7 Innocent Looking Games That Are Secretly Super Messed Up
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- Опубликовано: 17 май 2024
- Sometimes, seemingly innocent games can take unexpectedly dark twists, turning the sunny experience you were expecting into a harrowing ordeal you weren’t. You can prepare yourself for the horror, however, by checking out these seven innocent-looking games that are secretly super messed up, and subscribing for more videos like this from Outside Xbox!
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Игры
I have one word for you - Bugsnax. Remember folks, you are what you eat.
I still need to play the DLC that dropped a while ago. The reaction I had seeing that Strabby make it to the mainland at the end was very much one of horror.
As RT put it, it's a horror game for kids.
Yes, this. It was actually body horror!
Everything is Bugsnax...
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[Strabby pops up at the end of Ellen's playthrough]
AAAAHHHH! AAAAHHHH! AAAAHHHH! AAAAHHHH! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
This!!!!
I mean Doki Doki Literature Club is an obvious choice, but when it first came out I saw even people who knew about the twist shocked by how intense it got.
They kind of undercut it by putting a warning label on it, but they also kinda HAD to due to the twists.
That's the first game I thought about after seeing the video-title.
@@DigitalXAddict Same. I suppose it's not so secretly messed up since everyone knows by now.
I'm amazed honestly that didn't make it to this list. That stuff was in the first part 'Happy school days', and then went ridiculously dark (and weird - e.g. needing to delete files to achieve the true end).
Doki Doki Literature Club is still my favorite game just for how unique it is and the only horror game I like haha. I still know people who don't know about it and getting some streamers to play it. Not for everyone though and it's hard for me to wrap my head around since it doesn't affect me as much as others apparently
The double edged sword of using videos like these to find games you want to play, but having the twist spoiled instead of stumbling upon it naturally...
Just drink heavily until you forget it again!
@@SenecaRaine water?
I was just thinking that. Maybe i will watch the video muted and just seek out the titles of the games.
Well at least you know you were warned
Felt this in my *soul.*
That's how I got Undertale spoiled for me....
My favourite part of the Sonic Adventure stuff is that at the end, Tails rounds the game off with "all's well that ends well, right?" Tails, how many people died?!
My guess is that Tails don’t consider humans as people enough to give a damn. Maybe to him only anthromorphic animals count.
"THE CITY'S BEEN FUCKING DESTROYED!"- FastestThingAlive, 2008
Glad I'm not the only one who thought of that.
"I'd like a body count, and a second opinion!" -Tom Fawkes
Sonic Adventure 2: "We all did it together!"
Every Kirby game once you know the lore.
Can confirm. Kirby lore is nuts.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land was wild from the get-go. "Hey, here's an abandoned earth. Let's have adventures, don't think about it!"
Or fight the final boss
And sometimes, even if you don't. I wonder how many young kids had nightmares after the final boss of Crystal Shards...
@@BAMFshee To this day my favorite entry in the franchise :D
If you think Sonic Adventure is messed up, you should see Sonic Adventure 2, where a major plot point is a young girl getting murdered by paramilitary forces, causing her grandfather to go insane and trying to destroy the world. Additionally, when said grandfather's posthumous video log explaining how the world is about to end plays, the last few seconds make it painfully and traumatically clear that the recording you're watching is his last words before he's executed by firing squad.
And then there's another little girl watching as the moon gets blown up, and the 24 hour timer until the end of the world.
A little detail that makes that just a bit darker: the cell in which the grandfather was shot is the same cell that Sonic was locked in during the cutscene between "Prison Lane" and "Metal Harbor". The writing is literally on the walls: if Amy and Tails hadn't saved him, Sonic would've probably met a similar fate.
Still less disturbing than Sonic 06.
@@mappybc6097I genuinely can't tell if you're talking about Sonic getting stabbed or the whole Elise thing.
@@kaysrandomchannel4618 Both.
Echo the Dolphin. It's a pretty game about a cute dolphin trying to find his missing friends. It's also surprisingly hard, sometimes has a bit of a survival-horror vibe going on and it turns out his friends are missing because a Lovecraftian monster sucked them through a blender.
The whole series is basically a cute and innocent dolphin playing with friends that turned into an alien hunting time traveler with Atlantean powers preventing the end of the world and is all out of mercy by the end of it.
The further we get from the '90s, the more delightfully inexplicable that game has become. It seemed _so_ much less weird playing it back then than it does now!
Stardew Valley? Suicide? PTSD? Alcoholism? Abuse? All in a cute neat little package.
(think all of these also exists in Super Paper Mario, along with genoocide, slavery, mass mind control, or for more mundane horrors, there's also arachnophobia, being stuck in an endless grind, etc...)
Stardew Valley feels less about harsh juxtaposition and more like working things out comfortably, you know? Sure, Shane and Linus get messed up, yeah, there's more than just that but I don't wanna spoil it, but like... Nothing wild.
Don't forget about the attempted bribery of an elected official. Don't know what I mean? Talk to Pierre during the Luau, and he will ask if the Governor will give him a tax break if he give the Governor a certain wine.
don't forget the new green rain weather event. in year one, most of the townsfolk think it's the apocalypse.
@@ARMsMasterit was a whiskey, but your point still stands
What remains of Edith Finch, a lovely walking simulator about revisiting a childhood home.... then the frog.
Some of the horror in that game was the sheer number of building code violations
The brother working in the fish processing plant section really gets me. The gameplay manages to simulate mindless work by giving you the muscle memory to chop fish heads off then slowly replaces the visuals with a magical adventure... And then snaps you back into reality as you step out of his body and see he's no longer present in the real world as you 'bend to be crowned'.
@@octochanthat and terrible parenting. Legitimately, like, half the kid's deaths were because the parents were morons(from what I remember. Its been a long time)
@@MrShukaku1991 there's a video called The Villain of Edith Finch that puts a lot of the blame squarely on Edith Finch, Sr. for enabling a lot of things that led to a lot of preventable deaths, or needless anguish. I mean, she built a Fallout vault for her kid when he decided at like 8 years old he never wanted to see the outside world again
@@MrShukaku1991 Ignoring how Edie was obsessed with making death into a spectacle, SHE LOCKED HER 8 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER IN HER ROOM AFTER REFUSING TO GIVE HER SUPPER.
This lady is a horrible parent.
May I interest you in Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion? It starts out innocently enough, with the mayor making you his errand boy to pay off your taxes. But the further you get, the more you realize that something is seriously wrong in this cartoony little world.
Not going to lie, I literally started crying during one of the boss fights. And no, I'm still not over it.
Yessssss this one is so good!!!
Adventure time ama right lads
Yes!
@@massgunner4152 "Now with ISOTOPES!"
That reminds me, I wonder where they're going to take this lore with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, I should pick it up and see
One that comes to mind for me is Spyro: Year of the Dragon The game's story is basically that a sorceress has stolen a bunch of dragon eggs. Supposedly to "restore the magic" to her home world.
However, eventually it is revealed that she plans on killing the baby dragons in order to make herself immortal. And to make it even more messed up, she outright says she doesn't "have to" kill them, doing so just makes it easier for her to then cut off the wings which is what she actually needs.
says something about how messed up duck hunt is that just seeing the dog fills me with dread.
Duck Hunt, or Duck Season?
lol right? That game messed me up when it came out for some reason
it legit traumatized me cause i watched clips of it when i was 10, fucking haunted all of my dreams
A lot of modern horror games seem to follow this "creepypasta" style of starting out innocent before becoming corrupted and horrifying. They usually have some mandatory warning though on its rating. Of course no one ever reads those or they see them as a "good sign" if they're a fan of that kind of thing.
One of my favorite warnings is the DDLC "not for those easily disturbed" message because of the chance of it changing to something creepy.
I just beat that game yesterday (4/24) wtf. Fking hell
Yeah I immediately thought of Fairy Maiden's Odd Hideout
Cooking Companions should be on this list. Super friendly, *super dark*
100%
Doesn’t it take place during the Holodomor?
@@knightofarkronia9968 yeah, it does
I was just thinking about that one.
I'd forgotten my hatred for that fucking dog until now.
Which dog? There are many dogs in this video
@@hondaaccord1399 the duck hunt dog
@@hondaaccord1399 Obviously the dog in ECA
I was surprised not to see Hatoful Boyfriend on this list. Especially with the hidden story arc.
Such a surprisingly deep game, despite the absurd pigeon premise.
Oh yeah that's a good one! I was completely blindsided by how deep the game was, and the hidden story arc shocked me even more.
Little Misfortune is another one that few people point out. A friend did tell me to play it and still regret it to this day.
Yikes forever…
Eh, just throw some glitter and make it all better ✨️
Even though it was a flash game, I'm surprised Can Your Pet? isn't on here. That was my first experience with a cute game that was secretly dark. You raise a cute chicken and dress it up and play with it and then BOOM! Childhood ruined.
This reminds me of my spouse's story of having a pet chicken in South America. One day, sweet Paco became a lovely soup.
I remember playing Can Your Pet? when I was 14 and even then, the sudden switch hit me! It was so dark that I forgot about it until you mentioned it
Was PETA the maker of that one?
@@SithBunny1 Fairly certain they weren't involved in its creation. The developer is scaryama
That shit ruined me
How do you not have Bugsnax on this! You couldn't have more of a contrast between the cute start and the horror movie at the end.
come to snaktooth island and discover it's bugsnax!
Pokemon Gen 1. I don't think any Pokemon fan who's played red, blue or yellow can ever forget Lavender Town's Pokemon cementary Lavender Tower, the implication that you might be responsible for the death of one of your rival's Pokemon, and the encounter with the ghost of the orphaned Cubone's mother, who was killed by Team Rocket. (Most succeeding generations have something like that too. Like Gen 2's origin story for Suicune, Entei and Raikou.)
Pokemon Black/White or X/Y could be considered on the list too.
If I remember correctly,in Gold/Silver/Crystal, the legendary dogs died but were revived by Ho-Oh right??
Honestly, NO idea how this list could be made without Doki Doki Literature Club. The LITERAL DEFINITION of an unexpectedly dark game.
That's presumably why. A bit too obvious.
I've been playing a Animal Crossing like game called Cozy Grove that on the surface is cute and fun, but when the setup is that I'm some kind of Cub Scout sent to an island to help out a bunch of friendly, personable ghosts, things get pretty dark when you get into the backstories of how they died and why they aren't moving on. Also the implications that I can't get off the island and my Scout Leader has left me for dead, too. But hey, let's just collect the resources, cook recipes, catch bugs and fish, do little daily quests, don't mind all that.
Bonnie's Bakery is a good example of this since it looks like an innocent cooking game at first, but it is actually super dark.
I am horrified that Bugsnax is not on this list
I assume they are too, hence why it is not on this list.
I dunno if this counts, but Zelda: Links awakening? Didn’t realize it til I got much older but to leave the island you have to wake up the wind fish, and you learn by waking the wind fish you destroy/erase the existence of the island and everything on it, as if they were nothing more than a dream
Oh wow that sounds ghastly.
@@mikoto7693 oh sorry if it came out as ghastly. It is a cheery game, but the realization shocks you as you make the connection that you are essentially in the Wind Fish’s Dream and you essentially have to end the dream/destroy the world to return to yours. There is a happier ending if you beat the game with no deaths in that it (without spoiling too much) implies one of the NPC’s gets their wish granted and also leaves the island too
@@hobbes5552 Still, I don’t know how I would feel about playing an entire game, bonding with the characters and solving problems for them just to find none of them exist. That you’re just trapped in the dream of a magical being and everyone dies/vanishes at the end.
Sky: Children of the Light. Got the simplest and most adorable characters with kids running around floating on clouds but it's actually like that concept of hell where one day is on a forever loop.
There's a game called Pony Island, which is absolutely just a happy little arcade game where you play as a pony. Definitely nothing weird going on in that one.
The Bunny Graveyard and Doki Doki Literature Club.
indeed no Doki Doki Literature Club? Monika is angry now.
That game was designed to be very obviously messed up though. For a VN game, it's clichéd even when it was released.
I will never not sing my praises for Beacon Pines, it's just so charming literally playing in a storybook, but sheeeeeesh does it get dark at points, sometimes with zero buildup. Criminally overlooked, I do hope to see the oxbox or oxtra teams talk about it.
Seconded. Just a cheerful summer vacation story... then you find out how much snow there is outside your town...
Looks like some degenerate furry shit. Having said that: those visuals look spot on... almost if somebody gave a shit. Unfortunately not my cup of tea (gameplay wise, couldn't care less if it's big tiddied anime girls or big tiddied anthropomorphic sheep being thrown my way).
Loved that game.
Using this opportunity to tell everyone to PLEASE give Beacon Pines a shot, actually one of my favorite stories in a game.
Bugsnax messed my daughter up. Sure, its all bright and cheery, and nearly impossible to lose, but that last 30 mins and the ending though...
YES. There's the body horror element, and before you get to the ending the NPCs are all masking their insecurities and hopelessness. Also, the bad ending.
No way! My son is playing this right now and I just thought it was a weird take on Chao Garden... I best have a look into this ASAP haha. Thanks for the heads up!
Rime. At first you think it's a whimsical adventure of a young boy on a colorful island full of puzzles. Then you get snippets of the boy's past, seemingly losing his father in a storm before crashing on the island. It's just a little ways before the end when you realize that the boy is the one who was lost in the storm, and that he actually drowned, leaving his grieving, widowed father all alone. While the game was clearly inspired by the likes of Ico, it hides the darker stuff under brighter colors and lacking any kind of combat.
That Elite Beat Agents mission was definitely a twist. I don't think I failed it to get that photograph of him admiring himself that much. :P
Elite beats agents was so underrated.
Splatoon is actually pretty dark in a world building sense- post apocalyptic world where humans went extinct, cephalopods evolved to go on land but the world continues to flood and land is running out causing fights to start over turf- and that's just what i remember off hand from the first game
Wait until you get into all the mind control and attempted genocide in Splatoon 2 (though the latter requires the DLC).
And don't even get me STARTED on Alterna (S3)
5:35 That's the bad option? The man's a stud. I was expecting it to be something upsetting like a pic of him having had an affair or something.
Right? Or at least shouldn’t it be reversed? Good ending is a picture of her dad being goofy to remember me by,bad ending a picture of just her and her mother without her dad in the picture? 🤔
Watching the intro to the Lucy mission after playing a bunch of goofy fun missions, "Aww, going to help Lucy find a girlfriend for her Teddybear!" Intro progresses, "Right? Right?!..." tears.
If only "Emergency Call Ambulance" had Madam Web performing cpr on that kid in the back of the ambulance. Jack would be in safe hands.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It presents itself as a fun, light-hearted, whimsical adventure in the beginning levels, albeit one with a serious goal: finding a magical spring to cure your dad.
And then ... and then ... AND THEN ...
Just remember to play the original, not that unnecessary remake. *Why even need that?*
What happened
13:30 Well, I wasn't expecting a Corridor Crew collab, but close enough. I'll take it.
Their all still in their own creative bubble. I hope Brandon and Peter will work on a game together one day :D
I was like "Wait...Is that Sam? That looks like Sam."
And, one quick trip to imdb later, yup, that's Sam.
Lmao 😂 SAME! Sam?!? Sam in a video game? On Oxbox? 🤯
I mean, if you name your planet Sunder, it's on YOU when it gets broken to pieces.
Also, Sonic Adventure includes: Dr. Robotnik/Eggman flying his Egg Carrier over Station Square to terrify the population (hits different after 9/11), firing a missile at Station Square, and the whole story for Gamma.
Gamma's is at least somewhat fine, as he's simply killing his "siblings" to release the animals inside, and then he, too, gets to be free as a flicky again.
@@Infindox Really gliding over the "murdering all his siblings and then killing himself" part there
@@circeciernova1712like the other guy said it didn’t even matter,the robots were just shells ,and Gamma just freed the birds trapped inside,then finally Gamma himself blew up freeing the bird trapped inside him so it could go be with its family. If you’re really gonna go that route,then SONIC HIMSELF has been “murdering” robots since SONIC 1 😂😂😂😂
@@AdamAddictL Gamma still had a personality. As much as it might be for the best, he still had to track down and destroy his brothers and then himself. It's played for emotion. Whether or not you think it works well, whether you think it's cheesy or pointless, that is very much the intent of Gamma's arc.
The standard badnik that get smashed up throughout the series aren't shown with that kind of awareness and consideration of their condition (in fact, given how Robotnik/Eggman acts, you might well say that Gamma and his brothers are a new series of experimental robot capable of higher intelligence). He shows intelligence and emotion that other badniks have not been demonstrated to have. And yes, maybe we wonder what a badnik thinks or possibly feels before its destruction.
Or is depth not allowed?
Seeing Elite Beat Agents on a list makes my heart sing
Imagine your first day as a medical staff in the back of an ambulance and your ambulance driver decides it’s cool enough to catch air on a hill.
I have two words for you: Naughty Bear. You're literally a teddy bear in a world filled with teddy bears and your objective is to basically kill them all, one method of which includes DRIVING THEM TO DEFLUFF THEMSELVES. Sure it's not like a super good game and it gets repetitive after a (short) while, but it's the first game I thought of when I saw the title of the video.
Though DDLC is definitely a fantastic choice as well that, as others have pointed out, should have been included
Totally forgot about that one lol. I played it for a while then thought to myself “I’m training to become a serial killer” and set it down. Never looked back 😂.
Only not secretly disturbing. Once you get past the kid show opening kinda hits you in the face with a brick disturbing. Loved that game.
@grayboats7741 Yeah, the game pretty quickly lets you know it's pretty disturbing. But it goes into such dark territory, I feel like it makes up for how short the initial cuteness is lol
@expeng made worse by super kiddy lesson in kindness it starts with! Oh Defluff them all 😀
We Behold What We Become, Happy Wheels, Poppy Playtime. They fit this title.
Tails: "All's well that ends well, right?"
FastestThingAlive: "THE CITY'S BEEN FUCKING DESTROYED!!!"
I think Stray is like this. You start off with the attitude of being a curious cat and then find out you’re in a world completely devoid of humans. And the worst part about it is the actual cat you play as knows nothing of what’s going on, he just wants to get out of the city. Only the human player really knows what’s going on.
Tunic deserves a place in this list. Significantly more imprisoned tortured souls than the average cute puzzle game.
Bro duck season is absolutkey terrifying.I was like,”when is this gonna get scary? I heard about-AAAAAAAAAAAAA
I saw the list and immediatly frowned because Omori wasn't on it- Omori is practically the poster child for games that look cute and wholesome on the surface but are actually really messed up 😂
It doesn't look very cute or wholesome to me. I don't really find it to be a subversion when it just uses not scary drawings for like the cover
Omori tries too hard to be messed up, that game is kinda unintentionally funny at times because of how exaggerated the topics are
Advanced Wars: Days of Ruin is much darker imo. Part of the plot is that it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And better yet, there's a disease you're trying to cure where flowers grow within you, weakening your body, before bursting out and causing death like a pretty botanical xenomorph
True, but that is more overtly dark. The other AW games at least have a vineer of being a more light-hearted setting until something comes along to play with that idea. Days of Ruin announces its darker aspects from moment 0.
It's also one of my favorites in the series. 😊
@@Draeckon which is the one with the 4 nations fighting each other? With blue and yellow I think?
I think the Viva Piñata games would qualify.
Yeah maybe 🤔
Fun fact: The Sonic Adventure final boss was actually made into a special figure skating level in Mario & Sonic Winter Olympic Games. Unfortunately it's a different soundtrack but the boss fight is well made. I think this game is only on the WII so good luck finding it 😊
It was also on DS….but UGGGG I could NEVER pass the Rouge skating level 😡😡😡
I know it's regular OXbox, but Ellen really should have been the one to talk about cats 😔
Ellen is friend to cats so would never have been wounded by one. The cats know what Andy did so react accordingly.
Oh my God, I had Elite Beat Agents as a kid. I loved it, but I stupidly sold all my DS stuff a long time ago. So my wife bought it for me again a couple Christmas' ago, and I was playing it on Christmas next to her. My wife, whose father died when she was very young. Yeah, by the end of the song, she was bawling and I felt like a total asshole
Eversion is an old example of a game pulling a dark twist early on. It's a platformer where you "evert" at certain spots in each level to flip to new dimensional layers to progress. As you get further along though, the layers get progressively more dark and depressing. There's a very good reason it opens with a disclaimer for people of a nervous disposition.
I came here to suggest Eversion too! Excellent game that is uh... not what you'd expect.
It is still in Demo right now, but I will tell you, Normal Fishing is not what it appears to be.
Normal fishing was so creepy and awesome
That's the video game equivalent of a skin walker
"Oh yes me a normal will go normal fishing with this normal dog"
"Mooh"
If you think Sonic Adventure jumps into the grim, consider Sonic Adventure 2: it starts with several levels of the military rampaging through inhabited cities, halfway through the moon gets shot in half while a little girl watches a countdown to the end of the world, and by the end we see a man so thoroughly broken by the loss of one grandchild that he willingly sentenced all life on earth to die, including another of his own grandchildren.
Bonnie's Bakery 😰 cute little bakery mini game that takes a very..very dark turn
Literally any game in the Mother series.
Snes Mother was probably the least messed up but does have a party member get killed partway through depending on the version you play.
Earthbound: Giygas
Mother 3: Literally everything Mother 3 if you are somehow unaware.
Earthbound: *Only* Giygas? Sure, the alien that's terrifyingly-incomprehensible to even perceive is up there, but some of the other stuff is horrific too. Happy-happyism (which is literally a cult - high-control groups are very much not great), a nascent zombie apocalypse, the fact that time travel kills you and the fact that it's *literally four children* who are the only people who can save the entire world from being eaten by the said incomprehensible alien.
@@malcolmdarke5299 I mentioned Giygas cause I believe that he ended up the most well known thing about the game. Would rather leave the rest of the unknown unknown for those who want to see the rest of it if you know what I mean.
@@gameboy3433 Yeah, that's fair. I'm mostly trying to say that it's more than just Giygas that's screwed up.
How about To the Moon? The game glosses over how messed up Johnny's mom is so quickly that you likely won't put the whole picture together until after multiple playthroughs. Basically, her parental favoritism was so bad that, when she accidentally ran over Jowy (her favorite son), she forced Johnny into a drug-induced amnesia so that she could gaslight him into thinking that he never had a brother and condition him into being a replacement for Jowy.
1. Maybe the dog that follows u into the ER is the doctor maybe called doggie howser or Dr D. House (the D stands for Dog)
Sonic Adventure 2 did something similar when the true ending involved a mentally broken scientist who five decades prior rigged an entire space station to collide with the Earth to kill off all life on the planet out of sheer grief and vengeance. His diary was absolutely chilling to listen to as a kid.
Which kinda didn’t make sense….like,it was weird he didn’t input some kinda auto-fire program for the GIANT PLANET PIERCING LASER to go off by itself blasting the earth….instead just having the entire space station set in a collision course,and the bio lizard programmed to take over to keep it on said collision course if the original program was stopped.
IIRC, the arcade version of Duck Hunt DOES allow you to do shoot the dog in one of the stages, but it's treated like a Wily Coyote moment. You are chastised for shooting the dog because even if it teases you for missing two ducks with three shots, he IS on your side.
To expand upon BattleBlock, the ending is even more messed up than you said. Pit People, the direct sequel, happens as a direct result of Hatty's Hat laser murdering a giant space bear, which then crashes into the planet, destroying it and sending the bear's lover into a bloodthirsty rage.
Halo: Combat Evolved, perhaps? It's not exactly "innocent," per-se, but the introduction of the Flood quickly turns the gung-ho alien war in the first half into practically survival horror as the ring gets overrun by the all-consuming parasite in the second half.
I can't believe you left out Bugsnax. You turn cute little fruits, veggies and other delights into bugs, then catch and feed them to townspeople who sprout these snacks all over their bodies. Would that make them cannibals? The biggest innocence buster tho, has to be Pokemon. Capture cute animals, keep them prisoner, and force them to fight to the death and if you tire of them, give them to a dude who makes em into candy! Great fun for children everywhere. Thanks for the fun.
And that's all before you dig into the lore AND many of the Pokedex entries. Nothing messed up about those, nope.
Battleblock Theater was such an underrated gem, glad to see it get mentioned here!
PS: The Narrator in that game better have gotten paid well; he went so over-the-top for this game
Cozy Grove certainly has some messed up elements. While it seems like Animal Crossing, its story is much darker.
As a new spirit scout you're crashing with your boat on the wrong island. Are the adults helping? Noo! Why would they?! It's never even mentioned if your parents were told that you've been shipwrecked... And it takes about 90 days to repait your vessel.
Your task as a spirit scout is to help the ghosts of bears to move on. So you're alone, on the wrong island, with much more ghosts than your level of experience. And their problems are tough: guilt from various issues like alcoholism, corruption, anxiety, etc.
The worst story is the one from the first bear you meet, and it's one of the last stories I pieced together. She was also a scout and send to the island many years ago. But she failed to help one specific bear there, who was just content with the way things are for him. So she actually died on the island. So creepy.
Overall I love this game and how it handles these dark topics; how you help the bears to learn and to move on. But not getting help from the scout organizers and some of the stories are really tough to handle when you think too hard about them.
I own Cozy Grove and while playing the heck out of it, I too was surprised that the ghost bears had been through tragic events when they were alive😳 Not to mention the game tackling serious subjects like terminal illness, mental health, violent conflicts, etc.
1:22 this Ring Cam Ambulance footage has me crying😂 .. and concerned😆
Well great, now "You're The Inspiration" is back in my head. I swear OXboxtra videos feature the Elite Beat Agents Christmas mission just often enough to spite me.
Have you played the Japanese predecessor Ouendan?
There were two games but both had a sad scenario
First game had you cheer on a guy who died in an accident wanting to tell his wife he loved her one last time
The sequel had you cheer on a ice skater who had a falling out with her sister only for her sister to die in a car accident and decides to carry her legacy by being the best ice skater in Japan.
If you want to know how sad the latter scenario is, when you finish the song, the ouendan are seen crying.
Came here for Doki Doki Literature Club. Which should be all 7 places on this list.
Tails: “All’s well that ends well!”
Me: The entire city is flooded and people are drowning.
As long as you feel hopeless, it still has hope in it, and you can rearrange the letters to spell peeslosh!
Hands up if you also grew up with Happy Tree Friends. ;D
Way back in the day I played a Zelda-esque browser game called Seedling, in which a boy is created from the wind by an oracle in order to find a seed to replace a dying tree. It's very charming and nostalgic right up until the ending when a character chews you out for charging into dungeons and mass murdering all the creatures there just because they were in the way of you getting the seed, and if you don't go out of your way to get the good ending the oracle straight up destroys you once you've served your purpose.
The thing that went through my head was the Rockudrama mode added in Rock band 4’s rivals dlc. You go from having a goofy adventure becoming famous from performing in front of one fan to hitting a sad low of a failing band.
So happy to see Elite Beat Agents mentioned! Even though that mission was seriously depressing...
The Subcon Forest area of a Hat in Time was pretty dark with the nooses, suicidal spirits and Vanessa's whole deal
Oh definitely. It looks like your average Spooky Level at first, but between the 'Vanessa's Manor' mission, and the level's 'Storybook' revealing some pretty... horrifying implications about precisely HOW Snatcher, and the Forest itself, came to be, it's easily one of the more dark levels I've seen in an otherwise child-friendly seeming game.
Started playing this game for the first time a few days ago and literally just went through Vanessa’s Manor shortly before this video dropped. Completely agree. I used the Dweller hat/mask in the cellar/dungeon, but only later finding the Storybook did I see what @Sevenlexar’s noticed about the Snatcher’s implied backstory. Also, to add to the creep pile of this level: the fire spirits’ dialogue opening with the sing-song “We want to diiiiiiie?” o.O
I like that these weren't all indie horror (like I was expecting and love). There's a chance you'd get these and NOT expect horror!
They actually forgot shipwrecked 64
My time at Portia has dire implications to what happened
The Advanced Wars reminds me of Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. Being GBA as well (and I think the same developer) it likewise has bright color palette as you war across the continent. Then 7 or 8 chapters in a baddie kidnaps a family and you try to save them from a giant flesh eating spider. If you do nothing, you can let the dad watch the spider devour his 2 daughters right in front of him. Its quite cheerful!
And then later on a traitor makes love with his reanimated dead wife's corpse...
The opening to Sonic Adventure actually shows part of the flooding scene to set the tone before the song kicks in. So many of us expected it to get messed up. What we didn't expect was the extent of the damage. Nor the other messed up things in the story. There was literally a Chao genocide, and a murder-suicide!
I guess it’s because it was a browser game but I was shocked I didn’t see Can Your Pet on here lol
as soon as I saw the agents, I knew EXACTLY which episode you were going to be talking about. Everyone who's ever played the game/is a fan already knows. also everyone cries after hearing that song outside of eba because of the emotional trauma that was caused.
so glad to see them getting some rep though!
“Presumably, back to Hell.” Jesus, Andy, who hurt you?
Mr. Whiskers, apparently.
Advance Wars 1 and 2 never made sense story/tone wise. Still very enjoyable though to play. Best example in the first game is perhaps that you claim that you're "just passing through" Japa.... Yellow Comet. Meanwhile, Orange Star happily plonks down their headquarters, captures local cities, military bases, airfields and ports. "why do they attack us?!" At the end of the first game, Andy and Eagle just decide to have a "friendly" match just for fun. Hundreds if not thousands of soldiers can end up dying just for the sake of "having a friendly".
For two decades I thought that I was literally the only person alive who remembered the game Anachronox
I bought it at a garage sale in like 2004 and really enjoyed it and since then have never once seen it mentioned by anyone else in person or online
Sonic Adventure. I genuinely remember being blown away by the graphics so mental to think how far theyve come on since.
Similar to Anachronox, Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Which admittedly is set in a future where the Earth was ravished by World War 3) seems to be a relatively run of the mill JRPG time with a protagonist called Edge Maverick, his cool rival and put upon love interest/childhood friend, and anime catgirls. That is until some sort of space anomaly sends you back in time to 1950s Earth, where the technology present in your spaceship allows a mad scientist to create a device that obliterates the planet. It's quickly revealed this Earth was an alternate universe's, but this obviously does not improve the protagonist's mood.
Yeah, that was a bit f upped. Also in Star Ocean Till the end of time at the end of disc 2 or 3 the Executioners show up and start destroying planets. And that's bad.
Just switch that to Every Star Ocean Game Ever since, late game in SO2, the planet Excel gets destroyed utterly - as does your dad's ship - by the renegade planet whose name I forget because I suck at names and the only survivors are you and your party. Yes the planet descruction gets a cosmic retcon due to a deus ex machina after you defeat the final boss but...everyone you meet and grow attachments to during the first part of the game who isn't in your party effing dies. And, as in all Star Ocean games, you have to pass over recruiting some characters in favor of others and the characters you choose not to recruit are among the casualties of planet destruction. I don't know what SO1's dark turn is because I have yet to play that one, but with the rest of the series as evidence...it HAS to have one.
@fredclasson7865 isn't everything in SO3 a simulation anyways?
@@mappybc6097 Yeah, I think that was the 2nd or 3rd plot twist. But the fact remain that large space demons showed up because of the actions of or existence of the protagonist. And I don't think you know about the simulation when that scene plays.
Final Fantasy IX. Adorable artstyle, whimsical setting, Vivi as a whole.
What's the plot about? Genocide, depression, and existential crises up the wazoo.
Suggestion 1:
Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter
(Spoilers ahead!)
This sweet little DS game is a colorful, vibrant game where you can draw your creations to life in a wonderful sidescrolling platformer with an awesome pixel art style...! Mostly!
You know that whole trend of people making up dark, edgy fan theories saying, "this game is actually a coma dream"?
This game is /actually/ a coma dream.
Nothing could have prepared younger me for, after defeating 'the bad guy', thinking I won and saved the world... Only to then have all the lovable cast talking about how it's the end of the world and all of them end up accepting their fates, steeling themselves, then telling you (the creator) that 'they're ready', and then having you MANUALLY PRESS THE SCREEN TO END THE WORLD... /THEN/ suddenly the cute pixel art is juxtaposed to "harrowing realistic chiaroscuro artwork of a family getting into a brutal car crash after going home from the carnival, and the one human character turns out to be the youngest child who wakes up in the hospital with plushies that resemble two main characters that he got from the carnival. (While a surprisingly good/sweet song plays.)"
Google the ending scene. Shit is WILD.
"God, please bring my little brother back to me."
Yeah it was so traumatic for kids that the devs had to replace it with a much more tame ending where the kid in question instead of being in a car crash, fell out of a tree and fell into a coma iirc
I thought of this game too! Really gives “drawn to life” its double meaning
@@Altoryuthankfully, a recent sequel (which to my knowledge isn’t that good) retconned that ending. Making the darker ending canon
Pony Island
Was trying to work out which tragic thing in Anachronox you were going to do. I actually found Fatima's story was more emotional than the death of a whole planet
Thank you guys for consistently putting out videos EVERY Thursday with such feel good vibes that even depression looks nice...(it's not)... love you all❤❤❤
I'm surprised _Doki Doki Literature Club_ didn't make the cut. How many people playing this game for the first time expected... well, what happened to happen?
Maybe I’m just obsessed but kinda surprised at the lack of Undertale? Even on the true pacifist route, you suddenly have to go into the secret laboratory and fight amalgamates which make you question what’s even happening anymore. They’re so depressing and terrifying if you think too hard about them. Then there’s the whole ‘the player is an actual character outside of Frisk or Chara’…
My understanding of the Toy Box mission was that Lash just did some heavy investing in the infrastructure to redecorate the place in accordance to her bizarre sense of aesthetics.
Everything is just haphazardly placed all over and there's no rhyme or reason to it. They never actually state that anything is straight up destroyed.
I played a game called "How To Date A Magical Girl" and I think it would fit on to a list like this very nicely.
It starts off as an innocent dating sim with 5 romanceable girls where you manage your time, money, and school work.
Then half way through the school year, students start getting killed off horrifically. And I mean that. Girls lying in pools of blood, students hanging from nooses on a sentient tree monster, the gym teacher is impaled in the sports equipment storage shed, your best friend is decapitated and thrown into a river, you find out about an evil cult, you start having scary hallucinations, all five of the romanceable girls are murdered, and you realize all of your memories and relationships are fake as you've been put in a simulation to help you recover from being on death's door after you were hit by a semi truck because you were reading a manga while crossing the street.
Hey, the human mind is complicated and likes to have you seemingly blow up at something small rather than the real issue.
During the last story, you can get a darkly humorous line by the hotel proprietor as long as you go there before you get close enough to Big's house when that area becomes a cutscene trigger.
I loved playing Elite Beat Agents as a teenager. While the Christmas song is unexpectedly sad in an otherwise comedic game so far, the final level is deserves top spot for being the darkest. The various cutscenes depict an alien invasion, explicitly killing hundreds (and implying orders of magnitude more) of people, all previous clients in a prison (which I interpreted as an "education centre", even when I was 13), and even the agents themselves dying in the cutscene halfway through this two part mission. And that's only what happens if you're playing well!