What failure costs

None of these is especially hard on your hands. They are ordered by what you lose when it goes wrong, which is a separate axis and the one people actually bounce off.

Climbs punishment2.4 → 9.8 for you7 rungstypical step +1.8

Start at the bottom: Hades. Where you get on is the rung after the deepest one you have marked beaten.

2 rungs sit easier for you than the one before them. The order is authored for an average player and your aptitudes disagree with it here. It is left as written rather than re-sorted: the curator’s claim is about what each game prepares you for, which is not the same claim as “this one scores lower”.

These numbers are for an average player. Calibrate and the whole path re-reads itself against you.

1
Hades
2020 · Supergiant Games · ~25h
2.4PUN
You lose the run and keep the progress. The gentlest version of the deal, and the one that makes the rest of the ladder legible.
Start here
2
Hollow Knight
2017 · Team Cherry · ~30h
5.5PUN
You lose your money and have to walk back for it. Small stakes, but the first time the game takes something you have to earn twice.
+3.1 jump
3
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
2014 · Nicalis / Edmund McMillen · ~40h
5.0PUN
Runs long enough to get attached to, ended by one bad room. Learning to write off an hour without tilting is the actual skill.
−0.5 stepEasier for you than the rung below
4
Dark Souls
2011 · FromSoftware · ~45h
6.8PUN
Souls lost twice are gone for good and the checkpoint is a walk away. Punishment as geography rather than as arithmetic.
+1.8 jump
5
Returnal
2021 · Housemarque · ~25h
6.2PUN
Hours-long runs with nowhere to stop. The cost is your evening as much as your progress.
−0.6 stepEasier for you than the rung below
6
Darkest Dungeon
2016 · Red Hook Studios · ~60h
8.4PUN
It takes people. Someone you levelled for twenty hours dies permanently, and the game expects you to carry on with whoever is left.
+2.1 jump
7
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
2017 · Bennett Foddy · ~5h
9.8PUN
The ceiling, and honest about it: one bad movement returns you to the start with nothing kept. Everything below is a negotiation. This is not.
+1.4 jump