Caves of Qud

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Recommended Posted October 17, 2025 on Steam When I first came I across this game, I was taken aback by its reviews on Steam. People seemed to be enamoured, and they described something I had been thinking about for some time. A rich and deep simulation-based rogue-like game. After playing for eighty five hours, I can tell you that the game isn't all that. It does simulate, and the simulation is rather deep, but not so broad. If you're coming here from Dwarf Fortress, then it's worth noting that while there are many similarities, the simulation in this game is fundamentally different and I would say rather shallower. The world's history, like Dwarf Fortress, is generated on each play-through, but there are some inexorable pieces of history and lore to facilitate the main story. That is, there IS a main story, around which world generation revolves. This is rather different from Dwarf Fortress, but not necessarily a detriment. People will tell you that you can do anything in this game, 'even become a chair,' and while that's true, there is some nuance to the claim as is the case with each other game that has made the same claim before. The truth is that while you are free to do as you wish in this game, you are also heavily constrained by the necessities of life in Qud. The fact is, you will need to fight, and there is little other motivation than the completion of quests. So while it's technically possible to take on any other role in this game, the systems are designed for combat and quest completion, anything else is secondary. Ultimately, the game was not what I expected. But I still played it over and over. I believe what sets this game apart from others is its immersion. Every little detail is written in a consistently alien and yet real style. Although the overarching story is the same each time, every play through feels different. You end up caring for your character, and will be devastated when they are brutally killed in a seemingly unavoidable way. You'll then spend time thinking about what happened, grieving, and come to realise it was avoidable. You made a mistake. You forgot something. You weren't careful enough. This game demands so much patience and attention to detail from you. As soon as you become complacent you'll find yourself in an inescapable situation. This is exactly why I've had the game for so many months and only played eighty five hours. I spend a few days playing, and when a particularly cherished character meets their untimely demise, I'll find myself unable to continue playing. The game simply takes so much energy from you, because it demands so much of your attention. In the end, the game is unique. I've not found anything else with such an intricately filled out world and such immersion. It's not the perfect simulator described by many others, but it is definitely worth trying it.
• Recommended Posted October 8, 2025 on Steam Just beat this game for the first time after literally YEARS of attempts. And all I can say is... Wow. This might be my favorite game of all time. Yes, the graphics are what they are, and yes, the learning curve is basically vertical. But if you can haul yourself up it, you will be rewarded with one of the deepest, richest, most fulfilling gaming experiences of your life. The writing is insane / fantastic. The systems are elegant. The theming is immaculate. Play this game. Take it seriously. Put it on your Steam Deck and commune with it while you lounge at night. Thank me later, or not at all, but just play this game. I think you'll like it.
• Recommended Posted July 10, 2025 on Steam Not for me, but I respect it. I’m giving this a thumbs up purely out of appreciation for its scope and ambition. Caves of Qud is wildly imaginative and clearly a labor of love. But ultimately, it didn’t click with me. The procedurally generated nature of the world left things feeling too random. Outside of the hand-crafted zones, much of the game lacked a sense of cohesion or narrative weight. I often felt like I was wandering through noise. Bizarre and fascinating noise, sure, but noise nonetheless. Compare this to something like Kenshi, another brutally difficult open-world RPG for masochists and those who love self punishment. Kenshi’s world is meticulously hand-crafted, every ruin and biome telling a story, every journey feeling grounded. Despite having no quests, Kenshi manages to feel more alive, more purposeful as if you're carving your own story out of a world that exists with or without you. By contrast, Caves of Qud does have quests and narrative threads, but they often feel at odds with the randomness of the world they inhabit. That dissonance made it harder for me to immerse myself. It’s strange to have a specific goal in a place that often feels like it was stitched together by an alien dream machine. That said, I get why people love this game. It’s deep, strange, and full of potential. I just wish its world felt more intentional.
• Recommended Posted August 6, 2025 on Steam Caves of Qud is an easy recommend from me but there's a couple qualifiers. If you enjoy experimenting with stats and character builds along with piecing together your own narrative based on emergent gameplay then I think you'll like what's available here. Those who enjoy coming up with their own stories while playing games like Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, or Kenshi would probably like Caves of Qud. It also helps if you have a somewhat high tolerance for "older" looking games, although the QoL features available are superb. I never thought I'd be able to play a traditional roguelike with a controller and actually enjoy it. In my approximately 50 hour run in Roleplay mode (a mode where permadeath is turned off - highly recommended for your first run), I started off as an axe wielding maniac that specialized in dismembering enemies. Later, my character mutated and grew a tail that could sting enemies, causing them to get confused, and allowed me to get into a good rhythm of charging an enemy, cutting off a random body part of theirs, disorienting them with my stinger, and then backing off while I watch them stumble around until they bleed to death. Midway through the game, I encountered a particularly tough enemy that, unknown to me, also specialized in dismembering foes. I was able to defeat him but not without having my actual face cut off in the process. Thankfully, I was able to regrow my face with the help of an item, circle back and pick my old face up off the ground, and equip it on my newly regrown face like I'm Hannibal Lecter. I then learned that wearing someone's dismembered face gave a pretty good charisma boost and that this boost was proportional to the level of the enemy who dropped the face, so I would wander the world dismembering foes, occasionally ripping their faces off and wearing them as my own. Towards the end of the game, I stumbled onto a lucrative way of producing a near-infinite amount of cloning potion. Each time I drank it, up to 3 clones of my character would grow out of me, all with the same stats, and all disturbingly proficient at dismembering enemies. The end of the game consisted of my character commanding an army of nearly 20 identical Hannibal Lecters all armed with axes and scorpion tails, ravaging the landscape and indiscriminately chopping off body parts. One of the more unique experiences I've had playing a videogame.
• Recommended Posted February 24, 2026 on Steam A friendly goatman asked me to kill his brother, the mad cult leader Mamon Souldrinker, who was destroying goatfolk settlements throughout the jungle and drinking the blood of his victims. He also wanted me to bring me Mamon Souldrinker's amulet, but warned me not to wear it: it's what had destroyed Mamon's mind. Naturally, I agreed. I neglected to mention that my life goal was to become best friends forever with every faction in the game. And since his goatfolk brethren had murdered me countless times in my treks through the jungle--they tend to be extremely hostile to everyone and everything who isn't a goatperson--and I hadn't yet managed to befriend them...well, a goatfolk religious war seemed more like a [i]them[/i] problem than a [i]me[/i] problem. It didn't take too long to find Mamon; he did leave a trail of bodies and burnt villages in his wake, after all. I shot a syringe filled with the essence of pure love at him out of my homemade syringe gun, asked him if he wanted to be friends, and in a twisted mockery of the sacred ritual of sharing water, shared some of the flask of blood I'd brought along with him. Then, naturally, I asked him to travel with me. Of course, there was one small problem: I wanted to be friends with everyone and everything, and he wanted to destroy all sapient life in the name of the fell god that gave him the power to asplode heads or something, and tended to act on that impulse quickly and often. So naturally, I took him to go pick bananas. He immediately started a pointless fight with a sentient and animated (though stationary) tree. The tree picked him up and hurled him across the map, where he died instantly upon hitting the ground. Before I took the amulet back to the friendly goatman who gave me this quest, naturally I had to try it on, despite the fact that the game made it exceedingly obvious that this was a terrible idea and would eventually kill the player, meaning that you can actually enter an unwinnable state by doing so. It was pretty cool. Fortunately, I'd thought to inject myself with some time-juice that let me see a little way into the future, so I got to put the amulet on [i]without[/i] dying since it had all been just a vision of a possible future. Sadly, though, toying with powers beyond mortal ken like that meant that I disappointed a Highly Entropic Being...tragically setting back my quest to befriend them, too! Oh, and now I'm best friends forever with several unspeakable alien monstrosities who long æons ago humbled mankind and remained on Earth in order to periodically bring us to the brink of destruction. And you can pet dogs and cats. Final rating: π/[i]e[/i]: this game is pretty cool.
• Recommended Posted March 23, 2026 on Steam I've owned this game for 4 years and despite continually being drawn back to it, I just didn't get it. I could see the potential and really wanted to enjoy it, but it was too overwhelming and I just couldn't get my head around it. Well, finally 4 years later and with 36 hours in game, I get it now. I'm still dying all the time and have so much more to see and understand, but I'm having so much fun. Here are some tips that helped make it click for me: - Play classic mode and just randomize everything each time you make a character. It's easy to get decision fatigue from so many options, so just roll the dice instead and make do with what you have. Each time you play you'll get exposed to new mutations, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. - Familiarise yourself with whatever abilities you rolled, use them as much as you can. - If you don't know what to do, start with the Joppa quests. It might feel repetitive, but you'll encounter various things (that are random each run) while traveling across the map trying to complete them. - Use autoexplore, even on the surface. Use it in Joppa and the graveyard to the north. It'll help you discover things you might not otherwise have noticed as a new player. - Always examine new unfamiliar enemies first, don't just go in swinging. Get a feel for their toughness first. - At the beginning, rest between every fight until you're healed and restore your abilities! - Run away when health gets low, when you see a tough enemy, or when positioning is not in your favour. Use the sprint ability liberally. If an area is too crazy, go and do something else until you level up, just wander around elsewhere until you see some action. - You don't need to get to the bottom of each dungeon. Underground goes very deep and it gets tougher and tougher - grab what you need then get out and go elsewhere. Most quests give XP and being on the surface gives you a chance to restock. You can always come back when more powerful. Eventually, after dying dozens of times you'll start to work out which mutations, attributes etc. you want to pick instead of randomising everything. This game was a slow burn for me, but it's so worth it.