Finally: Our favorite roguelike for sickos will let me play as a sapient tree

What do you add to the game that has everything? We named Caves of Qud the best roguelike of 2024 due in part to its sheer density of simulated, deep-future, science-fantasy stuff: You can begin a playthrough as a fairly normal guy, and by the end of your run could be playing a clone of yourself who later became a psionic four-armed turtle man wielding a gun that uses blood for ammo and fires vacuum pulses that eat life.

With a tapestry of potential interactions already so profoundly, magnificently weird, what could Caves of Qud possibly be adding in Diaspora, an expansion that will be entering early access in December? Well, playable trees is a good start.

According to publisher Kitfox, Diaspora "includes several new feature arcs centered around the influx of riotous life and culture into marsh-moated ruins of Qud." Chief among them is the ability to start a playthrough as a mutated animal or plant. Those among you with Qud experience might be thinking, 'Aren't there already animal- and plant-themed mutations?'

And there are. But where before you could begin as a human and mutate into beast-shape or plant-form, now—in a sort of beautiful symmetry—you can begin as a tree and mutate into a man. Or, you know, a progressively weirder tree. A tree with wings. And a scorpion tail, maybe. Who can say?

Alongside the new mutant animal and plant stocks—and an accompanying expansion to the catalog of potential player mutations—Diaspora's early access launch will also seed new creatures and artifacts throughout Qud. These will surely bring with them their own new and exciting forms of existential peril. The camelfolk trade caravans are getting some love, too—and their saltback tortoise steeds will, for the first time, be mountable.

As it's an early access launch, those are just the initial offerings. Throughout the course of its continuing development—expected to last "on the order of one year"—Qud's creators plan on adding a new multi-step questline, new factions and underground villages, "roaming, seasonal mega-caravans," more items, creatures, mutant stocks, and (take a deep breath) new fungal infections.

If that last bit doesn't sound exciting to you, you've clearly never enjoyed hosting a sentient skin infection of tiny mouths which occasionally "harmonizes into sensible speech" to reveal a secret about the in-game world. You can see why I'm excited, right? Hello?

Caves of Qud: Diaspora launches in early access on Steam on December 9.