Nightmare Frontier
Nightmare Frontier
Game
Game2024
Rogue Waters
Developer Ice Code Games
Rogue Waters is a Pirate Tactical Turn-Based Rogue-lite. Play as Captain Cutter, commanding your ship and crew through procedurally generated encounters to seek revenge. Recruit, train, and upgrade crew, use powerful sea creatures, and engage in dynamic naval and melee combat to gain the upper hand. From the Steam store page
253 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy) · newest Nov 2, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
52
Mixed
106 positive · 98 negative
95% range 45–59%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 106 | 98 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 11 | 0 | 27 |
| Mastodon * | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| Lemmy * | 1 | 0 | 3 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mostly Positive
516 of 689 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Rogue Waters splits players with fun pirate tactics but bugs and repetition.
Many players praise the creative pirate-themed tactical combat and unique mechanics like ship battles and shoving, calling it fun and refreshing. However, the game is widely criticized for being buggy, with many reporting broken upgrades, achievements, and even save data loss, leading some to call it abandoned. [1][2][3][4][6][7][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]
Some players find the game too repetitive and shallow, with a dominant strategy emerging quickly, while others appreciate the forgiving roguelite structure and fair difficulty. [4][6][7][11][20][21][24][26][30][31][32][34]
Praised fun tactical combat · creative pirate theme · unique ship battles · forgiving roguelite
Criticised bugs and broken features · repetitive gameplay · lack of developer support · shallow strategy
Summary drafted by an AI model from the 36 reactions it cites ([n] links open each post), then checked by code: every paragraph cites real posts and every quote is verbatim. Written Oct 8, 2026. Method
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Rogue Waters sits at 52% positive across 204 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Reactions
60 of 253 · most liked firstHo Ho Ho, got some keys for you. Keys need to be activated till the end of this year. Core Keeper Cozy Underground Crafting claimed Dungeons of Hinterberg Alpine Dungeon Tourism claimed Gatekeeper Cosmic Co-op Action claimed Mouthwashing Existential Space Journey claimed Rogue Waters Walk The Plank Tactically claimed Spiritfall Mythic Combo Roguelite Tactical Breach Wizards Wizards With Guns claimed The Royal Writ Hilarious Historical Card Battles Tower Unite Community Minigame…
neutral · AI labelView post →Abandoned over a year ago with a plathora of gamebreaking bugs and interface issues. It's essentially still an early access game that never got released as one. Shame too, as the basic gameplay loop is decent enough for a roguelite and the bit of plot seemed like it could developed into something interesting.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Got the game through a bundle, but it *had* been on my watchlist, so I gave it a try. It's definitely interesting, the position and shoving mechanics the game's built around is pretty neat, but the ship combat sections really just boil down to 'try and break their cannons before they break yours, and then hope you can weaken their crew buffs' before a fight. On top of the repetitive ship combat, there are just... so many little bugs. ESPECIALLY based around the upgrade system. Some…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun at first, but by the end it gets really old and I was sick and tired of it. You just grind and hope for a good cannon run. Two upgrades just don't work. Achievements for upgrades don't work. Final form achievements don't work. I suffered through this nonsense on Ultimate V by the end and I didn't even get the achievement. Makes no difference but it did piss me off. By Act III you're all upgraded, you're just acquiring glass and blueprints for nothing. I'm rather regretful of having spent as…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a darn shame. I really liked this game! I liked the loop, the difficulty and the progression but it has too many game breaking bugs. The worst one at the moment is that Stunned ENEMIES cannot be targeted. You effectivley just gave a mob imminity until its next turn. At higher difficulty levels armour is a huge problem to get through and half of the items that help mitigate it don't work. They just assume nothing is a valid target. Until the developers actually fix all of the stuff they…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I usually enjoy tactical games, so Rogue Waters looked like an easy recommendation for me. Unfortunately, it only took about 15 minutes to lose my interest. The first red flag was a noticeable UI bug during the tutorial. It may seem minor, but when a game shows obvious issues right at the start, it doesn't inspire much confidence. The combat is not bad, but it feels very simple. Most of the time I was just pushing enemies around on tiny maps. After playing games like Into the Breach, I was…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →First, let me just say that I REALLY like this game. A LOT. But I won't recommend it. I just experienced an issue which I gather from users online is a fairly common one. I fired up the game today, as one does, and my player profile and save data were gone. Just GONE. And excuse my very finest pardon, but I will not be starting over. Doubly so because this could apparently happen again.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I think you can play this game and have a good time, but I have to warn you about what to expect before going into it, as I can only recommend this game with many caveats and everything I say is fixable if the devs care to do so. 1. The game lacks meaningful variety. You will be offered a variety of cannons, modules, crew members, and equipment, but you will never make a meaningful choice about what to use. Once you get the hang of the game you will known precisely what works and what…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun idea and decent execution but the game still has some really annoying bugs (even if nothing is game breaking) and some unimplemented features (mates upgrades and hull points?!?) and broken achievements. Feels abandoned by its devs... If you really want to try it wait for 50% or more discount
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →People mention game breaking bugs. Didn't get any of those, but did get the bugs that hard crash your PC
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Rogue Waters is a fun roguelite ttrpg that unfortunately has some gamebreaking bugs. Pros: -Roguelite, but has an actual story that you progress through as you clear runs. -Similar set-up to Darkest Dungeon where you can recruit characters with different class set-ups, all of them felt good to play with and felt unique and different. -I liked the push mechanics and it made positioning feel important and impactful. -The ship combat is rng, but the actual ttrpg portion has no rng. That…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a fun strategy game but here's a list of stuff to turn it into a positive review for me - More Sea Monsters - you encounter 3 that you get to use and the last one is kinda boring. You encounter so many monsters in random events, giant crab, sea serpent, sting ray and yet we don't see them in gameplay at all. - More mission types - Doing the same ship battle over and over or using a witch to escape the port in 1 turn, gets a bit boring after a while. - Bugs - Achievements are bugged.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Wasted potential. This game with this setup could work so much better as a normal RPG with sailing, exploration, and such than as a roguelike. There are a bunch of items that you can't keep even if your run is successful. Why? It is like birdwatching. You find an interesting item and make a note in your glossary, then let it return into the wild again. Also, if you researched everything, resources are meaningless. It is a rougelite, why can't I buy more stat or items or something? Oh, and my…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →[Epic] Songs of Conquest (PC), Rogue Waters (PC), Wytchwood (Mobile). https://store.epicgames.com/free-games Claim Everything (PC / Android & iOS) -…
neutral · AI labelView post →TL;DR: Excellent game, but severely buggy and in the hands of developers so incompetent and careless that their every attempt to patch it just creates new issues. There's a lot to love about this game. Like, it's genuinely a lot of fun! As a Roguelite, it's more 'lite' than 'Rogue' - sure, your ship resets after every expedition, but your crew accrues XP and you get currency you can use for permanent upgrades, and this happens regardless of whether your expedition ended in death or victory,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Devs abandon this one and left it unfinished because working on another game? But hey let other devs release a DLC? wtf is wrong here? @ Tripwire-Stone So it took you 2 years and now the negativ reviews to become aware of it?
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i tried to ignore the warnings. but the game is definitely too buggy to play. broken. kaput. not a finished product. it's unfortunately not even worth it if it's free.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →GOTY season is my favourite time of the year for podcasting! This week, @bradgallaway.bsky.social hopped on to tell me about his hits and misses of 2025, including Dispatch, Rogue Waters, Stories of Sol, Lies of P: Overture, and why Silksong didn't make his list.
neutral · AI labelView post →This game installed Epic Online Services spyware on my computer.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I got this game from Humble Bundle along with Diablo IV. The main attraction supposed to be Diablo IV, but that turned out to be a souless, gocha game with mediocre story. This game's story is nothing to write home about either, but still a notch better than Diablo IV. This game is actually fun to play. It has some bugs, like some upgrade are not implemented correctly, but nothing that breaks the game, so it's OK. It's also pretty short and sweet, nothing that steal your whole life.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A decent game that's absolutely not worth 38.99$ CAD. Has some glaring bugs that don't really detract from the experience, some unfinished mechanics and could use a decent amount of polish... but what's there is a creative, interesting roguelite that has unique mechanics. The pre-battle ship combat is a crazy cool mechanic with loads of player agency, the actual combat itself has a pretty big skill ceiling, there's a lot of smart design at play here. It's a roguelite with a clear narrative…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →tl;dr - Game feels like it was made with a lot of love. Playing with a crew of specialist pirates while summoning the Kraken to smack around the enemy crew is cool as ♥♥♥♥. Most negative reviews are from (I feel) very casual gamers. The game can (and should) be hard, but it's extremely fair. For context, I just beat the game on highest difficulty, selecting the next-highest whenever possible (after each story mission clear), and by the percentages of those achievements alone I know the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →An aesthetically interesting but strategically shallow game that honestly wouldn't be that out of place as a mobile game. Runs are generally short and death is forgiven, allowing you to lick your wounds and bulk up for additional attempts. The tactical gameplay is somewhat engaging at first, however a dominant strategy quickly emerges that allows you to win every encounter in a single turn. Simply eliminate the enemy ship's cannons, then weaken the crew to a single health (rather than…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a really fun game! But there are some pretty significant bugs that really ruin the experience. Upgrades are very broken, as in they simply do not happen or work. Not to mention that the achievements are also largely broken. It's a cool game but I expect something more functional for $30.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Good concept, not elaborate enough to be fun. Theme and mecanics are interesting, but the game cruelly lack depth and is highly repetitive.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Got this game in a bundle, spent a good while in it. I enjoyed myself, but my overall review will have to be a No. If you can get it during a bundle/sale for $10-15, then go for it. There's a few pieces contributing to this: (1) For a single player game, there's an unacceptable level of gacha-style rolling and grinding. (2) Your actual choices you make during the run don't feel particularly interesting. (3) The difficulty scaling isn't well-balanced, meaning you're basically forced into a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pretty average roguelike from what I've seen so far. Story isn't compelling, gameplay is pretty fun, and I like the pirate theming. I wish it was possible to sail around freely, instead you just get a Slay the Spire style map with nodes you can click on. The constant loading screens are annoying. Hard to recommend an average roguelike when there are so many great ones out there.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It’s Pirate Yakuza weekend but if you like pirates and don’t care for Yakuza, I’m going to recommend Rogue Waters. A pirate tactical strategy game where you make a crew and go on a quest for vengeance. Addicting game loop!
positive · AI labelView post →this is like, the most 7/10 indie game in the best way Gameplay: extremely fun and with some really inspired choices, but it does get repetitive. some genius gameplay decisions to make playing the game just simply feel good. being told exactly what type of enemy you're going to fight and the rewards you'll get is so refreshing. infinite undos mean you're never mad when an interaction happens that you didn't expect. and being able to blast specific parts of the enemy ship to compliment your…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Final Score: 59/100 I don’t think Rogue Waters is a bad game, but once I understood the systems and built a strong crew, I realized there just isn’t much game surrounding its core. The ship battles are fun, the different crew classes actually feel unique, and I spent a ridiculous amount of time rerolling everyone until I had an absolute wrecking crew. I also liked using the environment during boarding fights, the pirate presentation is solid, and some of the character animations and dialogue…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hello Im loving this game ! its a very interesting game play. however Im unable to go beyond the ultimate Level V 5 even though Ive defeated blackbone on that level multiple times. Devs : please help. beautiful game thouhg.. loved playing it.. cheers SHiv
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I had this game on my wish list and was really excited to see if appear in this month's Humble Choice but I can't help but feel disappointed. The game has some really cool ideas and a lot of potential but it just falls short. It's a roguelite where each fight begins with a ship battle and then you board the opposing ship to fight on deck. The ship battle just feels completely pointless. You get 3 turns before you board the enemy ship. There's a lot of RNG here as some cannons deal a range of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Buggy mess, the game is technically abandoned. No bug fix, no update, nothing.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Rogue Waters is a decent turn based roguelike. It gets points for being different. You're a pirate, you choose a path on a map, you have shipfight then board the ship or fort and have a srpg battle. Story is servicable. Battles are fun and have some depth. It's a good game for a low price, but can't recommend for full price as it gets too repetitive, each map takes a little too long, and the balance is questionable.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is filled with bugs, such as when you buy upgrade: it spends the ressource to purchase it but does not unlock... also I'm only at the beginning and this game is a grinding fest
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I loved the skirmish mechanics the demo showed and was what convinced me to get the game when it was on sale... However that changed once I played the game. What the demo doesn't show and explain is the grind you have to go through to eventually win a mission/adventure. It's not like other turn based games where you win/lose battles, gain xp + items and move on to the next battle. Here you embark on raids (which you have to finish once you've started them), where you get to choose which fights…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A brilliant casual rogue-lite. In true spirit of the genre, the first couple of adventures feel difficult and hollow, but the satisfaction when you slowly upgrade your equipment and begin demolishing the easy missions keeps pulling me back in. I wish there was some customisation elements for the ship, and the encounters do quickly start getting a bit 'samey', but if you want a simple casual game to sink 20 hours into then this might be the game for you.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I might dig a little deeper later but my favourite video game releases of '24 have been: Balatro, Tactical Breach Wizards, Trash of the Titans, Rogue Waters, Caves of Qud, Fields of Mistria, Animal Well, Frogue, Rally: Endless Conquest, Prescience and, a late add, These Doomed Isles!
positive · AI labelView post →I have a feeling I will enjoy Rogue Waters. www.pcgamer.com/games/roguel...
positive · AI labelView post →I absolutely love this game, but the current state of the game is in an absolutely buggy mess and needs patching(last patch was in July!!!) UPDATE: I FOUND MORE BUGS - Stunned enemies can't be attacked but when enemies stun you, they can attack just fine. - Inputs are not accurate. If you do a certain action, your units will completely ignore your command resulting in you having to do a different action. - MANY ITEMS CAN'T BE USED SUCH AS BOOTS THAT DAMAGE BASED ON ARMOR - RANDOM CIRCE NPC…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Honestly didnt look at the tags and though it was a pirate crpg. Turns out its a roguelite. It's pretty fun for what it is, but i dont see myself playing more now that i beat the story. Devs doubt you'll see this but making a crpg with pirates might not be a bad idea. And let us romance shiv or the musketeer.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →How is this a two year old game? There are bugs with basic controls and user interface, as well as plain bad decisions, that make for continuous, unavoidable frustration. I tried playing with mouse and keyboard as well as a controller and they each have their own issues that make you have to repeat actions and use weird workarounds. It feels like they were rushing to ship this, except - again - it's been two years since it came out! If you do decide to struggle with it, what you find is a fun…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Full of gamebreaking bugs and UI glitches. Achievements generally don't seem to work. Progression is horribly unbalanced and buying a few upgrades makes story progression a joke. Higher difficulties are harder, but not in a fun or interesting way. Post-story gameplay is rote and the story itself builds up a few interesting points, only to go "back to the status quo because this is a roguelite" and offers no actual resolution to anything. I really wanted to like this game. I can't say that I do.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like this game. I love pirate games. I love turn-based tactics. I hoped this would be a sweet spot game but some of the development decisions make it a grindy unfun game. If the developers ever come back and reduce the grind to get upgrades then I'll update this review.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Should have heeded the warnings that said this game has absolutely no replayability and gets boring really fast. I gave it a fair shot but almost from the get go I wasn't enjoying this nearly as much as I'd hoped for. I love tactics games and I love run based roguelikes... but then again, this isn't a rogueLIKE but a rogueLITE with all the terrible balancing and phone game style grinding that it entails. There are two kinds of meta-progression a game can have: The kind where after a run you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i almost can recomend this game JUST ALMOST devs.... i had this game for free thanks to a lovely friend i had this game on my wishlist for ever but when i play it it give me like enjoyment like fustration sure i die alot sure but that part of the game and i not complain about that but i hate the Game punishes me for some STUPIT BUGS!. 1 bug i had where i littarly pressed to attack the game does not show me any high lights i had to press randomy everywhere to get it to fix or press a other…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is really fun but it is too buggy to play, my whole save file got deleted one day and sometimes the game will freeze randomly
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was 'just' getting into the game in the first few hours, and loaded back in, lost all progress somehow... NOTHING buzzkills me like losing progress [s'why i don't play tarkov...], went to look up this problem and found out that it's been an issue for YEARS and has still not been fixed, so until you see people talking about how this has stopped happening, i don't recommend it. The game itself was actually starting to feel fun, but without reliable progress it's not worth your 'time',…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I would enjoy to have the same style of game with more polish. however, the game feels very basic. With improved storytelling devices, larger variety of units, more of about everything: it could have been something worth a recommendation.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →7/10 - Due to bugs Length: 20 to 30 hrs to experience everything I really like this game but there are technical issues you have to just accept. Developers have not updated the game in a long time and the game does have some unavoidable bugs. Game is essentially in a beta state, needed a little more time for bug fixing. The gameplay loop is REALLY fun! There are many good strategies to try out and most work really well. The AI is relatively good but not great, they are not really difficult but…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I recommend getting this game with some caveats and on a discount. This is a fun pirate-themed, tactical rougelite with deterministic combat and a focus on positioning. The game play for encounters starts with a ship battle phase where you trade volleys with your opponents trying to take out their buffs and units while destroying cannons so they can't do the same to yours. This is where the randomness of the combat exists since the crew battles are deterministic. The crew battle is the meat of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This weekend, tried three video games that I absolutely see myself diving deeper into: 9 Kings (roguelike deckbuilding autobattler), Sultan’s Game (card-based narrative strategy game) and Nightmare Frontier (tactical RPG extraction roguelike from the Rogue Waters folks). Games are good, gang.
neutral · AI labelView post →pretty good game at the start, became a bit stale and repetitive by the middle though. achievements are also a bit bugged
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A day early for patrons: it's the annual GOTY check-in with @bradgallaway.bsky.social, editor of Game Critics dot com and host of the So Videogames podcast. If Deathless, Rogue Waters and Stories From Sol aren't on your radar, then let Brad tell you why they should be!
neutral · AI labelView post →Was enjoying the game until I finished the prologue and a bug stops you from going any further without a controller. If they fix that bug I'll update this review but for now can't recommend it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great concept, very unpolished. There are abilities that end your turn without telling you they will, weapons that don't get damage bonuses (while others do, with no logic as far as I can tell as to which is which), glitches that prevent the unlocking of achievements, weird unlock and upgrade patterns, the upgrade to mate capacity just didn't work at all... If it's at a steep discount, I'd pick it up.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My save file disappeared after I played for 13 hours. The cause is probably because I pressed Alt+F4 to exit the game. After finishing the run, I went to exit the game but used Alt+F4 instead of the normal exit method. Normally in other games, exiting with Alt+F4 doesn't make the save file disappear, so I'm really frustrated.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →would have liked it, if it wasn't crashing... every... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.... five.............. minutes.............
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Until the developers come back and update this incomplete game, I won't recommend this game. The premise of the game is good and I had good fun with it. But there are bugs and unfinished features that still needs to be addressed by the devs.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has so many glitches and elements that don't work. It is a shame because the concept is good. However, I've played it on all levels of difficulty and most of the ship and crew in raid and shore upgrades and purchaseables just do not work. Steer well clear until the bugs / glitches are worked out.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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