Strategy Roguelikes, from One Ship to a Space Empire
The short answer
The best strategy roguelike for most players is FTL: Faster Than Light. You run one ship and its crew across a random galaxy, you can pause any fight to think, and it holds 95.1% positive across 78,893 Steam reviews at a regular $9.99 (as of October 2026). If you want a whole kingdom to run instead, play 9 Kings. If you would rather never fight at all, play Slipways.
Below are ten strategy roguelikes on Steam, sorted by what you command: one ship or one tower to keep alive, a squad or a party, a home to defend, and finally a kingdom or a trade empire.
Updated October 2026.
What makes a roguelike a strategy roguelike?
A strategy roguelike is a run-based game you win by managing an economy, a map or an army rather than by reflexes: each run starts over, plays out as one self-contained campaign, and losing ends it.
That rules out two things that crowd most lists. Action roguelikes have the runs but test your hands. Pure tactics puzzles, where every enemy move is shown in advance, are their own family: those are in our list of games like Into the Breach. Every game below asks you to spend something scarce (gold, crew, heroes, walls or trade routes) and live with it for the rest of the run. For what the “roguelike” half should deliver, our piece on what makes a good roguelike goes deeper.
Eight of the ten carry Roguelike or Roguelite among the top 20 tags on their Steam store pages (as of October 2026). Thronefall and Slipways do not, and each sits at a different edge. Thronefall has a hard loss, since a map ends when your Castle Center is razed, but its maps are a set list. Slipways generates almost everything fresh each run, but its store page states no loss condition. Their entries say so.
What are the best strategy roguelikes on Steam?
The “What you command” column is my reading of each store page. The order runs from small to large, and it is not a ranking.
| Game | What you command | Turns or real time | Roguelike tag on Steam | Mac | Regular price (as of October 2026) | Steam reviews, % positive (as of October 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FTL: Faster Than Light | One ship and its crew | Real time with pause | Yes | Yes | $9.99 | 78,893 (95.1%) |
| Rogue Tower | One tower to defend, and the towers along a growing path | Real time | Yes | No | $14.99 | 5,929 (82.6%) |
| Dicefolk | A team of monsters | Turn-based | Yes | No | $14.99 | 1,134 (88.8%) |
| Despot’s Game | A squad of humans | Auto-battles | Yes | Yes | $19.99 | 3,361 (84.0%) |
| Wildermyth | A party of heroes over a lifetime | Turn-based | Yes | Yes | $24.99 | 18,288 (94.6%) |
| Bad North: Jotunn Edition | Commanders on one island at a time | Real time | Yes | Intel Macs (M1 not supported) | $14.99 | 14,366 (93.2%) |
| The Last Spell | A squad of heroes and a city | Turn-based | Yes | No | $24.99 | 13,767 (91.4%) |
| Thronefall | A castle and its town, with you at the front | Real time | No | Yes | $12.99 | 23,785 (96.1%) |
| 9 Kings | A kingdom built from a deck | Turn-based, battles play out on their own | Yes | Yes | $19.99 | 23,399 (92.4%) |
| Slipways | A trade empire of planets | Turn-based | No | Yes | $16.99 | 2,312 (92.8%) |
| Hellmate (ours · unreleased) | An army summoned from a deck | Turn-based | Yes | Yes | Not set | None yet |
Prices are Steam’s regular US prices. All ten were discounted on the day I checked, so what you see may be lower. The “Roguelike tag” column counts Roguelike or Roguelite among the top 20 user tags. Bad North has a macOS build, but its Mac requirements say Apple M1 chipsets are not supported.
Which ones give you one ship or one tower to keep alive?
FTL: Faster Than Light
FTL is the best place to start, because a run is one ship you can hold in your head and you can pause any fight. You give orders to your crew, route power between systems and pick weapon targets mid-battle, as the Steam listing describes it. Hundreds of text encounters force tough calls, and permadeath means a lost ship is a lost run. It has by far the most reviews of the ten, and at a regular $9.99 (as of October 2026) it is also the cheapest. The free Advanced Edition content comes with every copy, and like Despot’s Game and Wildermyth it has a Linux build.
Rogue Tower
Rogue Tower suits tower defence players who want the map itself to fight back. You defend a single tower while the path toward it keeps growing: every level you choose a direction to extend it, and it twists, turns and splits at random, so where you build your other towers matters more than in a fixed-path game. Towers gain damage from elevation, which makes the few high spots worth arguing with yourself about. Upgrades come as card draws, over 400 cards and upgrades by the developer’s count, and permanent unlocks give each new game a small head start. Its 82.6% positive (as of October 2026) is the lowest share on this list.
Which ones are about a squad or a party?
Dicefolk
Dicefolk is for players who like monster collecting but want control over the dice. The developer calls it a tactical roguelite: you recruit from over 100 Chimera, customise the dice that decide their attacks, and control the order in which a battle plays out, which is the opposite of hoping for a good roll. The Chimeras you meet change from run to run, so the team you build does too. With 1,134 reviews (as of October 2026) it is the smallest game here, and the easiest one to have missed.
Despot’s Game
Play Despot’s Game if you want an army that fights without you. A group of people wake up naked, with no memories, in a procedurally generated labyrinth, and through loot, perks and class combos you turn them into wizards, cultists, ninjas and “mythical stale pretzel throwers”, in the words of the store description. Combat is indirect: you set up the squad, then it fights on its own. Survive the labyrinth and you meet the end-game builds of other players. The same page notes that the man-eating cabbage appreciates the variety in its diet, which tells you the tone.
Wildermyth
Wildermyth is the strategy roguelike for people who care who their soldiers are. Heroes grow from reluctant farmers into legends: they age, fall in love, transform and die, and the developer’s page says you can bring your favourites back in the next adventure. Fights are turn-based tactics on interactive battlefields, and a hero can “fall back” with a maiming that changes their story instead of dying. It is also the only pick with online and LAN co-op, if you want to share a campaign.
Which ones make you defend a home?
Bad North: Jotunn Edition
Bad North is for players who want a battle decided by where their troops stand. Vikings land on a procedurally generated island, and you move your commanders’ units around its shape while the soldiers fight on their own; Steam’s listing calls it a real-time tactics roguelite. Lose a commander and they are gone for good; lose everything and the run is over. Mac players should check their machine first: the same page says Apple M1 chipsets are not supported.
The Last Spell
The Last Spell is for players who want base rebuilding by day and turn-based defence by night. Mages caused a Cataclysm, and in the Steam description you rebuild your Haven by day, place walls, traps and catapults, then fight nightly mutant hordes in turn-based tactics where every Action Point counts. Before each run you can pick Omens, a limited set of bonuses for the run ahead, and there are five Havens to protect. It is also in our list of dark fantasy strategy games, and if the rebuilding between fights is the part you like, see roguelites with base building between runs.
Thronefall
Thronefall is for players who want a light build-by-day, defend-by-night kingdom and want to fight the night’s battle themselves. It is the borderline pick: the store page calls it a minimalist strategy game played across 10 set maps, which makes it closer to a tower defence campaign than a generated run, and Steam does not tag it as a roguelike. On each map you build a humble kingdom around its Castle Center, houses and gold mines for income and walls for defence, then charge into the night’s attack as the king, and the map is lost the moment the Castle Center is razed. You unlock 9 weapons and over 50 perks, take up to 5 perks into a map, and can add Mutators to make it harder. Its 96.1% positive (as of October 2026) is the highest share on this list.
Which ones hand you a kingdom or an empire?
9 Kings
9 Kings is the strategy roguelike I would hand to someone who already loves deckbuilders. Each king starts with a different deck of buildings, troops and spells; you place them to grow a city, then watch the armies fight, and when rival kings attack you can loot cards from their decks. The store also promises chaotic combos and perks that break the game. There are single-player Quest and Endless modes and an asynchronous multiplayer mode against eight rival kings. It is in Steam Early Access as of October 2026, with 1.0 announced for 12 November 2026.
Slipways
Slipways is the one to play if you want strategy without war. The developer describes space grand strategy cut down to a puzzle: you colonise planets and connect them with trade lanes so each one supplies what the next one needs, and “there is no military aspect” at all. A run takes 40 to 60 minutes by the store’s own count, and you use about 10 of more than 80 technologies each time. Almost everything is procedurally generated, so each run is a different sector. It is the other borderline pick: Steam does not tag it roguelike, and its store page names no loss condition. The standard mode gives you 25 years to build the best empire you can, with an endless sandbox and a ranked mode beside it.
Where our game fits
Our own game, Hellmate, is the last row of the table and not one of the picks. Its Steam tags include Roguelike, Turn-Based Strategy and Perma Death (as of October 2026). Like 9 Kings it builds its army out of a deck, but the fight happens on a chessboard: roguelike deckbuilding chess across the seven floors of Hell, where each floor belongs to a deadly sin and you summon pieces, sling spells and brand your army with sigils to melt that sin’s king before your turns run out. It is unreleased, due on Steam on 19 January 2027 (as of October 2026), so there are no reviews to point at. The Hellmate demo is playable now on Windows and macOS, and the Hellmate Steam page is where the full game will be.
If the chessboard is the part you want explained, our piece on what a chess deckbuilder is covers it, and our list of roguelike demos on Steam has more runs you can try before buying.
Quick answers
Is there a strategy roguelike without combat? Yes, one: Slipways. You keep planets supplied with what their neighbours need, a run is decided by how well they trade with each other, and nothing in it shoots back. Every other pick puts a fight at the centre, even where your troops do the fighting without you.
Are any of these real-time? Yes, four of the ten. FTL is real time but lets you pause any fight to give orders. Rogue Tower, Bad North and Thronefall are played in real time against waves of enemies. The other six resolve fights in turns or play them out automatically.
Can I play strategy roguelikes on a Mac? Yes, seven of the ten have macOS builds on Steam (as of October 2026), though Bad North’s requirements rule out Apple M1 chips. The other six are FTL, Despot’s Game, Wildermyth, Thronefall, 9 Kings and Slipways. Our list of roguelike games for Mac has more.
Are strategy roguelikes the same as roguelike deckbuilders? No. Some overlap: 9 Kings plays from a deck, and Rogue Tower hands out upgrades as cards. But FTL, Bad North and Slipways have no deck at all. For card-first runs, see games like Monster Train.
