Caves of Qud on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Inhabit a deeply-simulated science fantasy world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Build a character from a over a hundred mutations and cybernetics. The award-winning sandbox roguelike & RPG full of robots, deep lore, and sentient plants.
Caves of Qud is a procedural generation, turn-based combat and open world game
developed by Freehold Games
and published by Kitfox Games.
Released on December 05th 2024 is available in English on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
It has received 10,410 reviews of which 9,912 were positive and 498 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.2 out of 10. 😍
The game is currently priced at 28.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Caves of Qud into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10 21H1, Windows 11 21H2
- Processor: 1GHz or faster. SSE2 instruction set support.
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Graphics card: DX10, DX11, DX12 capable
- Storage: 2 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: Big Sur 11+
- Processor: 1GHz or faster. SSE2 instruction set support.
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Graphics card: Metal capable Intel and AMD GPUs
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Linux
- OS: Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04
- Processor: 1GHz or faster. SSE2 instruction set support.
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Graphics card: OpenGL 3.2+, Vulkan capable
- Storage: 2 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm giving this game a thumbs up with a caveat that it's for a very specific kind of player. You have to be into 2D roguelikes with turn-based combat. You have to enjoy the particular post-apocalyptic cyberpunk atmosphere that the game is going for. And you have to have a great deal of self-control to not ruin your own experience. Qud is a fantastic roguelike and a horribly, horribly broken game. You can play through the game blissfully unaware of the cracks in the fabric of the universe, but once you realize the cracks are there, you have to specifically avoid stepping on them because they ruin the game if you use them to your advantage. Specifically I'm referring to three mechanics which give you every reason to make your own gaming experience less fun in order to gain an advantage in the game: 1.) infinite reputation grinding, 2.) infinite merchant refreshing, and 3.) infinite item duping. All three of these things are possible to abuse very early on into the game, and they give you the possibility to throw away hours of your time to make the game as easy as you want, exchanging difficulty for tedium. If you want to spend sixteen hours walking up and down the desert for no reward other than reducing the number of enemy factions attacking you, then you can do that. If you want to check the merchant, walk five tiles on the world map, and then check it again, you can do that as many times as you want until the item you want shows up. If you want to duplicate the merchant who sells the merchant duplicating liquid, then you can do that and refresh him ad infinitum till you dupe him again and again into 100 liquid merchants. Yes, the game is that broken, and it's kind of fun to break it at first, but it very rapidly deteriorates into a disgusting experience if you play the game that way because it is not only tedious, it is in a technical sense optimal. Compared to breaking the game, every other "fair" way of playing the game ends up feeling bad. If you put these flaws aside, Qud is a beautiful game with intricate character building and a fascinating world. Play Qud and enjoy it for what it is, but don't try to optimize it. Keep your hands inside the rollercoaster at all times, and enjoy the ride.
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This is likely one of the best video games I have had the privilege of playing over some odd 25+ years of playing video games, I whole-heartedly recommend it!... to its intended audience. That is the short version, however, I think the long version is important here, because that comes with MASSIVE caveats. There are MANY people for whom this will simply not be an enjoyable game, no shade to them, and if that's YOU, I don't want my glowing review to trick you into bashing your head against a wall trying to enjoy something you won't. This is NOT the game for you if: - A unique, new weird and biblically-inspired writing style that isn't always immediately accessible without a dictionary in arm's reach would be more annoying to parse for you than it would be exciting to read. - Spending hours carefully RPG-grinding together a character with unique rare gear and unlocks only for them to perma-death as is normal in a Roguelike would make the experience more frustrating than engaging.(ALTHOUGH they have non-perma death options) - Staring at an art-style that is quite literally just one step up from ASCII art in its rudimentary depiction of.... everything doesn't have a sense of charm for you. - If the amount of information you're asked to absorb up front feels like too much, even after you are dozens of hours and/or deaths into the game. These are just part of how this game works and they're traits that for many are outright never fun, to which there is no fix for that. If none of that drove you away, buy this game immediately. It is simply that good. This game single-handedly sets a new bar for procedurally generated WRITTEN content, with every item description, random book, or colorful individual you meet managing to have genuinely descriptive, witty, and sometimes thought-provoking things to say or see held up by writing that somehow manages to highlight the human touch present in the prose even when that prose is being randomly assigned to new stories or new purposes on a new seed. A lot of the game leans on an unchanging sub-set of characters whose dialogue and questlines are not randomized, but their presence does not make the writing *around* them that lacks that anchor feel notably weaker in comparison, which feels like outright lunacy. It just shouldn't be possible to do this, but I have borne witness. This goes wonderfully in hand with the art style the game landed on, where simple pixel depictions that lack a sense of true size or scale (every creature and object, no matter how big or small, occupies 1 tile within the grid, even though some are clearly massive) are given that scale by textual descriptions that take advantage of relatively simple representations to paint detailed *life* into every creature and object. Everything from a basic semi-auto pistol up to a otherworldly cherubic guardian of lost tombs is given a loving, thoughtful rendition in text to make sure your mind is filling in blanks up to the limits of your imagination. The mechanics of this game are simple to summarize, but their depth is not. It's a turn-based RPG not unlike many you've played before, with a D&D-ish set of stats, XP, leveling, skill trees, abilities, and bonus stats from equipment and the like, but its the granularity to which these have been executed that excites, here. Everything from gaining (or losing!) limbs of all varieties, undergoing full physiology transformations, becoming a plant or fungi, reconstructing yourself with cybernetic enhancements, developing psionic abilities... There are nigh endless outcomes of the character creation and question process; a common outcome for more than a few players has been winding up a *sentient, walking door* upon their adventure, and that's not even *that* weird of an outcome. Then you realize that *every single creature in the world* is also operating under the same fundamental stats and abilities system, realizing that some of the enemies you wander into are subject to the same levels of complexity that you are. Simply Stunning. If it feels like I've been vague despite having a lot to say, its because I have. I did benefit a lot from going into this experience blind, and only starting to look up or learn about things within the game in more detail *after* working my way through my first couple of encounters with them. I'm trying to pass that benefit down if this review happens to be what finds you into the game as opposed to simply watching someone stream gameplay or something. But seriously, if you got this far, gave this barest review this much time, you should already be playing this game. Just pull the trigger, you will not regret it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Caves of Qud is currently priced at 28.99€ on Steam.
Caves of Qud is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 28.99€ on Steam.
Caves of Qud received 9,912 positive votes out of a total of 10,410 achieving an impressive rating of 9.24.
😍
Caves of Qud was developed by Freehold Games and published by Kitfox Games.
Caves of Qud is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Caves of Qud is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
Caves of Qud is playable and fully supported on Linux.
Caves of Qud is a single-player game.
There are 2 DLCs available for Caves of Qud. Explore additional content available for Caves of Qud on Steam.
Caves of Qud is fully integrated with Steam Workshop. Visit Steam Workshop.
Caves of Qud does not support Steam Remote Play.
Caves of Qud is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Caves of Qud.
Data sources
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 29 January 2026 00:30 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 January 2026 16:50 |
| Steam price | 28 January 2026 20:50 |
| Steam reviews | 28 January 2026 11:46 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Caves of Qud, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Caves of Qud
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Caves of Qud concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Caves of Qud compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
403
Developer
Freehold Games
Publisher
Kitfox Games
Release
05 Dec 2024
Platforms