Games Like Dead Cells: Best Roguelike Action

If you finished Dead Cells and want that same feeling — fast melee, a run you actually want to repeat, and just enough permanent progress to keep you pushing back in — the closest matches are Skul: The Hero Slayer, Hades, Rogue Legacy 2, and Have a Nice Death. Below are six worth your time, including one upcoming game that bolts time travel onto the formula.

What makes Dead Cells worth chasing

A quick note on what Dead Cells gets right, since it sets the bar for the rest of the list. The combat is instant — attacks come out the moment you press, dodges have forgiving timing, and the roll-and-hit rhythm stays tight at high speed. Runs reset on death, but you keep blueprints, mutations, and stat upgrades, so each attempt builds toward the next rather than starting from nothing. And the map borrows from Metroidvania design: branching paths, locked routes, secrets that open up as you unlock new traversal moves.

Most of that breaks down into three pieces other games copy in different ratios — the feel of the swing, the run-based loop, and the connected map. Some of the games below match one of those exactly and miss the other two. A couple get all three. The trick to picking is knowing which part you actually want back. For the wider field, there's a full best roguelike games roundup that places these in context.

Hades

The polished standard. Hades is an action roguelike where you fight your way out of the underworld, and almost everything about it is tuned to a shine — combat, pacing, the way the story keeps moving forward even when a run ends in death. The view is top-down rather than Dead Cells' side-on, so the movement feels different, but the loop is the same: die, keep your meta-progress, go again with a slightly stronger build.

What Hades adds that Dead Cells mostly skips is story momentum. Characters remember your last death, dialogue advances, relationships build — so even a failed run pushes something forward. The trade-off is that the map doesn't branch the way Dead Cells' does; you take rooms in a fixed sequence with a choice of reward at each door. If you want the run-based structure with a heavier narrative layer, start here. There's a separate list of games like Hades if that's the thread you want to pull.

Skul: The Hero Slayer

The closest match on this list. Skul is a 2D side-scrolling action roguelike, so the movement and combat sit right next to Dead Cells. The twist is the skulls: you play a small skeleton who swaps heads to change combat style entirely, and each skull is a different moveset rather than a stat bump. A run can shift from a heavy bruiser to a fast caster the moment you pick up a new head, and you carry two skulls at a time and switch between them mid-fight, which gives combat a layer Dead Cells doesn't have.

It's a little lighter than Dead Cells — shorter runs, a friendlier difficulty curve early on — but it's just as easy to lose an evening to, and the boss fights ask real questions about how you've built your pair of skulls.

Rogue Legacy 2

The one built around inheritance. Each time you die, your next character is a descendant — and they inherit traits, some helpful, some inconvenient, that change how that run plays. One heir might see the world upside down; another might do more damage but have a fraction of the health. Combat is platforming-driven, the castle reshuffles between runs, and permanent upgrades stack up across the family line.

It leans further toward Metroidvania map design than the first Rogue Legacy, with traversal unlocks — a dash, a double jump — that open the world the longer you play. If the part of Dead Cells you liked was watching your power grow across failed attempts, this scratches it directly, and the trait system keeps individual runs from blurring together.

Have a Nice Death

Made by people who know this genre well — some of the team worked on Dead Cells. You play Death himself, overworked and trying to put his company back in order, fighting through hand-drawn 2D departments full of unruly employees. The combat is fast and combo-driven, you mix a main weapon with two spells and a cloak attack, and the run structure will feel immediately familiar.

The art is the standout — sharp, monochrome, cartoonish in a way that earns the office-comedy framing. It's lighter in tone than Dead Cells and a touch more forgiving on the difficulty, which is part of its charm rather than a knock against it. If you bounced off Dead Cells for being punishing, this is the gentler way into the same loop.

Dead Estate

The odd one out, and that's the point. Dead Estate is a twin-stick roguelike shooter — not a side-scroller — set in a haunted mansion, with a roster of playable characters who each handle differently. The reason it lands on a Dead Cells list is the loop and the snap: quick runs, escalating chaos, item builds that come together fast, and a generous unlock pace that keeps handing you new characters and weapons.

So the combat feel is different — aiming and dodging instead of roll-and-slash — but the appetite it satisfies is the same one Dead Cells does, the urge to do one more run because the next item drop might break the game open. If you've worn out the melee platformers and want the run-based rhythm in a different shape, this is the swerve.

Coming soon: KUTO: The Lock of Time

If what you want is the Dead Cells combat feel with a hook of its own, KUTO: The Lock of Time is worth following — and to be upfront, it's our own upcoming game, so weigh the recommendation with that in mind. It's a time-bending action Metroidvania with a run-based structure, which puts it on the same map as Dead Cells: side-on movement, a fast melee weapon, branching layouts, permadeath per run with progress that carries over.

The hook is time. You play Jokoan Kuto, an outcast from the Order of the Time Guardians — the keepers tasked with holding the ages in order — who is betrayed by the gods, escapes death, and survives by merging with the titan Kronos. That bond gives him the Scythe of Kronos, a fast, physical hack-and-slash weapon that stays in hand the whole run, and command over time itself: bullet-time, rewind, dash, and more.

You carry two time powers at a time and swap which pair you bring between runs, which sits on top of the loop the way Dead Cells' mutations do — a build decision you make before you commit, then live with until you die. And the run moves forward through time rather than down a tower. Each era is its own battlefield with its own enemies and rules, from ancient Egypt and the Viking age through a falling Rome and ancient Greece — where Athena is a boss — to the Old West, a neon cyber city, the post-apocalypse, and the far future. Death ends the run, not your progress, and you push back in.

Because it leans on both genres, it shows up on two lists at once — there's a best roguelike Metroidvania games roundup that covers exactly this hybrid. For the full picture, here's everything we know about KUTO: The Lock of Time.

KUTO: The Lock of Time is coming soon to Early Access on Steam for Windows.

Add KUTO: The Lock of Time to your wishlist on Steam to follow it.