20 weird games you should play
something on this list will russel your jimmies. I guarantee it.
I met someone a while back who profoundly changed how I think about life. In 2018, I posted a photo of my TV with The Lion King playing, saying it was my first viewing because I grew up in a right-wing conservative cult, which is pretty weird, admittedly. A complete stranger named C.J. kindly commented, saying he hoped I enjoyed it and he knew there was a story there. (Understatement of the century, but no, I’m not going to tell that story here.) We chatted a few times, I found out he had written a book, and I even interviewed him on Good Humans. His name is C.J. Casciotta, and he wrote a book called Get Weird. In his book, C.J. writes: “Your weirdness is your worth. It’s the value you bring to this universe simply by breathing air with a set of lungs no one else has ever used before. You can’t do anything to become weird, you must only acknowledge that you are weird, even when you don’t feel like it - or when you would simply prefer to float gently in a giant sea of Same.”
I have always been weird. When I was a kid, I thought there were little people that lived in the TV that performed movies and shows on demand. I thought they knew which movie to perform by seeing which VHS (video home system) we had put in the VCR (videocassette recorder), and that was the reason the same people were always in everything. I used to say I wanted to be a metronome because I’d get to help people make music and hear new music all the time. I used to make “cowboy vests” out of paper bags from the grocery store. Like I said: weird. People generally agreed with my self-assessment and reacted exactly as you’d expect, which meant I was never really the cool kid. So someone validating and valuing weirdness was an incredible breath of fresh air. C.J. asked the question in his book, “Where were you when the weird was finally kicked out of you?” Sadly, all of us probably have an answer to that question.
What a boring world this would be if everything was always just like it had always been. How monotonous things would be if only exactly what was expected ever happened. How mind-numbingly soul-crushing life would be if no one ever deviated from the “routine”. We desperately need weird, if only to shake us out of our ruts and give us a reason to be intentional and present, every now and then. Weird is fresh, weird is new, and weird is interesting. Weird is not always necessarily good or “correct”, but it is notable and it is, to borrow the tech-bros’ lingo for a moment, disruptive. Weird, in summary, is a requisite for progress.
Video games are not immune to the same ruts and repetition, especially when that rut is making money. Sometimes, though, there are those who dare to embrace their weird and show it to the world, partaking in the grand tradition of weirdos throughout history, giving uniformity an adamant middle finger, and rallying the oddballs under their freak flag in a celebration of novelty.
Here are some games (in alphabetical order) that exist because of those wonderful weirdos. Enjoy.
baby steps
If frog hats and donkey men aren’t weird, what is?
I mentioned Baby Steps in my Game of the Year Write-Up, but it deserves a mention here, too. Baby Steps has a message that I think is important: asking for or needing help is not an admission of failure or a lack of ability; it’s just being human. This message is wrapped in such a thick layer of weird, though, that it is impossible to ignore, making the intensely vulnerable message more palatable and providing much-needed comic relief in contrast to the hard truths being confronted. From finding all manner of hats to meeting donkey men with an aversion to wearing pants to the controls themselves being bonkers, this game promises one of the weirdest video game experiences you’ve ever had, for better or worse.
Before Your Eyes
Ever had a staring contest with a video game?
Take the tape off of your webcam. Before Your Eyes uses your real-life blinks to progress the story, making this one of the most innovative ways to interact with a game that I have ever seen. The game itself tells the story about a journey through the afterlife, wherein a mysterious ferryman tells you he needs to learn the story of your life before he takes you to your final destination. Emotional and engaging, this game’s blinking controls make it even more immersive and impactful by highlighting the fleeting nature of moments.
Bugsnax
They yearn for the taste of bugsnax. The bugsnax yearn to be eaten.
Pokémon, but make it psychologically scarring. Sold? Maybe you need more.
In Bugsnax, you are invited to Snaktooth Island by your friend Lizbert, but when you arrive, she is missing, and mysteries abound. You then set out to find your friend and, in doing so, become acquainted with the island’s inhabitants and their… idiosyncrasies… along the way. Bugsnax, the insect-like fauna that inhabit the island, resemble familiar foods and are apparently the tastiest things anyone has ever encountered. Every islander you meet is desperate for the bugsnax, often to feverish, manic degrees, but eating them has consequences.
With flavors (hehe) of Pokémon, puzzle games, and detective vibes, Bugsnax has something for just about everyone, plus some big surprises for those who see it through.
Cult of the Lamb
A cute little lamb starts a cozy little cult.
What do you get when you mix Stardew Valley, Hades, and a dash of horror? You get a cozy little cult-builder sim with adorable animals to be recruited, blessed, punished, sacrificed, and/or married, depending on the whims of the cult leader, you. Cult of the Lamb features, you guessed it, a lamb who is saved from certain death by a mysterious figure and builds a cult in gratitude. Oh, and the lamb is possessed. In one section of this game, you can recruit followers and give them jobs, build a church and give sermons, bestow blessings on your followers to make them more productive, and punish dissenters to ensure compliance, all in service of building a thriving community. The other part of this game is venturing out into the harsh, wild world to annihilate the false prophets and gather resources for your cult. There is a lot going on here, and all of it is bizarre and cozy and strange and disturbing and fun.
Death and Taxes
Decide who lives and dies. And decorate your desk!
Being the Grim Reaper isn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, it’s mostly paperwork and bureaucracy. In Death and Taxes, you are the arbiter of death, or one of them, anyway. The decisions about which people live or die are ultimately yours to make, but your performance is being judged to see if you are worthy of a promotion. Your salary can be spent on doo-dads and widgets for your desk, new outfits, drinks at the bar, and other sundries. You’ll meet other colorful characters, uncover schemes, make friends, and decorate your desk. Part meditation on purpose and fate, part scathing critique of corporate bullshit, Death and Taxes certainly stands out as a singular experience and holds its own in a genre with some other dominant titles such as Papers, Please and Strange Horticulture.
Doki Doki Literature Club
Just a fun book club with cute girls, nothing weird going on here at all…
The first thing I’ll say about Doki Doki Literature Club is DON’T JUDGE A BOOK (or game) BY ITS COVER. I can’t say much about this game without spoiling it, so I’ll just say that if you like weird games with choice-based narratives, this is for you. If you are a child or are “easily disturbed”, as the game’s description says, this game is NOT for you.
Evil West
Let’s play cowboys and vampires.
Remember that movie, Cowboys and Aliens? No? You’re not alone, but you are wrong. It’s awesome. Evil West is like that, but with vampires and a lightning gauntlet. This game reimagines the Old West in a steampunk setting with the looming threat of vampire hordes wreaking death and destruction throughout the American frontier. As part of a top-secret vampire-hunting organization, you are tasked with rooting out the vampire menace and ridding the West of their evil once and for all. With gadgets, guns, and grit as your weapons against the vampires, this game is nonstop brutal action and explosive visuals reminiscent of 80’s action movies.
Forgive Me Father
Cosmic horror has never been so stylish.
Let’s do the disclaimer up front. H.P. Lovecraft was a bigoted, deeply xenophobic asshole. These views, along with the parts of his writing that reflect them, should be rejected and condemned in the strongest terms. Fuck racists and bigots. Cosmic horror is hard to separate from Lovecraft’s influence, so his abhorrent lack of humanity should be noted, even as we collectively try to reclaim and redeem the genre he so heavily influenced. We continue.
Forgive Me Father is a FPS (first-person shooter) set in a very Lovecraftian world where your character is white-knuckling their sanity while trying to fight back the eldritch horrors threatening humankind. Along with a “madness meter”, the game’s unique design features hideous monsters, disturbing NPCs, and guns that range from something Van Helsing would carry to organic, alien objects that may or may not be living things. The gameplay is frenetic, the visuals are striking, and the story is dread-inducing. Fans of cosmic horror will probably find a lot to love here.
The Forgotten City
The “golden rule” takes on a new meaning…
In 2015, a very ambitious and talented man named Nick Pierce (unrelated to the Pierce Institute), after 1,700 hours of work, created a FREE mod for Skyrim called The Forgotten City. It garnered high praise almost immediately and was one of the first mods to ever win awards or praise outside of the modding community itself. In 2021, after hiring some developers and working for another 4 years, The Forgotten City was released as a standalone game to similarly high praise and review scores. What a success story.
The Forgotten City is a game about an ancient Roman city stuck in a time loop. You, the player, happen upon this city and are tasked with poking around to discover just what is going on here and how or if it can be changed. There are a few different endings, lots of characters to talk to, decisions to make, and loops to live through. Your detective skills will be tested, as will your sense of morality and ethics. “The many shall suffer for the sins of the one…” Unless you can change that.
Genital Jousting
Go ahead, be a dick.
Arguably the most vulgar and certainly the most phallic game on this list, Genital Jousting puts you in the, uh… shoes, so to speak, of a penis named John, who desperately needs to find a date for his high school reunion.
Obvious crudeness aside, this game is surprising in a few different ways. It presents itself as an irreverent, physics-based oddity, existing just for the LOLs. Spend some time with it, though, and there’s some genuine warmth and heart buried under all those jiggling schlongs. Genital Jousting is mostly just a jokey, funny little game, but there is a touching (I know, the innuendo is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid here), earnest story about what it means to accept and love yourself while simultaneously striving to be the best version of yourself. Not necessarily a game you want someone walking in on with no context, but it is strangely wholesome and profound. Yes, I just called a game about a sentient penis wholesome and profound. I TOLD YOU I WAS WEIRD.
Her Story
Night Trap walked so Her Story could run.
In 1992, one of the most controversial video games (at the time) was released. Night Trap was one of the early games in the FMV boom of the heady LaserDisc era. Campy and mildly risqué, Night Trap featured the story of a group of teenage girls at a sleepover who are attacked by vampires. Gameplay consisted of voyeuristically switching between surveillance cameras to monitor the goings-on and triggering traps to stop the attackers. Notably, Night Trap was one of the key exhibits in the 1993 senate hearings about video games. Over 20 years later, games are standing on the shoulders of giants like Night Trap. Her Story, released in 2015, is one such game.
In Her Story, you are tasked with sifting through FMV footage of 7 police interviews with a woman in an attempt to piece together the truth about her missing husband. In the game, the interface resembles a mid-90’s computer database with limited keyword search capabilities, through which you view these interviews and gather clues.
The acting is top-notch and the gameplay is free-form without being aimless, making this game weird enough to be memorable without making it so strange that it is difficult to engage with on its own terms.
Inscryption
Learn what a stoat is while you play a card game for your life.
Inscryption, much like Doki Doki Literature Club, is better experienced than described. What starts as a kind of creepy deck-building card game with a mysterious opponent turns into… something else altogether. Twists and turns abound here, all of them completely unpredictable and each more bizarre than the last. This game is genuinely creepy. You should play it.
JETT: The Far Shore
Ride the hymnwave.
Shifting the tone from creepy-weird to esoteric-weird, JETT: The Far Shore is vibes, the game. You’ll glide through alien landscapes with a soothing lo-fi score accompanying you, encounter the mysterious “hymnwave”, and uncover secrets about the unforgiving world in which you find yourself. The narrative here is just ambiguous enough to be intriguing while not being inscrutable, allowing for a sense of discovery and wonder as you travel around in your jett. With shades of existential dread and a layered narrative, this game is not quite like anything I’ve played before and is well worth a look if you’re looking to shake things up.
Killer Frequency
Alright caller, you’re on the air, what’s your emergency?
In the small town of Gallows Creek, one man stands between the townsfolk and a serial killer on a spree: late-night DJ Forrest Nash. Killer Frequency throws you into the action as a DJ on the graveyard shift answering calls that probably should be going to the police, except the chief is dead and anyone could be next. Solve puzzles, find clues, and talk callers through their crises to help the town make it through the night. Equal parts horror and comedy, Killer Frequency features a pretty detailed 80’s era radio station, complete with switches, cassette and record players, and, of course, a phone. Don’t touch that dial, it’s traffic and terror on the 2’s here on 189.16, The Scream!
The Operator
Welcome to the FDI. Yes, FDI, shut up, it’s cool.
You are Agent Tanner, the newest Operator for the FDI, the Federal DEPARTMENT of INTELLIGENCE, which is legally distinct and definitely not the same as another government agency, ok? Why do you keep bringing that up? Ok, where were we? Oh yeah, your first day on the job.
In The Operator, you are the person in the chair, quarterbacking field agents via a 1990s computer interface. You’ll chat with, take calls from, and analyze files for field agents, assisting them in unraveling clues for various investigations. As you might have guessed, things eventually seem to be amiss, and something more sinister seems to be afoot. Embark on some extracurricular investigation, do some hacking, and get to the bottom of things before you get disavowed. Or worse…
The fictional agency, the UI, and the story are all excellent here, and the combination of these elements is what landed The Operator on this list. It’s weird, but in a cool X-Files, spy thriller kind of way.
Scanner Sombre
Hello darkness, my old friend…
The thing about spelunking? It’s dark. Like, SUPER dark. One way to remedy that would be to carry a flashlight, if you wanted to be a LOW-TECH NERD. Nah, let’s hook you up with a LIDAR scanner and goggles instead. That’s WAY better.
Scanner Sombre renders the world around you in rainbow-colored pinpoints of light, but only where you scan. In this game, you’ll explore a vast cave system, scanning your surroundings to navigate, revealing gaping chasms, subterranean lakes, and… other things. Over the course of a relatively short narrative, you’ll discover things long forgotten and perhaps better left buried deep below the surface. The visual style is striking and deftly elevates the feeling of claustrophobia and dread that sets in the longer you play.
Superhot
John Wick meets the Matrix, minus Keanu.
Combining puzzle-solving elements with FPS gameplay is a risky move, but Superhot pulls it off. The core mechanic of this game is that time only moves when you do. You’ll feel like a murder god as you rampage your way through levels, using whatever weapons you come across. The time mechanic allows you to carefully plan your next move and then execute with precision, which is exactly what you’ll need to do to survive the overwhelming odds stacked against you. Superhot gives the FPS genre a much-needed refresh and does so with style.
Superliminal
All you’ve got to do is WAKE UP.
“Hello! My name is Dr. Glenn Pierce, and I'd like to talk to you about being special: So special, in fact, that we have no idea where you are. But not to worry: We're working on it!”
Superliminal is TRIPPY. Like Alice in Wonderland on mushrooms soaked in LSD and laced with DMT trippy. And it’s amazing. In Superliminal, your alarm wakes you at 3 AM, and you venture out of your room into what you quickly realize is a surreal dreamscape. You are at the Pierce Institute, a patient of the famed Dr. Pierce, undergoing treatment via his state-of-the-art SomnaSculpt therapy.
Dr. Pierce, by way of cassette players you find throughout the levels, tells you to try and see things from a different perspective in order to make progress. The game plays with perception and dream logic in ways that will bend your brain and keep you saying “What? OH, NO WAY!” over and over again.
Thank Goodness You’re Here
“This isn’t a watering can. It’s a watering CAN’T.”
Thank Goodness You’re Here is maybe the most UK video game ever made. Fans of Peep Show, Mr. Bean, or Monty Python will love this game. The premise is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s shallow, if that makes sense. You play as a teeny yellow traveling salesman who begins by trying to see the mayor of the little town you find yourself in. After being told your appointment will not be happening for some time, as the mayor is busy, you venture out into Barnsworth to meet and help the locals with their little errands and tasks.
The controls in this game allow you to walk around, jump (in some cases), and slap things. Yes, I said slap things. Want to talk to someone? Walk up and slap them. Want to pick up an item? Give it a slap. Want to open a door? Yeah, that’s gonna be a slaparooney.
The comedy in this game comes from (along with the ubiquitous slapping) the utter Britishness of it, specifically northern Britishness, which is why I mentioned the shows above. The folks you meet ask you to help them with increasingly strange things, situations you encounter (such as someone trying and failing to learn how to drive while the instructor gets increasingly agitated and the poor fellow who just wants to keep his house clean) become increasingly weirder and more slapstick, and the story itself becomes increasingly more unhinged as you play, until it’s all off the rails and nonsense reigns supreme. But you do eventually get your meeting with the mayor!
TTRPGs
Paint me a picture with your imagination brush.
Maybe you want to be a traveling bard, entertaining the masses with music and performances so good, they seem like magic. Maybe you want to be a paladin, living out your oath with unwavering discipline and dedication. Maybe you want to be a rogue, scraping by with your wits and sleight of hand, stealing just enough to make ends meet and using your knowledge of the city and its shady denizens to your advantage. Wanna be a wizard, a necromancer, a soldier, or a chef? An exiled king? A disgraced priest or an itinerant scholar? You can! In TTRPGs (Table-Top Role-Playing Games), you can be just about anything you want to be. TTRPGs include games like Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowdark, Pathfinder, Mork Borg, Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, and many, MANY others.
I had to include these games on my list because, the way I play them, they’re weird as hell. You don’t have to play them that way; in fact, you don’t have to play them in any specific way, but that’s how I play them, and I love it.
Don’t misunderstand me, TTRPGs do have rules. Depending on the system and the group, you may find yourself creating a character in a futuristic cyberpunk city or a high-fantasy medieval kingdom, or a gritty seafaring town or… you get the point. But the universal aspect of all of these games is that YOU create YOUR character, which is something only YOU can do. Bringing this list full-circle, the specific flavor of weird you possess is the thing only you can imbue upon your character. Yes, again, there are rules, but your decisions, your character’s personality, your actions are YOURS, and that creative freedom is the thing I love the most about these games. I love getting to try out new, wacky ideas for characters and become entirely different people as I immerse myself in the game’s setting. Often, I have the most fun sort of “finding” the character as I go along, letting my improv instincts and the circumstances form the character instead of going into a game with a rigid idea of who my character is. But maybe you’d be more comfortable forming those ideas more rigidly ahead of time, and that’s ok! The fun of these games is becoming a character and collaborating with friends to tell a wild, unique story together.
I have had experiences in TTRPGs that I will never forget. I’ve performed impromptu concerts with my party to a crowd of thousands, given speeches to pirate kings, stolen arcane artifacts from dragons, gone to hell to confront a god, and returned as a hero from quests for glory. I have also performed one-man burlesque shows (complete with glitter and a splash zone), slapped a town guard with a piece of bacon, teamed up with a kobold to bamboozle a magician, and created an army of weevils to spy on royalty. The possibilities and permeations are literally endless, and I love creating funny, memorable moments with my friends.
If you have ever been curious about D&D or any other TTRPG, I beg of you to try it at least once. I’d be so happy to help you find a way to play one if you need to be pointed in a direction. I’ve made lifelong friends, had some of the most fun times of my life, and (I know it may sound melodramatic, but it’s true) become a more empathetic person playing these games, and they may just do that for you, too.