless "just one more go" loop as you discover new combinations that can send your chip count through the roof.

Despite the developer's wildly low expectations, Balatro has proven to be a true breakthrough hit in 2024, selling over 2 million copies on PC and consoles before topping the mobile sales charts when it launched for iOS and Android in September. The game has also had an impact with a number of high profile developers, leading to a free update adding custom card artwork themed on The Witcher 3, Vampire Survivors, Among Us, and more. With a completely free "major gameplay update" promised for next year bringing "new ideas and strategies" to the game, you can expect to hear a lot more about Balatro in 2025.

LocalThunk has in numerous instances used his considerable platform to prop up what he views as underappreciated indie games. When Balatro was nominated for three Golden Joystick awards, he used that moment to promote the indie RPG Arco, which has excellent Steam reviews but hasn't reached anywhere near the success of Balatro. And during last month's Steam Next Fest demo blitz, he spotlighted the indie roguelike Ballionaire and the deckbuilding tactics game StarVaders.

In a thoughtful Reddit post reacting to Balatro's nominations at The Game Awards, LocalThunk took the time to thank his community of players and raise some awareness about the headwinds indie developers face simply trying to stand out from the crowd.

A message to the community from r/balatro

"I feel uncomfortable treating the nominations and awards for Balatro as 'my' awards or nominations because I feel like my game just happens to be the current face of this beautiful and passionate corner of the industry," he said. "I just happen to be the lucky one to be propped up."

Doing his part to help bring attention to his favorite indies and their developers, LocalThunk then listed out his favorite games of the year that have either launched or have demos out, and which have not been considered at The Game Awards. Those include the aforementioned Arco, Ballionaire, and StarVaders, as well as the roguelite space shooter Nova Drift, the Metroidvania Animal Well, the decidedly Balatro-like deckbuilder Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, and the roguelike dungeon crawler Rack and Slay.

"Please give these games a try, a wishlist, gift them to a friend," LocalThunk said. "They are great games that I have played a lot in 2024 made by great people!" 

I've never played Balatro mobile during a meeting – but if I had, I would love it almost as much as I love my job.

While it's not the most popular roguelike around these days, there was a time when The Binding of Isaac was the hottest on the market, and it still has plenty of dedicated fans who have racked up hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the game. But unlike some other roguelikes from the time like Risk of Rain, Isaac is a completely single-player experience—but not for very much longer.

A multiplayer mode for the game is under development, and with it set to release later this week, executive producer Tyrone Rodriguez has shared a few clips on Twitter with the caption "We're going to have so much fun playing #IsaacOnline together."

If you've played The Binding of Isaac before, then you can probably already guess how chaotic the game would be with just one more player. With four players running around, like in the clips shared by Rodriguez, every room is packed with enemies, obstacles, and of course, tears flying, almost making the game look more like a bullet-hell than anything else.

Isaac creator Edmund McMillen has also been talking about the multiplayer update on Twitter, reminding players that if they want access to the multiplayer update, then they'll need to have purchased The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, as well as Afterbirth and Repentance, the game's two DLC packs. 

If you're after a multiplayer roguelike to play in the meantime, check out our best roguelikes list for some ideas. 

"We're giving The Rogue Prince of Persia a glow-up!" the developer says. The "big art upgrade" does more than de-purple the prince; environments are noticeably more detailed, and the whole world looks a bit sharper and higher-contrast. 

"The most obvious change of this update is the art direction where we've changed the color palettes. had much more detail added and just generally 'improved,'" a Steam post reads. "You'll also notice that the Prince is no longer purple - this change was made as the purple tone just didn't fit with the new direction. We'll go into more detail about why we made these changes next week, but we find that the art direction is now a much better fit with the game's genre, setting/story and the Prince of Persia series as a whole."

If you're gutted by the loss of the Prince of Purple, Evil Empire has good news: "there may or may not be skins coming in the future," per a YouTube comment. I'm down with both styles, personally, but I do agree with the fans pointing out that the new look is more recognizably Persian. 

The Second Act short list includes more biome, bosses, story content, enemies, and localization options. "This update will mark a point where we've effectively doubled the game's content from launch," Evil Empire clarifies. "All the roguelite markers are present - gameplay loop, metaprogression, builds, difficulty modifiers and more - and we're not finishing here with development continuing into 2025!" 

Our Rogue Prince of Persia review praised its slick combat at launch, but the game was crying out for updates and improvements, so it's good to see it chugging along. 

The Prince of Persia roguelike had to change its story because of the Prince of Persia Metroidvania - and was forbidden from using an iconic weapon

For the uninitiated, Balatro is a poker-themed roguelike that has you assembling poker hands to score points that can be then used to modify your deck to take on increasingly difficult score challenges until you bust. The genius is in how it plays with those simple expectations, the rules that many of us just know through learning card games at a young age, and allows you to really mess with them.

After all, a four of a kind is one of the top scoring poker hands for a reason. There's only four suits in a standard deck, so you'd need all possible cards of a matching value to score it. Unless, of course, your deck was supercharged with something like eight aces (and some of them were painted up to earn you extra multiplier bonuses on top of that). Likewise, straight flushes are less about luck than strategy when you've converted as many suits as possible into hearts. It's not just about the tricky hands, either. It's just as valid a tactic to figure out ways to turn the humble high card or pair into actually being your top scoring hand, so it outstrips the likes of a full house.

House always wins?

It's all about cheating the rules, and feeling sly as a fox while you do it. Much like how you could theoretically cheat your company of money by playing Balatro in the middle of the work day on your phone while you're meant to be working. But that's not something I would know anything about. I'm not even really sure what Balatro is. You want to check my phone? Ah, I've accidentally locked myself out of it and thrown it out of the window. I guess that data is simply lost now.

You're rewarded for winning matches with money – which, much like in real life while you may or may not be working, can be used to buy more cards. A rotating storefront between rounds offers more than just more playing cards, but also Balatro Joker cards (used to introduce permanent rule changes), tarot and spectral cards (which usually modify cards in your deck), and planet cards (which level up each scoring hand). There are limits. Playing cards, for example, can only receive one upgrade and one stamp upgrade at a time. Likewise, for the most part, you can only have five jokers in play at a time. Having those individual Jokers boosting lone aspects of your score will only get you so far as the "blinds" you're trying to beat the score of increase on a curve, so you need to get them to work together if you want to keep up.

The Baron Joker, for instance, gives a 1.5x multiplier for every King in your hand once you've played a hand. So what happens when you not only stuff your deck with extra Kings, but use the Mime Joker to retrigger the effect a second time, and the Reserved Parking Joker to generate extra money for face cards on top of that? Or if you combine the Half Joker that gives a +20 multiplier if your hand contains three or less cards with The Trio Joker and the Wily Joker to supercharge it with even more multiplication and extra chips when scoring a three-of-a-kind? You've got to be able to sit back, and let them get on with the job for you. Balatro, that is. Not anyone else.

Play on, joker diamond

While there are definitely optimal ways to play, and ways to nudge those possibilities into existence by knowing which blinds to skip for bonus rewards and the like, there's always so many opportunities to pivot that you're always constantly tempted to retool your strategy. Chasing new ideas as you stumble upon new cogs for your great big scoring machine is all part of the fun.

Balatro knows it, the wonderful sound design binging along with each extra bit of score as it tallies up a played hand, like watching slot machine wheels spin (without the gambling of course – it's only a theming here, Balatro has little to do with actual gambling mechanics). Though if you were playing it during a meeting, I'd recommend either turning down the sound or triple-checking you're on mute. In our last meeting, that definitely wasn't coming from me. Someone else was playing Balatro.

The only downside to Balatro mobile is that there's no cross-save, meaning if you've already put a substantial amount of hours into it via other platforms (um, guilty), you'll need to chase those high scores again as you unlock heaps of new cards and decks, and tick off challenge runs. Though in my case, I'm finding it quite fun to earn them all over again. The core of Balatro is so fun that unlocks or not, I'm always having a good time. Extra cards are just a bonus. After all, even Balatro's creator has had trouble 100% completing the game.

It helps that Balatro feels right at home on a touch screen. Naturally, you just tap to select the cards in your hand you want to either play or discard, and then do so. Likewise in the store between rounds you just select what you want to buy and either drag it to the top or the side of the screen depending on if you want to activate it right away or put it in storage. It just works. So well.

I can see my playtime in Balatro mobile rapidly increasing whenever I dare to look at my app usage, and if it keeps going at this rate it'll be breathing down the neck of the time I already put in on console. Just don't ask me to tell you what that number is. Or when I play. There's not a Joker on Earth that'd get me to admit to it, and I'm not going to try to play the hand that feeds. In the words of Jimbo the Joker: "Oh no, were you bluffing too?"

Looking for more? We've got the best roguelike games to lose yourself in. Or more on the go? Then our list of the best Android games is here to help too!

In a tweet last night, The Binding of Isaac developer Edmund McMillen confirmed that more than 13 years after the roguelike's original release, the Isaac Online multiplayer update will release for free on November 18. "Isaac Online will feature a full online co-op mode" for 2-4 players, McMillen explains, noting that players will have access to "completion markers" to note their co-op progress.

While the Binding of Isaac multiplayer mode has been teased for a while, it's not the only thing that the update will feature. McMillen says that it will also include "a considerable balance update that heavily focuses on buffing items you guys believe are lackluster/bad."

Now, I'll be the first to admit that in the many hundreds of hours I've spent with The Binding of Isaac, there are certainly some items I prefer to have over others. That said, I can't help but feel a little bit stung by the suggestion that McMillen is buffing items that the community simply believes to be lackluster or bad. If nothing else, there's the fairly strong implication here that the community is wrong, and that these items might be great in the right hands. It's a tiny-veiled hint of the 'git gud' mentality that's certainly appropriate to Isaac, but hurts me nonetheless.

The journey to The Binding of Isaac's multiplayer update has been slightly rocky, not least because a test earlier this year had to be taken down after impatient fans hacked their way in. It's also being worked on alongside McMillen's next game, an even longer-awaited cat-eugenics turn-based roguelike that's been in some form of development for 12 years now. Given that McMillen recently said that actually releasing a game is his least-favorite part of the development process, I have a feeling that he'll be glad to have both of these projects off his plate sooner rather than later.

It's only two weeks away, but you can grab one of our best roguelikes to kill time until Isaac Online.

In case Mortal Sin hasn't been on your radar over the last year or so, it's a first-person, dark fantasy roguelike where you descend into gorgeous procgen crypts to deliver brutally fast melee combos to the ghoulish, sometimes horrifying enemies below. An oppressive tone, 15 unique classes, and some boisterously fun combat is what made me sink into Mortal Sin last year, and it's still getting better.

"After over three months of hard work and long hours, I'm happy to present to you an entire overhaul of the enemies and their AI," lone developer Nikola Todorovic wrote in a recent blog post. "This was the last major system that was left over from the game's original conception, and it felt like I had hit a wall in terms of making the game the way I wanted it to be. So I had to roll up my sleeves and redo years of code bloat to make this happen. The effects of these changes are huge and impact nearly every system in the game."

As part of the huge overhaul, more than 90% of enemy animations have been replaced with new ones that are mostly a "bit slower and easier to read" now. The uglies have bigger brains than before, too, and can "move while attacking, strafe around you, back pedal or run away when they are weakened," while all the hit detection systems have also been reworked completely. There's a ton of other substantial changes outlined elsewhere in the blog post as well, like balance tweaks, new enemy attacks, and the fact that headless foes will now charge around erratically as if, well, they've lost their heads. 

Over on Twitter, Todorovic said the update turns Mortal Sin into a "leaner, meaner, and more exciting" game than ever before. "If you wondered what Dark Souls would be like with hordes of enemies, this one is for you." He also shouts out the nice 33% discount on Steam that's running until November 10.

Check out some other upcoming indie games to not miss a single release. 

Developer Poncle and rights owner Konami have collaborated on a massive Castlevania-themed DLC for the smash hit roguelike that, after three whole years and over 30 updates, is finally adding vampires to Vampire Survivors. Poncle call it a "full circle" moment for its beloved gothic roguelike as The Ode To Castlevania expansion has a huge castle to explore, more than 30 music tracks, over 40 new weapons, and over 20 new characters to play as, including iconic series mainstays like Alucard and Richter.

Poncle's newest trailer for the crossover is just as fun, zany, and celebratory as you'd expect - an iconic conversation between Richter and Dracula is recreated below and it definitely put a smile on my face - but there's also a nice surprise hidden in the video's description, too: Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon (Astarion) voices Dracula himself, with YouTuber SungWon Cho (ProZD) as Richter.

The trailer doesn't explicitly say whether the two actors have roles in the DLC, but I've since played through the expansion myself, and the two characters certainly sound like Newbon and Cho, at least in the one voiced cutscene I've found so far - just, maybe without the old-school filter distorting their voices so heavily.

"Due to the massive size of this update, our next patch will take a bit longer than usual to be released, but it will come with free content as always," the developer wrote in a recent blog. "We'll try to make less updates, but bigger, so that there's less achievements-related stress and a bit more stuff to experiment with."

See where Vampire Survivors lands in our best roguelikes to play right now list. 

Over on Twitter yesterday, the official Cult of the Lamb Twitter account shared a new parody animation from YouTube channel 64 Bits, which reimagines Nintendo's adorable cozy life sim series Animal Crossing – transforming it into something which looks and feels much more akin to Massive Monster's roguelike. Obviously, in reality, the indie plays very differently to the likes of Animal Crossing: New Horizons – they reside in totally separate genres, after all – but hey, you still get to live alongside a bunch of animal buddies, so that's something, right?

The team behind the indie clearly thinks so, anyway, as the official account responds to the animation, saying: "We're just like Animal Crossing!" However, there's a caveat, and one that might hit a bit too close to home for many. "Except our game is more realistic, since you can't buy a house." Ouch. 

Basking in the chaos of the replies this tweet prompted, with some joking that it was "uncalled for," the community manager simply doubles down further. "They told me to tweet something scary for Halloween, so I hit you with a dose of reality," they explain. 

Cult of the Lamb's Twitter account has always been a bit of a wild place, to say the least. Last year, the devs used it to proclaim that "we will add sex to the game if we hit 300k followers by the end of the year." This goal was hit in a matter of hours thanks to the thirst of the roguelike's community, and Massive Monster really did deliver in the Sins of the Flesh update which launched a couple of months later and added the Mating Tent. I mean, fair play to the team for actually sticking to its word – I'm not sure anyone was expecting the devs to take it seriously. 

For more games like Cult of the Lamb, be sure to check out our roundup of the best roguelikes.

"I was also playing Monster Hunter, and the weapons are so incredible in this game that it was impossible for us to do nothing about those weapons," Vasseur said. Fellow dev Yannick Berthier notes that the team had tried three or four different weapon systems before settling on the version that's now in the early access build of the freshly launched roguelike, which encourages players to combo two weapons together in "Alterattacks." 

"Monster Hunter was a big inspiration for both co-op combat and weapon design," Vasseur said in a follow-up comment. "In Monster Hunter Rise, the depth of each weapon means there's always more to learn, even after hours of gameplay. We wanted to bring that same complexity to Windblown, with weapons that have an immediate, powerful impact but also a deeper layer that rewards mastery. For instance, some weapons feature invincibility frames, letting skilled players dodge attacks while keeping up the pressure on their opponents.

"Some weapons also require precise aiming or positioning to unleash their full potential. Of course, we don't claim to have recreated Monster Hunter's incredible arsenal, but we put a lot of effort into bringing that sense of depth while keeping them accessible and enjoyable, even for players unfamiliar with their mechanics."

The Monster Hunter Wilds beta, currently available on PS5 via PlayStation Plus early access, has quickly proven that Capcom has also been iterating on its weapons to give all 14 new combos and counters. The addition of Focus Mode, which enables pinpoint attacks and wound-destroying specials, shifts the established rhythm, and several moves can now be chained together in different ways. It's taking some getting used to, but the more I play, the more I like the new hotness. 

I'd say the same of Windblown – the Dead Cells dev's new co-op action roguelike Windblown is so good that I'm already struggling to put it down.

"I once told Playstack (my publisher) that the full version of Balatro would have 120 Jokers," LocalThunk said on Twitter. "In a meeting later that week, they mentioned something about '150 Jokers,' and instead of correcting them, I just made 30 more Jokers." 

Because they didn't plan to have 150 Jokers, LocalThunk says they initially had no ideas for the additional cards, but that "life finds a way."

Though LocalThunk doesn't remember which 30 Jokers owe their existence to life finding a way, in a separate tweet they share that several fan-favorite cards would "be in the ether if I spoke up." Those cards include Lucky Cat (which earns a 0.25x multiplier whenever a Lucky card is played), Baseball Card (which supplies a 1.5x multiplier for each Uncommon Joker you hold), and the rare card Campfire (which receives a 0.25x multiplier per each card you sell). 

"So… the best ones?" replies one fan on Twitter.  

"A lot of these are personal favorites," says a popular reply. "Thanks for not speaking up."

"Thank GOD you have social anxiety, or this game would be so much harder," agrees another fan. It's true. At its core, LocalThunk's story is a moral tale: now we know there's at least one thing that being too quiet is good for. 

Balatro creator says his attempt to 100% his own roguelike game before the mobile port was doomed, and now he has "some words for John Balatro."

"Been trying to 100% Balatro for the first time since mobile launched, and holy shit, I have some words for John Balatro," he says on Twitter, sounding like the rest of us.

I get it. One of the challenges you need to complete to get that coveted accomplishment is to unlock all 15 decks currently on offer. Some are easier to do than others, though they share similarities. For example, you'll need to discover 20 items to get the Blue deck, while the Erratic deck, on the other end of the difficulty spectrum, requires you to win a run on the Orange Stake difficulty. Essentially, play the game and win under certain conditions.

Now, you can unlock all of the decks by clicking on your profile, but it ain't that easy – doing so disables achievements on that profile until you reset it. Regardless, if there's any lesson here, it's that you don't need to worry if that Balatro achievement milestone is beyond your reach – even LocalThunk is struggling.

Thankfully, the game itself is not struggling. The developer may have had low expectations for it - as his PC setup alludes to - but the roguelike took barely one month to sell 1 million copies. We also found out earlier this month that players across all platforms have racked up 11,000 years of playtime. This has also led to some rather neat collaborations with the likes of Stardew Valley and Cyberpunk 2077.

Not that any of that has helped LocalThunk 100% his game.

Before Balatro took over the world, the roguelike's creator considered naming it Fool's Gambit - "obviously not a great name," but it had a killer main menu.

Balatro launched on February 20 and sold over 1 million copies by March 18, not even a month later. As with many indie success stories, solo developer LocalThunk didn't expect anything like the reception he's gotten.

"I was expecting like four of my friends and my parents to buy the game, and that would have been awesome, so no, the entire past year has been a series of crazy events," he wrote on Twitter in response to someone asking if he anticipated the love it's gotten.

If you haven't played the game yet, I can't recommend it in good conscience because it may very well take over your life. It's now on mobile, too, so you can play it on the go - devastating news for my productivity.

While the game has now sold over two million copies and also topped mobile game charts, beating out the likes of Minecraft and Stardew Valley, it had very humble beginnings. "My actual production project folder is called 'CardGame' and is still in my 'Learning' directory, if that tells you anything about the expectations I had for the game," LocalThunk writes.

LocalThunk once called the game Fool's Gambit but admitted it was "obviously not a great name." If you're wondering where the current name comes from, a balatro is a word for an Ancient Roman jester. So the name we all know and love it by is very fitting given the game revolves around collecting and using joker cards with various effects.

If you're curious about Balatro and want to know more, you should read our interview with the developer. If you've already given it a go and not played in a while, now is the perfect time to jump back in because the latest free update includes crossovers with games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Slay the Spire.

Meanwhile, here are some of the other best roguelike games you can play right now.

The last two days have reminded me why Hades never fails to pull me back in, no matter how much time has passed – in this case, almost five months – since my last run. Now armed with the final addition to my Nocturnal Arms collection, I'm gritting my teeth through hordes of automaton defenders, reveling in the joy of seeing Dionysus and Athena again, and loving every minute of uncovering the mysterious intentions of a brand new Titan up on the surface. The best thing about this update for me, though? Realizing that the Black Coat might actually be my new go-to weapon in Hades 2, teething problems and all.

Fist bump

Equipping the Black Coat for the first time, I had no idea what to expect, but I knew what I was hoping for. The new Steam banner for Hades 2 shows princess of the underworld Melinoë sporting what looks suspiciously like a pair of gauntlets, not dissimilar to the Twin Fists of Malphon as seen in the first Hades. Those bad boys have seen me through more completed runs than any other weapon in Zagreus' arsenal, allowing me to lean into my love of up-close melee combat bolstered by truly disgusting dash builds. I've long wished the same brawler's fate for Zag's little sister, and now, I feel that hope flicker in my stomach once more.

After testing it out, I'm pleased to announce that yes, Mel is officially a fistfighter worthy of entering the ring with the likes of Mike Tyson. Part jetpack, part rocket launcher, part hard-hitting melee machine, the Black Coat is a weapon I never knew I needed so much in Hades 2. Picking up a new piece of gear is always a bit of a struggle for me in roguelikes, especially when I already have such a clear favorite in the Sisters Blades' Aspect of Artemis. I soon remember that with Hades 2 still being in Early Access, though, this splendid gift comes with a mean tradeoff. I take to the Black Coat's moveset like a shade to the River Styx, but now, I'm left grappling with the sad fact that my favorite boon has been removed from the game. It's moments like these that make Early Access worthwhile. Now, I can give myself a new challenge: how can I maximize the potential of this new item while experimenting with retooled boons?

First, I start out with the basics. Hephaestus' definitely overpowered boss-melter Smithy Sprint is no more, and after being thoroughly underwhelmed by its less potent replacement, I decide to take a chance on another divine entity. Hera's Hitch boons have always been a staple when it comes to clearing rooms of foes quickly, with one of the strongest being her sprint. Nexus Sprint applies Hitch to all enemies you run past in a given encounter, chaining them and allowing you to deal a percentage of damage to all Hitched foes by attacking just one. Pair that with the Black Coat's jetpack-like traversal that lets Mel effortlessly weave across the screen, I already have a recipe cooking up in my mind.

Next up, Hestia. I luck out by finding two Hestia chambers in Ephyra, going with Smolder Ring and Natural Gas to turn my Casts into burning rings of death. Running into Apollo later on and selecting his Super Nova boon makes my Casts expand in size, engulfing even more enemies in a fiery inferno as I run around and Hitch them together. The result? Truly devastating. The luck of the gods truly feels on my side during this run; finding a Heroic tier Nasty Comeback deals a blistering 1250% damage back at my attackers after Mel takes some herself, Dying Wish damages all Hitched foes after one of them is slain, and Apollo's vampiric Self Healing boon offsets incoming damage by recovering 30% HP whenever Mel gets hit. What did I tell you? This build is an unexpected winner. Or so it seemed. Sadly, my two remaining Death Defiances let me down in the fight against Prometheus, his blasted eagle gobbling each one up like so many regenerated livers before it. 

The Black Coat did not lead me to victory this time around, but it's still showing promise as one of the best Nocturnal Arms in the whole game. True, I'm still working through exactly what its omega attack can actually block (note: not said eagle's AOE onslaughts) and I really think those rocket launcher specials ought be a little more targeted and precise, but I am already sold on how powerful the latest Hades 2 weapon can be. How will it evolve over the course of the game's development, I wonder? The answer is, like all things Hades, in the hands of the Fates. Or, you know, Supergiant. 

Here's how Hades finally helped me fall in love with roguelikes.