Give me your super-duper obscure retro roguelike with incredible depth like cogmind or like dwarf fortress adventure mode.
I have it
OG strength.
Dungeons of Dredmor
came to say this, while the game is very tongue-in-cheek and built around humor, it is a competent turn-based rogue-like with some serious challenge and customization freedom.
A classic
Back when I played roguelikes my favorites were ADOM and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
Definitely CDDA. Incredibly in-depth, and the fact that it's pretty much open-source means you have a ton of mods/additional content coming in regularly.
Gotta say, initially, as someone who preferred the old-school fantasy of TOME & the likes, I was a bit skeptical about the setting...but it's actually much more than the trite and simple "100th post-apocalyptic zombie scenario" and it slowly grew on me (plus, there are mods that add magic, magical creatures, old artifacts, etc).
Honorable mention to WazHack (currently on sale for like 3$), although it's far more arcade-y and less complex, although still quite the challenge and what I'd consider "obscure"/niche.
CDDA is the answer, it's probably one of the best games I've ever played. The depth is out of this world and it's free.
Damn, 10 hours later and Wazhack isn’t on sale anymore 😢
Wazhack pretty fun for a bit
Most of the comments here are 90% not a roguelike, but roguelites or similar, you are asking for Roguelikes. So i can add some of what you are asking for:
1) Fara
2) Elona
4) Unrealworld
6) Rogue's Tale
8) Wayward
Renowned Explorers International Society
I don't know about it the obscurity but Undermine is nearly perfect to me.
Nethack. Good luck.
Came here for Nethack.
Nowadays I prefer slashEM but nethack was the OG for me.
The Doors of Trithius
Consistently updated "medieval" fantasy in a world drowning in a vermintide of gremlins. These are both the 'mischievous steal stuff and tinker with primitive machinery,' and the 'use their tribal magic to bind their souls to the plane of death magic' kind. Save towns, fight armies travelling across the world map.
The dev is incredibly responsive to bug reports and is also here on Reddit with us.
Scrolled through the list of replies and this is the one I bought. Highly recommend it, I've already sunk over 2 hours into it!
Infra Arcania, Zorbus, Neo Scavenger Extended and for something recent Path of Achra
I'm not sure what you mean by obscure given that context, so I'm just going to list any ones I like.
How do you define obscure ? Sub 5,000 reviews ? Sub 1,000?
I mean more like niche. Dwarf Fortress isn't as unknown as it used to be, but its still super niche.
Maybe niche compared to the usual AAA open-world stuff but in the colony sim communities it's one of the most popular games.
That's why I asked you to elaborate. Some games may be considered niche within the broader gaming market but within their niche they can often be extremely popular.
Caverns of Xaskazien 2 is super unknown even in roguelike circles, but very good and deep
Whitering room. Obscure for relevance, obscure for theme but a true gem
One I just bought yesterday that I can’t put down is Blood Fuel Ammo Speed. Absolute hidden gem with only 15 reviews rn
Colt canyon
Noita
Pixelated graphics but it has extremely cool gameplay, you can combine different effects on a spell to make it even more hectic, and pretty realistic physics of sort, for example, you can literally burn away the terrain instead of having to traverse it normally
Randomhack by Daniel Remar
Not really as deep as DF, since nothing is really, but Oxto is a great little game. It's like Hotline Miami if played better, fairer, and was a roguelike. Recently got a Switch and PS4/5 release too.
Ship of fools. Great coop rouge-like.
Daimonin, which was made as a fork of crossfire (not the one that comes up in Google search) in the late 90s iirc. Elona, elona+ or elona mobile (if you can get the mobile version working it's my fave version). Dransik (ashen empires). Kisnard remade.
Does Loop Hero count?
Heat Signature is really cool. You overtake procedurally generated spaceships and unlock new tech while doing so.
And when you die, you pickup as a new person on the home planet.
Akalabeth. One of the OG
Cube chaos
Prospector is a cool space roguelike
Flinthook! A pixelated game about being a space pirate!!! It’s so much fun I really love it!!! He has a space pistol, a quick hook that allows him to grapple anywhere on the screen as long as there’s something for it to hold onto, and a time-warping belt that slows down time for a short amount to make it easier to get through levels.
Not sure it's SUPER obscure, but Neurovoider.
Elona+
Pathway
Turn based strategy / roguelike set in north Africa world war two with Nazis and zombies. Very Indiana Jones. Amazing aesthetics, lovely game. Not too difficult.
Wizards of Legend
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup?
Or for something a bit different, perhaps Rimworld?
Dungeonmans is another one that I don't see mentioned often but I really liked it. It has some similarities to Tales of Maj'eyal
Caves of Qud
Caverns of Zoarre
Castle of the Winds
Castle of the winds ftw.
Sorcerer's cave is a good one
Castle came on a shareware CD bundle I bought, and I lost hours wandering the dungeons. The icon art was ahead of its time.
The Last Spell!!
Not obscure because it’s old, obscure because it just came out:
Path of Achra. It’s going to be big, and I’ve been absolutely obsessed with it the past few days. It has the DNA of some very crunchy traditional roguelikes, but is streamlined to be easier and more accessible. It’s still fairly obtuse for the first few hours, but you won’t be playing 100 hours without a win like with many other traditional roguelikes. The game itself is about crafting builds and trying to find broken combinations, and it’s extremely satisfying to figure out ways to make the entire screen melt.
Does telengard or temple of apshi count
Not sure anyone remembers Storm but it’s was also fun tho challenging for 8 year old me.
Daggerfall
Recently got into Rift Wizard 2
Astral ascent. Never heard about it before looking deep for a rogue like
Project zomboid is always a good one. The graphics look like the original sims and the gameplay has a lot of depth.
OP is asking for a Roguelike. PZ is not a Roguelike.
Probably a bit more popular than the rest, but BlazBlue Entropy Effect! Imagine "what if smash bros was a roguelite", with in-run combo discovery, strongly rec!
Sniper 3 like omg what a banger and the collection but the other games have aim assist which i hate. Wait what is a rogue game? Fuck
is KeeperRL a well known one ?