Gaming

Ah, look at everyone recommending action roguelikes. The Berlin Interpretation is dead, long live the Berlin Interpretation! I'll happily n'th Caves of Qud and Cogmind as amazing turn-based traditional roguelikes, and I'll add to that pile the following lesser-known gems:

• Dungeonmans: Very much a no-frills traditional roguelike but also a very good one and probably the closest thing out there to "DCSS but better".
• Tangledeep: Borrowing more from the Japanese side of the genre, with things like pets and item dungeons and sharply limited healing.
• DoomRL/Jupiter Hell: This is what it sounds like, a turn-based top-down version of Doom where cover and movement are everything. DoomRL is the original free version, while Jupiter Hell is the souped-up Steam version stripped of all trademarks.
• Rift Wizard: This one is weird but amazing - you can only attack via magic, you have a limited number of casts of all your spells, and you need to clear an entire level before advancing. But you have a mostly-free choice of new spells each level, and the goal is to put together something hilariously broken before the game outscales you.

Some other notable traditional roguelikes which I think are less good than any of the six above but still worth playing, are:

• Angband: A truly ancient free game whose roots go back to the mainframe days. Still has living variants in addition to vanilla, of which IMO the best are Sil and FrogComPosBand.
• Nethack: Another truly ancient free game from the mainframe days, this one was really intended to be a puzzle an entire university would work together to solve. If you try it today, expect to need spoilers.
• ADOM: The last of the ancient free trifecta, this is less arcane and more story-focused than Nethack but has some truly awful dick moves. Spoilers are an absolute must. Sort of like a proto-Qud. The original is free, but there's an enhanced tiles version on Steam as well.
• Golden Krone Hotel: A more modern game where you flip between human and vampire.
• Sproggiwood: A highly streamlined traditional roguelike where a given dungeon run will last less than an hour, but there's metaprogression between dungeons.
• Brogue: A free fantasy roguelike that, like Cogmind, completely eschews experience points.
• Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: A free roguelike immersive sim set in the post-apocalypse, complete with zombie hordes.
• Hydra Slayer: A math roguelike. You can only kill a hydra by cutting off all its heads, and if you don't cut off all of them then some number grow back. Your weapons do things like halving the number of heads, or cutting off exactly three heads (doing nothing if there are fewer than three).
• HyperRogue: The hyper stands for hyperbolic geometry.

Inscryption is pretty great. It's like a horror card game.

Enter the Gungeon is fun if you like bullet hell And Spelunky 1 and 2 are nice if you want a roguelike as a jump'n'run Although if you want to play Spelunky, definitely start with the first game. The second game is more difficult and more complex.

I didn't see anyone recommend in the comments, but I very much enjoyed Dreamscaper. It has a nice story revolving around the main character confronting hwr psychological issues in the world of her dreams. Combat is fun, slower paced and a little more tactical than most.

Also, fwiw, I'm not generally a roguelike fan, but I liked this one. Whether that makes you more or less likely to take my recommendation is up to you lol.

Skul: the hero slayer is fantastic, there is a ridiculous amount of build variety and the gameplay is great.

I like rogue-lites a bit more, so thethese games may or may not fit your interests.

• Permadeath mode in No Man's Sky
• Darkest Dungeon
• Everspace 1
• Ziggurat
• Eldritch
• Heavy Bullets
• Teleglitch
• Legend of Grimrock on Ultra Ironman difficulty
• Legend of Grimrock 2 with roguelike mod
• Dark Souls

Here are some smaller ones that I like that haven't been mentioned yet.

Crypt of the Necrodancer is a rythm based dungeon crawler in which you complete levels before the song runs out. Everything you do has to be on beat, like moving, attacking and using items. It's one of my favorite games and it even has working online multiplayer (altough that is only available through a DLC).

BPM: Bullets Per Minute is another rythm based dungeon crawler (can you tell that I love rythm games?) in form of a FPS. You explore rooms to kill enemies, get equipment and eventually kill that level's boss until you meet the final boss of the game. Similarly to Crypt, shooting, reloading and using abilities has to be done on beat (moving itself is not limited though).

Dead Estate is a pretty difficult isometric shooter (similar to Binding of Isaac). Being another dungeon crawler you work yourself through rooms, collecting items, upgrades and swapping weapons as you go, eventually defeating the floor's boss and moving up the floors until you reach the top. While there is no forced time limit, you do want to move fast, especially on higher difficulties.

I'm actually not sure if this fully counts as a roguelike (because I'm not really super familiar with the genre), but I started Returnal on PC yesterday and it already seems to be a pretty darn good game only after 30 minutes of play time. I am looking forward to putting more time into it!