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[joey4track]

This is quickly becoming my favorite genre. Even though it didn't really even exist until just recently. I've always loved platform games and roguelikes and now that they are coming together it's pretty fantastic. Not to say that an action roguelike has to be platforming, there are also some good roguelike fps's for example. Well anyway, here is a list of the action roguelike(like)s that I can think of, if you know of any other good ones please do tell..

Spelunky- one of the earliest action roguelike(like)s that i think needs no description here

Binding of Issac- another one that needs no description. took me awhile to get into it and still i wish i liked it more than i do but oh well. might just be the art direction...

Shoot First- one of my all time fav games, this one is horribly overlooked/underrated and is a top down shooter

Super House of Dead Ninjas- just released, super fast paced slash em up

Tower Climb- haven't really played this one as it looked kind of bland to me. perhaps i am wrong?

Risk of Rain- in development over at the indiedb, this platform shooter is super fun already and has a ton of potential

Paranautical Activity- an fps that i don't know much about but looks pretty fun from what i saw

Terraria, Starbound-  these maybe could be classified as action roguelike(like)s?


Well that's all I can think of right now but I'm sure there's more (to come).

[freeformschooler]

Super House of Dead Ninjas- just released, super fast paced slash em up

Tower Climb- haven't really played this one as it looked kind of bland to me. perhaps i am wrong?

Hell yes. Just played these two a bunch the past few days. I can give some insight.

SHoDN: Extremely fun. Great with a USB joypad. You're working on a Half-minute Hero level time limit (30 seconds), but the speed of gameplay means that it's pretty trivial unless you're just bad at the game. Somehow, all the different moves you can perform are just so satisfying, and the amount of unlockables is vast.

Tower Climb: It's a lot like Spelunky (every death really is your fault). The gameplay has a lot of variety, but a lot of the content doesn't appear very often or is locked away in later levels. My favorite part is how there's a ton of random events that can happen (lava level, air balloon/fan level, ghost shortcut). Very hard and skill-based.

[Edmus]

Shoot First- one of my all time fav games, this one is horribly overlooked/underrated and is a top down shooter

Now I've gotta reinstall that, thanks.

[Cthulhu]

SWOOOORDS Colon Lords of the Sword:  An isometric action roguelike where you use a variety of swords to kill the dudes before they kill you.  Kickass soundtrack, pretty exciting gameplay (Simple but very challenging), lots of fun, play it.

[Absolute Niro]

Wow, that's pretty weird. I was just discussing whether or not Paranautical Activity could be classified as a roguelike with someone on Youtube a few days ago. I personally think the gameplay of it as well as games like the Binding of Isaac are more like the original Zelda than a roguelike, so I don't like calling them that myself.

I agree that they're awesome games, though.

[Sirus]

I think Receiver belongs here. Made by Wolfire Games (the same team that made Lugaru and is developing Overgrowth), it's a sort of FPS roguelike where you wander through infinite, randomly generated buildings in search of audio logs. You start with either a semiautomatic handgun, a revolver, or a machine pistol, and must survive against really nasty robotic enemies that can easily OHK you. Ammo can be scarce, so you have to aim carefully at certain parts on the robots to disable them in some way.

The gun mechanics are really in-depth; no simple pressing R to reload here! The handgun, for instance, requires you to pull out the clip, add bullets one by one, re-insert the clip, pull the slide, and possibly cock the hammer or flip the safety as well. Each action has it's own button associated with it, and all of this is done in real time. It's awkward at first, but starts to feel really intuitive with practice.

[freeformschooler]

Oh wow, Risk of Rain looks amazing. DLing now.

Another one that has gotten nearly zero publicity due to the dev hiding all the time: Twisted Tower (http://www.create-games.com/project.asp?id=2040)

[nenjin]

CastlevaniaRL. It's a 2d, top-down, real-time rpg with rogue-like tendencies. It's styled like the handheld Castlevania titles, and uses a lot of sound effects that, if they aren't the actual sfx, sound damn close. Bunch of classes to pick from, gear to find, spells to learn....and it's hard as fuck. Enemies are pretty tough and it takes very little to die. You have to be very agile. If you really dig Castlevania, you gotta check it out. The later levels were too much for me, but I still go back to it occasionally. And promptly drown in the sewers under town looking for secrets.

Terraria, Starbound-  these maybe could be classified as action roguelike(like)s?

Eh...yes? No? I don't really know. What separates a roguelike from your garden variety RPG, or platformer with RPG elements? I guess I lean towards no because I don't play it on hardcore, but when played like that yeah, it might qualify.

[joey4track]

Tower Climb: It's a lot like Spelunky (every death really is your fault). The gameplay has a lot of variety, but a lot of the content doesn't appear very often or is locked away in later levels. My favorite part is how there's a ton of random events that can happen (lava level, air balloon/fan level, ghost shortcut). Very hard and skill-based.

I'll have to try Tower Climb then because it looked like it didn't really have much variety in the gameplay but maybe that's because I didn't watch enough of it.

Now I've gotta reinstall that, thanks.

Yeah, Shoot First is usually in my rotation. It's also awesome in co op.

SWOOOORDS Colon Lords of the Sword:  An isometric action roguelike where you use a variety of swords to kill the dudes before they kill you.  Kickass soundtrack, pretty exciting gameplay (Simple but very challenging), lots of fun, play it.

Wow, that looks awesome. Plus my homey is coming by tomorrow and it looks like a great 2 player hot-seat co op game too

Wow, that's pretty weird. I was just discussing whether or not Paranautical Activity could be classified as a roguelike with someone on Youtube a few days ago. I personally think the gameplay of it as well as games like the Binding of Isaac are more like the original Zelda than a roguelike, so I don't like calling them that myself.

I agree that they're awesome games, though.

That's why people are saying roguelike(like). I thinks it's mostly about the randomness of items/levels and permadeath. I am kind of surprised at something like FTL being classified as that though. Oh well, they are all great games anyway as you say.

I think Receiver belongs here.

I've seen that game, it looks interesting but I'd like to see more progress. Right now it seems very early under developed and could become something fun with more work put into it.

[Sirus]

I doubt it's gonna be worked on any more, to be honest. They already have their major project to work on and Receiver was basically done as a weekend challenge, IIRC.

[Scelly9]

Wow, gotta try all of these now.

While Hotline: Miami is less rougelike than most of these games, it's still a great top-down action game that's freaking difficult to beat.

[joey4track]

Oh wow, Risk of Rain looks amazing. DLing now.

Another one that has gotten nearly zero publicity due to the dev hiding all the time: Twisted Tower (http://www.create-games.com/project.asp?id=2040)

Oh yeah! I meant to put Twisted Tower on this list! Man, I've been waiting for that game for forever it feels like.

CastlevaniaRL. It's a 2d, top-down, real-time rpg with rogue-like tendencies.

I remember trying that back in the day so maybe I tried a very early build, I should check it out. Def love me some Castlevania. SotN is in my top 5 best games ever. I would love an HD modern 2D!! spiritual successor to that game. Possibly with roguelike elements. Which would then probably be my favorite game ever, haha.

[nenjin]

Development on it finished quite a long time ago, so it should be feature complete now.

And Super House of Dead Ninjas has, like, my favorite continue screen ever. I remember this old ninja arcade game (Shinobi something I think) where there was a saw blade coming towards your chest and the boss standing over you laughing. If you didn't continue, it carved into you and the screen went all bloody while you screamed. SHotDN must have played the same game, because their game over screen is so close to that, I had a flashback.

[joey4track]

Hell yeah, SHotDN has the coolest game over screen!

So after playing SWOOOOOORDS.. for a few minutes, I really really like it. But I am having difficulties with the controls. Although I've been a pc gamer for as long as I can remember I always prefer the gamepad. WASD has nothing on a d-pad basically. So I want to play this game with my 360 controller(and it even suggests it in the readme) but it isn't working properly unfortunately and the redifine keys option is a nightmare and doesn't seem to want to work right either. Sucks too because it seems fun as hell. It even has bring it on music like Doom

[0x517A5D]

Triangle Wizard's been around for a few years.  Top down, vector-style graphics, minimalist, mostly black-and-white.  If Asteroids and Nethack had a baby, it'd probably be Triangle Wizard.

Here's the Bay12 forum thread, and here's a writeup on RPS.
Edit: I just searched RPS for roguelike and skimmed the results.  These haven't been mentioned yet:

Red Rogue.  (RPS writeup.)

Probability 0.  (RPS writeup.)

Realm Of The Mad God.  (Multiple RPS reviews and a diary.)

I've never played any of them.