989 games
The best games with unique art styles on Nintendo Switch
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.
-
1 Hollow Knight
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A hand-drawn Metroidvania in a ruined insect kingdom full of secrets.
-
2 Hades
- Distinctive, stylised art style
Escape from the underworld as a roguelike with fast-paced combat and a story that grows with every run.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
6 Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Distinctive, stylised art style
The sequel to Hollow Knight: faster, more acrobatic and even more demanding.
-
7 Cuphead
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A brutally tough boss-rush shooter animated like a 1930s cartoon, where precise dodging, parrying and shooting decide every fight. A swinging big-band jazz score and local co-op round it out.
-
8 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.
-
9 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.
-
10 Gris
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A poetic platformer about grief, almost wordless and with a watercolour look.
-
11 Ori and the Will of the Wisps
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A gorgeous Metroidvania with fluid movement and an emotional story.
-
12 SuperHot
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A shooter where time only moves when you do, turning every gunfight into a choreographed tactical puzzle. Its stark red-and-white look and unsettling meta narrative make it unforgettable.
-
13 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.
-
14 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.
-
15 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.
-
16 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.
-
17 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.
-
18 Child of Light
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A fairy-tale RPG with hand-drawn visuals and a timeline-based battle system.
-
19 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.
-
20 Mouse: P.I. For Hire
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A fast-paced first-person shooter styled after 1930s black-and-white rubber hose cartoons, casting you as mouse detective Jack Pepper in a noir city. Its hand-drawn animation and jazzy score give it a one-of-a-kind identity.
-
21 World of Goo
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A physics-based construction puzzler where you build wobbly towers and bridges out of living goo balls to guide them to an exit pipe. Its quirky, darkly funny Burton-esque style, satirical tale about consumerism and technology, and wonderful soundtrack make it a modern indie classic.
-
22 Blasphemous
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A brutal Metroidvania in gorgeous pixel art that twists Spanish Catholic iconography into a nightmarish world of guilt and penance. Tight parries, gory executions and plenty of hidden secrets define the Penitent One's journey.
-
23 Night in the Woods
- Distinctive, stylised art style
As college dropout Mae, you return to your decaying hometown, hang out with old friends and stumble onto something sinister in the woods. Sharp, funny writing, gorgeous flat-colored art and an honest look at depression and a dying town make it stand out.
-
24 South of Midnight
- Distinctive, stylised art style
A linear action-adventure through the American Deep South where Hazel, a Weaver, battles folklore creatures and mends the broken stories of haunted souls. Its stop-motion-inspired look and soulful Southern soundtrack make it stand out.
What matters with Games with unique art styles
A strong art style does more than look nice in screenshots. It sets the mood, tells you how the world works and often carries the story when there is little dialogue. The games on this list range from hand-drawn and hand-painted to stark black-and-white and deliberately crude, and every one of them is available on Nintendo Switch.
When choosing, look past the visuals to how the game actually plays. Several of these are demanding: Cuphead pairs its 1930s cartoon animation with brutally tough boss fights, though it supports local co-op, so a friend can share the struggle. Hollow Knight hides a challenging, secret-filled Metroidvania behind its hand-drawn insect kingdom. If you want something calmer, Gris is a relaxing, nearly wordless platformer with a watercolour look built around grief rather than difficulty.
Pace and tone matter too. Limbo is short-form trial and error in a hostile shadow world, while Persona 5 Royal is a long, story-rich JRPG whose stylish menus and battles are part of the appeal. Ori and the Blind Forest suits players who want a hand-painted world with tight, demanding movement and an emotional story, and South Park: The Stick of Truth is the pick if you want turn-based combat with crude humour that looks exactly like an episode of the show.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most beautiful game on Nintendo Switch for relaxing play?
Gris is the calmest option here, a relaxing platformer with a watercolour look and almost no text. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is also gorgeous, though its platforming asks for more skill.
Are there hand-drawn Switch games I can play in co-op?
Cuphead is the one on this list with local co-op, and its hand-drawn 1930s cartoon style is among the most distinctive anywhere. Be ready for a steep challenge, as every boss fight demands precise dodging and parrying.
Should I play Hollow Knight before Hollow Knight: Silksong?
Silksong is the sequel to Hollow Knight, so starting with the original gives you the setting and a gentler introduction. Silksong is described as faster, more acrobatic and even more demanding.
Not quite your taste?
Tell us your favourite games and we'll find recommendations that fit you exactly.
