Heroes of Hammerwatch

Most action roguelikes treat each run as a clean slate, trusting moment-to-moment combat to carry the experience. Heroes of Hammerwatch, developed by Crackshell and released March 1, 2018, refuses that isolation. Runs accumulate meaning through a town called Outlook that sits between them, and heroes carry their experience points from one attempt to the next, growing in power across failures rather than resetting entirely.

Each run sends one to four players through procedurally generated floors of the Forsaken Spire, fighting enemy hordes and navigating traps, puzzles, and secrets while collecting loot from a pool of over a hundred items at varying rarities. Seven classes are available, each with distinct stats and ability sets, so the choice of character shapes how combat feels rather than functioning as a cosmetic label. Death returns you to Outlook, but the gold and experience earned survive in a limited form, feeding back into the town’s ten upgradable buildings, which provide bonuses that carry into future runs. Heroes themselves persist and can be brought into a friend’s game, which means cooperative play across four players shares characters with actual history rather than freshly rolled ones.

New Game+ extends the challenge past the first clear, preventing the difficulty from collapsing once players have upgraded Outlook substantially. The combination of a leveling hero, a developing town, and escalating post-game difficulty creates a layered structure that rewards sustained investment rather than isolated high runs.

Crackshell continued developing the game well after launch. The Witch Hunter DLC, which introduced a new class alongside a content update, arrived in June 2019. The Moon Temple DLC followed in February 2020, adding the Lunar Halls as a new area. The game reached console platforms in mid-2020. Patch activity continued through 2024, with versions 113, 114, and 115 arriving between April and November of that year. The studio also released the separate title Hammerwatch II in August 2023, and Heroes of Hammerwatch II became available in January 2025.

Players who know Rogue Legacy as the benchmark for town-building action roguelites will find Heroes of Hammerwatch occupying similar territory but leaning harder into co-op character persistence and dungeon-crawl density.