There seems to be a common overlap between darker, slightly more macabre-leaning games and games that refuse to hold your hand. It doesn’t necessarily matter if they’re platformers, action-adventure role-playing games, or metroidvanias; they just generally all tend to lean a bit more into the horrifying.
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Perhaps it’s because the horrifying aspects of life can be difficult to deal with and thus present a challenge that can be physically represented through challenging gameplay. Whatever it is, these types of games often refuse to hold your hand and offer little advice on where you need to go, what you need to do, and what’s going on.
10Dark Souls
The Dark Souls franchise, developed by FromSoftware Inc., is so notoriously difficult that other difficult games with darker storylines that are unveiled as you explore have started to be called souls-like. A key factor in determining souls-like games is also the bonfire mechanic that serves as your only save and refresh point throughout the game.
Thankfully these points are often close to bosses and just after them, which, considering the punishing mechanics in each fight, is a life-saver. Souls games don’t hold your hand when you’re fighting, and they won’t tell you where to go when you’re exploring outside vague hints.
9Bloodborne
AlthoughBloodborneis definitively in the same vein as Dark Souls games, thanks to being created by FromSoftware Inc., it has slightly different mechanics. It offers a faster-paced experience that you might find more difficult than Dark Souls; or easier, depending on how you like to play.
Regardless, just like other FromSoftware Inc. games, it doesn’t hold your hand when you’re fighting and learning the mechanics, and it certainly doesn’t tell you where to go when you’re exploring. This does, however, lend itself toexperimenting with different builds and play stylesto find out what you actually like.
8The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a beautifully macabre game to explore, but it warns you from the very beginning that it will not hold your hand. It is up to you to solve puzzles and find the smallest, perhaps most uninteresting clues to put together the mystery of Ethan Carter.
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This game encourages exploration and experimentation to find what works, though having a pen and paper in real life to help you solve the mystery doesn’t hurt. Despite the haunting beauty of the environment, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is definitely a horror game that puts your detective skills to the test.
7S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.is a first-person post-apocalyptic survival game. Set in an open-world environment, the only thing you really can do is explore and try to survive the creatures that haunt the irradiated wasteland. This game doesn’t generate difficulty in its puzzles, but through the survival and fps elements that you have to navigate.
It, oddly enough, mimics what a real-life post-apocalyptic scenario would be like because you’d be set loose into an environment and world with little knowledge and guidance. The only way to survive is to figure things out as you go and take one step at a time.
6Darkest Dungeon
Darkest DungeonandDarkest Dungeon 2are generally seen as some of the hardest games on the market right now. As a gothic roguelike, this game focuses on the psychological impacts of adventuring and going through the darkest recesses of dungeons and evil.
No two adventures will be the same as adventures are each procedurally generated, and the best way to progress is to experiment and try again. These two games will not hold your hand as you adventure, so you better get those guides handy.
5Hollow Knight
Hollow Knightis a little bit notorious for being a difficult Metroidvania, despite how ‘cute’ the bug characters may come off to you. It’s generally not grotesque or threatening at first glance, but everything in Hallownest is more dangerous than it seems.
You are dropped into the world with little knowledge of what is going on or what you’re supposed to be doing, and nobody is around to nudge you in the right direction. It is up to you, and only you, to explore and uncover the secrets of Hallownest andexplore some of its most challenging aspects.
4Silent Hill
The difficulty ofSilent Hillreally shines when you’re attempting to complete the puzzles, which some may consider on the unintuitive side of things. Whether you consider the puzzles intuitive or not, the game is hard. The sequel, especially, doesn’t hold your hand when you’re playing.
In all fairness, though, it works well toward the horror aspect because you don’t know what’s going on, and you need to take things slow. If you don’t know where to go or what to do, the only thing thatyou can do is explore the environmentand experiment.
3Limbo
Limbo is an exceptionally difficult and surreal platformer, featuring both dark elements in the story and in the actual landscape. The description for this game is ominously simple and deceivingly hides just how difficult the game is to progress through and uncover.
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You are left to your own devices and skills to move through each section of the game, and you will have to get good. Because it is a platformer, this game relies on you keeping cool and maintaining your patience and cleverness to solve each puzzle, so remember to take a few deep breaths when you play.
2Don’t Starve
Don’t Starveis a wilderness survival game that utilizes slightly more gothic, almost Tim Burton-esk graphics. It drops you into the wilderness with very little explanation and leaves you to figure out what’s going on and how you survive. The only way to make it through every night is to experiment and play around with the different mechanics and items available.
Like most other survival games, it’s up to you to figure out how to survive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be easy in this one.
1Fear & Hunger
Fear & Hunger is another survival dungeon crawler game that doesn’t just dabble in the macabre and horrifying but throws you into it at full speed. You might call it dark fantasy, but you’ll want to put the heaviest emphasis on the dark part because you will not walk away from this game the same.
This game convinces you not just to take the challenging content head-on but to deal with gameplay that refuses to hold your hand. In fact, it’s more likely to abandon you in the darkness than it is to hold your hand, often encouraging you to play dirty to survive the eldritch horrors that await you.
