Games Like Undertale with Roguelite Elements: 10 Picks

Undertale, by Toby Fox in 2015, isn't a roguelite. It's a linear RPG. But its character voice, where every NPC feels specific and every dialogue beat matters, set the standard that narrative roguelites after 2015 have had to meet. If you want that Undertale warmth and specificity in a game structured as a roguelite, this list from the team at Tyrian Games is the shortlist. The specificity of Undertale's voice is what makes it feel different from every other RPG of its era, and the games below try to capture that quality in roguelite form.

TL;DR

Undertale is a linear RPG, not a roguelite, but its character-voice approach has shaped a generation of narrative roguelites.
Closest fits include Hades, Deltarune's ongoing episodic release, Omori, and Griftlands.
HAWKER is listed as a character-voiced roguelite in a different emotional register.
Undertale's influence shows up in genres far beyond RPGs, and the "every NPC specific" approach is now the default for narrative-focused indies.
The list is weighted toward games where characters are written rather than generated, though a handful of procedural-character games appear because they handle specificity well.

The ten

1. Hades (Supergiant Games, 2020). The Undertale of narrative roguelites. Every character is memorable, every dialogue beat matters, and the compounding-across-runs structure is Supergiant's answer to Toby Fox's linear narrative density.

2. Deltarune (Toby Fox, ongoing episodic release). Not a roguelite, but Toby Fox's follow-up. Chapters are released episodically, with Chapters 3 and 4 launching in 2025. Listed for completeness because Undertale fans will want to know where the direct successor is.

3. Omori (Omocat, 2020). Not a roguelite, but shares Undertale's emotional register. Listed for Undertale fans who want more of that specific voice in a different shape.

4. Griftlands (Klei Entertainment, 2021). Card roguelite with three distinct protagonists, each with a full Undertale-flavoured character arc. The negotiation dialogue is genuinely character-specific, and the game feels written rather than designed.

5. Wildermyth (Worldwalker Games, 2019). Tactics RPG with procedurally generated character stories. The procedural generation produces specificity rather than flattening characters into types, which is the Undertale quality in a different form.

6. In Other Waters (Jump Over The Age, 2020). Text-driven exploration game with deep character voice. Not a roguelite but a sibling in tonal commitment.

7. Citizen Sleeper (Jump Over The Age, 2022). Dice-placement narrative game with Undertale-adjacent character specificity. The citizens of the Eye feel individual, and the game's emotional register is warm even in its bleaker moments.

8. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Love-de-Lic, Toybox, Western release 2020). Undertale's spiritual ancestor, rereleased for modern platforms. A direct line from Moon to Undertale is easy to trace, and the Western release was long overdue.

9. Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster, 2022). Character-voiced roguelite with cult-management overlay. The follower characters have personality traits that emerge through small interactions, which is an Undertale-adjacent approach even if the tone is different.

10. HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026). Grimdark-voiced rather than Undertale-warm, but with the same focus on specific characters. Every NPC in Ysward has a written voice, a memory of past runs, and a set of reactions that depend on player choices. Different emotional register from Undertale. Same commitment to specificity. Wishlist on Steam.

Why Undertale's approach is hard to replicate

Four reasons the Undertale character-voice approach is rarer than its influence would suggest.

Writing cost. Every NPC in Undertale has specific dialogue across multiple encounters. Toby Fox wrote it all. Studios with teams often struggle to maintain a single voice across dozens of writers, which means specificity can blur into house style rather than character.

Tonal discipline. Undertale keeps its tonal palette narrow. Humour, warmth, occasional sharp edges. Games that try to replicate this often overshoot into either pure comedy or pure sentimentality.

Mechanical integration. Undertale's character voice is reinforced by combat, not separated from it. The FIGHT, ACT, ITEM, MERCY menu is part of how characters are written. Most games put dialogue in one system and combat in another, which means the character voice can't touch the combat in the same way.

Genre expectation. Roguelites expect repetition and mechanical optimisation. Characters that feel written rather than generated fight against the genre's grain. Hades worked around this with thousands of scripted lines. Most studios don't have that budget.

A first-hand Hawker example

One of the Undertale lessons we took most seriously in Hawker was the one about specificity versus completeness. Toby Fox doesn't have five lines for every possible scenario. He has one line for the specific moment. That one line is doing enormous work because it's the only line. If he'd written five lines, each line would dilute the others.

Our first Hawker NPC dialogue pass over-wrote. Every character had five or six possible lines per interaction, sampled randomly. The effect was blur. Testers didn't remember any specific line, because the next session would produce different ones.

We rebuilt the major NPC lines with Undertale's approach in mind. One line per specific state. No alternates. The line that plays when you return at night with an empty cart is the line. The line that plays when you sell cheap to a customer who looks tired is the line. Testers immediately started quoting lines back to us. That's the Undertale quality. A game is memorable when its lines are specific enough to be quoted, not when it has enough alternates to avoid repetition. Repetition is fine if the lines are worth repeating. We owe Toby Fox that design principle, and we've tried to apply it through the entire caravan's NPC roster.

FAQ

Is Undertale a roguelite?

No. It's a linear RPG. The list is for players who want the Undertale character-voice approach in roguelite structure.

Is Deltarune fully released?

No. Toby Fox releases chapters episodically, with Chapters 3 and 4 launching in 2025. A full 1.0 window hasn't been confirmed at the time of writing.

What's the most Undertale-adjacent roguelite?

Hades by a wide margin. It inherited Undertale's approach to making every NPC feel specific.

Is HAWKER like Undertale?

Not tonally. Grimdark rather than warm. Similar in that characters feel specific and aren't generic vendors.

What made Undertale special?

A specific combination of character voice, mechanical integration, and tonal discipline. Also Toby Fox did nearly everything himself, which produced a consistency that team-made games struggle to match.

Why Undertale's specificity keeps getting copied

A brief note on what other games take from Undertale and why. Toby Fox's writing discipline has influenced the indie scene in ways that go beyond direct RPG descendants. Hades inherited his commitment to character-specific dialogue. Celeste inherited his willingness to use character voice for emotional work rather than exposition. Citizen Sleeper inherited his treatment of minor characters as worth naming.

The influence is wider than acknowledged. If you play enough indie narrative games you'll notice that the register shifted somewhere around 2015-2016, which is when Undertale's influence started filtering through. Games written before Undertale's shipping often treated NPC dialogue as functional rather than character-specific. Games written after often treat even one-line encounters as opportunities for character. The shift is real and it's traceable.

HAWKER owes the shift. Our NPC dialogue is more careful than it would have been if Undertale hadn't raised the bar, and every designer working in narrative-heavy indie today should acknowledge the debt.

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.

For readers who want to go deeper

A closing note for curious readers. Every category above has subcategories we didn't fully explore in this piece, because an individual article can't be everything. If a specific entry hooked you, most of the games in this piece have dedicated communities, Subreddits, Discord servers, and developer blogs worth finding. The wider indie gaming press, including Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, and Polygon, often does deeper coverage on individual games than a cross-category list can.

For players using this piece as a buying guide, the sales cadence on Steam is predictable. Summer and winter sales are the biggest. Smaller themed sales happen throughout the year. Most of the games mentioned have dropped to 50 percent off or more at least once across 2024 to 2026. Wishlisting the games that interest you is how you'll catch the right sale for the right game. Wishlist HAWKER on Steam while you're at it if the grimdark shopkeeper roguelite angle interests you.

For developers reading this piece, the practical takeaway is that the category rewards specific positioning more than broad appeal. Every successful entry above knows exactly who it's for. Studios that try to hit multiple audiences with a single game usually hit none of them. Pick a specific shape, commit to it, and ship the version that audience wants rather than the version you hope will please everyone.

Spoiler wall

Everything above keeps Hawker at the level of writing approach. The caravan, the specific-voice dialogue system, and the memory-across-runs structure are all shown in our trailers. Specific NPC names past the demo boundary sit behind this wall.

Closing

Undertale raised the bar for character voice in games. The ten above each apply that standard to a different format or tone. Pick based on whether you want warmth, darkness, or just more memorable NPCs in a roguelite shell.

Add HAWKER to your Steam wishlist.

Next read: Narrative roguelites after Hades.