Inhabit a deeply-simulated science fantasy world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Build a character from over a hundred mutations and cybernetics. The award-winning sandbox roguelike & RPG full of robots, deep lore, and sentient plants.
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Prices
Each in the currency that store quoted — not converted: the gap between two rows is the publisher's pricing, not an exchange rate.
Discounts
Every price cut of more than 20% we have observed, in each market that quoted one, with this game's chart position on either side of it. These are episodes, not a model: a sale is one event, and one event cannot tell you what the next one will do.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 2.11/day in the week to Aug 4 → 5.29/day in the week after.
For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 26 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 7 places towards #1, and the 2,402 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.
Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.
About
Caves of Qud is a Hugo Award-winning science fantasy roguelike epic steeped in retrofuturism, deep simulation, and swathes of sentient plants. Come inhabit a living, breathing world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Decide: is it a dying earth, or is it on the verge of rebirth?
Do anything and everything. Caves of Qud is a deeply simulated, biologically diverse, richly cultured world.
DEEP PHYSICAL SIMULATION — 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.
FULLY SIMULATED CREATURES — 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.
DYNAMIC FACTION SYSTEM — Pursue allegiances with over 70 factions: apes, crabs, trees, robots, and highly entropic beings, just to name a few.
RICHLY DETAILED SCIENCE FANTASY SETTING — Over fifteen years of worldbuilding have led to a rich, weird, labyrinthine, one-of-a-kind storyworld, layered on top of the simulation, all for you to explore. Live and drink, friend.
TACTICAL GAMEPLAY — Turn-based, sandbox exploration and combat offers as many solutions as you and your mutations, implants, artifacts, and skills are creative enough to invent.
RPG ELEMENTS — Quests, NPCs, villages, historic sites; some dynamic and some handwritten, interwoven to produce a transportative RPG experience.
ATMOSPHERIC ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK — Over two hours of otherworldly music to delve to.
Caves of Qud has one of the most expressive character creators of all time.
Play the role of a mutant indigenous to the salt-spangled dunes and jungles of Qud, or play a true kin descendant from one of the few remaining eco-domes — the toxic arboreta of Ekuemekiyye, the ice-sheathed arcology of Ibul, or the crustal mortars of Yawningmoon.
Build your character out of:
Over 70 mutations — outfit yourself with wings, two heads, four arms, flaming hands, teleportation, the power to clone yourself…
Dozens of cybernetic implants (and more to find as treasure) — night vision, translucent skin, carbide fists, spring-loaded ankle tendons…
24 castes and kits from across the social order of Qud and beyond Moghra’yi, the Great Salt Desert
Too overwhelmed to build a character from scratch? Choose one of 9 preset characters and start your adventure right away. Then return to character creation when you are ready.
Play one of four modes:
CLASSIC — Like other traditional roguelikes, this mode has permadeath, meaning you lose your character when you die. Extremely challenging even for experts.
ROLEPLAY — Play it like an RPG. Save your progress at checkpoints located in settlements.
WANDER — Focus on exploration. Most creatures will not attack you, you don’t gain experience by killing, but you DO gain experience by discovering new locations and treating with legendary creatures.
DAILY — One chance with a fixed character and world seed. How long will you survive?
After 9 years of continuous development and frequent updates, Caves of Qud has finally reached its 1.0 release! Here are some highlights of what's been added for 1.0:
The last leg of the main quest
The new, fully graphical UI
Hundreds of visual & sound effects
Lots of polish & stability
Caves of Qud is a project of epic proportions that's been in development for over fifteen years, since 2007. It began as the science fantasy roguelike dream of co-creators Jason Grinblat and Brian Bucklew, who released the first beta in 2010. Since then, it's accrued a few more contributors who have enriched the project by helping to add visual effects, sound effects, an original soundtrack, a new UI, new game systems, new lore, and half a world of content. Caves of Qud has grown into a wild garden of emergent narrative, where a handwritten story weaves a path through rich physical, social, and historical simulations. The result is a hybrid handcrafted and procedurally-generated world that's alive in a way few games are.
Add-ons
Each DLC is estimated with the same model as a game, then summed — a modeled figure, not reported DLC sales.
Sums Steam only; GOG, Nintendo publish no volume signal, so the true total is higher by an unknown amount.
| Store | Price | Audience | Score | Chart | Est. revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SteamYou are here | $29.99 | 12.7Kreviews | 95% | — | $12.1M |
| $23.99−20% | 297ratings | 80% | — | not modelled | |
Updates
Build ids and update times come straight from Steam's PICS — the same source SteamDB reads. Patch history grows as we record new builds.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 947 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
It provides an enjoyable experience for a while, but for the sort of game its trying to be (a supposedly infinitely replayable roguelike) I find myself being left disappointed. Here's a couple of my main criticisms: There is a weird lack of balance in character creation, you can choose between Truekin and Mutant. Mutant gets access to mutations, and Truekin gets access to Bionics. In the early game, bionics are rare, hard to install, and not super powerful even when you get into nitty gritty combinations. Mutations are powerful, but somewhat random. In the late game, bionics can give you access to a couple of things mutations can't, and you can eventually break the game enough to get mutations on your Truekin, and the inverse is not the case for Mutants (barring body-swapping shenanigans). So basically the trade-off for Truekin to Mutant is having a higher top end build for the cost of a (significantly) lower starting point. EXCEPT for the fact that you can completely outscale the game with any build anyway due to my next criticism. The game feels as though it is designed to be broken by the player, which is typically a fantastic feeling in roguelikes, hell, that's the whole reason to play a lot of them (like Noita or Catacylsm). You find a random combination that opens up the harder and more exciting elements of the game, which in turn lets you find more random combinations, etc. etc. Except once you learn CoQ, you will realise that you can break the game relatively early in the exact same way every single time, resulting in almost identical top-end items, and worst of all, the actual method of doing so is CRIMINALLY BORING. The method I'm referring to is using cloning solution to make an infinite trader farm with for Polygel. You can spend 5-10 hours doing this and beat the game from the inventory menu rather than engaging in anything approaching risk/reward. You can tell players 'just don't do it then' until you're blue in the face, but when this is how newer players are told to break the game every single time they ask for advice, they do it, and then they immediately lose the run they grinded for 10+hrs to achieve because they didn't learn certain fundamentals, don't be surprised when they close the game and leave a bad review. Even for experienced players, this is just the most efficient way to get to achieve anything you want in the game. So yes, it's a trap, but it's always going to be a tempting one until they decide to actually do something about it. I brought this up to a dev in their discord when they patched a similar but far more interesting (imo) exploit that allowed the same thing but with less tedium, and they accused me of being 'hostile' because I disagreed with their patching one without the other, and more or less ignored the point I was making in favour of the least charitable interpretation they could muster. That brings me to my final criticism: the development. I have been following this game for quite a while now. All I've seen are bugfixes. I see no indication that they understand or are willing to fix the core of the game, because they act to positive criticism with hostility. It can be fun, don't get me wrong, especially when you're learning the game. But had I known all this going in, I don't think I would have purchased the game.
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Genres
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English
| $29.99 |
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Matched by title — a reused name can pair the wrong games. * is a critic aggregate. Prices and positions are each store's United States storefront; Epic charts worldwide. Audience and Score too, except Steam's, which is worldwide.
Hours played at review time, across 951 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Caves of Qud has easily become one of my favorite games and I place its complexity and amazing gameplay up there with Zomboid (personally even above it). If you can look past the art-style (some people really care about visuals), its an incredibly DEEP game featuring procedural world generation and thousands of ways to play. The game is incredibly complex, has a ton of lore, different builds, playstyles, challenges, etc. I don't know many people that have actually beat the game and they still love it. With ~170 hours at the time of writing this review, I haven't even gotten past the second or third main mission with the basic start. It is very much a knowledge based game, you're going to die, a LOT. But each death will teach you something new about the world and you will be more cautious about it next time. Qud can be incredibly unfair at times but with enough knowledge and creativity, you can unfair back and break the game in some pretty fun ways. You can pretty much do whatever you want if you can think of it and, if not, there's a mod for that. My biggest recommendation is to play the game how you find most enjoyable, not the way its "meant" to be played! Don't like permadeath? Turn it off. Wish you could save a bit more often? Turn on the save scum (quick save) feature! Just want to explore the world and build? Get some mods and play in the role-play mode. Create your perfect character and experience the weird world of Qud. Per tradition of reviews, most people share their favorite random but cool experience they've had. Here's mine: I was playing as an artificer/grenadier and explored a random cave that had plenty of mines laying around. I found some cloning draught (extremely op) in a vial and put it in my pocket. I also happened to have stepped on a mine and blew up :) However, according to the event log (order of events is a bit fuzzy), I blew up, died, and the vial shattered which ended up cloning me as it fell on my body. Qud gave me control of the new me and I was able to loot my old body and continue my adventure (I blew up a few steps later because I was greedy instead of just leaving the cave).
Caves of Qud is my favourite game that I've never beaten. I mean that sincerely. It's also maybe my favourite traditional Rogue-like. I clocked a lot of hours in DCSS back on Webtiles... but Qud, just scratches that itch and goes completely beyond. The prose is absolutely captivating, there are certain descriptions of things that make me frustrated with just how beautiful and different they approach language! The character systems and skill systems are so freeform, I love getting to make My Little Dude, no matter what fancies I have, or what I happen to find and lean into. There's a story. I've seen... I want to say, half of it? Maybe? I genuinely don't know. I tend to play on the classic/permadeath mode, slowly mastering sections of the game, knowing what risks I can and can't get away with. The story isn't mandatory, per-se? It's there, it's very interesting if you want to engage with it, but Qud has a lot of randomly generated elements that form around the crystalizing pre-set structures and plot-beats, so you can really just make your own fun and explore. Touch-and-go with what you've learned, what miniature goals you set for yourself, the discoveries you make. If you know what you're doing, I don't think there are many, if any true hard-lockouts on progression. If you know what things you need to do, or have ways to access things, I think you can more or less speedrun Qud? Executing it is another story though, the game is difficult, it WILL put you in your place if you don't respect the danger it can throw at you and what risks enemies can pose. Qud might not be for everyone. You really need to have patience, be okay with dying, be comfortable with taking your time and enjoy the process of learning as much as the rush of victory. But if you like freedom, unique possibilities, and enjoy traditional Rogue-style games, please PLEASE give Qud a try. And do yourself a favor and read things, be inquisitive, engage with the story it presents you at least once. It's worth it. Edit: I beat it through Roleplay mode. It's still a big challenge and investment that way. I saw something. I need to go back. I was a fool to think this would be one and done.
>3rd rust-well >descend into the pits below >going good, found a shotgun at red rock >large rock deep down >"always fear large rocks." >You died. You were killed by a bloody slumberling. yeah, I love this game. Pirated it 100 hours ago. had to buy it, not even done. Live and drink, traveler.
This game takes me back to playing the original Fallout. I remember the sense of discovery I experienced playing the original Fallout, and how I had never played anything like it before. It blew me away. Playing this game feels the same way to me, and this is special because it's been ~30 years now since Fallout came out! Where modern Bethesda-era Fallout has prioritized appealing to a broader audience by focusing on "blowing ♥♥♥♥ up", the developers of Caves of Qud have gone to great lengths to build a deeply interactive world where you can do things you have never done before in a game. This goes a long way to immerse you into a world that truly feels unique and alien... providing a novel experience in a sea of games that are doing largely the same thing today. This is something that I cannot praise highly enough, and I wish there were more developers out there making art like this. I also want to highlight that the extensive controller support for a game that most developers would not even [i]attempt[/i] to support on controller is something I highly appreciate, and would likely have avoided this game if it weren't for their dedication to that support. It was surely key to their recent launch of Qud on the Switch as well. Congrats to the team for putting out an amazing game. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
This game was difficult to get into based on the sheer amount of things you can do without knowing for sure where to go first. CoQ does not hold your hand, but it does give a small tutorial and easy(er) beginner quests to be a gentle nudge in the right direction. I tried this game out about a year ago on my steam deck and didn't like it... now I've put in about 100 hours over the last two weeks on my Mac. I adore RPGs and this one is a masterclass in choosing your own adventure as your own unique character with different abilities and mods to explore. I think tinkering is so much fun. Another bonus is how many amazing mods there are for this game. The possibilities are endless. Right now I'm starting a settlement and look to recruit people to live there. Give this one a chance, it's so worth it. Easily one of my favorite games ever and I've only scratched the surface. This game is HARD but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I went into this game knowing absolutely nothing. We are seven hours in at time of review and I still know pretty much nothing. I love it. Things just happen and I try my best to roll with it. I'm sure there's a wiki or some such but I am plenty pleased figuring things out as I go.
Great if you're like me and enjoy running your head into a wall over and over but getting slightly smarter each time
honestly half of the fun u can have with game is spent not playing it but trying to visualise the world and the adventures u just had
The world and characters are a joy to explore and meet. The game's writing tries too hard to be a different flavor of English, but despite that its still very charming if not hard to parse sometimes. I think the game's major flaw, and what continually makes me bounce off it, is that it doesn't care much about user experience. I wouldn't call it's design actively hostile, just uncaring. Settings menu and keybinds are clunky and annoying to assign, and the initial keyboard layout is atrocious. Your mouse is also mostly useless, whereas a game like Tales of Maj Eyal can be played entirely with mouse and be a very straightforward experience. The game also obscures a lot of information from the player which only ruins the complexity of its systems; Two creatures can be average difficulty with the move bite and one will two shot you and the other will deal a tenth of your health bar. Immediately I'm met with the fact the game is giving me unreliable information, and I don't think that's a fun or interesting mechanic in traditional roguelikes. Everything I wanted from this game (A rich world to explore, tense survival mechanics, diverse builds, etc.) Has been done better by other traditional roguelikes. The game Wayward has much more mature survival and crafting systems, and Tales of Maj Eyal is better in almost every aspect including writing. The game tries to do everything. A massive open world, cooking and crafting, dungeons, complex questlines, all of these amazing ideas just end up as bloat to the experience. Wandering the generated world quickly becomes stale (reminds me of Starfield in a lot of ways), and you end up frustrated. When you finally get into some meat and potatoes though, its very hard to assess threats and plan a strategy which is a lot of the fun of a traditional roguelike. Instead of giving me enemy information like skill attack ranges or armor, it wants to tell me the exact makeup of every liquid on screen in a fictional measurement system. Removing this or locking it behind specific powers isn't fun and it literally ruins the game by continually landing you in unwinnable situations that you couldn't have possibly known. This problem occurs because there's no reward for intuition and a lot of the sci-fi elements encroach into the ran-dumb category. Using the low-pixel count graphics as a diagetic experience to witnessing cosmic/eldritch entities is really cool in theory, but the game abuses this aspect to the point where some scenes are literally incomprehensible and you die because you walked forward. A good example being the mimic enemy which is literally just a yellow wall tile texture; If it didn't attack a random plant I'd have never known it was alive. This is fun and interesting the first time it happens, but quickly you begin scanning every new texture because so little can be intuited. This is where the game's clunkiness really rears its ugly head, as you have to click and press look on every tile instead of just hovering over it with your mouse. The layering system of each tile is also still rather rudimentary and annoying to work around. I'll kill a goat on top of a tree (couldn't see it was on top of one in the first place) and because it dies on the tree its corpse is now behind the tree. So, in order to get the goat corpse and butcher it I have to chop down the entire tree over the course of a day because my character just couldn't look behind it. This same problem becomes even more critically annoying when every creature that drops a stack of items will hide the items behind each one. Wanted that iron sword from the snapjaw? Pick up seven random items so you can see it. Ultimately, after trying to get into the game multiple times I'm giving up. Its not worthwhile to invest into the game until I like it. I'm tired of having to force myself around a game's obtuseness to love what's good about it; It should just be good from the start. And with 20 years in the oven there's no excuse for it still being in this state. I've owned the game for a long time, and it's definitely improved in a lot of the aspects I talk about here, so perhaps a major update will address some of these problems. However, I get the sense the game is very intentionally designed and I don't think the kind of information I want is something the developers want to give out. It's supposed to be vague, just like a lot of the writing, and on some level I can respect that. But I don't want to play it.
Active players
Estimated daily and monthly active players (DAU/MAU) modeled from peak concurrency.
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
Players also reviewed
The games this title's players most often review too — audience affinity.
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