GROGPOD Roguelike Podcast

Moon and Sun! Caves of Qud returns for our summer music episode, as I grabbed some time with the composer Craig Hamilton! Since Qud is a dramaturgical triad, we couldn’t NOT do a third episode talking with the creative mind behind the creative sounds of the game. We’re talking Digital Audio Workstations, sci-fi literature, flamethrowers, traditional roguelikes, and so much more! The torsion of an...

“You don’t have the cards!” This week we deep dive the cyberpunk productivity app roguelike deckbuilder hybrid that our very own co-host Will has been developing since 2018! A unique spin on gamification apps, Hard Reset asks the ever-important question of: “what if we made the game part actually fun?” The capitalist oligarchs have taken over and you must stop them by upgrading your cybernetics as...

It’s a special bonus episode this week! With Rift Wizard 3 launching in June 2026, I sat down with developer Dylan White to talk about the third game’s evolution, how its distinguished itself from Rift Wizard 2, and what it takes to make a traditional roguelike game stand out in the ever evolving morass of games being released on Steam these days. Come for the discussion on PyGame, stay for the di...

He’s a bad bad kitty! We’re snapping our fingers and fighting through the alleways this week with Mewgenics! The long-awaited game by Binding of Isaac creator and roguelite genre legend Edmund McMillen, fans have been wating something like 15 years to experience the cat breeding tactical combat RPG. You are a crazy cat lady, reanimated from the dead by a mad scientist and your goal is to breed cat...

Emperor guide thy aim! Roguelikes and -lites span a spectrum, especially when they come as added game modes to big budget titles that aren’t roguey themselves. This week we explore Warhammer 40K Darktide: the action RPG featuring two … sort of … rogue-ish (heavy squinting) game modes: Expeditions and the Mortis Trials. From the moment I understood the weakness of game genre definitions, they disgu...

Play forever! It’s time to climb one of the most ambitious game releases in recent memory by dusting off UFO 50: the collection of games from the fictional LX Systems console of the 1980s. With some titles being very small, and others being very huge, we focus on just 7 that are the most rogue-ish: Bug Hunter, Velgress, Planet Zoldath, Waldorf’s Journey, Party House, Overbold, and Campanella 2! Wi...

(Hacker voice) I’m in. We’re pentesting the mainfraime this week with 868-HACK! A small-scope puzzle-y rogue-y game by one Michael Brough: multi award-nominated IGF game designer of other similarly overlooked titles like Imbroglio, Cinco Paus, and Zaga-33. Michael’s games were originally designed for iOS mobile devices back in the hallowed days of the early 2010s, in that bubbling time when roguel...

It’s not a bug, its a feature! This week we crack open the most meme-filled game of 2025 with Megabonk: the first game by (very likely) youtuber game developer Danidev in over 4 years. Is your Megachad’s aura farming going to crash out or is your drip fire enough to hit different? Just how long can a skateboarding skeleton with sunglasses last against Anubruh or … sigh … Scorpionussy? We can alway...

Rise… champion… again! The Spire returns to be slain once more, in the biggest roguelike launch of all time! Our top rated game of the podcast now has a sequel, but how will its early access evaluation period hold up? How sly will our ratings of the new characters be? Will we DEMAND to visit a more exciting planet? Will our souls be eternally bound to a tooth-filled grimoire? What about Osty? Is h...

This Is Part Of! … the roguelike pantheon of short games! A beloved mobile game classic, we hop in to Hoplite this week: the Greek underworld dungeon crawling chess tactics inspired puzzle game of spear-chucking, shield-bashing, and hoppin! Featuring at seemingly simple 16-floor dungeon that can go on infinitely should you so desire, the game also boasts a seemingly bottomless pit of bespoke puzzl...

Brains! Brains! This week in “yes we know it’s not a roguelike”, we venture into the heart of Kentucky for some country-fried human flesh with Project Zomboid. The zeds have spread and you have one goal: survive as long as possible. Do you loot the local school for backpacks and safety scissors, or the police station for pistols and shotguns? Do you dare risk alerting the manic hordes with your ca...

Muscle up your game buddy! This week we dust off the 500 year old robot action FPS Roboquest: something like a “Doom Eternal for kids”, the electrobeats of synthwave send you hungering for more and more of those delicious green health orbs. Infiltrate a gigantic city of bad robots, rescuing good robots along the way, and unlock all sorts of wacky movement gadgets, character classes, and more hidde...

Angels and demons all over the world, join hands and start a Monster Train sequel! One of our highest rated deckbuilder rogues arrives at GROGPOD station once again, featuring some interesting twists on the established formula. As we’ll explore more in this season, we’ll be looking closely at what makes for a good sequel while trying to make as many obnoxious monster moaning sounds at turbo speed...

Yoom-taah! To kick off season 4 of the podcast, we choose you: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team! Joined again by our expert guest on the sub-genre with Helen, we revisit nostalgia and fresh experiences for a 20+ year old spinoff roguelike…lite…game? Hopefully the listeners don’t also brand us as fugitives, focing us to traverse the Great Canyon of JRPG menu systems to the high peaks of Fri...

If the weather outside is frightful, then curl up in front of the fireplace with your favorite roguelike gaming podcast! That’s how the song goes, right? Well in order to find those new favorite permadeath games, Scott travelled back in time to August for the Penny Arcade Expo in downtown Seattle. With only one day’s worth of ticket time this year, we had to cram as much into one recording as poss...

Season 3 concludes with some of the heaveist hitter games we’ve ever covered for the podcast! From titans of tradtitional roguelikes like Path of Achra and Caves of Qud, to titans of real-time explosiveness like Noita and Hades, this is sure to be an Omegabowl for the ages. We have a great array of listener letters, co-host bickering, and wacky coin flips to make sure everyone is as equally mad as...

The agony and terror of season 3 of the podcast comes to a close with the Survivor-like, Diablo-lite game Halls of Torment! Hear the demonic horns and twisted drums that lay down the epic background music, feast your eyes on the gorgeous low poly, highly pixelated 90’s inspired spritework! Collect those soul stones, find the artifacts and items from the demonic lord’s hallowed halls and see firsth...

Stay a while and listen! The sanctity of this podcast has been fouled as we turn back the clock to cover the 1997 groundbreaking procedural action RPG: Diablo. From humble origins as an Angband clone, to global standardbearer for game design polish, this titan of the horror genre greets us with a few haunting guitar chords and a cathedral of the damned. Join our descent into terror as we encounter...

O Glorious Shekhinah! To conclude our two-part special on Caves of Qud, we turn our focus from the epic storyline to the deep gameplay mechanics and systems from the Salt Dunes of the west to the Deep Jungle in the east. Join us for a water ritual on how to negotiate with camel merchants before we clone them, managing our reputation with fuedal fungal lords, and how to navigate the differences bet...

Live and Drink! In this extra-special two-part episode, we first examine the deep story, lore, and soundrack to Caves of Qud. Winner of the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work, as well as the 2025 Independent Games Festival for Excellence in Narrative, it only made sense for us to break this absolutely massive game out into two parts. We are also joined by special guest and Qud strea...

The Age of Men is over. The Time of the Orc has come! The long-lived and highly rated franchise of Orcs Must Die! comes to the rogue world for the first time with its 2025 release of Deathtrap. A game OMD players have waited 4 years to see a sequel finally arrives featuring 4-player co-op maze-building character-quipping action. Join the team of sassy teen #1, wrench arm boy, sassy teen #2, murder...

Get in the zone! This week is a game with one wild journey from starting out as Starsiege: Tribes-themed extraction shooter to an original roguelite experience - it’s Deadzone: Rogue, of course! Awaken on a ship to shoot through piles of robots and uncover the mysteries that an unhinged space program influencer billionaire promises folks who sign up for a Mars cruise. What dangers might we face? O...

Zyzz up! This week we eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate all sorts of fantasy monsters in huge army blobs with Hero’s Hour! A hobby project by a Danish psychologist, we look deep into the psyche of tutorialization, 4X games as roguelikes, battles rivaling the Pelennor Fields, and cute horsies. Spears shall be shaken! Shields shall be splintered! And your capital will be taken over in 5 turns...

Eye see you! This week we gaze upon the wonder of The King is Watching: the kingdom management and goblin horde bashing simulator with a twist - your workers are only productive when you’re watching them. Kind of like being in the office and having your boss fly by your desk twice a day… An artistic feast with a deep level of meta-progression, try to survive wave after wave of horrid beasts and gi...

Praise the Sun! The Nightlords have invaded the world of Elden Ring and it’s up to you and your trusty co-op Nightfarers to stop them. The biggest roguelike game of 2025 so far, lauded developer FromSoftware’s latest entry takes a stark departure from previous games in the Dark Souls series at a blistering pace. Featuring gigantic bird-man, big-hat sorceress, acrobatic bow boy, yelling drunken pir...