HDII Top 100
Difficulty Rankings
Find the most difficult, or the easiest, games as rated by players. Games must have at least 5 difficulty ratings to be ranked.
| # | Game | Release Year | RatingAvg | Weighted RatingWtd | Number of RatingsRatings | |
The Hardest Indie Games
These are the 100 hardest indie games as rated by the How Difficult Is It community, ordered from most to least punishing. Geometry Dash leads the list at 8.8/10, ahead of Meganoid: Chronicles and Ikaruga. Every score is averaged from real player votes, and a game needs at least five ratings to qualify.
Hardest games by genre
More from HDII
How Hard Is Phantom Blade Zero
HDII voters have Phantom Blade Zero at 6.15/10, below Onimusha and nowhere near Sekiro. No death penalty, enemies that stay dead and boss phase checkpoints mean even Hellwalker lets you off easy, and the real test is locked behind your first clear.
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The Easiest Games Ever Made, Ranked by Player Votes
Stardew Valley is the easiest game on the site, and four Animal Crossing games crowd the top six. Pokémon takes more than half of the top 25, two 3D Marios sneak in, and a game about watching paint dry still is not the easiest thing players have rated.
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Every Castlevania and Igavania Ranked From Hardest to Easiest
Haunted Castle, a 1988 arcade cabinet most people have never played, takes the top spot at 9.13/10. All twelve of the hardest entries are classic stage-based Castlevanias, only Order of Ecclesia cracks the top half for the metroidvanias, and Symphony of the Night lands second from the bottom. Filter the list to metroidvanias only or Castlevanias only.
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The Hardest Survival Games of All Time, Ranked by Player Votes
The Long Dark takes the top spot at 8.38/10, tied on score with a free Finnish simulation from 1992 that beat it on nothing but sample size. Valheim, Subnautica and Minecraft all rate too low to make the list at all, and Minecraft posts the largest sample and the lowest score of the lot.
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