The best games with unique art styles on PC and Xbox
Games you recognise from a single screenshot: hand-drawn, playful or simply different.
How to find games that really suit you: Select up to 5 games you have played and enjoyed. 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
- Lots to discover
- Timing and reflexes matter (parrying, dodging)
- Challenging difficulty
A hand-drawn Metroidvania in a ruined insect kingdom full of secrets.
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2 Hades
- Action-packed real-time combat
- Timing and reflexes matter (parrying, dodging)
- Fantasy setting
Escape from the underworld as a roguelike with fast-paced combat and a story that grows with every run.
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3 Limbo
- Dark, serious atmosphere
- Puzzles and brain teasers
- Lavish presentation
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
- Timing and reflexes matter (parrying, dodging)
- Lavish presentation
- Lots to discover
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
- Lots of humour
- Turn-based combat
- Strong, story-driven narrative
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
- Lavish presentation
- Fantasy setting
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 Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Lots to discover
- Challenging difficulty
- Action-packed real-time combat
The sequel to Hollow Knight: faster, more acrobatic and even more demanding.
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8 Cuphead
- Action-packed real-time combat
- Timing and reflexes matter (parrying, dodging)
- Lavish presentation
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.
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9 Bastion
- Action-packed real-time combat
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Fantasy setting
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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10 Persona 5 Royal
- Turn-based combat
- A party of several characters
- Strong, story-driven narrative
High-school life in Tokyo meets dungeon crawling: stylish turn-based battles, time management and a long, gripping story.
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11 Gris
- Cosy, great for unwinding
A poetic platformer about grief, almost wordless and with a watercolour look.
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12 Ori and the Will of the Wisps
- Timing and reflexes matter (parrying, dodging)
- Lots to discover
- Action-packed real-time combat
A gorgeous Metroidvania with fluid movement and an emotional story.
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13 SuperHot
- Action-packed real-time combat
- Tactical depth
- Puzzles and brain teasers
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.
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14 Return of the Obra Dinn
- Puzzles and brain teasers
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Lots to discover
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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15 Transistor
- Tactical depth
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Lavish presentation
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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16 Fez
- Lots to discover
- Puzzles and brain teasers
- Cosy, great for unwinding
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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17 Valiant Hearts: The Great War
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Dark, serious atmosphere
- Lavish presentation
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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18 Machinarium
- Puzzles and brain teasers
- Lavish presentation
- Cosy, great for unwinding
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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19 Psychonauts
- Lots of humour
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Lots to discover
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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20 Rayman Origins
- Timing and reflexes matter (parrying, dodging)
- Lavish presentation
- Fantasy setting
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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21 Child of Light
- Turn-based combat
- Fantasy setting
- A party of several characters
A fairy-tale RPG with hand-drawn visuals and a timeline-based battle system.
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22 Don't Starve
- Open world
- Lots to discover
- Challenging difficulty
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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23 Grim Fandango
- Strong, story-driven narrative
- Puzzles and brain teasers
- Lots of humour
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.
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24 Mouse: P.I. For Hire
- Action-packed real-time combat
- Timing and reflexes matter (parrying, dodging)
- Lavish presentation
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.
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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