16 Games That Will Mess With Your Head
Many games want you to forget that you’re playing a game, to immerse you in their worlds as an escapist form of entertainment. Everything that happens in the game stays firmly within the bounds of that game. But what if the game got out and started affecting the real world? What if you weren’t sure you were still playing the game anymore? What if the game seemed to know what you were going to do, no matter how creative you got–and told you as much? Or maybe it’s as simple as the ending of the game being so powerful that you can’t stop thinking about it for days after.
The list below features some of our favorite examples of games that want to stay with you, running around in your head, long after you’ve finished. As an aside, the majority of these games are not available just on Windows, but Mac and Linux as well, making them that much easier to get your hands on and play. And if you don’t have a PC, you’ll find some on PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch consoles as well.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
- Developer: Silicon Knights
- Platforms: GameCube
- Release Date: June 24, 2002
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is a game that badly needs a modern remaster, even though Nintendo has shown little interest in reviving it. This was Nintendo’s first-ever Mature rated game, and you’ll have to dust off your GameCube if you want to revisit Silicon Knights’ answer to the survival horror craze.
Sanity’s Requiem forces you to keep an eye on the sanity meter for the main characters in order to prevent them from descending into insanity. If the sanity meter starts dropping, you’ll notice some unusual hallucinations like bleeding walls, disturbing noises, weird camera angles and a total break from reality as the game pretends to malfunction. It’s a trippy experience that still works in its original context.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
- Developer: Konami
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch, PC
- Release Date: November 13, 2001
For most of its runtime, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a standard stealth action game in the mold of the first Metal Gear Solid. Without giving away too many spoilers, the lead character, Raiden, is forced to question what’s real and what isn’t as the game starts what can only be described as psychological warfare against the players and the character.
Suddenly, your Codec contacts speak in gibberish, footage from the 8-bit Metal Gear games is played, and the game over screen puts you in the odd position of trying to fight off enemies when the playable action is on a much smaller screen. Hideo Kojima was anti-AI here before it was cool.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Developer: Headfirst Productions
Platforms: PC, Xbox
Release Date: October 24, 2005
Lovecraftian stories are almost always about horrors that can break the minds of men. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is no exception, and this first-person shooter/survival horror delights in scaring players. The main character, private investigator Jack Walters, wasn’t exactly the poster child for sanity before the game began. But he can lose his mind if he stares directly at the disturbing things in his way.
Jack’s break with sanity is also your entrance to madness, as the game unleashes distorted sounds and graphics while also screwing with your controls. You can save Jack’s mind by finding sanctuary areas or beating enemies. But if you wait too long to treat Jack, then his insanity becomes permanent, and that may lead to an early game over for you.
Observer
Developer: Bloober Team
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch, PC
Release Date: August 15, 2017
Before Bloober Team remade Silent Hill 2 for Konami, it released Observer, a psychological horror thriller that stars Rutger Hauer, Daniel Lazarski, a mind hacker who works for the Observers police unit. That power comes with some very useful abilities, but the game starts messing with you when Daniel uses his power to enter minds.
There are some thematic elements that may remind you of Ghost in the Shell, as Daniel has to question whether someone’s mind in a computer still counts as a person. Daniel also has to make a specific choice late in the game, and the kicker is that there really isn’t a right option. Daniel is screwed no matter which decision he comes to.
The Stanley Parable
- Developer: Galactic Cafe
- Platforms: PC (macOS, Linux, Windows)
- Release Date: October 17, 2013
Messing with your head is often a spooky, scary thing. But The Stanley Parable makes a joke of it. This first-person narrative game is a game about playing games. The (legitimately hilarious) narrator seems to be ready for whatever action you might take, even if it’s just to sit still staring at a wall, or something as extreme as trying to glitch your way out of the map. We often play games to feel smart, and try to do things the game doesn’t expect in hopes of breaking them. The Stanley Parable knows all your tricks.
SOMA
- Developer: Frictional
- Platforms: PC (macOS, Linux, Windows), PlayStation 4, Xbox One
- Release Date: September 22, 2015
From the developers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA steps away from the dark gothic aesthetic and has you exploring an undersea facility where everyone is gone and robots insist they’re human. The Giger-esque art design already makes this game unsettling, but as the plot unfurls, you’ll be faced with philosophical questions about things like consciousness and the nature of the self. The ending is what will really stick with you, though. We won’t spoil it here–SOMA is pretty inexpensive these days and features a mode for players who just want to enjoy the story and not worry about stealth. SOMA doesn’t try break the wall, but if you fully invest in the character and let the ending hit you, it hits hard, and will be living in your head weeks, months, and years later.
The Exit 8
- Developer: Kotake Create
- Platforms: Meta Quest, Nintendo Switch, PC (Windows), Playstation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
- Release Date: November 29, 2023
Spot-the-anomaly games are kind of a thing right now, and Exit 8 is one of the best. Developed by Kotake Create, Exit 8 drops you into the underground hallways leading you out of a Japanese train station. However, as you proceed, you’ll notice strange things. It might just be a weird sign, but look out if the wall tiles seem more man-shaped than usual. As you play, you’re asked to remember your surroundings and you’ll begin to doubt your memory–was that there before? This is a short game, as eight consecutive successful runs will get you out. But that might not be as easy as it sounds.
Dead Space 3
- Developer: Frictional Games/EA
- Platforms: PC (Windows), PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
- Release Date: February 5, 2013
Dead Space has been trying to mess with our heads since the original game–Isaac is not the picture of stability. But Dead Space 3 took that to a new level. While the single-player had annoying and unnecessary microtransaction hooks, developer Visceral Games was able to do something really cool in co-op mode: One player controls Isaac Clarke, of course, but the second player takes control of a new character named Jonathan Carver. This opens up new side missions and interactions related to the character. But most importantly, the game features “asymmetric hallucinations.” The ever-present Markers are known to cause hallucinations, and really, it would be weirder if Clarke and Carver saw the same hallucinations, considering how personal Isaac’s tend to be. This feature isn’t a gimmick, as it fits the tone and themes of the story and enhances the story by exposing the players to the same things the characters are experiencing.
Pony Island
- Developer: Daniel Mullins Games
- Platforms: PC (macOS, Linux, Windows)
- Release Date: January 4, 2016
Developed by Daniel Mullins, Pony Island is a game about a pony jumping over stuff. At least for the first few minutes. And then it’s a game about trapped souls, disintegrating code, and the devil himself. For such a seemingly simple game, Pony Island does a terrific job of unsettling the player through glitches and strange behavior, and that’s before it begins to break the fourth wall.
Doki Doki Literature Club
- Developer: Team Salvato
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC (macOS, Windows), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
- Release Date: September 22, 2017
One of the truly quintessential entries on this list, Doki Doki Literature Club appears to just be your average dating sim, closely following the tropes of the genre. Your childhood friend introduces you to the literature club at school, introducing three additional female characters. Just like a dating sim, you’ll talk to them and make dialogue selections, and then at key moments you’ll be asked to compose a poem for one of them. Things quickly spiral out of control when events take a hard turn toward darkness, and the game begins to bug out. The standard game is free to download and play on Steam, while the Doki Doki Literature Club Plus version adds new substories, new music, a visual overhaul, and more.
Superliminal
- Developer: Pillow Castle Games
- Platforms: Mobile (Android, iOS), Nintendo Switch, PC (macOS, Linux, Windows), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
- Release Date: November 12, 2019
Sometimes you need a new perspective to figure out a tough puzzle. With Superliminal, that’s not a metaphorical statement. In this game, you’ll solve puzzles with the power of perspective. There’s a small cube on the floor, and a tall ledge you definitely can’t reach across the room. The solution? Pick up the box and back up until it has the illusion of being tall enough to make the climb, and then drop it. Suddenly, it is big enough. This game consistently surprises with its ability to use perspective to make interesting and memorable puzzles. When you play it, you won’t believe your eyes.
Antichamber
- Developer: Demruth
- Platforms: PC (macOS, Linux, Windows)
- Release Date: January 13, 2013
Antichamber plays with the idea of impossible spaces–this and Superliminal are pretty different in terms of the puzzles they ask you to solve, but they mess with your head in similar ways. Turning around in a hallway might reveal that you can’t go back the way you came. Two sides of the same cube might open to different rooms. If you’ve ever dreamt of navigating an M.C. Escher painting, Antichamber is the game for you. The puzzles are built around making sense of things that, at first glance, don’t make any.
Inscryption
- Developer: Daniel Mullins Games
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC (macOS, Linux, Windows), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
- Release Date: October 19, 2021
Another Daniel Mullins creation, it’s not hard to see how this game followed Pony Island. Like that game, Inscryption is a creepy metanarrative game. You’re playing a game about a guy playing a game, and the game seems to be aware of its own existence. You wake up in an old hut with an old man challenging you to play a card game with him. Like Pony Island, this game is about darkness stored within a lost game, but it provides some truly compelling gameplay with a spooky metanarrative wrapped around it. There’s an official mod for the game, called Kaycee’s Mod, that lets you replay some of the game’s best parts.
There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension
- Developer: Draw Me A Pixel
- Platforms: Mobile (Android, iOS), Nintendo Switch, PC (macOS, Windows)
- Release Date: August 6, 2020
Sometimes it seems like we have to jump through so many hoops to get to games these days–agreeing to terms of service, setting up our characters, watching endless cut scenes, and slogging our way through endless tutorials–that it seems like we’re never going to get to the game. In the case of There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, though, that’s the whole point. When you try to start the game, it won’t start, and you’re tasked with figuring out how to get it working. As you advance, the game asks you to rack your brain with puzzles that demand creative lateral thinking. There’s a solid hint system in place to keep you from getting totally stuck. Like Stanley Parable, There Is No Game often feels like it knows what you’re thinking. You’ll go to try something, and there’s a voice line for that specific item being misused in that particular way. If you can get into the mindset of this game, though, there are a ton of fun puzzles to go through.
Mini Mini Golf Golf
- Developer: Three More Years
- Platforms: PC (macOS, Linux, Windows)
- Release Date: Dec 12, 2024
Mini Mini Golf Golf is a pretty perplexing name. This is, in fact, a miniature golf game, but it’s hardly your usual mini-golf game (for that, check out Golf With Your Friends). Instead, it’s an experimental narrative game. You’re not putting your way into golf holes, but something more like worm holes. Here’s the totally normal description from Steam: “As you discover tunnels through spacetime and unravel memories of inevitable climate collapse, identity and responsibility collide at the fault line of our planet’s future.” Normal mini-golf game.
Slay the Princess
- Developer: Black Tabby Games
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC (macOS, Linux, Windows), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
- Release Date: October 23, 2023
Your goal is simple: Slay the Princess to save the world. She’s even locked up in a cabin basement, so it’s not like you have to go find her. Sounds easy. So why do you keep dying? Slay the Princess is a visual novel psychological horror story with a looping, branching narrative filled with elements of body and cosmic horror. As the hero, you’ll find that the simple task is more difficult than you first envisioned, and as you try and try again, the game finds new ways to mess with you. Slay the Princess features a unique pencil-art look and full voice acting, too.
