With over 50,000 games to choose from, it’s not surprising thatSteamis the go-to digital marketplace for most PC gamers. If you’ve been on Steam for a while, you probably have a pretty sizable backlog of unplayed or uncompleted games by now just gathering dust. Also, if you were wondering; yes, those games are judging you for that.
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Instead of worrying about those resentful, judgmental games of yours, though, why not explore some of the most challenging titles that Steam has to offer? Aside from procrastinating, you’ll find all the creative ways game developers define, design, and scale difficulty to create engaging, challenging content.
10Jump King
You may have seen some particularly painful gameplay from Twitch streamers when Jump King blew up in popularity. The principle is simple, land a long sequence of jumps from platform to platform in a 2D space. In practice, that’s where the challenge comes in.
To go a bit deeper than the concept of patience, the difficulty of this game boils down to flawlessly executing a painstaking series of jumps as you climb higher and higher. If you mess up, there’s a good chance you’ll fall pretty far, losing a ton of that sweet, sweet progress.
9Only Up!
Only Up is another popular game that falls into the genre of… let’s call it a patience developer. It takes the form of a 3D platformer with some simple vaulting mechanics so you can catch yourself on a ledge and pull yourself up if you fall a bit short of your intended landing spot.
If that doesn’t sound too hard, consider that such a simple genre with only one level takes the average player four to five hours to complete. Oh, and if that wasn’t unforgiving enough for you, this game didn’t bother to give you saves or checkpoints; not a single one.
8Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy
Despite the title, you probably won’t “get over” this game until you finally conquer it, which could take a while. If you’re unfamiliar with this game, you’re a rather muscular person stuck in a heavy, metal cauldron armed with a sledgehammer that you use to climb a series of obstacles.
If you’re just going start to finish, taking the most linear path, this game will likely take you about six and a half hours to complete, assuming you don’t mess up too much. If you want to see everything the game has to offer though, that’ll bump you up to 30 hours of playtime or more.
7Super Meat Boy
With over 300 levels to complete, and danger placed in every conceivable nook and cranny, you’re going to be catching plenty of buzz saws, spikes, and other hazards before you beat this game. Even if you have great platforming skills, each level you play is probably going to look like a painting that is predominantly red.
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If you’re used to the most brutal, “unfair” platformers though, like the custom levels you can find in Super Mario Maker, then you’ll probably have the right mindset to take this game to the very end. Speaking of custom levels, Super Meat Boy has a level editor, so replay value is theoretically infinite.
6Kerbal Space Program
So you get to build a bunch of funky spaceships however you want for some silly little aliens, what’s so hard about that? Well, you can build a ship however you want, but if you want it to go to specific places, or make a round trip to the moon and back, it starts to become a truly challenging dynamic.
Sure,KSPdoesn’t mirror reality perfectly, but it gets pretty darn close with it’s mostly accurate orbital physics, mechanics, and Newtonian dynamics. That’s all fancy scientist language for: if you don’t respect the laws of physics, your ship is going to blow up, not launch at all, or fly a bit wonky.
5Dwarf Fortress
Even with the fancy, updated graphics in the Steam version, the true depth and complexity ofDwarf Fortresscome from everything happening in the background. The randomness, mechanics, and only partially helpful tutorial blend together, making it easy to get lost and succumb to the harsh world around you.
If you find your dwarves frequently dying of starvation, the elements, or some other kind of threat, you have two direct options: accept that losing is part of the game, and what you achieved and left behind is what matters, and look up beginner guides.
4Path Of Exile
Okay, a free ARPG with seven classes to pick from, shouldn’t be too bad, right? Well, what the vast majority of players end up experiencing is their character fizzling out only a few acts into the game. Why is that?
If you follow a build guide, you’ll be doing great, but on your own,Path of Exilerequires a near-encyclopedic level of knowledge to have true creative freedom and successful experimentation. From skill gems to league mechanics, to a passive skill tree with over 1,000 nodes to invest in, PoE’s learning curve can be quite daunting.
3Dark Souls 2
Is it any surprise that you’re seeing a FromSoftware title? While the Dark Souls series has plenty of visibility and internet clout to distinguish itself as a set of particularly challenging games, Dark Souls 2 takes the cake in terms of difficulty.
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While everyDark Soulstitle ultimately ends up being a combination of patience and pattern recognition, DS2 can be quite unforgiving compared to, say,DS3orElden Ring. Sure, all these games are challenging, but DS2 tends to require careful stamina management due to slower animations, learning about oftentimes unforgiving enemy and trap placements, and slower character speed.
2Hearts Of Iron IV
While more comfortable HOI4 veterans might disagree, it’s not uncommon for players to rack up tens to hundreds of hours in this game and still only feel “okay” at it. Heck, just the user interface alone, with all the stats, information, resources, and buttons it displays can be quite overwhelming.
Indeed, HOI4 isn’t so much a learning curve, but more so a learning cliff for almost every new player. From production calculations, division stats, and micromanagement, to faction and land management and leveraging peace conferences to your advantage, there’s a lot of potential for misplays.
1EVE Online
This space-faring MMORPG can start to feel like a part-time job as you sink your time into learning about everything it has to offer.EVE Onlinecan be very unforgiving, centering itself primarily around economics; money helps with everything, and you want to do your best to avoid expenses.
For example, if there’s anything the EVE community shouts over and over, it’s: don’t fly what you can’t afford to replace. If you lose your ship, you need the resources to replace it.
Even insuring a ship only gives you about 40 percent of its value. Oh, and be careful interacting with other players: EVE is pretty laissez-faire;scamming, stealing, and unethical actions are allowed.
