The “rogue-lite” video game genre has 2 defining characteristics:
- Randomness – levels are procedurally generated, and the power-ups you get will vary with each playthrough.
- Progression – whenever you lose, the game starts over from the beginning. But some upgrades persist between runs, so you gradually get stronger and unlock more content the more you play.
The rogue-lites listed below are the ones I’ve devoted the most time to so far this year.
(Most of them are available on both desktop and mobile platforms, though to my knowledge none of them use Flutter.)
5: Bloons TD 6
This tower defense game was released in 2018, and the developers have continually been updating it with fresh content.
I’ve really enjoyed the process of maximizing income in the early rounds and then becoming incredibly overpowered later on. They released the “Rogue Legends” DLC in February 2025; I thought it was kinda fun but wasn’t super impressed overall.
4: Balatro
This poker rogue-lite has won an absurd amount of awards over the past year.
Both the gameplay and the visual/audio design are phenomenal, in my opinion.
3: The Binding of Isaac
A game that combines religious trauma and poop jokes.
My favorite thing about Binding of Isaac is the multiplayer experience: I’ve had some great times meeting up with my brother to play it on Nintendo Switch.
2: Plants vs. Zombies Fusion
This fan-made game was originally in Chinese and then modified to support a variety of languages. Since it’s a mod of a fan game, the English version is only available for PC and accessed via a Discord server.
Despite the inconvenience (and questionable legality) involved in obtaining and running this game, I believe this is, by far, the best Plants vs. Zombies game to exist.
There’s a huge variety of game modes, including “Odyssey” and “Abyss”, both of which incorporate rogue-lite elements. The artwork is phenomenal, and I’ve been repeatedly blown away by the sheer brilliance of the game’s design.
1: PokéRogue
Many folks (myself included) have intense nostalgia for the Pokémon franchise. It spans dozens of games, with over 1000 Pokémon in total.
PokéRogue brings all of this content into one place: “gotta catch 'em all” is transformed into a super addictive rogue-lite progression.
Throughout the year 2024, the amount of time I spent playing video games was essentially zero, whereas now it seems to be my primary focus.
I’ve come to the understanding that contributing to the Flutter framework was enormously rewarding for me. An individual Dart project is a lot of work and has no guaranteed payoff, whereas framework PRs often land within a couple of weeks. Flutter code contributions and code review also involved social interaction with a variety of awesome people, and unfortunately I have yet to find another organization that can match this experience.
The current software job market also makes things difficult. Currently my plan is to “lay low” for a bit and either find Flutter work somewhere or just do a random warehouse job for the next year or so (I have an enormous half-finished Flutter project that I will hopefully bring to completion during that time).
If you have advice to share or can relate to this experience in some way, I’d love to hear about it. Cheers!