Risk of Rain

Most action roguelikes fix the power curve at design time, balancing enemies to match a predictable player strength. Risk of Rain, developed by Hopoo Games and released on August 11, 2020, refuses that contract entirely. A limitless scaling system accelerates both the player and every enemy on the map in real time, meaning a run that continues past the point of escape becomes an arms race with no ceiling and no promised winner.

Each run drops one of eleven playable survivors onto a hostile alien planet and tasks them with fighting through over a dozen handcrafted stages toward a final boss. Survivors control very differently from one another — the Engineer deploys turrets and barriers while the Huntress fires on the move — and each can be developed further through alternate skills unlocked over repeated play. Up to four players can tackle a run together in online co-op, and a rotating solo challenge called the Prismatic Trials offers a separate competitive mode.

The item system is what gives runs their texture. More than 110 items accumulate across a run, and their effects stack and interact in combinations that are not always obvious. A player holding enough of the right items can arrive at behaviors that feel genuinely broken, which is largely the point. Artifacts introduce optional rule changes — friendly fire, randomized survivor selection, curated item pools — that let experienced players reshape the difficulty and structure of a run.

Risk of Rain 2 arrived in early access before its August 2020 launch and continued expanding afterward. A Steam Deck controls update shipped in early 2026. The most visible post-launch arc has been its DLC releases: the Alloyed Collective expansion launched in November 2025 following a four-part developer diary series that detailed new survivors including the Operator and the Drifter, along with enhanced team content. A further expansion, Hallowed Concepts, was announced in April 2026 with developer diaries published through mid-2026 describing hexes and a new item tier called Hallowed Items.

For players familiar with Hades, Risk of Rain 2 trades that game’s narrative momentum and fixed enemy design for an open-ended power spiral where the run itself sets the stakes.