Starvaders is the best roguelike since Hades

2025 has proven to be an extremely competitive year for games. I have never felt so much excitement in my annual top ten list, and we are not even halfway through the year. I have played several games this year that immediately became some of my favorites all the time. There is no shortage of amazing games in 2025, which is a blessing for players, but may be a curse for the people who make them

No matter how many amazing games come out, we just have so much time on earth to play them – an unfortunate fact in life I actively look for solutions to (DM me if you have any ideas). Existential crisis aside, the reality of game development right now is that you can make a fantastic game that people will love, but if the stars do not adapt, if your release date is too crowded, if the right streamers do not take it, your game may not find the success it deserves.

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I have highlighted a couple of 2025's hidden gemstones recently, including Sunderfolk, a brilliant sofa co-op adventure such as re-mitigates board game, and pipistrello and the damn yo-yo, a zelda-inspired throw to game boy-era with some of the most invented combinations Today I want to talk about Starvaders, a tour -based roguelike that belongs in the conversation with all the time greats like Slay the Spire and in violation. Yes, it is so good, even if you haven't heard about it yet.

A rare roguelike masterpiece

Let's get the genre spy out of the way. Starvaders is a tour -based tactical tire building Roguelike. I know that the string of words sounds like steam diagrams married to some people, but I promise you, this game will quickly sink their hooks in you if you give it a chance. Don't let the cards or the tour -based strategy scare you, Starvaders is as easy to pick up as it is exciting to play. We have the scary part, still with me?

In Starvaders you play as a mech pilot that defends the earth from a strange invasion. Levels are laid out on a grid, with enemies that start at the top and your mech at the bottom. You will spend energy to play cards, which allows you to move around the web and blast foreigners with different weapons, and at the end of each turn the foreigners will move a space closer to you, as a tour -based version of Galaga.

When an enemy reaches the three lower rows online, you have a turn to eliminate them. If you do not, you will get a point of downfall, which is quite like losing a health point, but backwards. Take five points of Doom and your driving will end, recover you back to the beginning.

You can think of what meets Slay the Spire, or Roguelike Marvel's Midnight Suns, or (my favorite comparison) a tour -based version of Mega Man: Battle Network. If you like any of these things (or all, if you have good taste), you will love Starvaders.

A pace for progression

One of my favorite things with Starvaders is that it is not afraid to let you make progress. The average driving is about an hour, which is quite typical of a Roguelike Deckbuilder, but you will not only come to the last boss, die and start over and over as many roguelikes. Starvaders has a long onramp that makes learning insights and outs more manageable and it doesn't make the typical roguelike the thing to make you feel that you suck directly out of the gate. Instead, you win the first runs quite easily and start unlocking some new things. When things start to get hard, you have a good sense of where you made mistakes and how to adjust your strategy for success. It is not as Roguelikes usually works, but it was undoubtedly the right decision for Starvaders.

It is a tricky game that requires planning forward, which is not always easy when your abilities are randomly pulled from a tire. Starvader keeps his tire relatively thin with opportunities to add and remove cards with a few steps, so you can really customize your tire for a specific strategy, which is not something you always find in tire builders. Balatro did this exceptionally well last year, and Starvaders also nails that balance.

Choose your play style

Your first mech, Gunner, has a few different archetypes you can lean on, depending on the card you earn at the end of each fight. You will probably start with a simple attack building, which lets you put up pictures and take out foreigners with attacks that chain to other foreigners, take out whole rows or groups of enemies at once. When things stand perfectly, the chain reaction that dries the board can be extremely satisfactory.

My favorite strategy for Gunner revolves around strategic planting of bombs and is waiting for the right moment to set them up. With the right card, bombs are transformed into exploding towers that can be used to take out enemies that you otherwise cannot reach. When you start shooting images from several positions on the grid at the same time, the strategic depth for Starvaders really starts to shine.

The other mech you unlock is Stinger, and using it feels like playing a completely different game. Stinger has a gigantic sword and can teleport all over the net to attack foreigners face to face. It is a high -risk, high reward me that requires even more accurate planning than Gunner, but delivers even more satisfactory turns of pure carnage. As you unlock new cards, new Mechs and new pilots, your options will open and your strategies will deepen, but everything develops at a rate that feels both manageable and exciting. It is a game that is constantly evolving from driving to driving, as all the best roguelikes do.

Don't miss your chance to play the best roguelike in several years

There are so many roguelics out there, but there are really only a handful of legendary, genre-defining. Spelunky, the binding of Isaac, kills the spire, Hades, in the violation and dead cells constitute Mount Rushmore of Roguelikes which has stood the test and pressed the genre forward. Starvaders also has that potential, if it can manage to find an audience.

It's not an easy time for the little guy. Once you have games like Oblivion Remastered, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Blue Prince, all of which launch the same week, it's easy for less games, even big as Starvaders, to fly under the radar. Starvaders came out at the end of April and despite having an 87 on Metacritic and an overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam, it has fewer than a thousand simultaneous players right now. It is a crime against good games, and I insist, no, I demand that you give it a chance. If you don't like it you can come back here and I'll tell you a fantastic game from 2025 that no one has heard of. I can't guarantee you that it will be as good as Starvaders, and I'm actually pretty sure it won't be.