9 Best Roguelites With Permanent Progression

A death wipes away that run's Olympian Boons and chamber build, but Darkness buys lasting Mirror of Night bonuses. Keys unlock more Mirror talents and weapons, expanding your options as you learn. Each new escape still asks you to assemble fresh attacks, casts, and divine Boons rather than carry over the finished build from a previous escape.

Your return to the House of Hades brings new conversations, relationship events, and story. God Mode can add damage resistance that grows with deaths, easing the action without removing its bosses. Hades is a strong all-round choice if you want failure to move character, combat, and story forward.

The verdict

Choose Hades for permanent power and a story that advances on failure.

Gold from expeditions funds the Manor: rooms raise family stats and open facilities for future heirs. Each heir rolls a class and traits, so a Knight, Chef, or quirky heir changes how you approach the same castle. Heirlooms add permanent movement abilities that reveal new routes through biomes.

Relics and Resolve belong to one attempt, while Manor growth and Heirlooms persist across the family line. House Rules let you adjust contact damage, health, and damage, or enable flight for difficult platform sections. Each heir's class and traits change your tools, and precise jumps keep traversal active.

The verdict

Choose it for a growing family estate and permanent movement skills.

A Scrap expedition gives movement a clear extraction goal. Desktop uses cursor aim and held fire, with ammunition and reloads to manage; touch pairs a movement joystick with a fire control targeting the nearest living enemy. Scrap collected specifically in Scrap expeditions survives extraction or defeat, subject to storage capacity, and shelter upgrades persist.

Stored Scrap can become parts or ammo at the salvage bench, or fund permanent room and research upgrades. Water grows lettuce or tomatoes: a lettuce meal adds 20 maximum HP, while tomato soup adds 12% power on the next expedition. Three-card picks can favor the current fight or shelter growth. Fixed stations keep management directed rather than freeform.

The verdict

The closest fit when extraction loot should build a working shelter.

Cells spent at the Collector unlock weapons, skills, and mutations; permanent traversal runes open new routes. Other permanent upgrades add Health Flask charges, Gold Reserves that retain a capped amount after death, and Recycling skills; Legendary Forge investments improve the quality of future gear drops. After your first Hand of the King win on Boss Cell 1, Recycling Tubes let you choose one of four starting gear sets. Your weapon, scroll-stat path, and mutations are rebuilt each run.

That layers healing, retained currency, gear quality, and a chosen starting kit onto Dead Cells’ branching world. Scroll colors reward committing to one stat, but random drops can disrupt that plan. Parrying, rolling, and reading enemies stay demanding; each biome route asks you to judge how the current build fits.

The verdict

Choose it for lasting survival, economy, gear-quality, and starting-kit upgrades alongside new routes.

Gold earned during a run buys power-ups for future survivors, while characters, weapons, and other unlocks expand the starting pool. The weapons, passive items, levels, and evolutions assembled during one stage are temporary and disappear when it ends. You gain a visible upward curve without managing a town or a long menu.

Combat centers on movement and positioning because attacks mostly trigger automatically. That keeps crowds readable but is a poor fit if manual aiming is your goal. Its character roster, stages, and unlock checklist suit players who like turning repeated runs into permanent power and new experiments. Mobile purchase terms differ from Steam.

The verdict

Pick it for permanent power-ups and approachable crowd survival.

Characters and branches of the skill tree persist; selected skills, upgrades, and boss fights are part of each attempt. Steam lists more than 350 skills and over 100 craftable weapons, giving the long-term tree a direction for a huge pool of possible builds.

The cost is choice density: a run offers many skills and combinations, while the between-run tree asks what to open next. That planning rewards build tinkerers but has more menu load than Hades's smaller set of weapon and Boon options. It is a strong middle ground between content unlocks alone and a simple stat ladder.

The verdict

Choose it for long-term progression through a huge skill tree.

Brotato's lasting progress adds choices rather than permanent stats. Character and item unlocks expand later runs; challenges reveal more starting conditions and shop options. Most power comes from temporary waves, collected materials, and purchases, so you build a fresh setup each time.

Timed waves feed materials and experience into a shop between fights; six weapon slots make each character a compact build puzzle. Auto-fire is the default, with manual aim available, and local co-op supports up to four players. The standard twenty-wave sequence is compact, while optional Endless mode can extend a run.

The verdict

Pick it for new unlocks and quick shop-based build puzzles.

Camp buildings persist and unlock buffs, training, recruits, and equipment. Surviving mercenaries become more seasoned, while each mission builds a temporary weapon-and-skill setup. Virus exposure can produce helpful or harmful mutations; a killed mercenary can be lost permanently, so camp growth and personal risk coexist.

The evacuation copter lets a merc end a mission before a swarm overwhelms them. Auto-shooting makes positioning, skills, and extraction timing more important than aiming. Seven upgradeable buildings give the camp real weight; losing a veteran makes each mission risky even after the camp has grown. Choose it when survivor mortality is part of the appeal.

The verdict

A fit for camp management and high-stakes mercenary runs.

A run is built from scavenged supplies, crafted weapons, ammunition, and mutations. Infection drives the survivor toward death, while mutations grant new strengths along the way. When a survivor dies, a new one continues with perks and upgrades earned from earlier progress: the person resets, the campaign keeps moving.

Fuel shapes the route between locations, and you weigh how long to scavenge before pressing onward. Mutation bonuses can help an infected survivor push farther, but they do not remove the pressure to finish an outing before the virus wins. The handoff makes each attempt matter through perks and unlocks. Choose it for a deliberate zombie adventure rather than a pure arena-horde loop.

The verdict

Pick it for a zombie campaign where progress outlives each survivor.