Caves of Qud is a science fantasy roguelike epic steeped in retrofuturism, deep simulation, and swathes of sentient plants. Come inhabit an exotic world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Decide: is it a dying earth, or is it on the verge of rebirth?Who are you?Play the ro...
Caves of Qud is a science fantasy roguelike epic steeped in retrofuturism, deep simulation, and swathes of sentient plants. Come inhabit an exotic world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Decide: is it a dying earth, or is it on the verge of rebirth?
Who are you?
Play the role of a mutant indigenous to the salt-spangled dunes and jungles of Qud, or play a pure-strain descendant from one of the few remaining eco-domes—the toxic arboreta of Ekuemekiyye, the Holy City; the ice-sheathed arcology of Ibul; or the crustal mortars of Yawningmoon.
You arrive at the oasis-hamlet of Joppa, along the far rim of Moghra'yi, the Great Salt Desert. All around you, moisture farmers tend to groves of viridian watervine. There are huts wrought from rock salt and brinestalk. On the horizon, Qud's jungles strangle chrome steeples and rusted archways to the earth. Further and beyond, the fabled Spindle rises above the fray and pierces the cloud-ribboned sky.
You clutch your rifle, or your vibroblade, or your tattered scroll, or your poisonous stinger, or your hypnotized goat. You approach a watervine farmer—he lifts the brim of his straw hat and says, "Live and drink, friend."
What can you do?
Anything and everything. Caves of Qud is a deeply simulated, biologically diverse, richly cultured world.
Assemble your character from over 70 mutations and defects and 24 castes and kits—outfit yourself with wings, two heads, quills, four arms, flaming hands, or the power to clone yourself—it's all the character diversity you could want.
Explore procedurally-generated regions with some familiar locations—each world is nearly 1 million maps large.
Dig through everything—don't like the wall blocking your way? Dig through it with a pickaxe, or eat through it with your corrosive gas mutation, or melt it to lava. Yes, every wall has a melting point.
Hack the limbs off monsters—every monster and NPC is as fully simulated as the player. That means they have levels, skills, equipment, faction allegiances, and body parts. So if you have a mutation that lets you, say, psionically dominate a spider, you can traipse through the world as a spider, laying webs and eating things.
Pursue allegiances with over 60 factions—apes, crabs, robots, and highly entropic beings—just to name a few.
Follow the plot to Barathrum the Old, a sentient cave bear who leads a sect of tinkers intent on restoring technological splendor to Qud.
Learn the lore—there's a story in every nook, from legendary items with storied pasts to in-game history books written by plant historians.
Die—Caves of Qud is brutally difficult and deaths are permanent. Don't worry, though—you can always roll a new character.
This is possibly the greatest and most ambitious roguelike since Dwarf Fortress. These one star ratings are coming from youtuber meat-riders and people who don't understand what Steam Workshop is.
Steam Workshop is an integrated mod manager FOR Steam. I don't know why anyone would expect it to work with a copy of the game bought on a different service. Just get your mods from Nexus like everyone else.
And as far as the Youtuber drama is concerned, I've never heard of that dude and I don't care if the Devs were nice to him and his fans or not. Most Youtubers suck and they tend to collect around them a cloud of people who also suck.
Just want to preface this, the reviews below have been partially rendered incorrect because there are plenty of other places you can now get non-steam versions of existing mods (Nexus, GitHub etc) and plenty of steam workshop mods have non-steam links in their descriptions too anyway onto the actual review.
Caves Of Qud is a tough game to get into, though in 2024 it's had a lot of work done to lower the barrier to entry, it's still not everyones cup of tea but that's okay because if you roll with it and give it time, it'll repay you massively. Qud's hallmarks are it's bizzare but equally facinating and charming world and it's total lack of hand holding and punishing gameplay, but once you lean the games ropes you can really see the depth and variety the game has, for example in my current playthrough I'm a four legged mutant that wields two battle axes, has fangs to bite enemies and I can also teleport, shoot ice and summon an army of plants, my companions are a Mechanimist priest that can burn entire grids of enemies and a sentient plant that makes copies of xymself to fight with us.
Most games use "no two playthroughs are ever the same" as a marketing buzzword but this is one of the rare exceptions where that is true, because this game can be so emergent and so random that it's near impossible to have two playthroughs go exactly the same way, whether that is the powers you wield, killing a random legendary fish to gain reputation with another faction to make a dungeon easier or just the way your character dies.
I recommend this game wholeheartedly, even if you dislike it you can always refund it, especially on GOG, I do also suggest watching a tutorial on how to start a game just so you can get the ball rolling, if you're unsure if the games really for you, start on roleplay mode so you can at least have an easy shot at beating the main story without having to start the game from the very beggining each time you die (which you will, A LOT), Live and Drink.
I am not that into roguelikes, but this game lets you play in roleplay mode, so when you die you respawn at the last checkpoint. You can also save the game whenever you want (as long as you enable the option), so it becomes less frustrating to someone like me who just wants to come home from work and relax with some exploration.
The world generation is also great, as it does not randomly generate everything, so the general layout is always the same.
A bit of a disjointed review:
For a game that has graphics in between pixel and ASCII, it is extremely atmospheric. The world is weird in an intriguing way and deserves to be explored.
While the game does randomly generate the terrain, the world map is fixed and it's the details that are different. This isn't a critique but was not my expectation when I bought it. In fact, I like that even with the random elements the world has a history that can be explored and experienced.
The modding scene, atm, seems to be mostly on Steam. I try to buy from non-DRM free sources like GoG, but I wish I'd known that before-hand. Anything I feel the game is missing seems be be covered by the Workshop. There are some available on Nexus, but not very many. That said, I have been and recommend playing Vanilla before starting with mods.
I know the response to criticism of difficulty will just be met with "that's typical of the genre." But it's very frustrating to transition between screens and be dead before you've had time to blink. Once a threat you can't handle sees you, it's nigh impossible to run away even if you've been extremely cautious. I've been stalked between playthroughs and saves by a red-robed figure that explodes my head 2 screens away from the start-point. Not fun. The game needs stealth.
There's still more on the Roadmap for this game, and I find myself hoping that the Roadmap isn't all that's left. There's a lot I'd like to see added. Heck, after the Roadmap is done I'd even buy expansions if they bring a whole new map to explore.
If you're into the genre, this is a must buy. It's peak.
Maybe I'll clean up this review later but these are my thoughts.
This is a gem. It's not that there's no handholding (there's a very well-made tutorial); it's more like there are no hands. You've got claws, instead. Or maybe you do have hands; and an extra set of them. Or maybe you have two hearts and so you can sprint faster. And maybe you're a nomad, wandering rock deserts, or a lone gunman in a post-apocalyptic world; maybe you shoot fire from your face, or ice from your hands. And maybe you just died in that cave - or, have you? Maybe it was just precognition and now you've rewound time and know what awaits you in there. And these are just the results of having played for my first couple of hours (and 3 dead characters afterwards).
It's a must-buy, must-play for anybody who isn't intimidated by its essential (but absolutely striking!) visual presentation, music and sound effects are cool and on point, all the rest is pure genius. Recommended.
