Hades

I usually bounce off roguelikes — the reset-to-zero loop wears me down. Hades fixed that by making the dying part of the plot. Every time you fail and get dragged back to the House of Hades, the characters have something new to say. Failure became something I looked forward to.

The combat is fast, readable and endlessly remixable — each run you cobble together a different build from the boons the gods throw at you, and the good runs feel genuinely your own. It's the rare game that's deep enough to chase mastery and breezy enough to play for twenty minutes.

It's also just dripping with craft — the art, the voice acting, the music. Supergiant clearly loved making it, and that comes through every run. If you've ever told yourself you 'don't like roguelikes', start here.