Godot Roguelike: Build a 3D Hack 'n' Slash
Chain combos, battle through an endless gauntlet of enemies and grow stronger with every run.
Dash, Strike, Repeat
Feel Combat With Real Weight Behind It
Great combat has a rhythm: dash, strike, recover, repeat.
You'll build a 3D hack and slash character with that rhythm built in. Chain attacks together, dash out of danger, and knock enemies into hazards they won't get up from. Then you'll throw all of it into a roguelike gauntlet that keeps testing what you've built, run after run.
Chain Combos That Feel Exactly Right
A combo isn't luck: it's a state machine doing its job.
You'll build a state machine that governs everything your character can do, so chaining a heavy strike into a dash cancel feels precise instead of accidental. It's the backbone the rest of the combat is built on.
Give Your Enemies a Mind of Their Own
The same states that drive your combos also drive your enemies.
Reuse that state machine approach to build enemies with real, distinct behaviour: some roam and wait, others charge in, and some hang back and fire from range. Watching them path around a pit to chase you down, or fire on you the instant you're in range, is where the whole system starts to feel alive.
Keep Every Run Harder Than the Last
Every run gets harder, and every run makes you stronger.
You'll structure a roguelike loop where three levels shuffle through in rotation, and clearing one sends you through a portal to pick one of two free, randomly offered upgrades before the next level begins. Enemies keep coming in a growing gauntlet, so the pressure to get better at your own combat system never lets up.
Make Your Levels Look Shipped
Baked lighting, particles, and shaders turn a grey box into a place.
You'll bring your levels to life with baked VoxelGI lighting, GPUParticles fireballs, and shader effects you'll wire up and animate for dash trails and weapon slashes. In the final stretch, a knockback component lets you punt enemies clean into the pits and hazards scattered through every level.
What you’ll learn
Build a state machine that drives every attack, cancel and combo in your combat.
Give each enemy its own AI, from cautious snipers to relentless brawlers.
Structure a roguelike loop with randomised levels and run-based upgrades.
Craft reusable components for health and damage that work across your whole cast.
Cap off your combat with a knockback component that punts enemies into pits.
Bake VoxelGI lighting that turns a grey box into a level worth screenshotting.
Wire up shader effects like scrolling noise dash trails and glowing slash VFX.
Spawn fireballs and particle effects that make every hit land with impact.
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Love the fast, satisfying combat in games like Hades?
This course shows you how to build your own 3D hack and slash roguelike from the ground up. We're talking chained attacks, a dash you can cancel into, and hits that send enemies flying into hazards they don't get back up from.
What you'll build:
- A state machine that governs your character's every move, so a light attack, a heavy attack and a dash cancel connect into one fluid chain instead of fighting each other.
- Enemies with real behaviour of their own, built on that same state machine approach, some hang back and fire from range, others charge you down.
- A roguelike loop with three hand-built levels in a shuffled rotation and the enemy count climbing the deeper you get.
- Free upgrades between levels, picked from two random offers each time, no currency, just faster, stronger, tougher.
- A run-reset system where death wipes the level counter, difficulty and upgrades clean for a fresh run.
- Reusable components for health and damage shared across your whole cast, so a new enemy type never means rewriting the same logic twice.
- A knockback component in the final stretch that lets you punt enemies clean into pits and hazards.
- Baked VoxelGI lighting, GPUParticles fireballs and impact bursts, and shader effects you'll wire up and animate for dash trails and glowing weapon slashes.
This is for intermediate developers who already know their way around Godot and want to build something with real depth: proper state-driven combat, enemies with real behaviour, and a roguelike loop that keeps testing what they've built. If you've always loved roguelikes and want to build your own run-based progression, this is exactly that project.
By the end, you'll have a complete, playable roguelike, chained combos, intelligent enemies, and a gauntlet that keeps getting harder, built entirely by you.
Curriculum
Instructors
Bramwell Williams
Hi! I'm Bramwell Williams, a professional software engineer who worked on communication technology at Cisco and the IOS release of Rome Total War.
I started using Godot in 2017 and have been in love with the engine ever since, using it for over a dozen game jams and way more personal projects.
The update to Godot 4 made the 3D side of the engine a force to be reckoned with considering the engine's lightweight size, and being open source is a huge boon, with a terrific community to boot. I am really passionate about Godot and hope you come to feel as strongly as I do about the little blue robot 🤖!
For the last three years I have been a full time gamedev educator producing educational content for GDQuest, my own Godot course since Godot 4 first became available in Alpha, and now for Gamedev.tv!
This trajectory was born of a lifelong love of games in all forms and a desire to create wonderful stories while thoroughly enjoying teaching and breaking complex problems into manageable chunks.