Humanity has killed the gods. Not annoyed them, or stopped believing in them. Actually wiped them out. Well, almost.
In Godless, you’re the last deity left standing, and understandably, you’re not feeling especially forgiving about the whole thing. Instead of assembling a heroic party and heading out to save civilization, your job is to defend your shrine, summon an army of creatures, and gradually wipe humanity off the map.
That’s the setup behind Danil Kalyupa’s turn-based tactical roguelike, which originally entered Early Access in 2022 before launching version 1.0 in June 2024. More than two years later, it’s still sitting at fewer than 100 Steam reviews despite maintaining a Very Positive rating.
You’re Not Fighting the Monsters
Each battle takes place across a procedurally generated hex-based arena, with waves of mortals heading toward your shrine. Your role is less traditional battlefield commander and more extremely irritated supernatural meddler.
Rather than moving every unit yourself, you summon creatures that handle much of the fighting automatically. Some attack enemies directly, others heal or strengthen allies, and building the right combination can turn a fairly vulnerable defensive line into something capable of flattening anything humanity sends your way.
You’re not simply watching from the sidelines, though. Spells allow you to poison enemies, enchant units, resurrect fallen creatures, and generally interfere whenever things start going wrong. Resources are limited each turn, so deciding whether to summon something new, cast a spell, or save what you have for later becomes part of keeping that shrine intact.
Humanity already killed every other god. Letting them finish the job would be embarrassing.
Apparently Gods Can Terraform Too
Where Godless excels is in how much control you have over the battlefield itself. Tiles can be placed directly onto the map to reshape how encounters play out. Some provide buffs, others block movement, while more unusual options can teleport units around the arena.
That makes positioning about more than just dropping your strongest creature somewhere and hoping for the best. A well-placed tile can redirect enemies, strengthen your army, or completely alter how units move through the battlefield. Combined with summons and spells, it gives you three different layers to build around during each run…Who you bring into the fight, what supernatural nonsense you throw at everyone, and what the actual ground beneath them is doing.
There are hundreds of items spread across four elemental classes too, creating plenty of opportunities to stumble into combinations considerably stronger than they probably looked when you first picked them up.
Destroying the World Takes More Than One Attempt
Between battles, you choose your route and collect upgrades as you work toward increasingly powerful builds. Runs may end, but Godless also includes permanent progression, gradually giving you more options for future attempts as you work toward destroying ten continents and deciding what happens to the world once humanity has been dealt with.
It’s a neat reversal of the usual fantasy setup. The humans aren’t the struggling heroes trying to survive against some unstoppable evil. They’re the ones marching toward your shrine, and you’re the supposedly unstoppable evil desperately trying to stop them from smashing the final divine relic left standing.
Godless launched on Steam on June 3, 2024, after around a year and a half in Early Access. It currently has 95 user reviews, with 90% of players recommending it. For a tactical roguelike where you can summon monsters, reshape entire battlefields, and punish humanity for murdering your entire pantheon, that feels surprisingly overlooked.