Slay the Spire 2, Megabonk, and 33 Immortals aren’t survivors of a graveyard that doesn’t exist yet. They’re proof the mechanism is already running. A structural read on what mid-2026 data already con
I talk to A LOT of studios shipping roguelites. At the same time, I’m also detecting the early stages of a sort of “roguelite fatigue” in the wider player base; as the genre gets increasingly crowded and further dominates Steam’s discovery surfaces, people are starting to say “enough!” And it’s even more pronounced with deckbuilder roguelites. Vampire Crawlers may turn out to be the last such hit for quite some time (unless you count Slay The Spire 2’s 1.0, but as you mentioned they’re a cut above most other titles in this genre); if you’ve just greenlit a roguelite (and especially a deckbuilder) right now, you’re probably ngmi.
The same thing will happen with friendslop (another genre I see a lot of folks developing for) in a few years, btw… though that wave is still rising and hasn’t quite crested yet, so there’s still time to position oneself to ride it.
I was not at Gamescom last year but I received a lot of feedback from my friends that there were a lot of them being showcased. There was buzz at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh at the time as well to create roguelites as they looked easy to do. I think the mistake people make with them is that they are systems design heavy and look 'easy and engaging to make'. They're far from it. This is why we see a lot of them being churned out at rapid rate and a lot of them miss out on what makes them great in the first place.
I talk to A LOT of studios shipping roguelites. At the same time, I’m also detecting the early stages of a sort of “roguelite fatigue” in the wider player base; as the genre gets increasingly crowded and further dominates Steam’s discovery surfaces, people are starting to say “enough!” And it’s even more pronounced with deckbuilder roguelites. Vampire Crawlers may turn out to be the last such hit for quite some time (unless you count Slay The Spire 2’s 1.0, but as you mentioned they’re a cut above most other titles in this genre); if you’ve just greenlit a roguelite (and especially a deckbuilder) right now, you’re probably ngmi.
The same thing will happen with friendslop (another genre I see a lot of folks developing for) in a few years, btw… though that wave is still rising and hasn’t quite crested yet, so there’s still time to position oneself to ride it.
I was not at Gamescom last year but I received a lot of feedback from my friends that there were a lot of them being showcased. There was buzz at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh at the time as well to create roguelites as they looked easy to do. I think the mistake people make with them is that they are systems design heavy and look 'easy and engaging to make'. They're far from it. This is why we see a lot of them being churned out at rapid rate and a lot of them miss out on what makes them great in the first place.