5 Stealth Games You Forgot Were Sneakily Great

The stealth genre has given players boatloads of great games over the years. It’s also an area developers are willing to play with, giving us everything from action stealth to turn-based strategy sneaking. The big hitters in the genre (Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, etc.) get most of the publicity, but the genre is filled with hidden gems that are waiting in the shadows if you know where to look. Below, you’ll find five such games. Don’t think of this as an end-all, be-all list. Instead, this one is about giving you a few games you might’ve overlooked, giving you something new to play once you’ve played through all the classics.

Here are five great stealth games that went under-the-radar for many players.

5) Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

Shadow Tactics is not for the faint of heart. This is a tough-as-nails tactical stealth game that will put your ability to plan to the test. In some ways, it’s like an even more complicated version of chess. You have several hero units to command around the battlefield, each with its own abilities. While you can go in guns blazing, that rarely works. Instead, you need to strike with pinpoint precision and timing.

The good news about Shadow Tactics is that developer Mimimi Games was one of the masters of turn-based tactics. Unfortunately, the studio closed after releasing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, but if you fall in love with the developer’s brand of gameplay, there are a few great games you can jump right into.

4) Mark of the Ninja

Spoiler warning: this will not be the final Klei Entertainment game on this list. While most players know the developer from its Don’t Starve series, the team has a diverse catalog filled with great games.

Mark of the Ninja is a sidescrolling stealth game that asks you to stick to the shadows and fight through a world hoping to kill you. It’s got a great look and gives you plenty of tools to keep yourself hidden. Best of all, Mark of the Ninja got a remaster in 2018, making it easy to jump into in 2025.

3) Gunpoint

Gunpoint gives players access to a tool called the Crosslink. Using it, you can alter the wiring around each level, changing how things work. For example, if you connect a lightswitch to a trapdoor, you can then use the switch to send a guard plummeting to his death.

It’s an inventive stealth puzzle game that was coded by one guy, who worked on Gunpoint during his spare time. To be clear, he brought in artists for the visuals and sound, but this is Tom Francis’s baby. Gunpoint was successful enough that Francis and his team moved into full-time development and have since released two more stealth-based games.

2) Volume

Mike Bithell gained fame for Thomas Was Alone, an indie platformer that took the world by storm in 2012. After that, Bithell left his daytime job at Bossa Studios to open his own studio. That studio’s first game was Volume, which is best described as the stealth gameplay from Metal Gear Solid distilled to its very essence.

There’s a campaign to play through, but Volume also features infinite level creation, giving players all the gameplay they could ever want. Volume might be relatively simplistic, but that’s on purpose. It’s all about giving players engaging stealth action to dive into.

1) Invisible Inc.

Here’s the second Klei game. Invisible Inc. tosses aside Mark of the Ninja‘s action stealth gameplay and dives into turn-based strategy. You’re given a selection of agents to add to your crew and must work your way through each level using their abilities, along with a huge selection of items, augments, and programs.

The world is randomly generated, which makes every playthrough fresh, and you’re given several different game modes to further augment your experience to your taste. I said Mimimi Games was one of the masters of stealth tactics, but Klei probably takes the top slot in that pantheon of developers.

Simply put, Invisible Inc. is one of the most underrated games of the 2010s, not just of this genre. Klei’s masterpiece should’ve been a contender for Game of the Year in 2015, but was overlooked by far too many players. Do yourself a favor, even if you don’t usually love stealth games, and play Invisible Inc. right now.

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