RoguedexPart 2 (May 2024) · #5 of 13 in that tierWatch the moment (2:09:31)
Space Gladiators
- Developed by
- Blobfish
- Published by
- Blobfish
$14.99
Ever dreamt of being a space potato? Now’s your chance! Space Gladiators is a 2D hand-drawn roguelite platformer following a bunch of captives fighting their way out of a planet prison. Defeat hordes of aliens in the gladiatorial arenas and earn your freedom!
Consensus
A76.4/100
Steam players90% positiveVery Positive480 reviews
Metacritic ↗Users: 7.8/10
VG Insights estimate ↗≈14.5K copies · ≈$132K gross
What creators say
Ranked Apr 2023 · #11 of 15 in that tierWatch the moment (2:03:54)
What players say
A 2D hand-drawn roguelite platformer by Blobfish (the studio behind Brotato) in which quirky potato-like prisoners fight through procedurally assembled gladiatorial arenas on the alien prison planet Tartarus.
Steam players rate it Very Positive (about 90% of roughly 480 reviews), and the people who stick with it praise the tight movement, the variety of characters and the tough, customisable difficulty. It is widely described as an overlooked hidden gem that never found a big audience: the SteamSpy estimate is only 20-50k owners and revenue calculators put it near $118k gross. Critic coverage is very thin. Metacritic has one critic review (But Why Tho, 70/100) and only 4 user ratings averaging 7.8, and I found no OpenCritic entry. It launched in Early Access in October 2019 and hit 1.0 on 10 March 2021, with console and mobile versions following (the Metacritic page lists a May 2023 release on PS4, Xbox One and Switch). Recent Steam reviews from 2025-26 mostly compare it to Brotato, and several ask the developer to revisit and rebalance it, mainly because of slow progression.
Players love
- Buttery-smooth movement and controls; you start with a dash that has i-frames plus a double jump, which players say makes platforming combat feel great
- Each of the playable characters (eight per the store page) plays noticeably differently, with easy and hard characters
- Large item pool (300+ weapons, pets and trinkets per the store page) with risk/reward unlocks
- Difficulty is customisable and deep; a reviewer with dozens of hours had only cleared the second of five difficulties for most characters
- Goofy, charming space-potato humour and hand-drawn art that contrast with grimdark roguelites
- Strong replayability and achievement hunting (100+ achievements; some players have 70-190 hours)
- Varied levels built from hundreds of hand-crafted rooms, with 50+ enemies and 10 bosses
- Short-session charm: many reviewers with 70-190 hours call it a favourite and a hidden gem, with a few rating it as high as 9/10
Common complaints
- Progression is slow: you level up and collect items so gradually that runs can feel like a slog before any build comes together
- Items feel sparse early in a run, so the game leans heavily on the core combat being fun, which some players find merely okay
- Some players found the movement and combat unsatisfying or unhappy-making (short negative reviews)
- Steam community describes it as light on content overall
- Reported technical problems in the forums: the game not launching for some and progress not saving on exit
- The mobile version reportedly does not feel good to play compared with PC or console
Can feel tedious
- Slow levelling that makes the mid-run feel grindy and not worth the time, even for players who enjoy the game
- Long runs before item impact is felt, described as boring by a Brotato fan who stopped after minutes
- Hard characters and upper difficulty tiers can be punishing, even on the easy characters according to one reviewer
- Unlock grind for items and achievements is a long haul, though some like it
- Save and launch issues mentioned by community posters
What's unique
- Plays as a potato-style prisoner gladiator in a space prison, with deliberately absurd cast and tone
- Mix of arena-style combat and platforming with dash i-frames and double jump, closer to Nuclear Throne or Hollow Knight than top-down arena shooters
- Risk/reward item unlocks and a five-tier difficulty system with extra difficulty customisation
- Comes from the same studio as Brotato, so players frequently frame it as the less famous sibling with a very different (platformer) format
- Room-based levels built procedurally from many hand-crafted rooms, plus treasure rooms and merchants
Players want
- Rebalance or speed up levelling and item acquisition so runs reach their payoff sooner (most commonly requested in recent reviews)
- A developer revisit or content update; several recent reviewers explicitly ask Blobfish to update the game
- Mod support to extend content, requested in the Steam community
- More content depth, since some players say it runs out of things to do
- Clearer explanation of how to unlock higher difficulty (danger) modes
- Fix launch and save-progress bugs reported in discussions
Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.
Steam tags
ActionIndieRogue-lite2D2D PlatformerHand-drawnAction RoguelikeDifficultSingleplayerPerma Death
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Tier list Part 2 (2024)
Space Gladiators is a 2D action dungeon-crawler roguelike from the developers of Rotato, reusing many of that game's items and characters in a new genre. The gameplay is very basic (whack, dash, jump, or cast spells from range) and can feel slightly clunky, with the real focus on a large pool of items and unlockables. He finds it cute, funny and highly replayable, and thinks many players would love it, but the minimal combat got dull for him. Overall he calls it a good game that just is not for him and places it mid-B.
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