Games like The Long Way Up
If The Long Way Up is your kind of game, the closest matches are Crystal Core, Guild Idle and Guaxiang Lu: Trigram Chronicles — picked from the ranked list below. Each pick is ranked by what players of this game also play, shared genres and tags, and review-mined similarity — not a generic popularity list.
Get personalized picks →About The Long Way Up: A text-forward cultivation roguelite. Climb a tower of one thousand floors that never repeats the same climb for every new soul. Falling is not death, it is tuition: keep your realm, lose your altitude, and climb again with Moye, a sword spirit who remembers every fall you take.

Players who liked The Long Way Up also play
Steam players who put hours into The Long Way Up also tend to own these titles — a signal called collaborative filtering. imho.run cross-references millions of library ownership patterns to surface games whose real audiences overlap, regardless of whether their genre tags match.
Crystal Core
WHY THIS
Top pick for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries.
Crystal Core is a first-person roguelike deckbuilder where every card becomes an action in battle. Build your deck, choose your hero, and descend through the cursed Crystal Caves, battling monsters and growing stronger with every encounter. Can you survive the depths and destroy the Crystal Core?
Guild Idle
WHY THIS
Second-strongest match for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries.
An incremental idle RPG focused on hero management, buildcraft, optimization, and long-term progression. Develop powerful heroes, push them through the endless Eternal Strife, and immortalize them in asynchronous PvP where their legacy strengthens future generations.
Guaxiang Lu: Trigram Chronicles
WHY THIS
Third-strongest match for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Early Access with The Long Way Up.
Guaxiang Lu: Trigram Chronicles is a Five Elements & Eight Trigrams roguelike deckbuilder. Rise from Qi Refining to ascension: channel coins into Yin and Yang, play cards in the elemental cycle to trigger combos, and collect eight trigram discs to challenge the Heavenly Dao. Your journey begins now!
SALT SWEEPER
WHY THIS
Ranked #4 for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries.
SALT SWEEPER is a roguelite twist on minesweeper. Sweep corrupted desert mines, fight enemies in turn-based combat, and grow more powerful with weapons and spells you find along the way.
Zodiac Mountain
WHY THIS
Ranked #5 for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Early Access with The Long Way Up.
Ascend Zodiac Mountain in a roguelike deckbuilder with two-sided cards. Build Yin & Yang hands, discover powerful relics, and create satisfying synergies to defeat mythical enemies.
Eternal Sword Tomb
WHY THIS
Ranked #6 for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries.
No chosen one, only a mortal soul. In this hardcore cultivation Roguelike, found a sect and forge a legacy across generations. Fall in battle to become a Sword Soul that protects those who follow. Master the Five Elements, defy fate, and turn every death into a step toward a greater awakening.
Malignant Survivors 2
WHY THIS
Ranked #7 for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries.
Experience the most intense 3D crowd combat ever. Pick a hero, gear up and face the horde. Grab loot, get stronger and stay alive. Died? Try another hero, another build. Find your own path to the Abyss.
Kardiya: The Winds of Fate
WHY THIS
Ranked #8 for The Long Way Up fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries.
Rogue-lite RPG Dicebuilding game. Roll the dice, choose your companions, organize your gear, explore all of Kardia, and die. Then try again! Try again and again. Experience a different story each time. Until you find The Winds of Fate.
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Cheaper alternatives
Games in the same vein priced at least 40% below The Long Way Up at current Steam store prices.
Mage Arena
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under The Long Way Up on Steam right now. Shares Early Access with The Long Way Up.
A co-op PvP experience about using your voice to cast spells in the Mage Arena to settle an ages-old feud between sorcerers and warlocks.
Apewar
WHY THIS
Priced ~83% under The Long Way Up on Steam right now. Shares Early Access with The Long Way Up.
Apewar is an online tactical and action FPS/TPS monkey war game adapted from real life. Build your monkey team and fight against your enemies. By playing in a coordinated way, you can have fun and win with a good strategy. Monkeys are strong together!
Shark Dating Simulator XL+
WHY THIS
Priced ~83% under The Long Way Up on Steam right now.
Shark Dating Simulator XL+ is a quick-to-play comedy visual novel with colorful cartoon characters and a multiple choice storyline with consequences for your actions. The only thing for sure is that at some point you'll make it with a shark girl. Go you!
Force Reboot
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under The Long Way Up on Steam right now. Shares Early Access with The Long Way Up.
Force Reboot is a fast-paced FPS with rogue-lite elements. Force Reboot is entirely focused on nonstop gameplay. You need to get past all of the rooms as fast as you can.
Andy's Apple Farm
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under The Long Way Up on Steam right now. Shares Early Access with The Long Way Up.
Play minigames and discover the hidden truth in this retro-style horror game
Neophyte
WHY THIS
Priced ~50% under The Long Way Up on Steam right now. Shares Early Access with The Long Way Up.
A mini topdown action roguelike with chaotic spell-slinging hack-n-slash combat. Collect spells, choose perks and discover powerful synergies to become an unstoppable monster-slaying wizard.
Free alternatives
Free-to-play games that recommended players of this title also tend to enjoy.
Life is Strange - Episode 1
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
Episode 1 now FREE! Life is Strange is an award-winning and critically acclaimed episodic adventure game that allows the player to rewind time and affect the past, present and future.
ENA: Dream BBQ
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
Experience surreal environments and inexplicable characters as ENA in a new wild world.
The Looker
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
You wake up, alone, on a strangely familiar island full of puzzles that will frustrate and annoy you.
Sheepy: A Short Adventure
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
A Short Handcrafted Pixel Art Platformer that follows Sheepy, an abandoned plushy brought to life. Sheepy: A Short Adventure is the first short game from MrSuicideSheep.
Our Life: Beginnings & Always
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
A twenty-dollar bill, four summers, fifteen years, and a one of a kind life. Create an experience that’s all your own in this near-fully customizable visual novel where you grow from childhood to adulthood with the lonely boy next door.
missed messages.
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
‘goth gf’s iPhone’ airdrops you - accept or decline? A love/horror story about life, death, & memes.
A Date with Death
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
Fight against & romance the one hunting for your soul in A Date with Death, a romance chat simulator where you date(?) the Grim Reaper himself. Create your own character, decorate your apartment, and chat away with the charming yet dangerous Grim Reaper through text and video calls.
Grimm's Hollow
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
A spooky, freeware RPG where you search the afterlife for your brother. Reap ghosts with your scythe, explore haunted caves, and eat ghostly treats on your journey through death.
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Head-to-head comparisons
Frequently asked about The Long Way Up
- How much does The Long Way Up cost?
- The Long Way Up is listed on Steam at 5.99 USD (current store price; Steam sales may reduce this temporarily).
- What games are most similar to The Long Way Up?
- Based on Steam play patterns and shared genres/tags, the games most often recommended alongside The Long Way Up are Crystal Core, Guild Idle, Guaxiang Lu: Trigram Chronicles.
- Who developed The Long Way Up?
- The Long Way Up was developed by Flytel.
imho.run ranks Steam game alternatives using a mix of collaborative filtering (ALS / iALS / EASE / LightGCN), content scoring over genres, categories, Steam tags, developers, and publishers, plus AI-extracted vibes mined from review text. The page above is generated in seed mode anchored on The Long Way Up.
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