Roboquest

Roboquest is a roguelite first-person shooter developed by Lyon-based RyseUp Studios and published by Starbreeze, released in full on November 7, 2023 for PC and Xbox — day one on Game Pass — after three years in Early Access, with PlayStation 4/5 versions following on May 27, 2025. It holds a Metacritic score of 85 on PC, an OpenCritic recommendation rate of 88%, and an “Overwhelmingly Positive” Steam rating sustained across tens of thousands of reviews — the standing of a game that, in the crowded roguelite-shooter field, made one argument better than anyone: speed. Cel-shaded, Doom Eternal-fast, and tuned so a good run feels like a music video, it became the genre’s go-to answer to “what if a roguelite just played like a great shooter?”

Its story since has two chapters worth knowing before you buy: RyseUp declared the game complete in May 2025 after nearly a decade of work — no more content, servers staying up — and then, on July 23, 2026, it came back rebuilt for VR.

Technical Specifications

A Guardian and a Kid in 2700

The year is 2700, Earth is a scorched wasteland, and the last humans huddle in Haven City. A scavenger girl, Max, digs up a deactivated combat robot — the Guardian — and reboots it; the game is the Guardian’s runs out through canyons, ruined cities, and robot-infested badlands to find out what happened to the world, with Max as mechanic, narrator, and heart. The story is light by design and told between runs at the basecamp, but the cast — Max, the tinkering Guardian, the deadpan bosses — gave the game a personality most roguelite shooters never bother with, and the Noisecream soundtrack does the rest.

Seven Classes, One Speed

Every class is built around momentum: double-jumps, slides, wall-hops, and a stamina-free sprint over arenas that reward staying airborne. The Guardian is the all-rounder, Recon the crit-hunting glass cannon, Engineer the summoner, Commando the explosives specialist, Ranger the marksman, Elementalist the status-effect mage — with SuperBot, a 2024 addition, as the wildcard. Runs branch across map routes with randomized bosses, and the roguelite spine is a synergy-heavy level-up system layered over a large, procedurally rolled arsenal of weapons with affixes. Two-player online co-op scales everything, and the basecamp’s permanent unlocks — new routes, weapons, class perks — form the meta-progression that answers the genre’s oldest early-hours complaint.

Does It Get Better?

That complaint is the community question that ranks beside the game — “does Roboquest get better, or should I just accept…” — and the honest answer is the genre’s honest answer: the first hours show you a fast, tight, slightly samey loop, and the unlock tree widens it substantially — new zones, class perks, and difficulty tiers that turn a 30-minute run into a real build puzzle. Players who bounce tend to bounce on structure (short runs, familiar arenas) rather than feel; the “Overwhelmingly Positive” tail is made of the ones who stayed for the movement. Critics agreed: the 85 came with praise for gunplay, controls, art, and music almost unanimously, and reservations about narrative thinness and repetition that the post-launch updates were built to address.

The Update Arc and the Ending

RyseUp shipped a dense free-update year after 1.0: the Arsenal Update (April 2024: weapons, NPCs, summons, a training range), the Super Update (June 2024: SuperBot, the Captain McSlice weapon, Harmony Square), a Dead Cells crossover (August 2024), and the Endless mode (November 2024: shortened levels, scaling enemies, duo boss fights) that gave veterans a true ceiling. Then, in May 2025, the studio announced the end — candidly: “2025 marks nearly a decade working on Roboquest, and it also marks the end of the journey… The passion that burnt bright for so many years started to falter. Fatigue kicked in.” They stressed the game was never designed as a live service, that multiplayer and servers stay up, and that a new, unannounced project had “reignited the passion” that built Roboquest. For buyers, that’s the rare clean status: a finished game, not an abandoned one.

Roboquest VR

The afterlife arrived on July 23, 2026: Roboquest VR, rebuilt “from the ground up” by Flat2VR Studios with RyseUp for Meta Quest 3 and 3S — manual reloading, physical weapon handling, and two-player co-op intact — at $29.99, sitting at a 4.7/5 store rating from its first few hundred reviews. No PC VR or PSVR2 version is listed as of this writing. For a game whose whole thesis was movement and gunfeel, VR was the port fans asked for loudest, and early reception suggests it survived the translation.

Where to Play It Today

Roboquest is on Steam (Deck-friendly), GOG, Xbox, and PlayStation 4/5, routinely discounted under $15 and cycling through Game Pass; Roboquest VR is on the Quest store. On the co-op shooter shelf it sits beside Deep Rock Galactic as the fast, run-based counterpart — and among roguelite shooters, alongside Gunfire Reborn and Risk of Rain 2, it remains the one to recommend to anyone who thinks the genre can’t feel like a proper FPS.