Games Like Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (2026)

Shared: Metroidvania, Multiple Endings

Six years of memes and broken promises evaporated the moment I dropped into Pharloom. Hornet is a razor-sharp upgrade in every direction, and Team Cherry somehow delivered on the hype.

Shared: tier:indie, Multiple Endings

The dating-sim wrapper is bait, and MiSide knows it. What starts as idle chores with an anime girl becomes a genre-hopping psychological horror that two developers built better than most studios manage with a full team.

Shared: Metroidvania

Few two-person studios have conjured a world this dense and this lonely. Hollow Knight is 40-plus hours of hand-drawn melancholy that will humble you, haunt you, and refuse to let go.

Shared: tier:indie

Four friends, one camera, and a procedurally generated underground full of things that want to kill you on film. Content Warning is the co-op horror bit that somehow became the social satire nobody asked for but everyone needed.

Shared: Multiple Endings

Fifteen years on, Obsidian's Mojave masterwork still sets the bar for faction politics, skill-gated dialogue, and choices that feel like they cost you something real.