Skull Horde launched on PC via Steam on April 10, 2026, bringing developer 8BitSkull's particular brand of necromantic revenge to the roguelike dungeon crawler space. You play as a flying skull, a necromancer separated from its own body, raising armies of the dead to fight on your behalf through procedurally generated dungeons in runs that last around twenty minutes each.
The separation from your body isn't just flavour. It defines how you interact with every fight. This is a real-time auto battler, meaning your skeleton minions do the actual fighting while you make the decisions that matter: which units to purchase, where to explore, when to push forward and when to hold. You build your squad throughout each run by buying different unit types, each carrying their own special abilities. Purchasing duplicates of the same type merges them into stronger versions, eventually unlocking a unique ability for that unit. Loot found in dungeon chests and shrines interacts with unit classes and tags to produce layered benefits, and you can spend resources to reroll both units and loot to chase a specific build. The game wants you tinkering constantly, combining synergies between your horde composition and whatever the dungeon throws at you, but it also punishes hesitation. Linger too long in one area and the enemies will overwhelm you.
The tension between careful build-crafting and forward momentum gives each run its shape. You're a skull floating through corridors full of hostile flesh creatures, assembling an expendable army from whatever the dungeon offers. The premise frames the whole conflict as bone versus flesh, your undead legions clashing against an endless tide of living enemies. Each dungeon type features its own set of enemy varieties that demand different strategies, so a build that steamrolled one level might crumble in the next. Unique challenges tied to each dungeon type push you further off comfortable paths, requiring creative compositions to complete and rewarding you with new unlocks and content that feed back into future runs.
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Multiple playable characters give each run a different starting point. One of them, a zombie skull, can raise flesh enemies alongside skeletons, effectively doubling your necromantic toolkit. Each character carries unique special abilities that shape how you approach build construction from the very first room. On top of that, progression between runs unlocks powerful perks you can select before starting, letting you pair a character's strengths with a chosen perk loadout to lay the foundation for whatever overpowered combination you're chasing.
The mood sits somewhere between gleeful and grim. You are, after all, a disembodied skull seeking revenge against your own traitorous body, commanding legions of disposable skeletons through dungeons brimming with loot. There's a vengeful absurdity to the whole setup that the game leans into rather than away from.
Skull Horde is available now on PC via Steam with Steam Deck and Linux support. Each run cycles through the same core rhythm of exploring, purchasing, merging and pushing deeper, but the procedural generation and the sheer number of unit and loot interactions mean the build you stumble into is rarely the one you planned for.