Key Takeaways
- Deep Dish Dungeon launched on October 13, 2026 on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
- The game normally costs $14.99 but is available for $12.74 (15% off) on Steam through October 27, 2026 — a slightly better launch discount than the 10% most indie games get.
- It’s a survival metroidvania dungeon crawler with a cooking-centered progression system, published by Raw Fury and developed by Brazilian-founded indie studio Behold Studios.
- The dungeon is entirely handcrafted — no roguelike randomization, no procedural generation, no map or compass.
- Supports online co-op for up to 3 players with full crossplay across PC, Mac, and Xbox Series X/S.
- The game carries the Steam Deck Verified badge, held by roughly only 1 in 4 titles on Steam.
- If you’re on Game Pass, you can play it for free right now — no purchase needed.
A Dungeon Crawler Where Cooking Isn’t a Mini-Game — It’s the Whole Point
If the title Deep Dish Dungeon made you do a double take, you’re not alone. It sounds like someone cooked up the concept after watching too many cooking shows back-to-back with a dungeon crawler stream. But Behold Studios has been working on this one for a while, and what they’ve built is actually a legit genre hybrid that earns its odd name.
The game launched on October 13, 2026, and it’s currently sitting at $12.74 on Steam through October 27 — a 15% launch discount off its $14.99 standard price. That’s a small but meaningful edge over the 10% discount that’s become the default for most indie releases on Valve’s platform. Not a huge window, and not a massive savings, but if the concept interests you, it’s the cheapest it’s going to be for a while.
So what exactly is it? Think of it as a survival exploration game that takes metroidvania design principles — handcrafted environments, gated progression, backtracking to previously inaccessible areas — and ties them to a cooking and crafting loop where what you eat determines how far you can push. The developer’s own shorthand for the system is three words: “Food is progress.”
The Gameplay Loop — Expedition, Forage, Cook, Repeat
The core structure of Deep Dish Dungeon is built around a recurring cycle. You head into the dungeon, forage for ingredients and resources while dealing with whatever the environment throws at you, then return to your camp between runs to craft tools and cook meals. Different recipes produce different stat effects, so what you prepare before heading back in shapes how deep you can go and how well you handle what’s waiting for you down there.
It draws clear parallels to how food functions in a game like Valheim, where eating well isn’t optional flavor — it’s how you build the health pool and stamina that lets you fight at all. In Deep Dish Dungeon, that same philosophy is applied to the dungeon-diving loop rather than an open-world survival sandbox. You’re not just eating to survive; you’re cooking strategically to unlock the ability to push further into a dungeon that doesn’t stop throwing new obstacles at you.
What makes the structure specifically metroidvania rather than roguelike is that the dungeon itself is entirely handcrafted. Every puzzle, every hidden area, every environmental shortcut was deliberately placed by the developers. There’s no procedural generation, no randomized runs. You’re learning one specific dungeon across multiple expeditions, and the way forward always ties back to new tools you’ve crafted or new routes that become accessible as you progress.
No Map, No Compass — You Have to Actually Learn the Place
One of the more distinctive design decisions Behold made was to deliberately leave out a minimap and compass entirely. In a genre where maps are practically a genre staple — the entire first half of “metroidvania” is basically defined by map-filling — that’s a bold call.
The idea is that you learn Deep Dish Dungeon’s layout the way you’d actually learn a real space: through landmarks, through recognizing visual cues, through the memory of shortcuts you found three runs ago. When the game sends you back through familiar territory after unlocking something new, you’re not following a dot on a screen. You’re navigating from memory and environmental knowledge.
That design choice will either click with you immediately or feel frustrating depending on how you like to play. If you’re the kind of gamer who gets annoyed when you can’t pull up a map to figure out exactly where you are, this one’s going to ask you to adjust. If you’re the kind of gamer who actually enjoys committing a space to memory and feeling the satisfaction of knowing it well enough to navigate efficiently, it’s going to scratch an itch that a lot of modern dungeon crawlers don’t.
Co-Op — How It Works and Who It’s For
The entire game can be played solo or in online co-op with up to two friends, for a maximum party of three. Behold was deliberate about the party size cap, saying the limit exists specifically to make sure the dungeon still feels explorable and puzzles don’t get reduced to chaos by having too many people trying to solve them simultaneously.
The co-op framing is also worth noting: the developers explicitly describe it as being “not about competition, but connecting, sharing knowledge, and taking care of each other.” This isn’t a game where you’re racing your friends to resources or competing for kills. The intent is collaborative exploration — sharing information about routes you’ve found, pooling knowledge of recipes, covering each other in tight spots.
Full crossplay is supported across all current platforms: PC (Steam), Mac, and Xbox Series X/S. So if you’re on Steam and your friend is on an Xbox, you can play together without either of you needing to switch platforms.
About Behold Studios — The Team Behind It
Deep Dish Dungeon is the sixth game from Behold Studios, an indie developer originally founded in Brazil in 2009 and headquartered in Canada since 2019. The studio built its reputation on games that take established genre conventions and approach them from unexpected angles.
Their best-known titles are Knights of Pen and Paper (2012), a retro RPG that turned the tabletop roleplaying experience into a video game format, and Chroma Squad (2015), a strategy RPG built around running your own Power Rangers-style tokusatsu TV show production company. Both launched to strong reviews and picked up industry recognition. Deep Dish Dungeon is published by Raw Fury, the indie publisher known for backing distinctive creative projects.
For this one, Behold spent significant time in public development — the Steam demo launched in February 2026, went through a notable update for Steam Next Fest in June 2026 with controller support, saving, and expanded cooking behavior added, and the game had racked up over 150,000 Steam wishlists before a single public demo was even available, which says a lot about the interest the concept generated just from early reveals.
Steam Deck Verified — What That Actually Means Here
Deep Dish Dungeon carries the Steam Deck Verified badge, which Valve only grants to titles that pass a full compatibility evaluation: the game needs to work seamlessly with the Deck’s built-in controls, display properly on its screen at normal resolution, and show appropriate controller icons in-game rather than keyboard prompts. Roughly only about one in four titles on Steam carry the badge, so it’s not something every developer gets by default.
For a game built around atmospheric dungeon exploration with a cooking system, Steam Deck is actually a pretty natural fit — it’s the kind of title where playing in short sessions on handheld works well with the expedition-based loop. Go in, forage what you can, come back to camp, and put the Deck down until your next session.
Is It Worth Buying, or Should You Wait for Game Pass?
Here’s the honest answer: if you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, there is no reason to buy it. Deep Dish Dungeon launched day one on both services, so you can start playing right now for zero additional cost. That’s the easiest call you’ll make today.
If you’re a Steam-first player and don’t have Game Pass, the $12.74 launch discount through October 27 is a reasonable entry price for an indie title with this kind of production value and design ambition. At $14.99 standard it’s not breaking the bank either way, but saving a couple of dollars during the launch window is always a better deal than waiting and paying full price later.
The bigger question is whether the design philosophy lands for you. If you like your dungeon crawlers procedurally generated and roguelite-structured, Deep Dish Dungeon is deliberately doing the opposite of that on every level. It’s patient, environmental, and built for players who want to genuinely learn and master one handcrafted space over time. The cooking system adds a layer of progression planning that most dungeon crawlers completely ignore. And the no-map design will either feel immersive or frustrating depending entirely on your tolerance for genuine spatial navigation.
If any combination of those things sounds appealing, the Steam demo that ran earlier this year gave a solid slice of the experience — worth checking if it’s still accessible to gauge whether the feel of exploration clicks before you commit.
Deep Dish Dungeon is available right now on Steam ($12.74 through October 27), Xbox Series X/S, Mac, and Xbox Game Pass. For more on what’s launching and trending in gaming right now, check out the ongoing drama surrounding the Pokemon TCG’s lifetime ban controversy, or take a look at the Final Fantasy Resonance Terra Branford reveal if you want something entirely different but equally worth talking about. And for those keeping tabs on live service game shutdowns, our piece on EA NBA Live Mobile shutting down October 27 is relevant reading — especially given how close that date is to the end of the Deep Dish Dungeon Steam discount window. And for more on creative burnout and major developer departures from big franchises, the Jeff Kaplan Overwatch story remains one of the more sobering reads in gaming this year.
