Gods of the Grid
Gods of the Grid is a highly unique blend of match-3, roguelite, and RPG mechanics, all wrapped in a rich Greek mythology theme. You play as the child of a Greek god, swapping runes on a shared grid to make matches of 3, 4, or 5 to charge powerful spells against legendary mythological creatures and Greek deities. Because you and your enemy take turns on the exact same board, every move is a tug-of-war. Matches of 4 or more grant extra turns, allowing you to further refill your mana pools or chain attacks for extra damage. However, the enemies are also matching runes to charge up their own devastating unique attacks, so leaving the board state where multi-matches can still be done means that your opponent will use them to charge up their own abilities.
The essence of the combat is that every single swap matters, and this is one of the things I like most about this game. You are not just matching colors mindlessly, like it often happens in a regular Match 3 game. You have to carefully and strategically pick what you match. Skulls deal damage to your foes, hearts give you a bit of health back, shields give you armor to soak up hits, and colored runes build up the mana you need to cast powerful spells. It makes you think before each move, even more so when you are trying to exploit an enemy’s elemental weaknesses. Gameplay-wise, these battles are extremely satisfying. You can do all sorts of funny things, like stealing the enemies’ mana so that they can’t cast their spells anymore, blasting directly through their shields, or simply stomping them with a chain of spells. As it is now, the game truly makes you feel powerful and, to some extent, indestructible the more buffs (boons and relics) you stack.
It’s somewhat similar to other classic match-3 RPGs like Puzzle Quest or Gems of War in the sense that it has the same tactical grid style where you compete directly with your opponent over resources. However, it changes the gameplay from a long, static campaign into a fast, highly replayable roguelite loop.
The game is currently structured around 9 sequential dungeons, each of them having you fight several mythological enemies. Each dungeon adds a unique mechanic to the gameplay, such as turning several gems to a specific color, adding frozen or cursed tiles, or periodically reshuffling the board. The RPG element comes into play after each fight, where you are presented with 3 options to choose your reward from. You need to pick one of them, and each is a gamble between getting a beneficial outcome like money gain, health restoration, or a relic in exchange for a risk. There’s a lot of flexibility and randomness here, including trading your health for a random relic, swapping one spell with a different one, or even buying a skip for the next battle. Sometimes you can also get access to the shop to spend your gold on one of three random relics.
The progression system is another huge highlight for me. Since it is a roguelike, you do face permadeath with every battle, which means a single mistake can end your run, and runs partially depend on your luck or mostly in how the board is generated at the start of each battle. However, the game overall remains very fair because your efforts are never truly wasted. Each run, no matter how short or how long, earns you Favor from the gods (the longer the run, the more Favor points you get). This is a meta currency used for buying permanent upgrades to your health, damage, and other stats for all subsequent runs or to unlock a new demigod or enable a relic to start dropping during your run. With six distinct demigod classes available and a handful of relics and boons that you can pick on the way, the build variety makes every single run feel unique.
Right now, the game is in Early Access, but it already feels very polished and complete, with new mechanics and improvements being added every day. A global leaderboard is also available, and even a daily challenge if you want to compete in scores with others. If the normal mode seems too easy for you, a hard mode is also available. The developer is actively listening to the community and plans to balance the mechanics further and add more content (relics, dungeons) and an endless mode before the full release later this year.
Gods of the Grid strikes a perfect balance between being cozy and a challenging match-3 game. It lets you play at your own pace without any stress from timers, the core focus being optimizing the matches so you can do the most damage or protect yourself preemptively from the enemy’s attacks. Personally, while I am not the biggest fan of roguelites, I really, really love this game. It’s quite addictive, it’s casual yet deeply tactical, and I cannot wait to see what the final release looks like.
Please note that these points reflect the state of the build available on the Steam store in Jul 2026. The actual gameplay experience may vary upon release.