THE .JAR
Runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and needs Java 8 or newer. No Java yet? Get it free from java.com — after that, playing is a matter of clicking the downloaded file.
DOWNLOAD .JARv0.0.9FREE TO PLAY · PERMADEATH ROGUELIKE
ROGUEGRIND
An open-world pixel-art roguelike. Explore procedurally generated worlds, crack chests for tiered loot and grind for glory — knowing one death wipes it all.
On Windows and would rather not install Java? Grab the self-contained .exe instead.
Gameplay
GAME FEATURES
Everything below is implemented and playable right now - no vaporware, no promises.
PERMADEATH
Death is permanent. Your inventory, weapons and glory are wiped on the server the moment you die. Start again and play better.
PROCEDURAL WORLDS
Every run generates a fresh 1500x1500-tile open world with natural coastlines and lakes - across grass, jungle, desert, volcano, sand and snow biomes.
DUNGEON PORTALS
Portals scattered across the open world lead into dungeons whose layout is carved fresh every time you step through one. The ground under the portal decides which of the three you get: violet in snow or volcano opens the Rift, pale in the desert opens the Ossuary, anywhere else is an ordinary dungeon. Find the exit to get back out.
MINIMAP
A corner radar showing the biome around you, with dungeon portals color-coded by kind and any mob a quest needs blinking so you can find it. Navigate without getting lost.
TIERED ARSENAL
Swords, bows, staffs, daggers and axes from Tier 1 to Tier 10, with damage, range and fire rate scaling every tier. Your weapon is your class.
SPECIAL ATTACKS
Every weapon category has its own mana-fueled special, right-click to unleash it: Dash Slash, Homing Volley, Meteor Shower, Ricochet Knives and Whirlwind. Legendaries can even carry their own unique special.
UNTIERED LEGENDARIES
Twenty-three unique weapons stronger than any Tier 10 drop - Fire Sword, Void Bow, Magic Harp, Poison Sickle, Dragon Axe and more. Found only as rare chest loot.
WEAPON AFFIXES
About half of every weapon you find carries an affix, and wears it in its name - from raw damage and fire rate to poison, burn, freeze, entangle and knockback on hit. Roughly a third of them are curses.
ARMOR AND RINGS
Three slots past the weapon - chest, legs and a ring - drawn from 169 untiered pieces. Power is the material, not a number: plate mitigates hardest and slows you down, robes trade protection for speed and mana, leather splits the difference. Rings are the only source of health regen, mana rate and lifesteal.
THE FORGE
Park a spare weapon between sessions and it climbs a tier on a real clock that keeps running while the game is closed - or reroll its affix instead. It belongs to your run, though: die and whatever is inside dies with it.
TREASURE CHESTS
Three rarities from common Brown up to rare Gold. Higher rarity means a tougher chest to crack open - and far better loot inside. Bring DPS.
SHINY ENCOUNTERS
Any enemy can rarely turn up as a Shiny - a recolored variant with triple health and 50% harder hits. Worth hunting down: a kill always drops a chest, forced Gold-rarity and boosted odds at a legendary.
GLORY LEADERBOARD
Every kill pays glory and every quest you finish pays a bonus - but only a living run keeps it. Your best run is ranked against every other player on the all-time, monthly, weekly and daily boards below.
TALENT TREE
The glory you earn also opens a tree of twenty-one talents, seven rows of three with one pick per row. The first opens at five glory - about five ordinary kills, though a finished quest can get you there sooner - so you are building from the first minute. Columns are lanes - Guard, Swift and Mend - and each ends in a capstone you only reach by spending three of your six earlier picks in that lane, so committing means giving something up. Talents never grant damage, and the whole tree dies with your run.
QUEST BOARD
Three quests roll onto your board each run — slay a marked enemy, deal damage, survive the clock, crack chests, or find the dungeon boss — each paying bonus glory the moment you clear it. Not feeling the board? Hold the reroll key to shuffle in a fresh set.
PERSISTENT LOADOUT
Log out and your inventory is saved to the server - restored on your next login with every item in the same slot. Until you die, of course.
GLOBAL CHAT
Chat with every player online, across all worlds, while you grind. Compare loot, trade tips, mourn each other's deaths.
YOUR CONTROLS
Rebind every key live from the launcher, and toggle between auto-fire and hold-to-fire mid-run. Movement, chat, inventory - your layout.
DOWNLOAD
Two ways to play, both free and both the same game. Pick whichever suits your machine.
THE WINDOWS BUILD
A self-contained Windows build with Java already bundled, so there is nothing to install first. Windows packs the whole runtime into one executable here, and some antivirus tools treat that packaging itself as suspicious — if yours complains, that is what it is reacting to, not to anything in the game.
DOWNLOAD .EXE
Active development
LATEST UPDATE
AUGUST 8, 2026 v0.0.9
- FIX Special attacks now throw their projectile in the colour of the weapon that cast them, matching the particles and impact animation every special already carried. A special reaches the screen through a different path than an ordinary shot, and that path never asked the weapon for its tint - a Void Bow's Homing Volley was throwing six amber arrows that burst violet on hit, and every staff's Meteor Shower rained the same fixed orange rock whatever colour the staff itself was. Two specials are left alone on purpose: Wraith Pass's ghastly blade is already its own colour ramp, and Bullet Bloom's three note colours are the ability, the same reason the Magic Harp opts out of the weapon-colour rule everywhere else. Meteor Shower also now genuinely plays a landing animation instead of nothing at all - the class that throws it skips every code path the other specials' impacts go through, so the burning fall, the detonation and the dying embers it was always meant to show had never once reached the screen.
- CHANGE Staff tiers now have ten genuinely distinct colours instead of four. The ladder used to be drawn from the sheet's four bolt sprites, so three tiers in a row shared the exact same colour - invisible while only the bolt carried it, and obvious the moment last patch's gem recolouring put the same blue stone on three different tiers. Every staff tier now drives its bolt, gem, particles, impact and Meteor Shower off one colour of its own, spread so the six gemmed tiers you see side by side in the inventory are never closer than 40 degrees apart. Meteor Shower's landing marker also drops its fixed red for the caster's own colour, the same reasoning as the fix above - a red ring under a blue staff's blue meteors and blue flames read as a second, unrelated effect rather than a warning about the one already in front of you.
- CHANGE The Dragon Axe throws its own breath cone now, instead of the Fire Mage's plain bolt - the same art the game's most distinctive axe and a common enemy's shot were quietly sharing. It's a fan that visibly thins as it flies and dissipates exactly at the edge of its range, whatever the weapon's speed. The cone's reach is unchanged from the bolt it replaces - redrawing a weapon's art is not supposed to rebalance it, and the game now checks for that on every projectile that ships with more than one frame.
Compete
RANKINGS
Live rankings pulled straight from the game database. Die gloriously and your name ends up here.
| Rank | Player | Glory | Quests Completed | Killed By | Died on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | uranylhydroxid42 | 791 | 8 | Blue Flame | |
| 2 | Marco | 102 | 1 | Void Dragon | |
| 3 | Itachi | 87 | 3 | Imp | |
| 4 | michelle257 | 38 | 0 | Bat | |
| 5 | Max | 2 | 0 | Scorpion |
| Rank | Player | Glory | Quests Completed | Killed By | Died on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | uranylhydroxid42 | 791 | 8 | Blue Flame | |
| 2 | Marco | 102 | 1 | Void Dragon | |
| 3 | Max | 2 | 0 | Scorpion |
| Rank | Player | Glory | Quests Completed | Killed By | Died on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No deaths yet. | |||||
| Rank | Player | Glory | Quests Completed | Killed By | Died on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No deaths yet. | |||||
HALL OF INFAMY
Before you dive in
FAQ
The questions worth answering before you commit a run.
IS ROGUEGRIND FREE, OR IS THERE ANYTHING TO BUY?
Completely free, with nothing to buy - no purchases, no premium currency, no pay-to-win. Every weapon, tier and legendary comes from playing.
CAN I PLAY WITH FRIENDS - IS THIS MULTIPLAYER?
You can chat with every player online, globally, while you grind. You cannot meet, trade or fight alongside them in the world itself - there's no shared game state between players, only shared chat.
WHAT HAPPENS IF I LOSE CONNECTION MID-RUN?
Nothing punishes you directly for it. Permadeath only triggers from an actual in-game death, never a dropped connection - your saved inventory is exactly how you left it next time you log in.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?
Everything on that character wipes - inventory, weapons, glory, all reset. Permadeath is the core of the game, not a difficulty toggle you can turn off.
I DOWNLOADED IT - WHAT DO I ACTUALLY DO?
Log in with Discord or Steam, hit Play, and you spawn into a fresh world with a tier-1 weapon and a few potions. From there: kill things, crack chests for better gear, and stay alive long enough to bank glory. The How to Play page walks through the controls and every system in detail.
WHO MAKES THIS?
One person, in their spare time, on a custom Java2D engine built from scratch - no Unity, no Unreal, no game framework underneath it. Ideas, feedback and bug reports are genuinely welcome at roguegrind@gmail.com.
IF DEATH WIPES EVERYTHING, WHAT AM I WORKING TOWARD?
Your best run is permanent even though the run itself is not. Glory from your strongest attempt stays on the leaderboard with your name against it, so progress is measured across runs rather than inside one. The gear is temporary; the ranking is the score.
Your account
SIGN IN TO YOUR PROFILE
Sign in to see your stats, best runs and backpack on this site. Roguegrind accounts are linked through Discord or Steam - no passwords to remember, no security questions to lose. Playing itself happens in the downloaded game.
LOGIN WITH DISCORD
LOGIN WITH STEAM
First time here? Logging in with Discord or Steam creates your Roguegrind account automatically - then open the game launcher and click the same button there to play. No separate registration needed, here or in the game.