Caves of Qud

About Caves of Qud

Caves of Qud is a Hugo Award-winning science fantasy roguelike epic steeped in retrofuturism, deep simulation, and swathes of sentient plants. Come inhabit a living, breathing world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Decide: is it a dying earth, or is it on the verge of rebirth?

Do anything and everything. Caves of Qud is a deeply simulated, biologically diverse, richly cultured world.

DEEP PHYSICAL SIMULATION — Don’t like the wall blocking your way? Dig through it with a pickaxe, or eat through it with your corrosive gas mutation, or melt it to lava. Yes, every wall has a melting point.

FULLY SIMULATED CREATURES — Every monster and NPC is as fully simulated as the player. That means they have levels, skills, equipment, faction allegiances, and body parts. So if you have a mutation that lets you, say, psionically dominate a spider, you can traipse through the world as a spider, laying webs and eating things.

DYNAMIC FACTION SYSTEM — Pursue allegiances with over 70 factions: apes, crabs, trees, robots, and highly entropic beings, just to name a few.

RICHLY DETAILED SCIENCE FANTASY SETTING — Over fifteen years of worldbuilding have led to a rich, weird, labyrinthine, one-of-a-kind storyworld, layered on top of the simulation, all for you to explore. Live and drink, friend.

TACTICAL GAMEPLAY — Turn-based, sandbox exploration and combat offers as many solutions as you and your mutations, implants, artifacts, and skills are creative enough to invent.

RPG ELEMENTS — Quests, NPCs, villages, historic sites; some dynamic and some handwritten, interwoven to produce a transportative RPG experience.

ATMOSPHERIC ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK — Over two hours of otherworldly music to delve to.

Caves of Qud has one of the most expressive character creators of all time.

Play the role of a mutant indigenous to the salt-spangled dunes and jungles of Qud, or play a true kin descendant from one of the few remaining eco-domes — the toxic arboreta of Ekuemekiyye, the ice-sheathed arcology of Ibul, or the crustal mortars of Yawningmoon.

Build your character out of:

Over 70 mutations — outfit yourself with wings, two heads, four arms, flaming hands, teleportation, the power to clone yourself…

Dozens of cybernetic implants (and more to find as treasure) — night vision, translucent skin, carbide fists, spring-loaded ankle tendons…

24 castes and kits from across the social order of Qud and beyond Moghra’yi, the Great Salt Desert

Too overwhelmed to build a character from scratch? Choose one of 9 preset characters and start your adventure right away. Then return to character creation when you are ready.

Play one of four modes:

CLASSIC — Like other traditional roguelikes, this mode has permadeath, meaning you lose your character when you die. Extremely challenging even for experts.

ROLEPLAY — Play it like an RPG. Save your progress at checkpoints located in settlements.

WANDER — Focus on exploration. Most creatures will not attack you, you don’t gain experience by killing, but you DO gain experience by discovering new locations and treating with legendary creatures.

DAILY — One chance with a fixed character and world seed. How long will you survive?

After 9 years of continuous development and frequent updates, Caves of Qud has finally reached its 1.0 release! Here are some highlights of what's been added for 1.0:

The last leg of the main quest

The new, fully graphical UI

Hundreds of visual & sound effects

Lots of polish & stability

Caves of Qud is a project of epic proportions that's been in development for over fifteen years, since 2007. It began as the science fantasy roguelike dream of co-creators Jason Grinblat and Brian Bucklew, who released the first beta in 2010. Since then, it's accrued a few more contributors who have enriched the project by helping to add visual effects, sound effects, an original soundtrack, a new UI, new game systems, new lore, and half a world of content. Caves of Qud has grown into a wild garden of emergent narrative, where a handwritten story weaves a path through rich physical, social, and historical simulations. The result is a hybrid handcrafted and procedurally-generated world that's alive in a way few games are.