What should I play next
Ask for the shape of the challenge.
Not “something hard” — something that leans on the axes you want leant on and stays out of the way everywhere else. Demanding on strategy, forgiving on execution, under twenty hours. Everything below is scored through your own calibration, so “demanding” means demanding for you.
You have not calibrated, so this is matching against an average player. It still works; it is just not about you yet.
CalibrateSign in and this can read the ask out of a game you have already beaten.
Read out of Elden Ring Nightreign
Its own neighbourhood, ordered by how close the difficulty actually sits.
Enter the Gungeon
2016 · Dodge Roll · ~30h
A bullet hell with a generous dodge roll and completely ungenerous boss patterns. The unlock grind is doing double duty as the difficulty curve.
Elden Ring
2022 · FromSoftware · ~60h
Enormous and completely indifferent — most of its walls are optional, and it will never tell you which ones.
Nioh
2017 · Team Ninja · ~60h
Ki pulse turns stamina from something you spend into something you play in rhythm, and the game asks for it in the first hour without ever insisting you learn it.
Ninja Gaiden Black
2005 · Team NINJA · ~20h
Enemies act during your recovery frames and refuse to wait their turn. The famous difficulty is the ordinary encounters, not the bosses.
Lies of P
2023 · Round8 Studio · ~35h
A parry game wearing a Souls coat: dodging alone will carry you for two hours and then stop working entirely.
The Surge
2017 · Deck13 Interactive · ~20h
You choose which limb to cut off, which means every fight is a decision about what you want to be wearing afterwards rather than only about surviving it.
Lords of the Fallen
2023 · Hexworks · ~40h
Its difficulty is crowd control, not duels: the game throws groups and ranged attackers at you constantly, and the second world doubles the population.
Dark Souls III
2016 · FromSoftware · ~40h
The world is kinder than Dark Souls and the bosses are considerably meaner — almost all of the difficulty has moved into the fog gates.
The Surge 2
2019 · Deck13 Interactive · ~25h
A directional parry replaces the roll as the answer to almost everything, and the game is markedly better once it clicks and markedly worse until it does.
