Games Like Hades with Shops: 10 Picks for 2026
This piece from the team at Tyrian Games exists because we keep seeing the same question in indie roguelite Discords and Reddit threads. "Games like Hades but with an actual shop you run." Hades has vendors. Hades doesn't have a shop you operate. If what hooked you on Hades was the combat plus the between-run progression, but you wanted the between-run time to be more interactive than buying relics from Nyx, this list is for you.
TL;DR
- Hades has vendors but no operational shop; the subgenre that combines narrative roguelite combat with real shop management is narrower than it looks.
- Closest matches in 2026: Moonlighter 2, Cult of the Lamb, Potionomics, and HAWKER in September 2026.
- The pattern only works when both halves are genuinely developed; thin shop layers disappoint fans of the idea.
- Hades II launched full release in September 2025 and arrived on PS5 and Xbox in April 2026, so "Hades-likes" is now a bigger audience than ever before.
- If you've played the four at the top of this list and still want more, the piece ends with a branching map toward pure shop sims or pure narrative roguelites.
Why the combination is rare
Hades combined run-based combat with a narrative hub in a way that made people imagine a third thing: a shop layer inside the hub. The game itself never implemented that. Supergiant deliberately kept the House of Hades simple. You meet characters, you accept upgrades, you start the next run. The hub is about relationships, not transactions.
When a game tries to add real shop management on top of Hades-style run structure, something usually has to give. Either the combat suffers because too much time goes into the shop, or the shop is so shallow it's decorative rather than operational. The ten games below either nailed the balance, came close enough to be worth playing, or are shipping soon from teams with the history to attempt it.
The list
1. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault (Digital Sun, Early Access November 2025). The cleanest current match. You run a real shop with supply chains, customer moods, pricing psychology, and upgrade trees. You crawl dungeons that have the run-based feel of Hades. PC Gamer's Early Access coverage described it as "cozy with a heavy helping of Hades," which is a precise tag. The first major Early Access update landed in March 2026 with a new combat path and new weapons. If you want Hades-plus-shop in one sentence, this is it.
2. HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026). Our game. The grimdark version of the same formula. You run a mobile caravan across outposts in the ruined Duchy of Ysward. You crawl procedural ruins. You owe a debt to Ankou, the Breton folk figure of death, that ticks down across thirty in-game days. The combat inverts at night, which is our specific twist: your abilities surge in shadow and fade in light. Shorter runs than Hades, longer shop phase, more direct deadline pressure. We built it because we wanted to see what happened when the Hades-with-shops idea went somewhere less cozy. Wishlist on Steam.
3. Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster, 2022). Not a shop strictly, but the closest non-shop implementation of the "manage a hub between roguelite runs" idea. You run a cult, which has economic and social layers that behave like a business. Shopkeeping sold to meaning-seeking followers. The runs are tight, the cult management is surprisingly deep, and the tone lives on the cozy-grim axis that makes Cult of the Lamb one of the more unexpected crossover hits of the last five years.
4. Potionomics (Voracious Games, 2022). The shop half of what you're looking for, paired with turn-based card battles rather than action roguelite combat. If what you liked about Hades was the character relationships and between-run progression, and you don't mind losing the real-time combat feel, Potionomics delivers the shop side more completely than anything else on this list. The haggling minigame is genuinely interesting even after twenty hours, which is rare in this genre.
5. Moonlighter (Digital Sun, 2018). The original. Simpler than the sequel, plays like a 2018 Zelda-like with a shop bolted in. The shop layer is solid but less deep than Moonlighter 2. Worth playing if you want to see where the genre came from, and you'll understand why a lot of Hades fans discovered Moonlighter late and felt like they'd missed an obvious thing.
6. Graveyard Keeper (Lazy Bear Games, 2018). Darker than Hades and less run-based, but fits the "operate a business between expeditions into danger" pattern. The business is a medieval graveyard and the morality is immediately questionable. Long runtime, cozy-grim tone. Useful on this list as proof that the Hades-plus-shop idea can go dark without losing its audience.
7. UnderMine (Thorium, 2020). Pure roguelite with a persistent shop hub, full release August 2020 after Early Access in 2019. You play a peasant recruited to mine cursed artefacts for the king. Between runs you expand a village shop and unlock NPCs. The combat is tighter than Moonlighter's. The shop is thinner. Closest to Hades' actual run structure of anything on this list, and a useful halfway point if Moonlighter felt too shop-heavy and Hades too shop-light.
8. Dead Cells (Motion Twin, 2018, still updated). Dead Cells is a pure roguelite, but its hub has been steadily expanded with more NPCs and more transaction-like interactions over its long content runway. If you already own Dead Cells, the more recent updates add more shop-adjacent content than the original release had. Not a true shop game, but the hub is deeper than Hades', and the combat is some of the best in the roguelite space.
9. Dave the Diver (Mintrocket, 2023). You run a sushi restaurant by night and free-dive by day. Not Hades-like in combat style, because Dave is stealthy and reactive rather than action-heavy, but the "layered businesses on top of run-based action" pattern is identical. Massive commercial success. Worth playing to see what systems-stacking looks like when fully developed.
10. Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games, 2020). Not a roguelite. Listed because a surprising number of Hades fans tell us Spiritfarer scratched the same "hub with characters you care about" itch in a completely different frame. The "shop" in Spiritfarer is your boat, which you upgrade to serve spirits on their way to the afterlife. Hades without the dice roll, plus grief. If what made you love Hades was Achilles, not the dash-strike, this is the game.
A first-hand Hawker example
One of the decisions we made in Hawker specifically because of Hades was to make the caravan feel like a hub you returned to rather than a loading screen. In Hades, you get excited to come back to the House because Zagreus has new dialogue with every character. That's a narrative achievement, not a design one, and it's hard to reproduce without Supergiant's writing room. So we took a different angle. In Hawker, the caravan literally moves. Every time you complete a day, your caravan has rolled a short way along the arc from its starting position toward Keridann. The hub you return to has new neighbours, a new view from the stalls, a different shape of the landscape out past the fire. The "return" feels like progress even when the narrative beats are quiet, because the setting changes underneath you. This is our cover for not being Supergiant. It's also a structural idea we stole from Hades fans who complained online that the House never really changed, and we think the critique is correct.
What to play if this subgenre is too small for you
If ten games doesn't feel like enough and you've already played most of these, there are four reasonable branches. Pure shop sims like Potion Craft and Travellers Rest give up roguelite combat entirely but deepen the shop side to a degree none of these ten do. Pure narrative roguelites like Slay the Spire, Monster Train, or Loop Hero give up the shop layer entirely but push narrative density further than any of these ten manage. Base-management roguelites beyond Cult of the Lamb, including Darkest Dungeon 2 and Backpack Battles, approach the "hub you care about" problem from yet another angle. And then there's the option of waiting for HAWKER in September 2026 if the specific blend of grimdark plus shop plus roguelite is the one you're after.
FAQ
Does Hades 1 have a shop?
Hades has vendors but not an operational shop. You buy relics from Nyx, weapons from Achilles' conversations, and upgrades from the Mirror of Night. None of these are a shop you run. They're characters you relate to. The distinction matters because games like Moonlighter 2 and HAWKER have both vendors (for you) and shops (that you run).
Does Hades II add a shop layer?
No. Hades II launched in full on 25 September 2025 and came to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 14 April 2026. Its hub is the Crossroads, which expands character interactions beyond the House of Hades, but doesn't add operational shopkeeping mechanics. If you liked Hades II and wanted a shop to actually operate, you're looking for the same combination this article covers.
What is the best Hades-with-shops game in 2026?
Moonlighter 2 if you want the complete package. HAWKER if you want a darker, more time-pressured version in September 2026. Potionomics if the shop is what matters and you don't need real-time combat.
Is Cult of the Lamb a roguelite?
Yes. The combat runs are true roguelite runs with permadeath and persistent upgrades. The cult-management layer in the hub is the game's innovation on the formula.
Is HAWKER a narrative roguelite?
Yes. HAWKER uses Ink-driven dynamic dialogue and a branching narrative that shifts based on player choices across the thirty-day arc. The narrative is as load-bearing as the combat, which is what puts it in the Hades lineage rather than the pure-shop-sim lineage.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps to the Day 7 demo line. We don't spoil past Ramzel's defeat or the train to Keridann in any of these articles, and nothing in this piece goes past the systems-and-shape level of Hawker's opening week.
Closing
The Hades-with-shops subgenre is real but small. The four names at the top of this list (Moonlighter 2, HAWKER, Cult of the Lamb, Potionomics) represent most of the current serious attempts at the combination. If you've played those and want more, you'll need to broaden into adjacent shapes.
Or wait until September.
Next read: Narrative roguelites after Hades: what the genre is doing next, or Hades for players who loved the runs.