28 Best Roguelike and Roguelite Games for Mobile — Top Picks for Android and iOS

The best roguelike and roguelite games for mobile aren't watered-down ports — on Android and iOS the genre feels right at home. Short runs, one-handed controls, and that one-more-try pull line up almost too well with how people actually play on a phone. This is a curated pick of 28 games you can download and play on your phone today, not a dump of everything tagged "roguelike" on the store. They're split by what they actually feel like to play: frantic action roguelikes, bullet-heaven survivors in the Vampire Survivors mould, card-battling deckbuilders, old-school dungeon crawlers, and slower tactical roguelikes for a commute. Some you can start for free, some are one-time unlocks, and every entry here has a real, working mobile version — no cloud-only footnotes, no "coming soon". Jump to the subtype you're after, or scroll and let a few surprise you.

Fast hands, twitch reflexes, and a weapon in every room — action roguelikes are the loudest corner of the mobile scene, and the one that survives the jump to touchscreens best. Expect procedurally built stages, permadeath runs, and builds that snowball from a lucky drop. These are the picks to open first if you want a roguelike action game that respects your thumbs and your battery.

Motion Twin's roguevania is the game most people point to when they argue that a console-grade roguelike can live on a phone without losing its teeth. In Dead Cells you wake up as a blob of cells in a shifting castle, hack through it with a rotating arsenal of blades, bows, turrets and grenades, die, and start over a little stronger and a lot angrier. The mobile build was rebuilt from the ground up by Playdigious with two control schemes, including an Auto-Hit mode that aims your attacks so you can focus on dodging and positioning. Weapon synergies, mutation loadouts and the constant push-your-luck of a timed door make every descent read differently, and the pixel animation still looks razor-sharp on a small screen. If you install only one action roguelike from this list, this is the safe bet.

Before half the industry noticed roguelikes belonged on phones, ChillyRoom built one that was mobile-first from the start. Soul Knight is a twin-stick dungeon shooter with pixel art, an auto-aim option that keeps things playable one-handed, and an absurd wall of guns — hundreds of them, from pea-shooters to laser cannons. You pick a hero, dive into randomly assembled floors, and blast through bugs, robots and bosses to recover a stolen magic stone. Online co-op lets a few friends pile in — there are plenty more best two-player mobile games if that's your thing — there's an offline mode for flights and tunnels, and new characters and seasonal modes keep landing years after launch. It's chaotic, generous and endlessly replayable, the mobile roguelike a lot of people cut their teeth on.

ChillyRoom's second entry trades Soul Knight's guns for fists, blades and kung-fu. Otherworld Legends is a hand-drawn action roguelike where you brawl through themed dungeons as a roster of heroes, each with a distinct melee, ranged or magic style, collecting oddball items that stack into wild combinations. The combat is closer to a beat-'em-up than a shooter — dashes, parries and combo timing matter — and the 2D-meets-3D pixel look is some of the prettiest on the store. Runs are short, the item pool is deep, and you can play offline or team up in co-op. If you've wrung Soul Knight dry and want something with more melee weight, this is the natural next step.

One well, one direction: down. Downwell arms you with gunboots — boots that shoot — and asks you to fall through a procedurally generated well, stomping and blasting enemies, grabbing gems and combos on the way to the bottom. Ojiro Fumoto's 3-colour palette and vertical layout were basically designed for a phone held upright, which is why it still feels like the purest pick-up-and-play roguelike on mobile. Each drop is over in minutes, upgrades tweak your run in small mean ways, and the skill ceiling is brutal. Tiny download, huge staying power.

The fast, room-clearing platformer ScourgeBringer plays like a metroidvania that never sits still. You're Kyhra, dashing and slashing through a procedurally shuffled monolith in short, high-speed bursts, chaining melee hits and gunfire to keep a combo meter alive between rooms. The mobile port keeps the frantic pace intact with responsive touch controls, and the run structure — clear rooms, fight a colossal boss, unlock permanent upgrades, go again — is tuned for the kind of 10-minute sessions a phone invites. It's demanding and rhythm-heavy, aimed squarely at players who want a roguelite platformer that rewards clean, aggressive play.

Rocketcat's action-RPG roguelite has been quietly getting better for over a decade, and Wayward Souls remains one of the most story-forward picks on mobile. You choose one of 7 heroes — a warrior, a mage, a rogue and stranger sorts — each with their own moves and playstyle, then fight through randomly generated dungeons that riff on classic top-down Zelda with a Dark Souls streak of cruelty. Permadeath ends a run, but a steady upgrade system lets you come back tougher, so progress never fully resets. Built for touch from the ground up, it's a veteran that still holds its own against flashier newcomers.

This is the genre that ate mobile. Ever since Vampire Survivors, the "survivor-like" — auto-firing your character while thousands of enemies swarm in, grabbing upgrades until your build turns the screen into a fireworks show — has become the default phone roguelite. If you searched for games like Vampire Survivors on Android or iOS, everything below scratches that itch, from the free-to-download giants to premium takes with no strings.

The one that started it all. Vampire Survivors puts you in a field, hands you a whip that swings on its own, and lets the horde come — hundreds, then thousands of bats and skeletons pressing in while you pick level-up options and evolve weapons into screen-clearing monsters. There's almost no manual attacking; the whole game is movement, positioning and build-crafting, which is exactly why it works so well with one thumb. The mobile version launched as a surprise and carries the same content as the big-screen release, expansions included, plus couch co-op if you turn the phone sideways. It's the blueprint every other survivor on this list is chasing, and it's still the most moreish of the lot.

Habby took the Vampire Survivors formula, swapped the gothic field for a modern city overrun by zombies and monsters, and polished it into one of the biggest mobile hits of its era. In Survivor.io you dodge through swarms while your weapons fire automatically, then chain skill upgrades — a rocket launcher here, a forcefield there — into evolved gear that carries you through boss waves. It leans harder into progression and loadouts than its inspiration, with a constant drip of events and modes, and it plays entirely one-handed. As an on-ramp into the survivor genre, nothing else has quite the same reach.

You are a potato. You are holding 6 guns. That's the pitch, and it's plenty. Brotato is a top-down survivor-like where each run lasts 20 or 30 tense minutes as you fend off waves of aliens, hoover up materials between rounds, and spend them on weapons and traits to bend the run toward one absurd build. Wielding half a dozen weapons at once — auto-firing or hand-aimed — means the theorycrafting runs deep, and dozens of characters each rewrite the rules. Ported to phones by the team behind 20 Minutes Till Dawn, it's a tight, focused survivor with no filler.

Survive until sunrise. 20 Minutes Till Dawn drops you into a Lovecraftian night with a single gun and a slowly tightening ring of monsters, and asks you to last 20 minutes by stacking upgrades into a broken build. It's a shoot-'em-up at heart — you aim and fire rather than letting the game do it for you — which gives it more of a hands-on kick than the pure auto-battlers around it. Over 80 upgrades and a rotating cast of characters keep the runs varied, and sessions are short enough for a coffee break. A punchy, atmospheric take on the survivor loop.

The survivor formula gets a fresh coat of paint in Halls of Torment, reskinned in the look of a late-'90s dungeon crawler — think early Diablo, all murky corridors and clicky loot — and it's a shockingly good fit. You hold off relentless hordes, but the pre-rendered art, character classes and stat-heavy loot pull it closer to an action-RPG than most bullet-heavens dare. Traits, curses and equippable gear give runs a build-your-own-nightmare depth, and the mobile version — from the same porting hands as Brotato — keeps the grimy atmosphere intact. For players who like their survivor games with a side of loot obsession.

The newest face here, and the weirdest hybrid. Ball x Pit fuses brick-breaker physics with survivor-style hordes and a dash of base-building: you fling bouncing balls through swarms of enemies, watching them ricochet and multiply into a chain-reaction of destruction, then build up a home base between runs. It landed on Android and iOS in March 2026, and the layered systems reveal themselves slowly, so early runs feel simple before the combos start folding in on themselves. If the genre was starting to feel same-y, this is the pick that proves there's still room to bend the rules.

If bullet-heaven is the genre's reflex test, roguelike deckbuilders are its chess. You build a deck (or a bag of dice, or a slot machine) as you climb, weighing every card against the run you're trying to assemble, and the best of them are pure mobile gold — turn-based, offline-friendly, and endlessly deep. These are the best roguelike deckbuilders and card games on Android and iOS, from the genre's holy trinity to stranger experiments.

The card game that set the template. Slay the Spire has you climbing a 3-act tower, and between every fight you draft cards, snap up relics and prune your deck into a lean, lethal machine — or watch it collapse under its own weight. 4 characters play completely differently, the enemy patterns reward planning a turn ahead, and the "just one more climb" hook is legendary for a reason. The touch version handles cards cleanly and, being turn-based, loses nothing on a phone. Nearly every deckbuilder on this list owes it a debt; it's still the one to beat, and the obvious first install for anyone chasing the best roguelike deckbuilder on mobile.

Poker, but make it a roguelike, and then make it impossible to put down. Balatro hands you a deck of playing cards and a growing stable of Jokers — wild modifiers that warp the rules of scoring — and dares you to clear escalating score targets before you run out of hands. Every run is a hunt for a combo that breaks the math wide open, and the moment you find one is pure slot-machine dopamine. LocalThunk's phenomenon arrived on phones with controls remade for touch, and its short, punchy rounds might make it the single most dangerous game to have on your commute. Genuinely hard to recommend responsibly.

Slay the Spire on two axes. Monster Train defends a burning Pyre riding through the frozen underworld, and its twist is verticality — you stack units across 3 floors of a moving train, mixing two clans' cards into engines that snowball out of control by the final boss. It's faster and more combo-forward than most deckbuilders, and the Covenant system piles on difficulty for anyone who masters the base game. The full package, DLC included, plays beautifully in portrait, and after a long iOS-only stretch it finally reached Android too. A must for anyone who wore out the Spire.

A deckbuilder built specifically for the way phones are held. Meteorfall: Krumit's Tale lays each dungeon out as a 3x3 grid of cards — enemies, items, gold — and asks you to clear it in the right order, managing health and resources like a puzzle box. You pick one of 5 upbeat heroes, each with their own cards and rhythm, and grind through short, self-contained dungeons that auto-save and play fine one-handed, online or off. It's lighter and breezier than the Spire, wraps its systems in a wry sense of humour, and is one of the most quietly replayable card roguelikes on the store.

Terry Cavanagh's roguelike runs on dice instead of a deck. Each of Dicey Dungeons' 6 characters — a warrior, a thief, a robot and odder sorts — turns dice into actions by slotting them into equipment, and Lady Luck's dungeon keeps finding cruel new ways to bend the rules against you. It's colourful, quick and mechanically inventive, with a bouncy soundtrack and a difficulty curve that rewards clever slotting over raw luck. The mobile port arrived with the free Reunion expansion built in, adding a heap of new episodes. A brighter, sillier cousin to the heavyweight deckbuilders, and no less clever for it.

A roguelike about beating a slot machine to pay your rent — and, Luck be a Landlord would like you to know, defeating capitalism. Every spin lands symbols on a grid, and you build a synergistic economy out of them: bundle fruit for combos, pair a thief with a treasure chest, chase interest on your savings. There's no real-world money or gambling anywhere in it, just a deceptively deep engine of symbols and items that clicks together like a good deckbuilder. Runs are short, the "one more spin" pull is real, and it's become a cult mobile favourite for good reason.

A gothic fairy tale wearing a card game. Night of the Full Moon casts you as a Little Red Riding Hood venturing into the Black Forest to find her missing grandmother, building a deck out of attacks, prayers, curses and equipment through a branching night of random encounters. The paths you pick and the strangers you choose to trust decide how dangerous the woods get, and swapping to a different class reshapes the whole run around a new deck and playstyle. There's a deep pool of cards and bosses to unlock across repeat visits, and the storybook art gives it a mood most deckbuilders skip. An easy, atmospheric on-ramp for anyone curious about card roguelikes.

Imagine Peggle and Slay the Spire had a very strange child. Peglin is a pachinko roguelike: you launch bouncing orbs down a pegboard, and where they land decides how much damage you deal to the monster waiting below. Between fights you collect and upgrade orbs and relics that warp the physics and the payoff, turning a simple drop into a run-defining gamble. It's not a deckbuilder in the strict sense, but it shares the same build-a-run DNA and turn-based calm, and the tactile joy of a good bounce is tailor-made for a touchscreen.

Here's where the genre goes back to its roots. Traditional roguelikes — grid-based, turn-based, unforgiving — were arguably always meant for a device you poke with a finger, and mobile has some of the best there are, including a couple you can grab for nothing. If you want the real deal, permadeath and all, start here.

Quietly one of the best free games on any platform. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is an open-source traditional roguelike built on the bones of Watabou's Pixel Dungeon, and years of steady, thoughtful updates have turned it into a deep, superbly balanced dungeon crawler. You pick a class, descend floor by floor through randomised depths, identify potions and scrolls the hard way, and try to reach the bottom before the dungeon reaches you. It's maintained with obvious love and asks nothing of you in return — just a huge, generous roguelike that respects your time. The best possible starting point for the classic style.

The roguelike that made you dance. Crypt of the NecroDancer sets a grid dungeon to a driving soundtrack and demands you move, attack and dodge in time with the beat — miss the rhythm and your run falls apart. As Cadence you head down into the crypt after your missing father, learning enemy patterns that each have their own musical tell. It's a wildly original mash-up of roguelike and rhythm game, you can play to your own music library, and the touch controls keep the groove intact on a phone. Demanding, joyful and unlike anything else on this list.

The closest thing to real NetHack you can comfortably play on a bus. Pathos: Nethack Codex rebuilds the notoriously deep classic as a tile-based, touch-first roguelike, with 13 classes, a dungeon full of emergent chaos, and the freedom to play turn-based or in real time. It keeps the "the game knows a thousand tricks and will use all of them" spirit of its inspiration while shaving off the arcane keyboard commands that scare newcomers off. Free, frequently updated for years, and quietly one of the deepest roguelikes on mobile for anyone willing to learn its language.

Proof that a great roguelike doesn't need a hundred systems. Hoplite is a compact turn-based tactics game on a small hex grid: you're a Greek warrior descending after the legendary Fleece, and every move — spear throw, shield bash, leap — has to account for exactly where each enemy will strike next. Altars let you pray to the gods for upgrades, so runs slowly build into puzzles of your own making. It loads instantly, plays in perfect little bursts, and has the kind of clean, readable design that keeps people coming back for years. A pocket-sized classic.

For when you want to think, not twitch. Tactical roguelikes slow the clock down — dice, cards, positioning and cold arithmetic decide the run, not reflexes — which makes them ideal for a phone you dip in and out of. These are the strategy-minded picks, from party-builders to island defence; for grand strategy and 4X that isn't built around runs, the best mobile strategy games top picks up where this leaves off.

A tactical roguelike that runs entirely on dice, and somehow one of the most strategically rich games on mobile. Slice & Dice hands you a party of 5 heroes, each represented by a die whose faces are their possible actions, and every turn you roll, reroll and spend those faces to survive escalating rooms of monsters. The genius is in the risk — a bad roll can be salvaged with clever ordering, ability use and a little nerve. 20 levels of increasingly nasty fights and a mountain of hero and item combinations make this a connoisseur's pick that's easy to fall hard for.

Think deckbuilding, but everything is slowly freezing to death. Wildfrost has you assembling a board of companions and cards in a frozen world, where a "counter" system ticks every unit down to its next action, turning each fight into a timing puzzle as much as a numbers game. You recruit leaders and allies, chain buffs and freezes, and try to build a team that snowballs before the cold wins. It's tougher and more board-focused than most card roguelikes, with a charming, chilly art style. Sits right on the border of deckbuilder and tactics, and nails both.

A roguelike where you build the level and then mostly watch it fight. In Loop Hero your hero auto-battles around a looping path, and your job is to place tiles — meadows, forests, vampire mansions — that spawn enemies and resources, balancing the loot you need against the danger you can survive. Back at camp you spend it all on rebuilding a lost world card by card. It's a hypnotic, slightly cerebral rhythm of set-up and payoff that suits idle-but-engaged phone play perfectly. Unusual, moreish and very hard to describe until it clicks.

Minimalist on the surface, merciless underneath. Bad North is a real-time tactics roguelite about defending a chain of tiny procedural islands from Viking raiders: you position squads of soldiers, react as longships land from every side, and retreat when a fight turns before it costs you a commander for good. Losses are permanent, so every decision carries weight, and the clean diorama art keeps a tense game readable at a glance. Levels are bite-sized, the campaign builds real tension as your map shrinks, and it plays wonderfully with a finger. A quiet, elegant strategy roguelite that punches far above its size.

Both build runs out of procedurally generated levels and lean on permadeath — lose, and you start over. The rough line people draw is progression: a "pure" roguelike (Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Pathos, Hoplite) sends you back to square one each time, while a roguelite (Dead Cells, Vampire Survivors, Hades) hands over permanent upgrades that make the next attempt a little easier. In practice the labels blur, and most of the games on this list sit somewhere on the spectrum rather than at either pole.

Plenty of the genre's best cost nothing to start. Vampire Survivors and Survivor.io are free bullet-heavens, Shattered Pixel Dungeon and Pathos: Nethack Codex are free traditional roguelikes, Soul Knight and Otherworld Legends give you a generous free run of action, and Night of the Full Moon, Peglin, Loop Hero, Wildfrost and Slice & Dice all let you play a chunk before deciding whether to unlock the rest. It's one of the most generous corners of mobile gaming.

Most of them. Single-player, turn-based and run-based games rarely need a connection, so Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Slay the Spire, Balatro, Meteorfall: Krumit's Tale, Slice & Dice, Hoplite and Soul Knight's offline mode all happily run on a plane or in a tunnel. The main exceptions are the live-service survivors like Survivor.io, which lean on regular events and online features.

Slay the Spire is still the benchmark and the safest first pick, with Balatro the breakout that hooks people who've never touched a deckbuilder. From there, Monster Train adds vertical, combo-heavy depth, Wildfrost brings tactical board play, and Dicey Dungeons and Meteorfall: Krumit's Tale keep things lighter and quicker. If you want the whole card-roguelike spread, that handful covers it.

The survivor-like is arguably the defining mobile roguelite, so yes. Beyond Vampire Survivors itself, Brotato, 20 Minutes Till Dawn and Halls of Torment are the standout premium takes, Survivor.io is the huge free one, and Ball x Pit is the fresh 2026 twist that bolts brick-breaker physics onto the formula. All of them share the same auto-firing, horde-clearing, build-stacking loop.

Every game in this list is available on both Android and iOS, so the whole rundown works whether you're on a Google Pixel, a Samsung, or an iPhone. A few are also built with iPad and larger screens in mind, but none of them are locked to a single platform.

Which pocket roguelike has stolen the most of your time — and which one belongs on this list but isn't here yet? Share your run in the comments.

That's the pick of what you can buy or download outright, but the mobile roguelike well runs deeper. A couple of genre greats live behind subscription services rather than the stores, and if you'd rather chase the roguelikes and roguelites built for big screens — Hades, Returnal, the full Slay the Spire climb and dozens more — the best roguelike games across PC and consoles top covers them in depth. And for more phone games built around the same "one more go" hook, the best addictive mobile games rundown is the natural next stop.

From the makers of FTL, this is one of the sharpest tactical roguelikes ever made — chess-like mech battles where you see every enemy move before it lands and defend cities across a doomed timeline. It isn't sold on the stores, but it's fully playable on Android and iOS through Netflix Games, which makes it an easy add if you already subscribe.

A slick tactical roguelike deckbuilder set across feudal Japan, built around a single-lane duel where you queue attacks and dashes like cards and read the enemy a beat ahead. On phones it lives inside the Crunchyroll Game Vault rather than the app stores, so a Crunchyroll membership is the way in — well worth a look if you have one.