Masocore is avideo game subgenre with a focus on intense difficulty, often featuring complex or unfair mechanics. The name is aportmanteau of "masochism" and "hardcore", suggesting that players of the genre are hardcoregamers who find pleasure in the aggravation required to beat the games and the feeling of reward afterwards for having surpassed a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Masocore games are mostly 2Dsidescrollers, harkening back to retroNintendo hard platformers, although the definition can also be taken to encompass fully 3D games of high difficulty such assoulslikes.
Masocore games are mostly platformers, and are specifically designed to frustrate players.[1] Unlike classic games, masocore titles often offer infinitelives, encouraging the player to try over and over again with little friction.[2]
Games of the subgenre are popular withspeedrunners, who spend thousands of hours mastering the games completely and then compete to be at the top of the leaderboards.[2]
Some of the first masocore games were created out of nostalgia for classic titles, such asCastlevania,Mega Man, andGhosts n' Goblins. Fans wanted to recreate the feeling of euphoria after beating a difficult game, and therefore created similarindie games themselves.[2] Before the genre itself was established, numerousKaizo Mario hacks were created that greatly increased the game's difficulty.[3]
The term was popularized by the gaming blogAuntie Pixelante, there attributed to an unknown SelectButton forum member.[1][4]
Examples of masocore games includeSpelunky (2008) andSuper Meat Boy (2010).[2] Other notoriously hard titles includeI Wanna Be the Guy (2007),Dustforce (2012),Geometry Dash (2013),1001 Spikes (2014), andCeleste (2018).[5] The game director ofNioh (2017) stated that he intended the game to be masocore, and the development team therefore "consciously avoided making the game easy".[6]
Due to its pick-up-and-play portability and library of challenging indie games, theNintendo Switch has been called "a perfect platform for masocore games".[7]