Games Like Stonewards: 5 Co-op Digging and Defense Games

What you are actually looking for

Stonewards sits at a junction. Its loop — hold a wall, then dig on a timer, then spend what you dug — is two familiar genres bolted together, and which half you enjoyed determines which of these you should buy next.

Creators covering the game reach for the same shorthand: one four-player gameplay video is titled “Dome Keeper Meets Deeprock”, which is a fair description of the design and a useful map of where to go from here.

Prices below are the US Steam listing at the time of writing; all five go on sale regularly.

If you liked the co-op and the dwarves

Deep Rock Galactic

2020 · $29.99 · Online co-op

The obvious ancestor. Four dwarves, procedurally generated caves, mining under pressure, four distinct classes with hard-locked roles. What it does not have is the defend phase as a structural half of the loop — DRG missions are expeditions with the occasional swarm, where Stonewards is a siege with mining between assaults. Vastly more content, more polish, six years of updates, and no roguelite run structure.

Core Keeper

2024 · $11.99 · Online co-op

Top-down rather than first-person, and survival-crafting rather than roguelite, but it is the other mainstream “dig a base out of the dark and defend it” game, and it supports larger groups than Stonewards’ four-player cap. Take it if the mining and building was the part you liked and the wave timer was the part you did not.

If you liked the dig-then-defend rhythm

Dome Keeper

2022 · $5.39 · Online, LAN and split-screen co-op

The purest version of the Stonewards loop, and the cheapest game on this list. You mine downward between waves and race back to defend a dome; the entire game is that tension, in 2D. If what hooked you in Stonewards was the specific anxiety of being one tunnel too deep when the horn sounds, this is that feeling distilled — and unlike Stonewards it has split-screen.

Orcs Must Die! 3

2021 · $29.99 · Online co-op

The defense half, taken seriously. Traps, chokepoints, waves that escalate, and two-player co-op. No mining and no economy of your own extraction — you are spending a budget rather than digging one. Take it if the wall-holding was the fun and the mine was the chore.

If you liked the roguelite progression

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

2025 · $7.79 · Single-player only

Same universe as Deep Rock, restructured as a run-based auto-shooter with mining. It scratches the “unlock things across runs” itch that the Stonewards class unlock system creates. The important caveat: Steam lists it as single-player only, so it is a solo companion to Stonewards, not a replacement for co-op night.

A note on what is not here

Nothing on this list is a dwarf-themed tower defense roguelite with a four-player co-op siege loop, because that combination is close to what makes Stonewards distinctive. The nearest thing to a direct competitor at $9.99 is Dome Keeper at half the price and a fraction of the scale, and Deep Rock Galactic at three times the price and many times the content.

If you are weighing whether Stonewards itself is worth it first, the Steam score and player numbers are on their own page.

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