After 15 years, legendary roguelike RPG is finally leaving Early Access, but the devs await the "financial realities of sales" before deciding what to do about DLC

Caves of Qud
(Image credit: Freehold Games)

15 years after it first entered development - and nine years after it first hit Early Access - the legendary roguelike RPG Caves of Qud is finally set to launch in 2024. After announcing that news last year, the devs at Freehold Games have now provided a roadmap to launch.

Caves of Qud differs from other old-school roguelikes with its big emphasis on narrative, blending handcrafted elements and procedural generation to build a unique quest system. The game's other claim to fame is its Dwarf Fortress-level physical simulation system, which allows you to, for example, literally melt stone walls if you can generate the heat necessary to do so. Characters are simulated just as robustly as the world, right down to individual body parts, so you can imagine the possibilities for emergent sandbox shenanigans.

Getting the main storyline finished will be the developers' big project this year. "We don’t want to spoil everything," the devs say in a Steam post, "but throughout summer and fall our central project will be to finish the main quest, and then add something to satisfy those who complete the entire narrative arc of Caves of Qud. We’ll add a more hands-on tutorial, too."

That puts the proper 1.0 launch at "late 2024," which the devs are keeping purposefully vague. "No, we don’t have a date, as it’s still a while away and we don’t want to be up against the marketing budget of the next Assassin’s Cry: Breath of the Duty (trademark pending)."

Other big touches planned for launch include a full UI redesign intended to be pleasant to use across mouse and gamepad without losing any depth. There's also a "refresh" of the game's starting town, a pile of new achievements, improved effects, narrative tweaks, and bug fixes throughout the game. The devs are also "preparing the game architecture so we can properly handle big meaty updates post-launch."

Which, of course, means that post-launch updates are planned, including "major content and system releases. How many exactly depends on the financial realities of sales, but no matter what, we have two big DLCs planned already. We honestly don’t know yet if they’ll be paid purchases or free upgrades, but we’re thinking about the right approach."

These are the best roguelike games out there. 

CATEGORIES
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

Read more
Elin
Somehow another roguelike RPG 17 years in the making launched last year, and sitting beside Caves of Qud it's gotten 4,700 glowing Steam reviews in near-total silence
Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress' Adventure Mode finally leaves beta on Steam this month, turning the notoriously complex strategy game into a brutal open-world roguelike RPG
Hades 2 screenshot showing poseidon
Hades 2's 1.0 release date is still a mystery, even to its devs: "Whenever that will be"
Terraria art showing a short-haired blond man sitting atop a grassy field in metal armor, colorful slimes on either side of him
"Terraria will never die as long as there is one last final update," creator says as its 6th final update approaches at long last
Balatro Joker card
Balatro's first big update is still on track for 2025, but it'll be "done when it's done, because it's got to be good before it's fast"
Vampire Survivors
Vampire Survivors dev teases "one more original expansion," online co-op, and what sounds like a whole new game in the studio's "biggest, chaotic-est, surprising-est" year yet
Latest in Roguelike
screenshot from Rogue Light Deck Builder showing a claymation figure sitting behind a desk.
With 97% positive reviews on Steam, Rogue Light Deck Builder is a hilarious $3 parody game that takes its name very literally
A screenshot from the Balatro: Friends of Jimbo reveal trailer, showing a card with The Witcher's Geralt on the front.
Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke says indie poker roguelike Balatro was his 2024 GOTY, beating out Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Astro Bot, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Balatro
Even Balatro's publisher doesn't know when LocalThunk will be done with 1.1: "Maybe I should whisper in his ear, like, 'So how's those 200 new jokers coming?'"
ben starr dressed in harequinn makeup chomping down on a banana
"Balatro was a pain in the ass to market," but it started getting better once players started cracking open the demo so they could play forever
Balatro Joker card
Balatro's first big update is still on track for 2025, but it'll be "done when it's done, because it's got to be good before it's fast"
Balatro Joker art
When starting development on his hit roguelike, Balatro creator set out to recreate a made-up card game he played "thousands" of times with his friends
Latest in News
Assassin's Creed Shadows
As Assassin's Creed Shadows overtakes Valhalla and Odyssey, Ubisoft promises "this is just the beginning" in heartfelt thanks to players
Dante in Netflix's Devil May Cry
Netflix unveils a stacked anime trailer filled with hits like Sakamoto Days and upcoming releases like Fire Force and Moonrise
Jujutsu Kaisen
After no big Jujutsu Kaisen announcements on a week packed with anime news, fans are now convinced season 3 is skipping 2025
Bethesda
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's PS5 release looks like it might be revealed today as Bethesda teases an announcement: "Keep eyes here"
Mindseye
"There are so many games": Legendary dev behind GTA 3, GTA 4, GTA 5 and many more says the industry needs to "get smarter" about what players want
Posing with a rifle in the Fallout 76 Ghoul update
Fallout 76's art director "had to fight really hard" so Bethesda would make the MMO's map bigger than Skyrim's