Best Roguelike Metroidvania Games

The best roguelike Metroidvania is Dead Cells — it built the template and still sets the bar, fusing a roguelike's randomized runs with a Metroidvania's connected, ability-gated map. The rest of this list is for when you've cleared it and want the next one. Here are the games that get the hybrid right.

What is a roguelike Metroidvania?

Two genres, stapled together, and the seam is the whole appeal. From the roguelike side you get the run loop — procedural or reshuffled levels, permadeath, and builds that stack as you go, so no two attempts are the same. From the Metroidvania side you get level design that connects back on itself, with paths gated behind abilities you have to earn.

The tension between those two ideas is what makes the hybrid interesting. A pure Metroidvania wants you to memorize one map and master it. A pure roguelike wants you to throw that knowledge out every run. The good hybrids find a middle: the layout reshuffles, but the rules of the space — the shortcuts, the gated doors, the unlock economy — stay learnable. You're getting better at the system even when the floor plan keeps changing.

Most of these games are technically roguelites: when you die, the run resets but your permanent unlocks carry over. The distinction matters less in practice than the forums make it sound. If you want the long version of how the two genres differ and where the hybrid sits, we wrote a full breakdown of the action roguelike Metroidvania. For the wider Metroidvania field, start with our best Metroidvania games roundup.

Dead Cells

The one that defined the category. Dead Cells runs a roguelike loop through levels built with Metroidvania logic — connected zones, and routes you open permanently with runes like teleportation or the ability to climb vines. Each rune you bank unlocks a branch of the world you couldn't reach before, so the map widens across your whole save file even as each individual run gets shuffled.

Its combat is the reason people stay. Fast, weighty, and built around a parry-and-roll rhythm, with hundreds of weapon and mutation combinations that let one run feel like a brutal melee build and the next a turret-and-traps setup. You don't backtrack a persistent map the way you would in Hollow Knight, but the spatial design and the gated shortcuts are pure Metroidvania. Years of free updates have piled on biomes, bosses, and difficulty tiers, so the ceiling is high. If you only play one game off this list, play this.

Rogue Legacy 2

The one that leans hardest into the map. Rogue Legacy 2 sends a new, randomly traited heir into a connected castle every run, and its signature is the lineage system — when your knight dies, you pick from their offspring, each with quirks that change how they play, from colorblindness that recolors the world to gigantism that makes you huge and slow. Some of those traits are jokes; some genuinely reshape a run.

The Metroidvania pull is underneath the roguelite loop. You spend gold between runs on a manor that permanently boosts your line, and you earn traversal abilities — a dash, a spin kick that bounces off enemies, a way past hazards — that open doors the castle kept locked. The result is steady forward motion even on a bad run, because the next heir starts a little stronger and a little freer to roam. It's funnier and more forgiving than it looks, and a good gateway if Dead Cells feels too punishing.

Skul: The Hero Slayer

The one built on a single idea, taken far. You play a skeleton who can swap his own head, and each skull is effectively a different character with its own moveset — a swordsman who darts in close, a mage who zones from range, a werewolf who tears through crowds, dozens of them. You carry two at a time and swap mid-fight, which turns combat into a constant read of which head fits the room you're in. Collecting and combining skulls is the engine of every run.

The levels are stage-based platforming rather than one continuous map, so the Metroidvania label is looser here than it is for Dead Cells. What earns Skul the spot is the combat depth and the way its run structure rewards experimentation — most runs you end up building around a skull you didn't plan to use. For fans of Dead Cells' feel who want something with a different rhythm, this is the closest follow-up.

Have a Nice Death

The one with the most personality. You play Death himself, an overworked middle manager trying to bring his rogue employees — Pollution, Despair, and the rest — back in line, across hand-drawn departments of the afterlife styled like a corporate office that happens to run the underworld. It's an action roguelike with platforming and weapon-driven combat, and you build each run around a scythe form plus secondary weapons and spells you find along the way.

Like Skul it's stage-based rather than a single map, so it sits at the looser end of the hybrid. The movement is springy, the combat leans on chaining attacks and dodges, and the difficulty bites once you're a few departments deep. The art alone is worth the look — every screen is drawn in a flat, inky storybook style that nothing else in the genre matches. A strong pick when you want the loop with a lighter tone.

Dead Estate

The one that swaps the controls. Dead Estate is a twin-stick shooter roguelike set across the floors of a haunted mansion, with a roster of playable characters who each handle differently and a B-movie horror-comedy streak running through the whole thing. You clear room after room, grab guns and items that stack into a build, and push deeper into the house while it tries to kill you.

It's the loosest Metroidvania fit on this list — there's no melee platforming and no connected map in the Hollow Knight sense, just floors you ascend one cleared room at a time. The reason it's here is for readers who like the run-and-build loop but bounce off precision platforming. The aiming is the skill check instead. If you want the genre's structure with a different control scheme and a sense of humor, it belongs in the conversation. Worth a look once the heavy hitters are behind you.

One to watch: KUTO: The Lock of Time

Full disclosure — this one is ours. KUTO: The Lock of Time is a time-bending action Metroidvania built in Unity. You play Jokoan Kuto, an outcast from the Order of the Time Guardians who is betrayed by the gods and survives by merging with the titan Kronos. That bond arms him with the Scythe of Kronos and command over time.

The hook is the time powers. Where most roguelike Metroidvanias hand you weapons and mutations, KUTO hands you control of time — bullet-time, rewind, dash, and more, drawn from the Kronos bond and swapped between runs. The run carries Jokoan forward through wildly different eras: Ancient Egypt, the Viking age, Ancient Greece, a falling Rome, the Old West, a neon cyber city, a post-apocalypse, the far future. Each era is its own battlefield with its own enemies. Die and you lose the run, not your progress — that run-based structure is what puts KUTO in the same conversation as this list, even as its core identity is the time-bending Metroidvania.

It's coming soon to Early Access. If you want the full picture, here's everything we know about The Lock of Time, and you can wishlist it on Steam.

Which one should you start with?

Start with Dead Cells. It's the cleanest example of the hybrid and the easiest to fall into. Want a heavier Metroidvania map? Rogue Legacy 2. Want combat variety above all? Skul. And if the time angle is what pulled you here, see how the genres connect in our best roguelike games list, where KUTO sits among the action picks.