Games Like Hollow Knight but Roguelite: 10 Picks
Hollow Knight is a metroidvania. Its fans often want the same atmosphere and combat feel in a roguelite structure without losing the tone. This list, from the team at Tyrian Games, covers the ten best attempts at that combination across 2018 to 2026, ordered by how close each comes to capturing what made Hallownest work.
TL;DR
- Hollow Knight's signatures are dark atmosphere, precise combat, and patient exploration in a dying world.
- Roguelite games that capture these include Dead Cells, Hades II, Curse of the Dead Gods, and HAWKER in September 2026.
- The combination of Hollow Knight's tone with run-based structure is rarer than you'd think, and most attempts compromise on one of the three signatures.
- A handful of non-roguelite Hollow Knight descendants are included because their tone is closer than any roguelite's.
- Team Cherry's Silksong remains a metroidvania, not a roguelite, so it doesn't feature on this list directly.
The ten
1. Dead Cells (Motion Twin, 2018, still updated). The closest combat feel. Precise, deliberate, rewarding. Less atmospheric than Hollow Knight but the closest roguelite match for the feel of fighting in Hallownest. Long content runway, with new biomes and weapons added through 2024, and the "parry this, punish that" rhythm is almost identical.
2. Blasphemous (The Game Kitchen, 2019). Not a roguelite but metroidvania with grimdark atmosphere close to Hollow Knight's. Listed because the atmosphere match is so strong that many Hollow Knight fans who try roguelites bounce off the list and play Blasphemous instead. Blasphemous 2 in 2023 continues the series.
3. Hades II (Supergiant Games, full release September 2025, PS5/Xbox April 2026). Roguelite with tight combat and strong atmosphere. Brighter than Hollow Knight but mechanically among the strongest roguelites ever made, and the witchcraft combat pattern has more in common with Hollow Knight's deliberate strikes than Zagreus' dash-strike did.
4. HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026). Our game. Dark roguelite with combat that inverts at night. Not metroidvania-shaped, but an atmospheric match for players who loved Hallownest. Breton folklore, ruined Duchy setting, thirty-day debt to Ankou. Wishlist on Steam.
5. Curse of the Dead Gods (Passtech Games, 2021). Dark temple roguelite with a light-and-shadow mechanic. Hollow Knight's atmosphere with run-based structure, and the corruption system creates a stress-like pressure that Hollow Knight players tend to recognise from Hallownest's atmosphere.
6. Death's Door (Acid Nerve, 2021). Not a roguelite, not metroidvania, but shares Hollow Knight's tone and combat rhythm. Worth playing specifically for the combat, which feels like Hollow Knight with a narrower move set and a more focused pace.
7. Loop Hero (Four Quarters, 2021). Unusual roguelite with dark fantasy atmosphere. Shape is nothing like Hollow Knight. The tonal register is similar and the sense of being the last small thing in a collapsing world is strong.
8. Rogue Legacy 2 (Cellar Door Games, 2022). Metroidvania-roguelite hybrid. Lighter than Hollow Knight but structurally close. If the metroidvania half of Hollow Knight was what hooked you more than the tone, Rogue Legacy 2 is the hybrid to play.
9. Skul: The Hero Slayer (SouthPAW Games, 2021). Action roguelite with dark fantasy tone. Faster-paced than Hollow Knight, with a charming twist (you play a skeleton swapping heads as classes) that gives each run a distinct feel.
10. Nine Sols (Red Candle Games, 2024). Chinese-influenced metroidvania with Hollow-Knight-adjacent combat. Not roguelite but tonally connected, and worth playing on the strength of its combat alone.
What Hollow Knight fans actually want
Four qualities keep coming up when Hollow Knight fans describe what they're looking for in roguelites.
Precise combat with meaningful parries and punishing mistakes. Hades II nails this. Dead Cells does too. Curse of the Dead Gods approaches it. A lot of roguelites have combat that's satisfying in the moment but doesn't require the deliberate pacing Hallownest insists on.
Atmosphere built through absence rather than events. Hollow Knight is quiet. Most roguelites are loud. The quietest options on this list are Death's Door and HAWKER, and both lean on ambient sound and empty spaces rather than on constant enemy pressure.
Worldbuilding you can find rather than being told. Hollow Knight's Hallownest reveals itself through room names, enemy designs, character silhouettes, and the few lines you can elicit from NPCs. Roguelites that replicate this include Risk of Rain 2's monster logs and HAWKER's tablet codex, both of which ask the player to piece things together.
A protagonist who feels small in a big place. The Knight is tiny in Hallownest. Most roguelite protagonists are power fantasies. Games that keep the smallness include Tunic and Hollow Knight itself, with Hawker aiming for the same feeling through the physical smallness of the caravan against the open landscapes.
A first-hand Hawker example
One of the reasons we keep coming back to Hollow Knight in Hawker conversations is that Team Cherry solved a pacing problem most roguelites don't even attempt. Hollow Knight lets the player sit in silence. You walk into a room. Nothing happens. You walk out. That room gave you nothing except atmosphere. Most roguelites fill every room with combat or loot because they're afraid of empty space.
Our first Hawker prototype made the same mistake. Every scavenging location had at least one enemy, one loot node, one skill-check. Playtesters found it exhausting. In mid-2025 we added what we now call "still rooms," scavenging spaces where nothing happens except the light changing and a piece of ambient sound. No enemies. No loot. Just atmosphere. A few of these per day.
The tester feedback changed immediately. People started reporting that the world "felt bigger," even though we hadn't added a single meter of map. What we'd added was negative space. That's the Hollow Knight lesson. Empty rooms make the full ones feel important. We owe Team Cherry the design budget we saved by not needing to populate every location with content.
FAQ
Is Hollow Knight a roguelite?
No. Hollow Knight is a metroidvania with non-roguelite progression. The progression is persistent, not run-based, and death returns you to the last bench rather than resetting a run.
Will Hollow Knight: Silksong be a roguelite?
No. Silksong is a metroidvania like the original. Team Cherry has confirmed the structure in multiple development updates over the years.
What is the best roguelite for Hollow Knight fans?
Dead Cells for combat feel. Curse of the Dead Gods for atmosphere. HAWKER in September 2026 for dark atmosphere plus shop management. Hades II if you want the current mechanical peak of the narrative roguelite shape.
Are there any metroidvania-roguelite hybrids?
Rogue Legacy 2 and Skul blend the two. Most games pick one or the other because the design tensions between exploration-based progression and run-based progression pull in opposite directions.
Is there anything like Hollow Knight's quiet pacing in roguelites?
Rare. Most roguelites are built around constant pressure. HAWKER's "still rooms" and the quieter moments in Curse of the Dead Gods' deeper temples are the closest current attempts. Team Cherry themselves remain the masters of quiet pacing in this tonal register.
The Silksong question
Worth addressing directly, because it hangs over every Hollow Knight conversation. Team Cherry has been working on Silksong for years. The game's reveal in 2019 promised a 2020 release. It slipped. Updates have been sporadic but consistent, and Team Cherry's periodic development news has confirmed the game is still in active development. A 2026 release window is plausible but unconfirmed.
The wait has shaped the Hollow Knight fan community in specific ways. Players have replayed the original dozens of times. The modding scene has grown to produce Silksong-adjacent content. The community's patience has been tested but not broken. When Silksong lands, it will land into a fan base more dedicated than almost any indie release has had. Until then, the games in this list are the closest thing available to the Hollow Knight feel, and most of them reward the same kind of careful play the original rewards.
Extended genre notes
Worth naming a few observations about the broader indie gaming landscape this category sits in across 2026. The indie market has grown significantly since 2020, with Steam alone now publishing thousands of titles per year. Discovery is the category's biggest challenge, not production. Most players find new games through a combination of algorithmic recommendation, word of mouth, and curated lists like this one.
The 2026 commercial story for the category favours studios that ship with clear positioning rather than studios that ship as genre-default entries. A game that knows who it's for tends to find its audience even at small scale. A game that hopes to be liked by everyone often ends up being recommended by no-one. HAWKER's positioning (grimdark shopkeeper roguelite, Breton folklore, thirty-day clock) is deliberately narrow because narrow positioning travels better than broad positioning in 2026's crowded indie market.
The audience for this category tends to cross generational lines. Players who grew up on 1990s PC games, players who came in through the 2010s indie boom, and players new to indies through 2020s word-of-mouth are all represented. The category isn't age-coded the way some indie genres are, which means studios can build for breadth rather than specific cohorts.
Practical buying advice
If you're using this list to build a reading-and-playing library, a few practical suggestions. Most of the games mentioned go on Steam sale at least twice a year, often at 50 percent or more off. Adding them to your wishlist and waiting for the next sale is usually the most cost-efficient approach. Many of the older entries are cheap year-round. The newer ones often go on sale first during Steam's summer or winter sales. HAWKER's Early Access price is below the planned full-release price, which is standard indie practice.
If you play on handheld (Steam Deck, Switch 2, ROG Ally) most of the games above run well on these platforms. The category tends to be performance-friendly because the production values prioritise tone over graphical fidelity. This is worth knowing because category fans often play across multiple platforms.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps Hawker at the level of atmosphere and systems. The caravan, the Gwiravon, and the day-night combat inversion are all shown openly in our trailers and store page. Specific late-game atmosphere and the Keridann material sit behind this wall.
Closing
Hollow Knight's specific combination of dark atmosphere and precise combat is rarer than its popularity suggests. The ten games above each capture a piece of it. If you want the full package in one game, replay Hollow Knight. If you want fragments in roguelite form, the list above is your starting shortlist.
Next read: Grimdark indie games in 2026.
Further reading
For related context see what is a shopkeeper roguelite, HAWKER release date and Early Access guide.