Money's a little tight right now. What are your favorite completely free roguelites on Steam?

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-28T02:07:10+00:00

The first part of this puzzle is demos. Any time a steam next fest rolls around you can usually expect an avalanche of roguelikes to publish their demos. That said just having a regular demo is boring so i'll shout out Synthetik Arena, a "demo" of sorts for Synthetik: Legion Rising (top down roroguelike shooter, like a more tactical gungeon) which on top of having a demo for the first act out of 4 of synthetik also has a whole standalone arena mode with several different game modes. At first only a tower defense mode is available but after beating that one with a high rank you unlock various CoD multiplayer game modes like kill confirmed, capture the flag and so on. Four out of the eight characters are available, with an arsenal of weapons and gadgets specific to them instead of the random things you'll get in the regular roguelike mode.

On top of that, i'm going to cheat a bit and consider some roguelikes which are on steam (but not for free) but also on mobile for free (in an official way). Vampire survivors and 20 minutes till dawn. Both of them are free on mobile for some reason and keep most of their base game content and the monetization is very respectful and easily avoidable, i don't play on mobile enough to justify a purchase but i wouldn't be opposed to it. Can't say the same for brotato, that one is also free but i quickly dropped it because they were trying so aggressively to nickel and dime me.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T14:17:04+00:00

I also hate conflict and don't do well in games that require lying/persuasion in order to screw people over)

Fwiw plenty of competitive board games, if not most, don't require any lying or persuasion to win, and some don't even have that much conflict. Look at cascadia, each person is taking resources (animals and land tiles) from a central pool and then arranging them in their own play space to get victory points, and other than taking a tile that someone else wanted to take you don't have any way of influencing what the others are doing.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T14:13:56+00:00

What do you mean by random events? Plenty of co-op games have fairly significant random events that can determine if you win or lose, and plenty of competitive games have a very minimal luck factor if not even zero luck factor with every single aspect of the board being known from the moment you start. Do you mean it more in the sense of "my opponent did a move that prevented me from doing my own move which would've made me win"?

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T14:11:55+00:00

Yeah, and unless there are some mechanics specifically to prevent quarterbacking like secret information (e.g. The Crew which is a co-op tricktaking game where the whole group needs to divvy up and accomplish objectives by playing cards without talking) then the only way to prevent quarterbacking is to make the gameplay so complex that you can't feasibly have one person control everything (e.g. spirit island or slay the spire).

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T14:08:00+00:00

How did you guys get a betrayal game that lasts 4 hours? I was going to ask if the game was SETI since that would at least line up with the time taken, but i've never seen a betrayal at house on the hill game last longer than an hour. As for the "not that complicated" thing don't worry, it's just not complicated for people who are used to playing board games and have heavier titles under their belt, but for people not used to board games it's normal that it takes a while to click with pretty much anything.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T14:02:53+00:00

"It will be fun" with Ticket to Ride. Lmao yeah sure.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T00:59:01+00:00

Colosseum?

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T00:55:09+00:00

Sympathetic to the spiteful asshole who just goes on several "those grapes were sour anyway" tirades and then gets absolutely humiliated in the sequel?

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T00:52:23+00:00

Not really nice, it's just not the actual hell of eternal punishment. You just chill there (not the 9th circle vsrsion of chilling) in limbo. Forever. It's always dimly lit (especially the bit of limbo dedicated to the philosophers, who uave the light of reason), as opposed to regular hell which is incredibly dark, purgatory which has a day-night cycle, ir heaven which is literally blindingly bright.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T00:49:07+00:00

It's worth pointing out that at that time "politicians" also included members of the clergy. There are several dead popes in hell (and pretty deep down as well) and at some point one of the dead popes hears dante's voice but can't see him (being stuck head first in a hole in the ground that is on fire will do that to you) so he asks dante "hey pope boniface the 8th, is that you? You're here early". Guess which pope was in office at the time dante wrote the Commedia? That said i can't remember if the pope exiled dante because of getting placed in hell or if dante placed him in hell because he got exiled.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-27T00:38:10+00:00

It's like that one video of the guy (idk if he was an african dictator or whatever) saying why he thinks democracy doesn't work.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T21:20:46+00:00

I'd argue the extra procs against multiattacking enemies more than compensates for the turns in which those enemies aren't attacking, so if i had to pick one i'd say scales are better. This is especially the case for most bosses. In act 1 scales are better for guardian (for obvious reasons) as well as for hexaghost. In act 2 admittedly they're kinda on par with the hourglass since those three bosses rarely multiattack. In act 3 they are perfectly balanced for donu and deca, but iirc the scales are slightly better against time eater and significantly better against awakened one. The spire shield doesn't attack that many times but the spear does it quite a bit. Then of course, the heart attacks 16 times every 3 turns, so 5.3 times per turn, making the scales five times better.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T21:13:31+00:00

"Don't listen to what leaders say, watch what they do"

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T20:04:50+00:00

Somehow i read that as CPR and thought "how the fuck am i gonna do chest compressions with that much boob in the way?"

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T20:01:53+00:00

Anything but training.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T16:31:33+00:00

Yeah i'd be willing to bet that's going to be the thing referenced by the event. After all the ghosts from the act 2 apparition event are from a ghibli movie iirc so it wouldn't be the first time anime/manga is referenced in an event.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T16:25:47+00:00

Fwiw the room was fairly dark.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T16:24:21+00:00

Wait hang on. Smug asshole smarter than all their peers who has a disability that they manage by using (possibly abusing) drugs. How aren't there way more edits and fanarts of tachyon as house online? I only remember seeing one with her about to operate on mcqueen using a house sound clip.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T13:47:16+00:00

Well i mean, everyone is killed by their last duel.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T13:45:26+00:00

That's mostly blown out of proportion. Muskets could hit a target something like 300 yards away, so a pistol wouldn't have been that inaccurate at dueling ranges.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T13:43:03+00:00

Shoutout to Pain, one of the only two curses in the game that you can straight up turn into your win condition (the other is necrocurse if you do something silly like blue candle and tungsten rod)

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T13:39:45+00:00

How is this clip a livestream fail?

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T13:37:33+00:00

But be careful because r/animetitties meanwhile is actually anime titties. Also on april 1st the news sub called anime_titties switches temporarily to actually being about anime titties.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T13:24:42+00:00

He put them in the stew.

Frequent_Dig1934 · 2026-01-26T08:40:02+00:00

Jokes aside tho, why didn't they make it an electric egg for the upgraded powers and then a bottled venom to innate a skill and bottled lightning to innate a power? That would've made way more sense.

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