Dead Cells
The hands. Movement and combat feel even better than Hades — the flow of a good Dead Cells run is the genre's high-water mark. What you trade away is the heart: there is barely a story and nobody waits for you at home between runs.
Three games in, eight games out
Name a game you already love — one is enough to start, three give the sharpest matches. If we have written a guide for it, you get our hand-picked follow-ups first, each with the sentence explaining why we picked it; anything left over is matched on shared genres and player reception across 33,000 PC games.
Example: Hades, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight → 8 suggestions
Graveyard Keeper
The closest match for the loop. Same daily rhythm of chores-into-progress, but you run a medieval graveyard instead of a farm and the game is openly cynical where Stardew is warm. Crafting chains go deeper; the writing goes darker. If Stardew's niceness ever felt saccharine to you, this is your game.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
The actual sequel: faster, harder, and more demanding of its movement from the first hour — Hornet starts with tools the Knight earned over a whole game. The 89% rating (vs the original's 97%) is mostly a difficulty argument, not a quality one. If you have not played it, this question answers itself.
Slay the Spire
The brain. Strip the action away and keep the part of Hades where you weigh three boons against your build — that decision, repeated for forty hours. The genre standard for a reason, and it runs on anything.
My Time at Portia
The closest match for the town. Portia's cast has schedules, favours and weddings just like Pelican Town, but you play a builder, not a farmer — commissions replace crops. The 3D presentation makes the town feel more like a place you live in and less like a menu you visit.
Nine Sols
Hollow Knight's exploration frame with Sekiro's deflect at the centre — every boss is a parry conversation, and the final stretch is as good as this genre gets. Hand-drawn 'taopunk' setting, heavier on story than Hallownest. The combat pick of this list.
Cult of the Lamb
The closest to 'both halves': combat runs that feel like a lighter Hades, and between them a cult to feed, house and indoctrinate. The management half is the deeper one — expect to catch yourself doing runs just to fund the commune.
Coral Island
The closest one-to-one modern Stardew: farm, town, mines, romance, seasons. It adds diving and reef restoration and looks considerably better. It is less tightly balanced than Stardew — money comes too easily by year two — but as a second serving of the same meal, nothing else comes closer.