The Swashbugglers is a cartoon-style 2D roguelike autochess focused on tactical strategy while keeping a witty, lighthearted tone. Set in the late years of a Reptilian Dynasty where corrupt officials and local despots collude, you recruit reptilian and insect heroes from the greenwood forests to form a team. By building their skills, equipment and stele inscriptions through battles, you work to defeat the chaos-causing leaders within a time limit. Sly swarms of cockroaches, venomous mosquito soldiers and manipulated giant flesh worms stand in the way, and enemies arrive with randomly attached curses.

Chart credential: Steam 250 seven-day chart position #42 for the week of 5 September 2026, up three places from the previous day. Score 7.08 from 107 reviews at 87 percent positive. Released 4 September 2026.

Key features

A time limit that forces the build to commit

Most autobattlers let a run drift: you can keep rerolling until a synergy appears. Putting a hard deadline on defeating the leaders means an unfocused board is a losing board, so the decision that matters is when you stop shopping and start scaling. That single constraint is what separates the good runs from the long ones.

Three upgrade tracks instead of one

Skills, equipment and stele inscriptions progress separately, which means a unit is not simply a tier. Two players can field the same insect and have it doing entirely different jobs, and it makes a weak early recruit worth keeping if the inscription line supports it. Depth in an autobattler comes from how many ways a piece can be wrong, not from how many pieces there are.

Curses randomise the problem, not the answer

Enemies arrive with randomly attached curses, so each encounter modifies the rules rather than just the stat line. This is the healthier way to add variance to an auto-resolving battle: you cannot outplay a dice roll during combat, but you can prepare for a rule change before it. It keeps the pre-battle phase, where the actual game lives, the thing that decides the fight.

Where to find it

The Swashbugglers is on Steam at $6.39, down 20 percent from $7.99 at the time of writing. Single-player with Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud, and full English support alongside eleven other languages. View The Swashbugglers on Steam.

Frequently asked questions

How much does The Swashbugglers cost?

6.39 dollars on Steam at the time of writing, a 20 percent discount from the 7.99 dollar list price.

Is The Swashbugglers an autobattler?

Yes. It is described as a roguelike autochess, where you build a team and battles resolve automatically based on your setup.

Is The Swashbugglers in English?

Yes. Steam lists English alongside Simplified and Traditional Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese and Korean.

Is there a time limit in The Swashbugglers?

Yes. You must defeat the chaos-causing leaders within a time limit, which is the core pressure on how you build your team.

Who made The Swashbugglers?

Developer Asmodeus Game, published by Shuffle Play Games. It released on 4 September 2026.

Who made The Swashbugglers

Asmodeus Game developed The Swashbugglers. You can see their other games and where to follow them on the Asmodeus Game studio page.