What is a roguelite?

A roguelite is a game built around short runs where dying sends you back to the start, but some of your progress carries over. You keep permanent upgrades, unlocked gear, or currency, so each new run begins a little stronger than the last.

Levels and enemy layouts are generated fresh every attempt, so no two runs play the same.

How a roguelite run works

You start each run weak and build up from whatever the game drops in front of you. When you die, that run's build is gone, but the permanent upgrades you bought with earned currency stay.

Those upgrades are the whole point. They chip away at the difficulty over dozens of runs, so a wall that stopped you last night can fall the next day.

The map and drops reshuffle through procedural generation on every attempt, so memorizing a route gets you nowhere. Reading the run in front of you does.

Roguelite examples from our guides

• Dead Cells is built by Motion Twin around dying and starting again a little sharper, so what you unlock carries into the next attempt. It holds a 4.8 average from 135,746 ratings, one of the top scores in our best offline mobile games guide, and PEGI 16 makes it a poor fit for a shared family tablet.
• Vampire Survivors is Poncle's pixel roguelite, free to install, with survival against thousands of enemies as the only goal. Its Google Play listing carries role-playing, survival, and roguelike tags together, it's rated 4.4 from 81,685 ratings, and we ranked it fourth in that same best offline mobile games guide.

Roguelite or roguelike?

A roguelike wipes everything when you die, so the next run starts with nothing but what you've learned. In a roguelite, some progress sticks, so each death leaves you a bit stronger for the attempt after.

Returnal sits on the roguelike side of that line. It's a demanding solo PS5 shooter rated 4.37 out of 5, and we placed it fourth in our best PS5 shooter games guide.

Neither should be mixed up with a souls-like, which sends you back to a checkpoint rather than all the way to the start.