Best Roguevania Side Scroller Games on PC

An Amazing Wizard

Gameplay

What do you get when you combine a roguelite with metroidvania? A RogueVania!

Explore procedurally generated levels with over 250 Artifacts, more than 100 Spells and dozens of Magic Weapons to unlock and use. After every death you’ll respawn in one of the four nature-inspired magicial worlds.

Story

A bad Necromancer has placed you in his Magic Realm. Because of that few Magic Hands started to follow you. They are able to cast powerful spells. Find items to make them stronger and free yourself!

Key Features:

Procedurally generated world - Explore a unique world every time you play.
5 Nonlinear Levels - Only 5 levels? Yes, but each time you die you’ll respawn in one of the four nature-inspired worlds and face other enemies based on current biome.
Few Difficulty Levels - Every time you kill the end boss, you’ll gain possibility to change the difficulty level and face stronger foes.
Many Bosses - After every level you’ll have to face a merciless boss.
Action RogueVania - This means permanent deaths where you lose every item you’ve found, but there are some permanent upgrades available.
A lot of Secrets and Mysteries to discover - No spoilers!
250+ Unique Artifacts - Every artifact has it’s special use. A lot of them change your Basic Spell behaviour or add special abilities. Literally countless combinations.
100+ Spells - Cast Fire Balls or Tornados, Summon Creatures, Slow Time, Create Gravity Zones and many, many more…
Dozens of Magic Weapons - Use one of many Magic Weapons to help you survive!
Dozens of Upgrades - Upgrade your starting items or statistics. Add more elements to the world, increase your chance for finding better items and many more!
Hours of fun - This one depends on your skill. Something about 30-60 hours or even more.
Multiple Save slots

Read More: Best Roguevania Action Roguelike Games.

An Amazing Wizard on Steam

Abyss Odyssey

score: 2.5/5

tl;dr: clunky combat married with splendid art direction and severe lack of content

| difficulty: | 3/5 | time to finish: | 5-10h |

| fun-factor: | 3/5 | presentation: | 3.5/5 |

achievements

| difficulty: | 3.5/5 | time to 100%: | 20h+ |

| DLC: | - | multiplayer: | Online Champion |

| date-based: | - | glitched: | - |

– Real player with 27.9 hrs in game

Read More: Best Roguevania Action Games.

I’d like to break the game down for you in this review. I’m gonna talk about the combat mechanics, the visuals, and the various features that make it stand out as a platformer/fighting game. When reading about this game you see it compared to Super Smash Brothers, Dark Souls, ect. The truth is that with its combined features, Abyss Odyssey does not at all play like any of the games anyone is comparing it to. So, in an effort to give you a realistic perspective of what you can expect in this game, lets get started.

– Real player with 25.9 hrs in game

Abyss Odyssey on Steam

Sundered®: Eldritch Edition

After a few day’s worth of playtime on this game, I feel like I’d like to toss in my two cents on it. By two cents, I should clarify that I mean many paragraphs. this review will not be short, and I apologise. Sundered, on the whole, is a good game. There are several elements that merit critique in my eyes, though they didn’t detract from the game so much as to merit a negative review. With that out of the way, let’s dive in to some thoughts and ramblings.

Firstly, I should say also that this game has quickly become one of my all time favorites. The atmosphere, the artwork, the enemy design and storytelling all are favorites of mine, and I think they’re exceedingly clever and engaging. However, even when you take away my biased opinions, the game stands up to scrutiny, with well designed gameplay and mechanics (as well as story and the other previously mentioned aspects).

– Real player with 82.7 hrs in game

Read More: Best Roguevania Action Roguelike Games.

Well, you can tell by my hours of gameplay that I really enjoyed this game and got the most out of it, even the bad out of it.

The harshness of the reviews left me really unsure, in the first few minutes, no matter how much I was enjoying, the game design made me fear for what people have said, so let me clarify a few things.

TL:DR

Great game, very challenging, beautiful animation, exploration is rewarded, so is proper strategy (Change your routes and upgrade luck early, please). The randomness is not unfair, it is not unfair, your skills matter. Bosses are great, minibosses often suck. The major flaw is making the “good” path so poor, but the rest is brillant. If you want to have 1 run and the best experience, I’d say “Put the hardest difficulty and fully embrace”

– Real player with 58.2 hrs in game

Sundered®: Eldritch Edition on Steam

Rogue Legacy

I first played Rogue Legacy at a friend’s place, trading off the controller at each death. It wasn’t much, but it got me instantly hooked on how fun it was. So hooked, that I downloaded Steam, bought the game for the full $15, and bought a $30 wired Xbox 360 controller… and I don’t even have any Xboxes. All this for this one game… and it was worth it.

Rogue Legacy plays like Castlevania and Super Ghouls N Ghosts. You move, jump, attack, and use a secondary weapon. The uniqueness comes into play when you die, which you will… a lot. Once you die, you will be brought to a selection of three heirs to play as next. Each one has a random character class, secondary weapon, and set of traits. Classes determine certain stats and abilities. Secondary weapons, or spells as they are called, use up MP. That’s all pretty basic stuff. But the traits are very interesting. Some traits are helpful, like a speed increase. Others are harmful, like giving your attacks no enemy knockback. And some are just… well… neutral things… like making everything black and white. Your heirs have a chance of having two, one, or none of the traits at random. With all the random factors, you have to really get lucky… or pick the lesser of three evils. Is getting your prefered class worth the traits? Are the spells to your liking? It also makes you think about the next area… skills.

– Real player with 318.3 hrs in game

For context I played exclusively with a keyboard: Space to jump, ESDF for movement, W for right dash, R for left dash, J to attack, K for spells and I for class abilities. imo this is the best setup for non-controller players.

Rogue Legacy is Really Hard

My first life, I played as Sir Lee in the year 730 AD, and got through about 2 rooms before dying to a spinning picture frame. But ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and another life for the castle, and another, and another…

Each time I learned a little more about how to deal with enemies:

– Real player with 64.9 hrs in game

Rogue Legacy on Steam

Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition

Nongunz at first just looks like your everyday shooty-platformer-roguelike but… it does very interesting and unique things that change the usual dynamics for these games, e.g. it uses some kind of idle economy that lets you buy stuff before starting a run based on the amount of prisoners you have liberated on previous attempts or it lets you bail out in the middle of a run while keeping the items you’ve found so you can start over with them, encouraging farming…

It gets weirder though and the more you look at it the weirder stuff you are going to find, especially since it’s intentionally very obscure and it takes time to decypher some of the stuff that is going on. I think it’s definitely worth a shot if someone is interested in how this kind of mash-up can affect a pretty known genre like the roguelike and it definitely becomes its own thing with these additions. I enjoyed it a lot.

– Real player with 46.5 hrs in game

Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition released recently, and I wanted to post a positive review about it. I dont actually have much more to say other than I feel like this version is more fine tuned than the original in a few different ways. The game seems at least a little bit more accessible, even if this new version does have a bit more bugs than the original release.

The things id like to point out specifically in why I like the game are mostly style choices, sound and visual design seemed dark and unique at the time, and very minimal game systems in play made for a unique experience for this indie title when it first released years ago.

– Real player with 29.2 hrs in game

Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition on Steam

Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial

A good game with broken mechanics.

Mostly simple, kill hordes of enemies and move forward. The game doesn’t really help with any direction on things that can be done, it’s mostly up to us which means a player can probably go through the entire game without knowing some very basics mechanics that can be done. There is hardly anything in the game to read or explore more on, sometimes even the minuscule help it offers will be hard to understand. One simply has to hope they understood the message it conveys.

– Real player with 47.7 hrs in game

### ”A potential rogue-like metroidvania where the death is learning…“

Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial is a mixture of metroidvania and rogue-like element developed by indie IceSea Team of two people. It adapts into side-scrolling game with the influence of soul-like mainstream. Yet still have some flaws and require polishing during Early Access (currently 3 playerable levels). It’s risk-reward fun for people who seek a challenge.

Story and Presentation

Set in the hybrid fantasy world with some modern tech elements, the world design is clean, well-produced texture, and colorful. You play as a young maiden named “Erza”who specialize in close combat and ice spells. She has to prove herself by conquering mysterious tower to prove hunter’s license and get rid of wedding plan. The story is simple and straightforward, but what lies on the top of tower is quite intriguing. You spend most of time chatting with Devil companion between the levels as I hope they develop relationship through the story.

– Real player with 42.6 hrs in game

Tower Hunter: Erza's Trial on Steam

Ghost 1.0

Game Overview

Ghost 1.0 is an indie metroidvania that is set on a sci-fi world where robots and machinery are becoming a trend to humanity, whatever the purpose for them may be.

You play as “Ghost”, a digital ghost who performs mercenary work and was hired by two genius hackers in their attempt to uncover the secrets behind the success of the Nakamura Corporation with their robots. Your mission is to infiltrate the Nakamura Space Station and steal their Artificial Intelligence algorithms.

– Real player with 50.8 hrs in game

Ghost 1.0 is one of the best modern Metroidvanias you can buy and definitely sits alongside Axiom Verge as a standout of the recently quite crowded genre. Unlike Axiom Verge however which follows the formula to the letter Ghost 1.0 finds its own way and throughout the course of the game constantly throws in surprises and breaks conventions that really make it stand out.

The premise of Ghost 1.0 sees 2 hackers hire a mysterious agent (you) in order to infiltrate the Nakamura Space station in order to learn its secrets. Ghost is an agent capable of taking on the form of an electronic ghost and taking over Androids at will allowing you to control your main android body or a number of other androids around the station and it is this mechanic that really shines through as the game’s unique selling point.

– Real player with 46.5 hrs in game

Ghost 1.0 on Steam

Block Dungeon

The meaning of the game is quite simple, you need to pass different levels, pump your character, kill enemies, change weapons. The game has good music and very nice graphics, the eyes just rest during the passage, this is not a FPS game where you need to focus as much as possible at the monitor, this game is where you can relax and have a good time.

– Real player with 23.7 hrs in game

This game is simple yet it is FUN.

There is no tutorial or manual, so here is a simple guide (WASD to move or attack, Q opens inventory WASD to move about inventory E to use item, F to destroy item, Q closes inventory) As you get stuff check your inventory if the item is better than what you have equipped then use it if not destroy it. Healing potions are 25 health and 50 health so watch were your health is and use one as needed.

Every block you reveal gives you coins equal to the level you are on. Lvl 1 = 1 coin lvl 10 = 10 coins. There are 3 vendors in the main screen Weapon, armor and potion/health spend coins with these vendors to get upgraded gear, it also drops randomly from chests in game. You inventory is LIMITED to the boxes you see once it is full you cannot get any more loot until you use or destroy something. If you die you respawn in the main screen area.

– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game

Block Dungeon on Steam

Sand Witch Adventures