With Mike recently rounding up the best roguelikes and roguelites on Metacritic, it got me wondering which of these games made the biggest splash when they first released on Steam.
Before you take a peek below at the standings, it’s worth noting that these figures come from SteamDB. Using the site, I looked up the most popular roguelikes and roguelites and checked their peak launch player numbers in the first 24 hours. For this list, I’ve focused specifically on each game’s initial release on Steam, rather than later 1.0 launches.
When it comes to most appearances on the list there is a joint tie between Hopoo Games (Risk of Rain 2 and Risk of Rain Returns) and Edmund McMillen (Mewgenics and The Binding of Issac: Rebirth).
Slay the Spire 2 is the latest game to crack the top 10 and what a start it has got off to. The deckbuilder sequel recorded 282,314 players in its first 24hrs making for the biggest roguelike/roguelite launch of all-time. This is a huge increase from the original game which launched in 2017 to 193 concurrent players
In terms of the games we cover here, the only one that surpasses it is Elden Ring Nightreign. While we don’t consider that a roguelite, it has a bunch of adjacent elements. It also had publisher backing, it was based on a huge IP, and they’re hardly comparable, so I think it’s safe to call Slay the Spire 2 as the biggest roguelike launch of all time.
Here’s how the games stack up based on their launch-day concurrent player peaks:
- Slay the Spire 2 – 282,314
- Hades 2 – 103,567
- Megabonk – 82,301
- 太吾绘卷 The Scroll Of Taiwu – 72,121
- Risk of Rain 2- 70,194
- The Binding of Issac: Rebirth – 69,747
- Mewgenics – 65,962
- Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor – 56,943
- Loop Hero – 51,156
- Risk of Rain – 45,141
