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 Sifu
Nearest fingerprints in the catalogue. The same demands, a different game.
Returnal
2021 · Housemarque · ~25h
Bullet-hell reflexes bolted to roguelike stakes — the two hardest things to hold simultaneously for two uninterrupted hours.
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.
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.
Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection
2021 · Capcom · ~10h
Two hits and you are in your underwear, three and the level restarts, and the game expects a second full loop before it will show you an ending.
PUBG: Battlegrounds
2017 · PUBG Studios · ~50h
Slow, heavy and unforgiving — one bullet from someone you never saw ends thirty minutes, and the correct play is usually to not take the fight.
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.
Call of Duty: Warzone
2020 · Infinity Ward · ~50h
The fastest time-to-kill of any battle royale, which makes positioning worth more than aim and mistakes worth almost nothing else.
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.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
2023 · FromSoftware · ~25h
The walls are build checks rather than skill checks. The tutorial helicopter and the first real boss both exist to say that the fight is decided in the garage.
Apex Legends
2019 · Respawn Entertainment · ~80h
The movement is the skill ceiling and nothing in the game mentions it — the players beating you are using techniques that were never taught, only tolerated.









