Caves of Qud
Worth it · Roguelike · 2024
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $29.99.
- Length
- 48.5h
- Value
- $0.62/hr
- Reviews
- 95% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, Graphics card: DX10, DX11, DX12 capable, 2 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
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.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
The value story
September 2015 is where it bottomed out, at $8.99. Its cuts run 10 percent off as a rule. There have been 121 in the 11 years tracked, about 4 weeks apart.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 9 percent on value. It is pricier than 99 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 94 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Into the Breach ($14.99, scores 86) beats it on value, while it beats The Doors of Trithius ($14.99, scores 69).
Of the 799 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 27 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written October 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 75 percent of the 599 reviews written there were positive, against 95 percent overall, and those are 5 percent of everything written about it. It sells extras on top of the sticker price (unlock); the score docks it lightly for that.
HowLongToBeat players log 48.5 hours as a typical playtime, and completionists log 503, 10 times as much.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating, which is the one that means it just works.
The drop-off
69% start to 2% finishA game like this has no single ending, so its score does not use the finish rate. The curve shows where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
339 players online when we last checked, on Oct 1, 01:46 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
This game is the answer to the question: What if Gene Wolfe was more of an Old Testament guy? Much like The Book of the New Sun, the series of novels from which Caves of Qud draws heavily, this game is a favorite of mine. The world building prose is the best I've read in any game. It may be the best in any piece of media I've ever consumed, Wolfe notwithstanding. Descriptions of items, places, and characters are so...
Bounced off a few times. Recommend playing "Roleplay". This is a knowledge based game, and roleplay is plenty punishing while also giving you some space to FAFO.
I keep dying and have absolutely no idea what i'm doing half of the time, and I think that makes for the best kind of open-ended style RPG games. There's so much charm and quirkiness to the world and characters. I keep wanting to jump back in and attempt to make it just a LITTLE bit further. I've played mainly on Classic and haven't bothered with the other modes yet, but truly an unforgettable experience.
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
Caves of Qud scores 81/100 on the BANG Score (worth it) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/333640/caves-of-qudReviews set the ceiling, and the size of the player base moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 26, price as of Oct 1.
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