10 Hardest Indie Games To 100% Complete

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Although it might seem like big-budget (Triple-A) games could create difficult gaming experiences given their abundant resources, this is not often the case. Instead, it’s usually indie games that take on the challenge of creating tough games.

While some games are just inherently difficult to play, even more of them are really difficult to 100%, especially when you’re trying to get every achievement on top of doing everything the game has to offer.

I’ve encountered various games that appear easy to play initially, but prove extremely challenging when trying to finish them completely. My focus will be on titles that skillfully create tough challenges using simple game mechanics.

Moreover, I think unfair difficulty requiring generally unreasonable tasks should be pretty absent from this list, as it’s not particularly a challenge of skill, but rather a challenge of how good you are at reading a wiki.

With that, let’s take a look at the 10 most challenging Indies to play to 100% completion.

10. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

A Terrible Fate

Outer Wilds is my favorite game ever, yet I had a very rough time getting all the achievements, as all of them are things you thought you couldn’t do on a first playthrough.

Some story spoilers for Outer Wilds below.

Namely, in terms of base game achievements, landing on the Sun Station or going into Giant’s Deep’s core are massive pains in the ass, especially if you’re trying not to use a guide. The DLC gets even worse.

Plenty of these achievements are manageable, sure, but then there are things like jumping away from one of the Owlk before they kill you, which you think would be easy, but the conditions to unlock it are so specific you’ll never get it on your own.

The most challenging aspect is persistently trying to surf on the wave in The Stranger, as it demands extremely precise positioning with an object that, contrary to expectation, doesn’t offer much precision. Due to this, it typically requires multiple attempts, each lasting over ten minutes.

9. Risk of Rain 2

Avalanche of Accomplishments

In simpler terms, “Risk of Rain 2” is a game that offers numerous hours of unique content, primarily due to its various unlockable items, each having distinct challenges tied to them as accomplishments.

Although many of these tasks are achievable with persistence alone, the remaining 20 pose significant challenges due to the game’s high level of difficulty (excluding easy mode).

Killing Mithrix with a supply beacon requires some great timing, positioning, and a waste of one of your best resources, and killing an Imp Overlord with the Preon Accumulator feels like complete RNG whether or not it gives you the necessary unlock.

In my opinion, what’s most challenging is the task associated with Ethereal, where you must complete a Prismatic Trial as Mercenary without taking any damage. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if Prismatic Trials weren’t based on daily randomized runs, making it incredibly difficult unless you’re patient and willing to wait.

8. Balatro

Trick Up Your Sleeve

Balatro is the widely popular card game that people can’t seem to get enough of, as it boasts one of the most tedious collections of achievements and unlocks out there. If you have plenty of free time on your hands, this game will surely keep you occupied.

Some less common trophies can be obtained simply by strategizing a gameplay to achieve them, like playing a flush with five wild cards. However, the three Completionist achievements are downright malevolent in their design.

To complete this task, you’ll need to find all of the Jokers, Spectral Cards, and so on in the game by purchasing each one at least once. This process could take a considerable amount of time. However, mastering every deck on Gold Stake difficulty is incredibly tough, and it will definitely take a significant amount of time to accomplish.

Even worse, though, the final Completionist achievement has you getting a gold sticker on every Joker, which means winning a run with every single Joker in the game on Gold Stake. Considering I can barely win a Gold Stake run with the Spectral deck, that sucks.

7. Celeste

500 Meter Dash

Celeste is already a pretty tough precision platformer, and while getting through the main eight levels won’t kill you, the B and C sides, plus Chapter 9 and the challenges it brought, all stretch you pretty thin.

As a dedicated fan, my 100% adventure concludes by tackling every B and C side, gathering all strawberries, and conquering chapter 9 – quite a challenge in itself. However, there’s even greater obstacles lurking beyond that point!

The achievement for getting a 1-up requires you to carry 10 strawberries on you, which means you can barely land on the ground without messing up and having to restart, and getting WOW requires a ton of extra platforming in chapter 9.

Alright, let me put it in a gamer’s perspective: “Lastly, there’s something else I need to grab, but calling it an achievement would be too heartless. The Golden Strawberries are scattered across each level from the get-go. To collect them, you’ve got to complete the entire level without dying once – that’s just plain ruthless game design!

6. Hollow Knight

Bugged Up

Hollow Knight is a game in the genre of Metroidvania, featuring hand-drawn graphics and combat reminiscent of Dark Souls. The combat can be quite demanding, with some segments so tough that they discouraged me from finishing the entire game.

In the initial stages of the game, you’ll encounter regular boss battles. However, when you reach the Godhome content, you’ll find yourself facing colossal boss gauntlets. These gauntlets enhance every boss in the game and become progressively harder as you advance.

In Pantheon 5, you’ll face off against every boss in the game consecutively. If you die during this challenge, you’ll be sent back to the start. The Absolute Radiance fight is particularly difficult because it can easily defeat you at the beginning.

Even after that, the achievements are genuinely evil, requiring you to 100% the game in 5 hours, finish the game in permadeath mode, and as a further slap in the face, 100%-ing the game with permadeath. Can’t wait for Silksong to be even harder.

5. Terraria

Brick by Brick

Hey there! Do you enjoy Terraria? That’s neat. To achieve the platinum trophy, though, you might want to spend around a hundred hours on it – I guarantee it will be a fantastic experience. Truth be told, I’m quite fond of this game and consider its platinum trophy among my most cherished ones; however, earning it was no walk in the park.

Not only do some achievements require quite a bit of grinding and waiting, namely ones based around random events like the Blood Moon or Slime Pets, but a few go even further and that takes forever.

1. Start by obtaining the Cell Phone, Ankh Shield, and Zenith artifacts.

2. Traverse various locations and battle numerous enemies to gather a collection of about two dozen items that would otherwise be useless if they couldn’t be combined.

3. Combine these collected items as needed throughout your journey.

As a gamer, I can tell you that among all the characters in this game, there’s one who hasn’t made an appearance yet but is set to be released this year. Achieving 100% bestiary completion will be the feat to unlock this character, and if you’ve ever attempted to get a Nymph Banner, you understand why that’s such a challenge.

4. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Divine Dedication

When it comes to roguelike games, I had some self-control when making my selections, but it was impossible not to include The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth with its massive 640 achievements.

There’s one achievement for getting every single item, and those achievements are all tied to doing really specific stuff, namely defeating every boss with every character, or just donating your life savings as any true gambler should.

Sometimes, you encounter situations where randomness plays a role, and even though you try your best to navigate towards many of these achievements, a significant number of them will require restarting multiple times just to get 5 elusive Pills.

Even if you are the luckiest person on earth, you won’t be able to conquer five consecutive daily challenges without a significant time investment. I only recommend attempting this if you have several thousand hours available.

3. Stardew Valley

Hell in Paradise

You might assume that a charming farming game like Stardew Valley would be a breeze to play, but if you haven’t delved deeply into it, you wouldn’t understand that the completion process can be quite challenging.

Achieving Perfection is no small feat given the massive task at hand. This involves building a strong bond with each Non-Player Character (NPC), trading every possible item, and spending approximately 13 million gold on structures that will likely be underutilized due to your current endgame status.

1. Obtain every book in the game

2. Max out and perfect all skills
3. Achieve mastery in the arcade

This means you need to:
– Gather all available books within the game
– Master every skill, making them as proficient as possible
– Spend time playing the arcade games to reach the highest level of achievement

Journey of the Prairie King is an optional shoot-em-up minigame, but if you want every achievement, you need to beat it without dying once, which is such an extraordinarily precise and challenging task that for the longest time.

2. Cookie Clicker

Surprisingly Strategic

You might write off Cookie Clicker as another idle game that asks nothing of you other than clicking mindlessly for hours. Yet, there’s genuinely a ton of strategies you need to employ if you want to get to the end, and that is a ridiculous feat.

Of the 637 achievements, a solid 8% of them will take you hours of planning, making builds, unlocking upgrades, and a lot of actively clicking Golden Cookies and trying to combo them into each other for a chance at an achievement.

The conclusion of Cookie Clicker is surprisingly lengthy, and if you assume it’s simply about creating an optimal setup and patiently waiting, you’d be mistaken. Even with the best layout in place, it will still take several centuries of idle play to earn the last few achievements.

In my 2,300 hours of Cookie Clicker, quite a bit of it was spent with the game open on a side monitor, which made the shift to rapidly grabbing a Golden Cookie, selling buildings for a buff, taking out a loan, and summoning another cookie quite the wild one.

1. Tower Unite

Just Keep Gambling

If you’re seeking a game that offers an experience similar to VRChat, but without the virtual reality aspect and instead packed with numerous mini-games and attractions, Tower Unite might be exactly what you’re after.

Among the games on Steam, this is the one with a substantial fanbase and offers 36 achievements, none of which have been completed yet. With an impressive 651 items to unlock, it challenges you to become proficient in every facet of the game.

Sure, some are a bit brain-dead easy, like putting on a workshop model or visiting another player, but then you’ve got achievements for landing a hole-in-one on 67 different mini-golf holes, or getting a 5000-note score in that piano arcade game.

I enjoy playing this game as a means of unwinding and having fun, and sometimes I ponder the experience of achieving Platinum status, yet I’m too apprehensive to even contemplate devoting my entire life to mastering the game. If you claim to have earned the Platinum trophy legitimately, I find it hard to believe.

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2025-03-17 17:55