Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Instant death in both directions and an instant restart. The difficulty is entirely in how quickly you commit to a floor plan you have already memorised.

One hit kills you and one hit kills them, and the retry is instant. Each room is a plan you rehearse at speed, not an endurance test.

Each boss is a fixed piece of choreography that you learn by dying to its second phase forty consecutive times.

Nothing but boss fights, each a bullet hell and a duel at once. Phases checkpoint until the late ones, which do not.

The purest execution test on this list and also one of the gentlest, because the retry is faster than your regret.

There is no block button — parrying is a direction plus an attack, aimed at the incoming blow, and the game tells you this once and then assumes it.

Rhythm violence at speeds that stop being readable. The later levels are memorised rather than reacted to, whatever it feels like at the time.

Aggressive rather than punishing — dying costs you almost nothing, so the walls are boss-shaped and the rest is spectacle.

Nothing is hidden and nothing is easy: every technique in the game is visible from the first match and takes hundreds of hours in the hands.

Building is a second game bolted to the first, played at a speed that looks like a bug, and the mode that removes it is where most people should start.