Barony Costs Just $2 in the Steam Summer Sale—And It’s a Surprising RPG

For as long as I can remember, Barony has hovered at the edge of my Steam wishlist and store browsing habits. It’s the kind of game I kept postponing—mostly because the retro, blocky visuals look like they belong to a disposable dungeon crawl, not something worth real attention. Then the Steam Summer Sale finally cut it down to $2, and even if I’m joining late, this is one of those “late” buys that ends up feeling like a bargain in more ways than one.

Release window, editions, and current deal

Barony is an indie roguelike RPG available on Steam, and it’s currently listed for $2 during the Steam Summer Sale. The game launched in 2015 and has continued receiving updates since then, with additional paid DLC that is optional.

Under the simple, pixelated exterior, Barony turns out to be anything but “quick and throwaway.” It’s a sprawling, punishing roguelike RPG built around deep systems and procedural chaos—one that still feels satisfying to play well into 2026. At $2, it’s easily one of the highest “hours per dollar” buys I’ve made, and I say that as someone who already owns Minecraft.

You don’t need to spend money to play with friends—if you’re looking for alternatives, check out the best free co-op games on Steam.

What $2 buys you in Barony

Barony is an indie first-person roguelike RPG developed by Turning Wheel LLC. The studio is small and remote, and it released the game in 2015—then kept working on it without stopping. This year, it reportedly passed one million copies sold, and that kind of slow, steady success usually shows up only when a game builds a dedicated following one run at a time. After eleven years of updates, the current version feels far more ambitious and layered than its bargain price suggests.

Turning Wheel’s Sheridan Rathbun has described a wide range of inspirations, stretching from Spelunky to System Shock 2. If you want a quick way to picture it, the pitch is basically a Dungeons and Dragons campaign filtered through the bones of early first-person RPGs—like the dungeon-crawling DNA of The Elder Scrolls: Arena or Daggerfall—then fused with the unforgiving logic of Rogue and NetHack. Rathbun calls NetHack “the biggest inspiration” behind Barony. In practice, the whole package reads like a tribute to a design era many studios spent the last couple of decades smoothing down.

The story setup didn’t end up being the main reason I kept playing, but it does nail a pulp-fantasy vibe. An undead lich named Baron Herx has cursed the town of Hamlet, and your job is to descend into his dungeon and end him. Still, the narrative mostly functions as an excuse to drop you into darkness and danger. The real fascination comes from the mechanics, not the script.

Little hand-holding, fewer apologies

One of the first things you notice in Barony is that it includes an eight-part tutorial that tries to teach everything—from the details of spellcasting to hunger, and even how to throw rocks. At first, it can feel clunky, but it makes sense once you realize how frequently the game punishes small misunderstandings. No matter what class you choose, you will die in Barony—a lot. The important part is that the game doesn’t treat your failure like a personal insult, so you shouldn’t either. Permadeath is the backbone of the experience, and the dungeons are procedurally generated, meaning each attempt brings new traps, new enemies, and new ways to make a bad call. You can starve, eat spoiled food, get flattened by a boulder, or lose everything because you identify a cursed potion using your senses instead of reading it off a scroll.

That last example is where the old-school RPG DNA really earns its keep. The systems don’t “modernize” themselves into something convenient. Items often arrive unidentified, effects can stack in ways that ruin your run—or turn it around—depending on how you think and how fast you adapt. In addition, the first part of the recent “Instruments of Destruction” update reworked the magic system around three schools of spells and roughly eighty individual spells. Whether you roll a human tank-style Barbarian, an accursed, hunger-driven Vampire, or a duck-loving Myconid Hermit, Barony expects you to figure it out. That’s a compliment to the player’s intelligence, but it’s also a warning: the game won’t slow down to meet you halfway.

Note: The second part of the “Instruments of Destruction” update is planned to launch later this year, alongside two new biomes, new secret areas, fresh music, and more content.

Co-op chaos—and classes for every type of masochist

On the practical side, Barony includes 13 classes in the base game that are human-based. Across all three DLCs, there are 26 additional options spanning multiple races. The lineup ranges from relatively straightforward builds to setups that feel deliberately chaotic. If you want something familiar, you can pick a warrior, wizard, or rogue-style approach. If you want the harder road, you can select roles like the sexton, the joker, or the arcanist—each one changing how your run plays and reinforcing replayability as one of the game’s core engines.

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

What makes Barony stand out is that, despite its intense systems, it also supports four-player co-op in multiple formats: online play, split-screen, and crossplay. That multiplayer setup flips the experience into something even more frantic. Shared spaces plus friendly fire means your party is just as capable of getting you killed as the monsters are. Even so, the co-op pacing tends to balance out more than it breaks the game. And because it’s still a co-op roguelike, the funniest deaths are often the ones your friends cause on purpose.

Three DLC drops—high value, but still optional

Barony has been around for more than a decade and remains actively developed, so it does have paid downloadable content. There are three DLC packs in total, and while they cost money, they’re described as modestly priced and worthwhile on their own. “Myths and Outcasts and Legends and Pariahs” each add four new monster races and signature classes, covering options like vampires and succubi, plus goblins and insectoids. The later “Deserters and Disciples” content adds five more monster races and five more classes. Combined, they expand the number of ways you can build—and break—a character. That said, they’re still fully optional if you’re worried about missing out on the “core” experience.

Whether you prefer a human, sword-and-board Barbarian, a cursed hunger-driven Vampire, or a Myconid Hermit who’s all about ducks, Barony assumes you’ll learn the game rather than be guided through it. It’s both a compliment and a threat.

The expansions do add more complexity, but here’s the catch: they also raise the total cost quickly if you’re trying to collect everything. At a near-ninety-percent discount, the base game is an easy yes. Once you add the DLC, the overall price can climb toward what you’d expect to pay for a typical full-priced indie title—even if it’s still on sale. If your goal is the complete monster-race buffet, the deal stops feeling quite as lopsided. Still, it’s not required for the best version of the experience. In my case, Barony impressed me enough that I almost felt like I should support it further. Turning Wheel LLC earned that money in a way that feels surprisingly rare these days.

The easiest $2 buy you can make in the 2026 Steam Summer Sale

At this price, Barony is a steal no matter what kind of player you are. But it’s worth being clear: this is not a comfortable recommendation for everyone. The difficulty curve in this co-op roguelike is steep, the interface shows its age, and a bad early attempt can end before you’ve learned anything useful. Barony demands patience and careful improvement. If you want a game that meets you halfway, it will likely leave you standing in the lobby.

That said, the game’s whole identity is built around that expectation. If you commit to it and start speaking its language, it can become deeply rewarding. And if you’re already comfortable with that vibe, Barony is the full package: a feature-heavy RPG that has been refined over a decade, asks for patience, and pays you back with emergent gameplay that some modern titles charge $60 for—sometimes without delivering anything close. For the cost of a gas-station coffee, Barony is one of the most lopsided trades I’ve made in years.

Barony is currently available for $2 during the Steam Summer Sale.