Best Difficult Games

Based on critic scores and popularity, the top difficult games right now are Elden Ring, Dark Souls: Remastered, and Lies of P. The list updates every day as prices and new releases come in.

A soulslike is an action game inspired by FromSoftware's Souls series: tough but fair combat, big bosses, few checkpoints and enemies that punish every mistake. Lords of the Fallen, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, The First Berserker: Khazan and Steelrising - set in an alternate French Revolution - all follow that formula in their own way.

Plenty. Super Meat Boy and The Messenger are precision platformers that test your reflexes, Doom Eternal is a lightning-fast shooter that gets brutal on higher difficulties, Returnal is a bullet-heavy roguelike shooter, and Opus Magnum is a puzzle game that will challenge your brain instead of your hands.

Pick one that lets you ease in. Celeste has an assist mode you can turn on whenever you need it, Hades lets you get stronger with every attempt and has an extra-easy mode for when you get stuck, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Stellar Blade have soulslike-style combat with easier difficulty settings. If you like dying and trying again, see our Roguelike Games list, and for tough exploration games, Metroidvania Games.

Yes - Don't Starve Together is an unforgiving survival game that is easier (and funnier) with friends, and Ultimate Chicken Horse is a party platformer where everyone builds traps to make the level harder for the others. For more games to play together, see our Co-op Games list.