On Tuesday, Prophecy Games announced Deadzone: Rogue 2, a sequel to its 2025 standout roguelike. It doesn’t have a release date yet, but a demo will be available sometime in June 2026 for players to get a feel for how the sequel sharpens and expands on the core gunplay of the first game.
The original Deadzone: Rogue was released last summer, but didn’t arrive on my radar until its Nintendo Switch 2 launch in March. I picked it up on a whim while traveling and was immediately transfixed. While everyone else was enjoying the horrors of Marathon, I was getting my FPS fix in Deadzone: Rogue.
Like so many great science-fiction stories, Deadzone: Rogue is set on a space station with nary another human in sight. Instead, killer robots and creepy biomechanical creatures inhabit its hallways, and they all want to kill you. Throughout your runs, you uncover pieces of lore that’ll gradually help you put together the mystery of what happened to this station and where you fit into it.
As intriguing as all that is, the real draw of Deadzone: Rogue is the top-notch gunplay. You can make a killer build around any of the game’s primary weapons, since they all have their benefits. I prefer the large magazine of an LMG, because I don’t like being caught reloading while enemies swarm, but the high rate of fire of SMGs with smaller mags are just as devastating with the right perks. Any weapon can melt away enemies once you get the hang of it, and mid-run shops allow you to continuously upgrade your chosen gun if you find yourself with a favorite you don’t want to ditch.
On Switch 2, Deadzone: Rogue is one of the rare third-party games to make use of the mouse controls. Using a Joy-Con as a mouse (with the other Joy-Con just kinda awkwardly floating by itself in my other hand) definitely takes some getting used to at first. But after the first few rooms in a run, it feels like second nature. I can whip my sights around much quicker using the Joy-Con mouse than the thumbstick, which comes in clutch when multiple robots are trying to cut my run short.
What keeps me coming back to Deadzone: Rogue is its variety of builds. There are multiple types of elemental damage you can lean into, like freezing opponents or setting them on fire (never gets old). One build that I’ve come to rely on for long runs involves adding companion bots who follow me around, doling out damage and, more importantly, taking my opponents’ attention away from me. (A bot will respawn when it blows up — I won’t.) Another favorite is a perk that grants temporary stealth when killing an enemy with a melee weapon. With a strong enough axe or knife, I easily channel my inner Ezio and stealth kill a room full of goons without them even knowing I was there.
Permanent upgrades, which you enhance before setting off for a run, ensure that even in death you get stronger — something that’s become commonplace across other roguelikes like Hades 2 and Saros. Also in between runs is when you’ll say hi to Planty, the only lifeform that’s trying not to kill you. Good plant.
Though initially launched almost a year ago, Deadzone: Rogue still feels new, so a sequel seemingly releasing this soon is a bit of a surprise. What is this, the 2000s? But I’m still eager to see how Prophecy Games expands on what makes the first game so great, since it quickly became one of the Switch 2’s best.
Deadzone: Rogue is available on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
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