Caves of Qud dev teases “at least three” expansions for the sci-fi roguelike

17 years after development began and 14 on from its first public beta, sci-fi roguelike Caves of Qud hit 1.0 in 2024 to a tremendous response. Its old-school aesthetic puts it in the wheelhouse with Dwarf Fortress (with which it also shares publisher Kitfox Games), and its deep, retrofuturistic sandbox world will keep you similarly sucked in once you can get over the initial learning curve. Spurred by the success of its launch, developer Freehold Games now teases what’s next, with multiple expansion packs currently on the cards.

“For a long time we hoped we could keep working on Caves of Qud after its 1.0 release,” Freehold Games writes. “As we’ve hinted here and elsewhere, the success of the launch is allowing us to do just this.” Its exit from early access was met with a 95% rating on OpenCritic, marking it as the highest-rated game of the year at the time on the review aggregation platform, and a worthy contender among our best roguelikes. Following some time to rest and reflect, Freehold now talks about the future.

“We’re going to be focusing development into a few big expansion packs that will come out one by one over the next few years,” Freehold explains. “Each expansion pack will be paired with a big update to the base game. The base-game updates will be free, and the expansion packs will be purchasable as DLC. The first one will likely come out sometime next year. We have at least three sketched out, but time will tell what they look like beyond the first.”

As for what we can expect, Freehold suggests “things like new types of playable creatures, underground villages, new mechanics, and expanded lore.” It says that, with each release, “both the expansion pack and its paired base-game update will have a lot of stuff in them,” but notes that it will decide on a case-by-case basis whether features feel like core upgrades or something better suited to the DLC.

There’s no word on price yet, but Freehold notes that, since these updates will be larger than the Pets of Harvest Dawn pack, they will “definitely” cost more than that add-on (which is $4.99 / £4.29). It does, however, mention that it will include new pets to Harvest Dawn with each future expansion, and that they’ll be given to existing owners for free. “We may slightly increase the price of the pet pack in the future to reflect this,” it concludes; “we haven’t decided yet.”

While we wait to hear what’s coming, take a look through more of the best sandbox games on PC, along with our pick of the best indie games in 2025 for other potential hidden gems.

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