1,976 games
The best games with unique art styles
Games you recognise from a single screenshot: hand-drawn, playful or simply different.
How to find games that really suit you: Tap “I like it” on up to 5 games. Playalike compares 20 traits such as combat, story and atmosphere and suggests games that hit exactly the same spot, even across genres.
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1 Hollow Knight
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A hand-drawn Metroidvania in a ruined insect kingdom full of secrets.
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3 Limbo
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A wordless puzzle-platformer rendered in stark black and white, following a boy through a hostile shadow world full of deadly traps learned through trial and error. Its oppressive atmosphere and minimalist art make it a haunting, memorable experience.
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4 Ori and the Blind Forest
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A gorgeous hand-painted Metroidvania platformer with tight, demanding movement, tense escape sequences and a heartfelt tale of loss and hope. Its sweeping orchestral score makes the forest of Nibel unforgettable.
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5 South Park: The Stick of Truth
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A turn-based RPG that looks exactly like a playable South Park episode: as the new kid in town you join Cartman and friends in a backyard fantasy war that spirals wildly out of control. Timed attack inputs and crude, irreverent humor define the experience.
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6 Journey
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A wordless, meditative pilgrimage across shimmering dunes toward a distant mountain, where you may meet anonymous strangers online and communicate only through chimes. Short, breathtakingly beautiful and carried by an award-winning score that hits hard emotionally.
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7 Persona 5
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A supremely stylish JRPG where you balance daily school life and friendships in Tokyo with heists into the surreal Palaces of corrupt adults as the Phantom Thieves. Snappy turn-based combat, an iconic acid-jazz soundtrack and a long, gripping tale of rebellion set it apart.
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8 Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Distinctive, stylised art style
The sequel to Hollow Knight: faster, more acrobatic and even more demanding.
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10 Bastion
- Distinctive, stylised art style
An isometric action RPG where a gravelly narrator reacts to everything you do as you mix weapons and rebuild a refuge in a gorgeous hand-painted, shattered world. Its soundtrack and poignant ending choices make it unforgettable.
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11 Persona 5 Royal
- Distinctive, stylised art style
High-school life in Tokyo meets dungeon crawling: stylish turn-based battles, time management and a long, gripping story.
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13 Ori and the Will of the Wisps
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A gorgeous Metroidvania with fluid movement and an emotional story.
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15 Return of the Obra Dinn
- Distinctive, stylised art style
As an insurance investigator, you use a magical pocket watch to relive the final moments of a ghost ship's crew and deduce the identity and fate of every sailor. Its striking 1-bit visuals and brilliant deduction design make it a one-of-a-kind detective game.
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16 Transistor
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A gorgeous sci-fi action RPG in which the singer Red wanders the city of Cloudbank with a talking sword, blending real-time fights with a pausable planning mode. Freely combinable Functions allow creative builds, and a melancholic soundtrack defines the whole experience.
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17 Fez
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A serene pixel-art platformer where rotating a flat-looking world reveals hidden paths through a third dimension. Beneath its calm surface lie cryptic ciphers and deep secrets that reward obsessive puzzle-solving.
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18 Valiant Hearts: The Great War
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A moving puzzle adventure in a hand-drawn comic style that follows four lives and a loyal dog through the horrors of World War I. Alongside its puzzles, it weaves in real history and hits hard with quiet, tragic moments.
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19 Machinarium
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A wordless point-and-click adventure following a tiny robot through a gorgeously hand-drawn, rusty machine city, packed with clever puzzles and charming pictogram storytelling. Floex's atmospheric soundtrack makes it a calm, whimsical work of art.
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20 Psychonauts
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A quirky 3D platformer where a young psychic dives into the minds of eccentric characters, each one a wildly inventive level. Sharp humor, distinctive art and surprisingly heartfelt themes about mental struggles make it a cult classic.
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21 Rayman Origins
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A gorgeously hand-drawn 2D platformer bursting with zany humor, tight jumping challenges and frantic treasure-chase levels, playable with up to four friends in chaotic local co-op. It gets seriously demanding in its later stages.
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22 Child of Light
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A fairy-tale RPG with hand-drawn visuals and a timeline-based battle system.
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23 Don't Starve
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A merciless survival game with a gothic, Tim Burton-esque hand-drawn style, where you scavenge, craft and fend off hunger, insanity and monsters in a procedurally generated wilderness. Death is permanent, but every run teaches you something new.
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24 Grim Fandango
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A film-noir adventure through a Day-of-the-Dead-inspired afterlife, following skeletal travel agent Manny Calavera as he unravels a conspiracy across four years. Sharp, witty writing, a swinging jazz score and tricky, sometimes obtuse puzzles make it a genre classic.
What matters with Games with unique art styles
A distinctive art style does more than look nice in screenshots. It sets the mood, makes worlds easy to read and often tells you what kind of experience you are in for before you press a button. The games on this list range from hand-drawn and painterly to stark, cartoonish or comic-like, and many of them pair that look with a soundtrack that matters just as much.
Looks can be deceiving, so check what sits underneath. Cuphead's charming 1930s cartoon animation hides a brutally tough boss-rush shooter, and Hollow Knight's quiet, hand-drawn insect kingdom comes with demanding combat and a lot of exploration. If you want something calmer, Journey is a short, wordless trip across shimmering dunes where you may meet strangers online. Limbo uses stark black and white to create a haunting puzzle-platformer built on trial and error.
Think about how much time you have and who you play with. Persona 5 Royal is a long JRPG whose bold, stylish menus and visuals carry you through school life and heists in Tokyo. Rayman Legends is the pick for groups, with chaotic four-player co-op and rhythm levels set to music. South Park: The Stick of Truth looks exactly like an episode of the show, but its humor is crude, so it suits players who already enjoy that tone.
Frequently asked questions
Which games with a unique art style are not too difficult?
Journey is a short, meditative experience without much challenge, and Bastion and Hades focus on story and stylish combat rather than punishing difficulty. Hollow Knight, Hollow Knight: Silksong and Cuphead are tagged as difficult, so expect a real test there.
What are the best hand-drawn games to play in co-op?
Cuphead offers local co-op for its tough boss fights, and Rayman Legends supports chaotic four-player co-op in its hand-drawn levels. Journey also lets you travel with anonymous strangers online, though you can only communicate through chimes.
Should I play Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal?
Both share the same striking style and story of the Phantom Thieves, but Persona 5 is listed only on PlayStation, while Persona 5 Royal is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Royal is the newer version, so it is usually the easier one to pick up.
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