Last updated on November 29th, 2025 at 08:45 am
1-Bit Rogue: A dungeon crawler RPG! – Roleplaying Game Review
1-Bit Rogue: A dungeon crawler RPG! is a Roleplaying/Adventure/Entertainment game from Kan Kikuchi, first launched in 20th October 2016.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 471+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes 1-Bit Rogue: A dungeon crawler RPG! Stand Out
1-Bit Rogue is a simple roguelike!
It’s a monochrome game featuring super simple retro pixelart!
Features a chiptune soundtrack for that nostalgic PSG sound chip feel!
Game Details:
- A 50-floor randomized dungeon
- Defeat dragons and collect artifacts!
- Weapons decay with use — if they hit 0, they’ll break!
- Choose from five classes (including a ninja!)
- Also features a final boss and epic ending!
How to play:
- Use the virtual D-pad to move in four directions
- Long-tap to skip a turn
- Use coins to level up
Access the level up menu from the bottom left of the title screen
Dev team:
- Art direction/game design/graphics/sound: Skipmore
- Programming/level design: Kan Kikuchi
- Translation: NEP
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, 1-Bit Rogue: A dungeon crawler RPG! is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 14th November 2016
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
1.3
Modify ads.
1.2
When you purchase "3-bit color mode", remove banner ads and popup ads.
bug fix.
1.1
bug fix.
Download & Availability
1-Bit Rogue: A dungeon crawler RPG! is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get 1-Bit Rogue: A dungeon crawler RPG! on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
The retro vibe is exactly what we were looking for! This game is so much fun and we always find ourselves coming back to it and playing it! Being able to close out of it and come right back to where we were makes it a perfect mobile game! We really enjoy playing this game and had to support the creator for the extra color pallet option.
Charming, clearly inspired by Dragon Quest aesthetically, gameplay is straightforward but strategic. Your weapon only lasts a few swings here so after the first few floors are cleared, you better start counting your steps carefully! You will have to gamble at times to get the best out of your weapon before switching, or decide which enemies are worth taking out if you can avoid them. The music is simple but very listenable with a classic sound, reminding us distinctly of picking up our GameBoy Color after school.
Fun game, simple but solid design, and we like the IAP model.
The game isnt properly spanning the screen on the iPad Pro version. Im trying to contact the developer, but Im not so sure theyre reachable about this.
First off: Great app! It's a small single focus app, that keeps us coming back. Not many apps can do that. If it were made by anyone else, we would play like 3 times & delete it. We do have some suggestions, from least to most important, here they are: The exits: we would appreciate it if the staircase rotated so that it would make sense, and not be a staircase facing a wall. The staircase would always be facing the way of the hallways. It's small, but we feel like it would make the game feel more polished. Variation: As much as we love playing the game, we can only do it a few times a day, and then we come back the next day. Some more variation other than floor layout would be interesting. Maybe secret hidden rooms behind non solid walls? What about legendary varieties of common enemies, that have more health. The ability to add 1 custom weapon that gets added to the pool ofexisting weapons would be neat, and it would always be cool to encounter it. What about a class of character that can walk two frames without causing enemies to have a turn? Lastly, either a melee weapon that can hit two spaces ahead of you rather than one would be awesome.
The controls are a slim bit on the difficult side but gosh darn it is not unplayable. Also did you add the color dlc yet? Just wondering.
We really like this game. Its super simple and yet super fun! We would definitely recommend.
We love this game. We love that it's free. We play Dungeons and Dragons- Like the pen and paper version- and this reminds us so much of it. We recommend this to anyone who loves dungeon crawlers.
This game is good for people who are looking for a challenge, but a very manageable one. We got the boss after maybe 8 or 10 plays through using the Rogue.
Its a cool game but we have one problem, WHATS THE NAME IF THE SONG?!?!?! Its cool though.
This actually does a really good job of recreating an early 80s PC feel, to the point where its almost hard for us to play because of overwhelming nostalgia . Good work.
We can play this game for hours nonstop! Its very fun and much better with 3-bit mode on.
We like this game very much humbug our only problem is the ads, we would always get ads after we die just to get to the main screen and it is very annoying. We don't know if it's just us who's having this but please fix this ad problem.
We normally dont like retro style games but we gave this a try and was blown away. It is very simple and somewhat repetitive, bit something about this game makes it near impossible to put down. 5 stars all the way.
We love 1-32 bit games we dont know why but we do. This game is fun and easy. A must play.
Not much to say other than that we love this style, no in app purchases (other than one to tip the dev a beer), the game is endlessly entertaining, and you should totally download it. Why haven't you yet you loser it's free just do it.
This game is pretty much perfect. It is the closest thing to a classic rouge-like on mobile. The only way to make it better would be to increase the weapon durability, but that's it. Great game, thoigh.
Once you figure out the strategy you can get really far.
Wow! An Awesome rogue like game.
This is the best rogue like on the App Store, and 1 of our favorites in the top 5. It might even be a perfect game. We love everything about 1-bit rogue. Im in love with the style, and the gameplay is perfect. There's just enough depth to it, and it's also just simple enough for mobile pick up and put down type play. As far as we can tell there isn't a single bug or glitch. Just total mind blown.
If the game developers are reading this, they need to know this is our favorite game on the App Store. We bought the ad-removing and 3-bit color granting In-App Purchase, which was well worth our money. We love the game and it's great, but we feel it has a lot more potential. If you would keep updating and fine-tuning the game, maybe with a daily/weekly challenge setting, we could see the game becoming way better. Better than it already is, which is hard to beat! Keep improving the game, and we think you could have a real success here.
This game is wonderful especially for free, we couldn't help but supporting the devs for the 3-bit graphics they truly are lovely. We beat the game in a day, that's not to say it's easy by any means, we personally play a lot of roguelikes so we're rather familiar with the genre but this game is a wonderful little roguelike with replayability cause even after you beat it you still can beat it with other classes which offer a whole new play style. If you're on the fence about this game, trust us, you're gonna love it if you're a fan of the genre.
Great Turn-based roleplaying game with minimal design.
Love this game. Great time passer if you have a few minutes, and also a great game to grind for hours on. The only improvement we think is to make the make the ninja able to gain health, because it's really annoying always dying in one hit. Great game, we would definitely recommend to everyone.
This is definitely one of the better rogue games.
We love this game. We even bought the devs a beer to get the color version. It does get repetitive (obviously) and is quite grindy. Our one balance recommendation is the vampire. Its no fun to have 60-70 health, find yourself trapped with no weapon next to a medicine chest, and unable to defeat the vampire since he absorbs so much health. 4/5 would recommend.
Very enjoyable game, but, like so many other games, has an annoying behavior. We understand only supporting portrait orientation. But developers, please please PLEASE support flipping when we turn our tablet over. The iPads charge cable plugs into the bottom of the tablet. When we play at night we have our tablet plugged in to charge and we rotate the tablet so the charge cable is on the top… And your game doesnt flip so its upside down. We have to turn our tablet over so it puts weight on the charge cable potentially damaging both our tablet and our cable.
Great game, but the only issue is that the most expensive class, the ninja, is probably the worst as it cant gain the most valuable resource: health. We understand that its a ninja and not supposed to get into fights, but he just cant kill big things like dragons to get artifacts. Maybe make it so he gets one attack for killing things instead. Otherwise great game.
This game definitely gets down the feel of a traditional roguelike, with simple controls, permadeth, and an enjoyably tense atmosphere as you try to resource-manage between gold, health, and progress. Thats the game at its best. At its worst its grindy and tedious, and sometimes feels unfair. While Ive definitely died a few times to mistakes Ive made, too often it feels like you just find yourself in an unwinnable situation: you have no weapon, youre in a dead-end area, and theres a monster in the way. Its kind of annoying to die every time because you took a wrong turn in the maze (or spawned in the wrong place), especially when death means a tedious slog through the earlier levels of the dungeon to reclaim your progress. All in all Id recommend it, but it gets repetitive pretty quickly.
Good game, the only think we disklike is that when you die you get an option to revive yourself with an ad, but even if you dont click that, you still get an ad a lot :(.
We love this game. Its kinda hard but we hope to defeat it sometime. The only thing we dont like is the ads. But in the App Store feature today it showed it in color, but its actually black and white. Plz update with color. Also make the spell scrolls ranged not melee.
Why so many ads? That's the only problem this game has. Other than that, the game is very addicting and perfectly nails the aesthetic of a retro RPG.
We are a fan of it simple game style and charming music however the music it's a little repetitive after a while and we definitely have a problem with a lot of the characters. The clerk has the ability to abuse the ghosts to gain more life. While the ninja being the most expensive character is the most underwhelming with it's only buff being a DCY of 2 if they could just tweak the characters and flush out the game a little bit more we feel that this could be one of our favorite games in the AppStore.
We like this game's look and it's simple controls but we wish it had a bit more to discover. The classes are too similar and we were disappointed that spells are the same as weapons.
This is a fun and simple game. Great for playing in traffic or a waiting room. We Paid for the full version so we can't speak on the ads being annoying. The only improvement we can think of for the dev is an option button in-game so you can toggle the music off or on without going to the main menu, which you only see after you die. We think that if this game got fleshed out like some of his others it could be a big hit.
The game is immensely fun but gets a little too repetitive at times.
This is not showing up. Just downloaded the game. Digging it though, just the ads are driving us nuts.
One of the curses says increase ATK by 1, set DCY to 1. This curse increases ATK by 5.
Neat little game. We would pay to not have to watch the ads (which are for games that look very stupid) after dying just to get back to the home screen. This is a real black eye on an otherwise promising game. Makes us not want to play it.
This is a cool game but it is kind of ruined by the very strange ads that appear at the bottom of the screen. They are all in Chinese and arent exactly objectionable but are very strange and off putting. If the ads were in English we might pick this game up again.
You have something fun but weapon damage is bad enough that we quitting. We went 5 levels without one. We would have unlimited weapons and scrolls and you can pick a new one up as you go.
Its good if you have a few minutes to kill. The only way to progress decently is by saving money after death to buy character levels. Theres no point in using money for anything else in the game.
- We get a 30 second ad every single time the game is over. Seriously, showing an ad after we choose to not revive (game over) while there is an option to revive by watching an ad is terrible. Like whats the point then? We get to watch an ad anyways. 2. Im not sure if theres a setting or something but the control is a bit sensitive. But its fine if we do single swipes instead of scroll. 3. Otherwise the game itself is wonderful.
Worst in game ads of any game we've ever played. Gameplay is good but they need to find a different ad service.
The additional advertising added to the game makes it far less fun.
This game is boring, even for a rogue dungeon crawler.
Cute game and certainly nostalgic. One aspect we cant stand is that your weapon breaks. This is so silly. After a weapon breaks, it could be many levels before a new weapon is found. If you last that long.
The game is fine. The ADs are awful. The videos are long and loud and even though we can understand watching an AD to get a second life…why force users to watch an AD after we are dead just to get to the main screen. Also buying the upgrade doesnt appear to get rid of the ADs so whats the point. We get that developers need to make money. There are a lot of games that do a good job balancing ADs but this one is not one of them.
Ads play even when you dont want to continue. We were going to pay for the game but saw reviews that the ads continue. Instead we deleted the game.
Its been a long time since we last played this. The gameplay is great, its simple puzzles disguised as a retro dungeon crawler. However, this app deserves a one-star review, we would rate zero stars, but that doesnt seem like an option. Why does it get a low score? Because of the aggressive advertising on it. Ads that pop-up after every death that cannot be skipped until an x appears a few moments later, or an ad that pops up every now and then that doesnt even let you leave it, instead the only way to get past it is to click on the ad. Opening the game sometimes causes these ads to pop up. When you die, you have an option of giving up a portion of your gold to continue or you can PLAY ANOTHER AD. Furthermore, it looks like theyve since added a banner ad thats always on the bottom of the page since we last played a couple years ago. And then, get this, despite raking in cash from the sheer amount of ad revenue this downloadable billboard makes, the developer has the audacity to make a separate page on the Home Screen to ask for donations. Like mate, your game is almost bloody unplayable because of the ads youve rented out across the blasted thing. Do you think Im going to pay you $3 to watch even more ads (but this time the game has a whopping three colors added to it!!!!!!). Bugger off.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.3
- Size: 62.06 MB
- iOS: 7.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: [Kan Kikuchi]()
Last updated: 14th November 2016 | Genre: Roleplaying, Adventure | Developer: Kan Kikuchi