warning tonight's presentation although edited for youtube contains imagery and subject matter some may find disturbing while our program is educational we still feel that viewer discretion is advised [Music] today 65 of american adults and nearly all teenagers play video games games look ever more real they can and do show incredibly detailed violence 77 percent of parents believe media violence including video games is contributing to america's culture of violence customizable feedback software push the stick that pushes back and feel your pain and here's one that the most unbelievable all that says kill your friends guilt-free have you ever had an experience while playing a video game that left you unsettled maybe it just got a little bit too close to home or covered a topic that maybe was still just a bit sensitive or maybe you were playing something and found something so weird and psychedelic that you'd even know what to think well welcome back to the controversial and disturbing games iceberg where we'll catalog just about every disturbing game ever made i don't know why i'm morbidly obsessed with these unnerving experiences but i know that i want to share them with somebody for those that don't know an iceberg is a chart where at the surface everything is just the stuff that everyone knows and as we go down things are going to get a little bit more obscure a little bit more dark and morbid as well in the previous video we covered the internet and indie horror lairs just a tip while today we're going to cover a few of the titles that we missed previously the real horror lair and then the bizarre and trippy lair if you've not seen the last video it's not important to understand this one but it's a good hour of more disturbing video games with that out of the way today's video is going to cover some uncomfortable and sensitive subject matter so much like the intro says viewer discretion is advised however before we get into that has this ever happened to you [Music] oh what are you doing no that's not my money [Music] [Music] why wouldn't you stop him unfortunately he couldn't stop him because he lacked a reliable vpn service like nordvpn with nordvpn you could not only prevent your identity from being stolen by unscrupulous hackers but also help me keep the lights on and the editors paid nordvpn is a service that protects your online browsing by acting like a secure internet tunnel that prevents bad actors and your isp from harvesting your data or other nasty things if you're looking for a specific movie or show and you're just not finding on your hulu odds are you might be able to find it with nordvpn as you can spoof your ip and check the netflix and say the netherlands or japan so now your location won't be a determining factor if you can watch a show or not if you want to protect yourself and make the most of your streaming services if you were thinking about getting a vpn anyway and wouldn't mind supporting my stupid channel please consider going to nordvpn.com that creepy reading if you sign up today links will not only be in the description but pinned in the comments as well so with that out of the way sit back relax turn down the lights and prepare to be scared as we present and continue our discussion on the controversial and disturbing games iceberg [Music] beginning with every part in the iceberg moving forward we're going to go back and cover some of the things that we missed that were either cut due to time or we didn't know about it till someone in the comments told us about it seriously the suggestions you guys leave have been a huge help during the creation of this video after that we're going to cover the real horror lair where things will seem to get a bit more personal followed by the bizarre trippy lair we'll we'll see some things that are downright unexplainable with that said roll the next item [Music] [Music] i'm scared is a lo-fi first-person horror game created solo by italian developer ivan zanati it was one of the first of its kind to achieve mainstream success for a style of meta horror which manipulates the files on your computer to deliver scares outside the game using subtle misdirection to keep these fourth wall breaks fresh and catch the player off guard much of i'm scared success is also due to the let's players who discovered it in 2012 and continue to support the game during its expansion and steam release four years later presenting itself as an experimental project which may be prone to glitches i'm scared primes the player for the game's narrative this involves an entity known as whiteface becoming self-aware and tormenting the player not only is whiteface responsible for crashing the game whenever they catch you but they are also the being which is implied to be manipulating the player's computer installing things like images and text files to a folder created specifically for the game in a way similar to luna game which we covered in part one of our disturbing games iceberg series i'm scared uses the same tools of game maker studios to create files on your computer for internet veterans like us who understand the limitations of game maker studio this isn't such a big deal but your average player may arrive at the conclusion that they have installed some kind of virus or even an evil spirit some of these files are also part of the solution to the puzzles within the game so you'll need to engage with manipulated files to a higher degree than with other meta style games like undertale and doki doki literature club i'm scared actually has a pretty heavy ending in a chekhov's gun style twist a noose that attentive players may have spotted earlier in the game turns out to be your only means of escaping whiteface's nightmare at least in the original game in the steam release you're instead given the option to purge whiteface from your computer though even this feels like a regrettable course of action since you're effectively erasing a self-aware being by removing its heart [Music] inscription is a card based game with roguelike and deck building mechanics that slowly reveals itself to be a series of games over the course of its three acts the player controls luke carter a streamer who found a set of coordinates to a mysterious floppy disk while opening card packs from his favorite childhood game the first game does have suspenseful elements such as the cards shaking in fear as you choose your sacrifices to summon higher level monsters and items that let you sacrifice an eye or a tooth in order to literally tip the scales in your favor later the player will find out that the pseudo dungeon master of this game laishi is one of four scribes with the power to create cards and game mechanics for the game inscription progressing through these scribes challenges in the other games contained within inscription reveals more about the game and the floppy disk that contained it while we also occasionally view camera footage of luke as his own mystery unfolds revolving around the incriminating data on the disc and the mysterious game publisher trying to cover it all up what we found to be the most disturbing about inscription however is its emotional ending sequence where due to circumstances involving the insidious data on the floppy disk one of the self-aware scribes decides to start a process that will delete inscription and all of its data as a progress bar fills scribes you never got to play with will invite you to experience just a taste of their games and their final moments lamenting over the fun you could have had and what you're about to lose leshi makes an appearance for one final game as well remarking on the strength of your deck and how far you have come as assets from the game disappear and the world they inhabit is erased around you these scribes try to keep you playing until the very end where they can only shake your hand and congratulate you on a game well played [Music] hello charlotte is a series of rpg maker games separated into three episodes by estonian artist and game developer ethering you play as charlotte wiltshire who lives in a place called the house which is a large structure with 11 floors that serves as the setting of each game and is populated by aliens androids and other strange creatures though the player does control charlotte it would be more accurate to say that you play a seth the puppeteer who makes decisions on charlotte's behalf despite the fact that she is classified as a puppet and requires seth's inputs to even move she has a deeply caring personality and can be hurt or killed just like a person it is charlotte's job to keep the nephew of an alien surgeon named huxley safe and in their adventures they encounter new worlds and a god-like being named the oracle that lives in a world beyond the tv this is only scratching the surface of the lore in world building of these games which can be very dense though there is a human element to the characters that make them easy to relate to and sympathize with the game's surreal setting is also a vehicle for metaphors about some of the heavy themes the game tackles like mental illness and prescription drugs abuse bullying and even the struggles of growing up trans this leads to a lot of twists and heavy moments that linger with you not only making you think about how you lead your life in the way you treat others but also providing meta commentary on how we perceive and engage with fiction [Music] among the sleep is a first person horror adventure game developed by krill bite studios after a successful kickstarter campaign in 2013. in this game you play as a two-year-old infant child accompanied by his teddy bear as he is awakened by strange sounds in the night and goes to investigate what he finds is a pocket dimension of memories which he's able to access using memory items like a pendant worn by his mom which used to belong to his grandmother the rest of the game sees the player traveling between strains and frightening realms in order to find these memory items while being pursued by entities like this shrieking witch that hunts you in the woods and a monster in a big coat called the heap after getting the last memory item and being separated from teddy bear this child begins to recontextualize the traumas he endured revealing that the shrieking witch and heat monsters were representations of his abusive mother after she turned to alcohol in order to cope with a messy breakup with the boy's father when we return home at the end of the game it looks much messier and disheveled than when we began and we find a mother curled up defeated by the alcoholism which now dominates her life in the end the player's left with sympathy for both the mother who's losing control over her own actions and a child who doesn't have the possibility of understanding these turbulent times instead seeing his own mom metamorphosized into a monster death in texas is a visual novel style simulation game which borrows elements of paper's pleas to simulate the work life of a grim reaper who must decide which humans live and die each day based on the short profiles of the humans which cross his desk and any special instructions from your overseer fate your department in the afterlife manages the fates of human beings going through critical moments where their lives are at stake and while you never know what kind of danger your clients are in when their profiles appear on your desk you are only permitted to spare a select few of them each day not only are the fates of individuals tied to your actions but in some of the game's endings you can bring about the apocalypse and destroy all human life if you kill the wrong people and make your decisions blindly or carelessly which is literally the ending i got on my first run all the while you are beholden to bizarre instructions and quotas from your overseer which appear arbitrary at times forcing you to make tough decisions that go against your sensibilities the idea of human lives being in the hands of an underpaid office worker who might be operating under incomprehensible instructions or may even be simply uninterested in their job or the people it affects creates a sense of being small and unimportant along with some existential dread things aren't all doom and gloom however as the game manages to keep things light with an outstanding sense of humor that highlights the absurdity of its setting in scenarios such as the time period when fate goes on vacation and leaves his pet cat in charge of everything even your character grimm points out how ridiculous it is that he's going to get his pay a job evaluation and have business talks with a cat in addition to this death and taxes shares many ideological similarities to the death positivity movement which encourages people to have an open conversation about death to alleviate anxieties associated with the end of one's life for those reasons even though death and taxes contains disturbing themes you're likely to walk away from this game feeling better about dying than when you began [Music] can your pet is a shock flash game which boldly asks can i frighten preteens just discovering flash on the internet to which the answer is an undeniable yes while we don't personally find this game to be particularly disturbing it proved to be an effective beaten switch for many luring in younger and more casual internet users with an interest in dress-up and pet-style browser games surely causing plenty of childhood trauma in its wake this short experience boils down to a series of interactions that you unlock as your bond with your pet check increases ranging from personalizing your pet to taking care of it and even playing games finally when you unlock the last interaction which looks like a bicycle at first this happens instead x what is this at the end we find a half-hearted message about the average processing age of chickens which doesn't take into account the accelerated growth of factory farmed poultry honestly you'd have to be pretty delusional to think that the birds being made into tyson chicken tenders look anything like this or that they wear little ties and mustaches when we chuck em still breathing into the grinder while there is definitely an argument to be made for more ethical practices across the board in the meat industry this game only superficially addresses the issue probably the most disturbing thing to come out of all of this are the can your pet nfts being peddled on their website we can't show much footage on this one for reasons but agony is insanely controversial and unsettling for reasons that we'll get into i'd also like to quickly thank probably jacob who makes amazing reviews on youtube and you should probably check out his channel as it's his opinion that is informing mine on this pole agony situation now let me ask you a question when the toba super volcano erupted and reduced the human population to 3 000 did we just sit around and go extinct or did we sharpen some sticks and get to work when the ice age happened did we sit around and freeze to death or did we look at the biggest animal with the most fur and then sharpen some sticks and get to work so when you die and you wake up in hell you sit around and give up no you find some friends you sharpen some sticks and you get the [ __ ] work this is what people do we adapt that's how we made it to 2018. agony is a kickstarter game that was founded on the idea that it would be a uncompromising depiction of hell initially though there was some controversy as the esrb and other rating boards were hitting agony with an ao rating which get this would have prevented it from being sold in most retail stores and on home consoles as a result this uncompromising depiction of hell had to make some compromises mostly over depictions of female nudity as that was the biggest issue in the room also the idea that ao rating is a little stupid on principle when you think about it if you really think about it if you're old enough to play an m-rated game you're also old enough to play an ao rated one too the fact that breasts moving are more terrifying to the sensors than the violent and graphic use of an unborn child as mortar for a wall deeply confuses me after some legal trouble which probably jacob covers in greater detail in his video on the subject mermaid studio made a patch for the pc which restores the censored content the way that the kickstarter was envisioned beyond the controversy this intensely graphic interpretation of hell is downright unsettling unnerving and not for the faint of heart and with that out of the way it looks like we're done with layers one and two for at least this video and we're gonna move down to layer three layer three is real horror for the purposes of this iceberg real horror games are games that root their subject matter in reality often these games will cover subjects like war real world abuse mental health and even disease and how that can just be impactful to a person as you can imagine things are going to get more controversial and more disturbing as we move down just like with anything else we hope to cover anything that we missed in the next installment which will be dedicated to covering literally everything we missed with that said roll the animation [Music] let's go [Music] that dragon cancer is a title that bears the weight a name like that would suggest this is a game about the real life green family dealing with their baby child joel greene battling with terminal cancer and surviving for years after he was expected to die joel was diagnosed with atypical terroid rabboy tumors also known as ats or arties when he was only one years old ultimately he'd have the opportunity to get to live another four years instead of the projected few months dying at the age of five throughout the game we get visual depictions of what it must have been like for joel from his perspective during these trying times that dragon cancer uses gameplay elements to put you into child life perspective of a toddler at the same time this is happening we're listening to conversations the green parents are having with each other as well as their kids and their doctors with an atrt as soon as you have a recurrence of any kind it is fatal it's only a matter of time before it spreads to several locations we've already thrown all the chemotherapy we have at it we can't continue to give him chemotherapy that we know it's resistant to so there just aren't any treatment options that are curative [Music] i'm going to cry after all because they love us and they love joel and we're very good at managing the pain and masking symptoms at the end of life from what we could find the greens believed that joel would survive and regularly updated people on their child's condition through the site joelvangreen.com even as development on the game began joel was alive and fighting this disease with this title initially intending to be a message of hope which completely reads in the game itself despite having cancer since the age of 1 the family seemed hopeful that joel would beat the sing and end up a miracle child which as we now know did not happen you really get to feel the ups and downs this family goes through just trying to keep joel alive and happy as you can imagine putting a one-year-old on some of the most intense courses of chemotherapy isn't exactly the most easiest thing to listen to at the same time it feels like you're listening to someone doing their best not to drown like somehow the realization that their child is gonna die hit them during development and this expressive despair seeps right into the narrative of the game itself which i have to say hit me the player like a bag of bricks despite how unrelentingly depressing this game is considering its end i have to say that it was life-changing to gain the kind of perspective by being put into the shoes of these parents who made this title knowing that they'd lose one of their own but instead of listening to me why not listen to ryan green and what he had to say about this experience that dragon cancer exists because my wife amy my children caleb isaac elijah and zoe my business partner josh our team john brock ryan mike and chris our friends who are at ouya kelly julie bob and jared are over 3 000 kickstarter backers in defund and this entire industry believed it should exist often in video games we get to choose how we're seen our avatars and our tweets and the work that we do are all meant to portray the story that we want to tell the world about why our lives matter but sometimes the story is written on to us or it's it's told because of us or in spite of us and it reveals our weakness our weaknesses our failures our hopes and our fears you let us tell the story of my son joel and in the end it was not the story that we wanted to tell to let my son's joel's life change you because you chose to see him and to experience how we loved him and i have hope that when we are all willing to see each other not for just who we want to be but who we are and who we're meant to be this act of love and this act of grace can change the world [Music] which is irish for good night was created by terry kavanaugh and incra pari studios in flash the latter of which will be covered later in the iceberg for creating a much more abstract and dark game in this title you play as a little girl named emer who lives with a religious and abusive family the game opens up with your mother explaining how you are nothing but a burden and that it would be better for her to not have a daughter like you from what we can understand your brother died and your parents have grown abusive and eccentric since the grim incident as you walk around the house doing chores your parents will relentlessly call you disappointing useless and other horrible adult things you typically would not call a little girl if you interact with a doll in your room named baby eemer will externalize the abuse she receives by projecting it at the doll after your mom practically begs your dad to beat emer she's sent to her room with no dinner that's when eemer's father shoots himself the family dog and the mom the game ends with eamer lamenting that she would rather live miserably with her parents than be left alone while her parents apologize for being terrible and that you would be better off without them the way the game portrays how a victim can sometimes love their abuser and making it hard for them to recognize the abuse is absolutely spine chilling and the message this game tries to deliver is clear [Music] school shooter simulator is not a traditional video game instead serving as a virtual training platform for teachers and first responders to create and practice active shooter response plans created by the department of homeland security and enhanced dynamic geosocial environment or edge is a program which uses the unreal engine to simulate students and faculty in a virtual school allowing participants to take the role of a teacher or law enforcement in order to test out strategies for dealing with an active shooter these features such as barricading doors and instructing students on where to take cover are modeled after tactics which have been used in real-life mass shootings like virginia tech the development team also used resources like dispatch tapes and the first-hand accounts of survivors in order to make the simulation as realistic as possible though the program's purpose is educational it puts you in a situation uncomfortably close to what real people would have endured during an active shooter crisis edge even allows for playback of the simulation from the perspective of the shooter who can be either a child or an adult in order for the viewer to analyze which factors affect the outcome the most though it's unnerving to see an active shooter event unfold from the perspective of the suspect a valuable teaching tool but a sobering and unnerving one to be [Music] papers please is a small indie game created by lucas pope who would go on to develop the fantastic return of the ober den in papers please you play as a border passport checker who just got their job after the labor lottery pulled out their name and assigned them to it now you work to make sure that your rent and utilities are paid and that your family is taken care of which can be a difficult task in and of itself the fictional dystopian country of arstotzka has intense political tension on the border where you work leading to scenes like this [Music] the player character gets paid based on the number of people that you're able to process which becomes increasingly difficult as time goes on and more mechanics are introduced even if you're playing optimally you barely make enough money to make ends meet which is definitely a commentary on something the system incentivizes you to process these people as quickly and robotically as possible yet your decisions have a real impact on the people that you're processing which the game makes sure to let you know about papers please also looks downright depressing the colors are muted and even the ost feels oppressive with its synthesized low brass tones the story is also pretty dark as most of the 20 endings involve you becoming imprisoned executed or getting your family killed the game lets us imagine what might happen as we're only told your family's safety is unknown as we await execution or hard labor there are some funny moments sprinkled in two so it's not all doom and gloom overall papers plays as a well-written game that in retrospect we should have placed a bit higher on the iceberg red candle is a taiwanese game studio that makes horror games of a focus on taiwanese culture so far they have created two titles and if this video comes out on time they're currently crowdfunding a third one called nine souls which i am super excited for the first game detention is a psychological horror story that according to their press kit all started with a simple question why can't i find any games that could represent our culture and show the world the place that i grew up in we can confidently say that in his own unsettling way mr yao from red candle has accomplished what he set out to do detention takes place during a period of time known as the white terror for context beginning february 28 1947 the 228 massacre would take place following a dispute over contraband cigarettes which the sale of was controlled a hundred percent by the government the killings would lead to anti-government sentiment and a rebellion which ended with the deaths of an untold amount of people the estimation is anywhere between 18 and 30 000 which for obvious reasons is too big of a disparity to not be sure about descriptions of the execution sounded a bit like this a soldier carrying the rifle approached us they took everything from his pocket the watch and the ring everything if that wasn't harrowing and bleak to listen to the kmt's official stance on the situation was very blunt to say the least according to the head of the secret police we would rather kill 99 innocent people than miss one guilty one the period of time known as the white terror begun shortly after the february 28th massacre when the kmt or chinese nationalist party declared martial law basically it's an excuse to arrest and kill people the government may not like politically and racially as well this is seen in detention both in aesthetic and narrative the thing that we found the most unsettling is how believable the overall story is given the time period that it takes place in it's a tragedy about how being young and dumb can have absolutely devastating consequences at least that's how we see it their second game devotion came shortly after which effectively uses horror to criticize the growing pandemic of cult culture in taiwan due to lacks laws allowing for plenty of room for abuse by the hands of these religious leaders unfortunately shortly after its release and i'm not joking here devotion was pulled from all stores because of a placeholder texture that made fun of the current chinese president xi jinping by comparing him and his likeness to the disney character winnie the pooh keep in mind that no one was supposed to see these placeholder textures except for the developers as a direct response chinese players would review bomb the game and a red candle in a punitive measure would lose their business license in the following months devotion was set to re-release on gog however the owner of cg project red decided not to list it after receiving many complaints and messages from real gamers brought to you by the company that made cyberpunk 2077. luckily this has a happy ending as of right now you can play devotion and buy a drm free version directly from red candle games online store which of course i have already done it's fantastic every living cell on planet earth will be dead you have one chance this is the reminder that you're given with almost every single day you complete in the new grounds flash game one chance the game follows dr john pilgrim the leader of a small group of scientists who seemingly discover the cure for cancer they soon find out that the cure doesn't just kill cancerous cells but also normal cells the pathogen is then released into the air giving all living beings on earth six days to live the player then decides how dr pilgrim will spend the remainder of this time the gameplay is fairly simple and straightforward you walk around and can interact with key people and your environment a note from the game's creator dean moynihan states that this game is about choices and dealing with them with every day that passes by the scenario changes depending on the decisions you make the previous day your decisions will also play a factor in which of the multiple endings you'll obtain the thought of an occurrence that leaves humanity with a very small amount of time to live is always unnerving and terrifying though the second generation graphics aren't really creepy it's the storytelling in the atmosphere that are at the core of this game's disturbing nature there's only two songs that make up this game's ost but they aptly give off a feeling of gloom and dread as you proceed you'll notice the world becoming more bleak from the dying vegetation to the city becoming a ghost town due to the declining population dr pilgrim's relationships with his family and co-workers deteriorate leading to betrayals abandonment and other desperate actions one would expect people to have in such a grim scenario arguably the game's most standout feature is a cookie that prevents the game from being played more than once thus the name one chance obviously there are workarounds to circumvent this but moynihan discourages this as he feels it cheapens the impact of the game [Music] spec ops the line goes out of its way to present itself as a 7th gen console shooter lulling the player into a false sense of security as they run and gun their way between objectives in order to progress the story the game refuses to show its hand at first only hinting at what's to come with loading screen messages like how many americans have you killed today it's all your fault and the devastation shown on the game's main menu spec ops the line is actually a more complex game than it lets on using its mechanics to comment on themes like accountability mental illness and the tragedies that seem to reach everyone involved in war players will commit unnecessary violence and atrocities in order to reach the end of the game only to be unexpectedly filled with guilt and dread after coming face to face with the consequences of their actions the members of the player's squad which are later revealed to be figments of the main character's imagination frequently question your motives this culminates in a scene where you're forced to use a weapon called white phosphorus the aftermath of which is far removed from the action set pieces of other call of duty clone shooters to say the least this is made even more unsettling by the fact that you only realize there were civilians present until you walk through that aftermath yourself [Music] hotline miami is a top-down action game where you play as jacket or one of several other characters who may or may not be criminally insane and usually wear rubber animal masks on the job to conceal their identity the run and gun action is tight and unforgiving if you let the enemy get a beat on you for even a second you're bound to get splattered only to quickly respawn and try again from the beginning of the floor the world of hotline miami is also a brutal and unempathetic one with a heavy focus on the city's dramaticized criminal underworld a terrorist cell of ultra-nationalists called 50 blessings and the suffering inflicted on anyone who gets involved whether you're a cop a retired veteran or an obsessed fan turned spree killer things aren't going to end well for you the game largely speaks for itself with its striking and hyper violent visuals as pixelated blood spatters across the level and points rack up for stylish and efficient streaks of executions the player character regularly finishes off mobsters and other characters with their bare hands both in and out of scripted sequences strangulations excessive beatings and even eye gouges are rendered in hotline miami's grimy pixelated style all while the victims beg for their lives but then at the end of each level the mood shifts completely as you make your way back to the car taking in all of the death and destruction you had caused without even realizing it in the midst of the frantic gameplay the guilt of this eventually causes jacket to break down as he's haunted by the guilt of his remorseless mass killings even starting to suffer from hallucinations of his victims appearing as they did in the middle of their execution aside from the political mystery and the crime thriller elements of the plot which paint a bleak picture themselves the game puts the player in an uncomfortable spot by reinforcing their role in the hyper-violence around them hotline miami casts you in the role of a remorseless spray killer then asks you whether you enjoy hurting people making a statement on how we dissociate from the violence we consume i have been super interested in the twisted metal series ever since i discovered it back in 2012 on the ps3 it's one of those strange titles that goes from wacky old-school uncanny valley horror comedy to grimdark abstract horror after all these years still got some snap in that left hook of mine you know that was the first time i ever knocked someone out with one punch twisted metal black for the ps2 is considered to be one of the best games in a franchise and used to be a system seller back in the day unlike the other games in the series which focuses on a cast of wacky characters and a mystical red-haired man named calypso who hosts the twisted metal tournament the winner of which gets a monkey paul like wish twisted metal black has the same exact premise except the wacky racers are inmates at the blackfield asylum with their own trauma and aggressively bleak motivations each person has their own reason for wanting to win usually rooted somewhere in their own mental illness and the more devious the character the better the end that they typically get for example in the event that brimstone wins he learns that he's not actually a good man at a cloth but rather a mentally ill pastor who murdered a infant during a baptism then there's outlaw a cop who wanted another chance to save a family during a botched raid and if he wins he of course gets that chance but instead dies tragically in their place calypso had done it i never thought it could be like target target is still hot there are enough disturbing tails found in this title that i could talk about it for hours but they're all worth a watch and absolutely grisly and unsettling everyone is focused on revenge and getting on with their own insecurities which typically doesn't end well many fans theorize that this title was so dark and disturbing because the game takes place in the decaying mind of the twisted metals mascot sweet tooth who is just a violent and insane clown if you find yourself unable to play the game there's hours worth of cutscenes that are well worth watching right here on youtube this war of mine is a harrowing take on the struggles of civilians at wartime inspired by the stories of the everyday lives of people trapped in occupied cities such as during the siege of sarajevo and warsaw poland during world war ii the name of the game is ironic because even though nobody you play asked for any of this war still made its way to their doorstep and they cannot escape its horrifying consequences this war of mine presents the conditions of real people who were caught in the crossfire hiding themselves away during the day being cut off on the world with little supplies and having no truly safe place to be hunger disease and raids are all constant threats in this very emotional experience about managing the lives of everyday people in horrible situations sometimes you will need to make a difficult decision where every option is a poor one or do something in order to survive that leaves you feeling guilty for instance there's an elderly couple in the game whose home you can rob for supplies while they beg the player to not steal their medication and food of course if you decide to steal from them anyways you will revisit the home later to find the couple both dead in their bedroom [Music] dujana is an indie game that gets uncomfortably close to some real existential fears despite its trippy and off-the-wall presentation it is a sobering story about accepting death and dying the story follows dujana who sets off into the desert to track down her missing husband and daughter who were last seen looking for a suitable place to bury their family pen as dujana searches however it becomes increasingly apparent that it's far too late to save her family and that the journey is really about finding and speaking with people it will help her to process the emotions that follow grief this culminates in a funeral scene where dujana grieves over the unfairness of losing her husband and daughter lamenting how deeply she still misses her family and how she had no agency in protecting her loved ones whether it be from fictional threats like spider people or very real threats like armed conflict in the middle east it isn't a comforting thought to understand that there isn't anything we can do to prevent the inevitable deaths of everyone we know and love it's even more uncomfortable to consider that we ourselves will one day die however dujana argues that not only should we face this fact but that we should welcome it and accept it even if it's [ __ ] terrifying it should be stated that the game's creator jack king spooner openly mocks the idea of dissecting games and trying to find meaning where there is none intended for all we know we could be totally off in our reading of the game which in our opinion makes dujana that much more unsettling [Music] i have no mouth and i must scream is a point-and-click adventure game based on the 1967 post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by harlan ellison who also co-designed the game the plot takes place in an alternate history where the cold war has escalated so far that america russia and china are all waging war using their own super computers eventually the allied master computer am has gained sentience and assimilated the other supercomputers and is taking control of the conflict in the following years humanity was wiped out saved for five survivors which am tortures in perpetuity keeping them in hugger and agony due to his intense hatred for humans the player controls these five survivors benny gorister nimdok ted and ellen as they are manipulated and subjected to games for the total amusement of am these games are based on the flaws fears and past traumas of the survivors and are designed to further torment them while the survivors will attempt to subvert these intentions and succeed in their games this will only anger the machine which will then try to think of new ways to torture them one of these survivors nimdok is also considered to be heavily controversial nimdok's story was censored and completely removed in both the french and german versions of the game which ironically made it unwinnable long before being captured by am nimdok was a nazi physician who conducted medical experiments was a personal friend of joseph mengele and also turned over his own jewish parents for termination [Music] rule of rose is a japanese survival horror game for the ps2 where you play as a young adult orphan named jennifer as she becomes trapped in a zeppelin ruled by a hierarchy of children who demand monthly tributes this game sparked controversy when releasing in europe due to rumors that the game contained scenes of children buried alive underground in-game state of masochism and underage eroticism as a result of this misleading press the game was banned in the united kingdom despite the fact it received a 16 plus peggy rating from the video standards council who deny the existence of the alleged content the game's plot revolves around a group of children who call themselves the red rose aristocracy the order resembles a royal hierarchy with higher ranked members holding absolute authority over members below them and jennifer is forcibly inducted into this order as the lowest ranked member when she's brought to the zeppelin in addition each member must provide a specified monthly gift or be fed to the stray dog so much of the gameplay is exploring the airship in order to find these gifts jennifer is repeatedly subject to punishment for failing to find her gifts in time leading to various scenes where she's tormented with a dead rat on a stick or this scene where she's forced into a sack which is then filled with insects the game seems to take inspiration from lord of the flies in this regard with the cast of children trying to impose order on one another in the absence of adults only to tear each other down as the game goes on it becomes clear that the events of rule of rose are actually a representation of jennifer reliving her own traumatic childhood the order began as a way to get the children of jennifer's orphanage to bully and ostracize her into the head of the order's royal arms even going as far as to kill her beloved pet dog in a tragic turn of events there is a scene where the leader later returns to the orphanage while manipulating an unstable man named gregory pretending to be is to see son joshua to lure him there though her intention had been just to scare the children back under her subjugation gregory instead kills all the kids at the orphanage including her and with that we've made it to the final leg of our journey even getting to this point i've missed a few entries mainly due to botched audio which unfortunately i just don't have time to re-record with that out of the way let's talk about the bizarre and trippy layer games that fit onto this lair are typically going to have a psychedelic quality to them and their stories are going to be a bit less straightforward than what we're used to as a result our reads on some of these games could be completely wrong i want to warn you guys to take everything that we say with a grain of salt from this point moving forward i'll do my best but i'm only human and i can make mistakes here that said like always we want to treat any sensitive subject matter with the respect that it deserves and make sure that we do these titles justice so with that out of the way let's update our iceberg and then load the animation [Music] so [Music] the terrible whiteness of appalachian knights is an absolutely miserable game to play and and i mean like absolutely miserable and uncomfortable to play mechanically it's dull and the discordant beats and bloops of the soundtrack add to a mounting sense of anxiety that builds up through the short 13 minute experience we won't lie this is an experimental game where the purpose is to try to create a very specific feeling in the player and maybe make a point through that feeling though it's a bit hard to tell with this title i personally enjoy games like these but they're not for everyone created for free by inspire games who is named the most prolific independent game developer at least in the 2016 iteration of the guinness world records gamer edition the terrible whiteness of appalachian knights cashed you as a housewife the opening coldly states with the bare minimum amount of context i have a family i met my husband mark 20 years ago now we have two children jack is the youngest rose is in secondary school all my days run into one another there's little to do but sleep afterwards you're thrown into an ascii house which requires you to use your imagination from this point on it's up to you to check on jack and rose and then maybe mark maybe do a task then go to sleep since the game repeatedly informs you that you're tired the mom will give out generic lines like eat your veggies or don't stay up too late or do your homework but ultimately the world is almost completely unreactive to you and your actions the only time you can make the game state change is when you go to bed each night a member of your family will wake up screaming and it will be your job to help calm them down first jack then rose then mark when you entered a master bedroom with mark the game always informs you that the mom that you're playing as is afraid after dealing with mark you go through one more seemingly normal day then after the last fade the music catched to a harsh buzzing a unsettling drawing of a naked woman with a vengeance stare is looking down she's wearing what looks like thick makeup and her face starts to become distorted until it looks like this you're then greeted with a mini game where you're supposed to simulate oral the loud irritating beeping and distortions in the graphics during this cutscene make the act distressing for both the character on screen and from a player perspective even without context it's easy to see that there's something horribly wrong here i tried to do some research to figure out exactly what this game might be about and in that i found the appalachia region in the united states is characterized by being extremely poor having a low population density resulting in those that live there being very remote when the mom says all my days run together all i can do is sleep it could refer to the fact that she's a stay-at-home housewife you would be isolated entirely from the outside world just look up the full gate family and see how bad this isolation can get as for the nazi imagery i'm not sure although i found one article about this game that suggests it might be an issue down there if you're from west virginia or kentucky and might have some more information i'd love to read about it in the comment section but there's something unsettling about this game touted as one of the best point-and-click adventure games right up there with grim fandango sanitarium follows a bizarre unsettling journey through 90 cgi uncanny visuals you play as max an amnesiac who wakes up in a dilapidated asylum and finds himself traveling to strange surreal locations while trying to figure out who you are and the mystery of why you're here in between these fantastical spots you return back to asylum further blurring reality and fiction this game doesn't shy away from violence against children and has a recurring theme of showing how people in power constantly fail to protect and often abuse those below them child or not through visuals alone this game makes us feel uncomfortable the deformed children of the first area look downright demented and hearing about how as punishment another little girl was basically used as a scarecrow while her eyes were pecked out his stomach churning max also has his own mental issues that stem from the loss of his sister as a child due to some illness and even greater issues with the mysterious doctor that seems to have betrayed him in some way with sanitarium on everything from steam to your mobile phone nowadays it is definitely not hard to get this one running space funeral is an independent rpg maker game made by the kadamites where you play as philip a pajama-wearing boy from scum city who embarks on a quest to find out why the world became so [ __ ] up and hopefully set everything back to normal the game is a celebration of outsider art proudly wearing its tone and aesthetic on its sleeve though the unnerving visuals of space funeral can range from hilarious to downright anxiety inducing at times the game is rife with intentional imperfections and garish design choices which reference a corruption that has consumed the world literally turning it into a nightmare version of itself there's evidence of this corruption everywhere from the cruelly depicted buildings that look like disembodied heads freakish and unsettling characters and lurching animations which are unsettling to say the least space funerals graphics are designed to look like the work of an amateur arguably making it more impactful by giving it a personal quality that causes us to question the imagination that created it this intentionally creepy and amateurish tone is extended to the game's writing which is obsessed with blood not only are there rivers made of blood but it's one of the most common items in the game and even the title screen mirrors this fixation one of the standout sections of space funeral which unexpectedly places you into a deeply dreadful atmosphere is philip's journey into the blood caverns the color palette of the game changes to a sinister black and red theme as philip enters and ruth white's narration of the charles baudelaire poem spleen begins to play ruth white's 1969 adaptation of the flowers of evil is heavily used by the game to unnerve its players and is practically worth checking out the game for its implementation alone hong kong 97 is a shoot-'em-up style game released for the super famicom which was developed and published by happysoft the same company which created the story of kami kushiki village which will be covered in the next iceberg video the game's quality is so poor that even underground gaming magazines like game urara called it dreadful and it is still acknowledged today as one of the worst games of all time in this game you play as chin an unspecified relative of bruce lee who has been hired by the hong kong government to wipe out the population of mainland china before they can immigrate to hong kong and raise the crime rate even more tasteless than this casual racism is the game's overuse of shock imagery from the holocaust victims shown in the opening slides to the real-life dead body shown in the game overscreen the infamous image which was taken from a documentary about the bosnian genocide shows a dead civilian with his head graphically beaten and the words chin is dead sloppily pasted over it in chinese in english chin can be killed in one hit so you'll be seeing this screen often if you don't pick up the syringe power-ups which are implied to be heroin defeating 30 enemies will cause the final boss to appear the ultimate weapon tong xiao ping the name and likeness of this final boss are based on chinese leader deng xiaoping who is still alive when the game was released defeating it doesn't even end the game which just loops endlessly no matter how many enemies you kill the previously mentioned designer kowloon kurosawa would later respond to attention the game continued to receive decades after release by stating that his goal with hong kong 97 had been to create the worst game possible in order to make a mockery of the video game industry of course when your game begins with you openly begging for retailers to carry your games which you will heavily discount it's hard to see the joke being on anyone other than yourself hong kong 97 is still remembered today as a bizarre and creepy artifact from a bygone era of gaming to those who did not know the intention of the designer or just didn't have the context to understand why the game was so bad or macabre it must have been like something from another planet [Music] milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk is a series of short visual novel games developed and published by nikita krukov the subject of these games is an unnamed girl who seems to suffer from social anxiety that makes the day-to-day tasks like going to the store to buy milk a challenge hence the name not only does she struggle to read the expressions and intentions of people seeing them as strange alien creatures but the girl also becomes easily sidetracked by obsessive thought patterns often repeating herself or just overthinking things in general for this reason she chooses to view herself as the main character in a visual novel enlisting the help of the player to organize her thoughts and get through today as the game progresses the girl admits that her medication is becoming less and less effective and that imagining herself as a visual novel character might be her only way of avoiding this reality she ultimately decides to lower her walls even if it's only for an imaginary player and has a frank discussion about her condition which she leaves ambiguous on purpose in order to keep her identity separate from her diagnosis it is later revealed that the voice of the player is the influence of the girl's latest medication which explains why it encourages her to face her fears and live in reality in retrospect this makes the fact that she imagined a player that take interest in her life without being overly critical even more depressing reinforcing the fact that this character has nobody to turn to for help while the first game focuses on one trip to the store and the challenges it poses to someone with intense social anxiety the sequel milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk expands on the girl's life at home allowing us to see more of this character in her element while exploring the main character's room we learned more about the trauma that she's experienced in the past and the obsessive-compulsive tendencies which seem to dominate her daily life despite the fact that the sequel has multiple endings there is no happy ending for the girl that magically solves all of her problems and allows her to function independently the way that she wants to this is one of the most disturbing things that the bag of milk series has to offer or to say about living with a mental illness there is no escape from our own minds trying to imagine ourselves without this mortal coil is like imagining milk outside of a bag of milk instead we can only keep trying to live day to day even if for some of us it seems impossible yume nikki is a psychological horror rpg maker game which was created by solo japanese developer kikiyama and released in 2004 yume nikki means dream diary in japanese which makes sense because the game is based around exploring the dreams of protagonist madotsuki while seeking out all 24 effects madotsky is what's known as a hikikomori which is a term used in japan to describe a severe form of social withdrawal characterized by the individual refusing to leave their home yume nikki conveys this worthlessly by having modalski shake her head whenever she's directed by the player to leave the apartment in the waking world instead she can only leave the apartment while dreaming where she is taken to a nexus of 12 doors which all lead to different worlds within the dream on top of this there are also thresholds and npcs which can warp you to even deeper dream world all of which are full of bizarre and eclectic imagery that represent themes and events in modolski's life while there is no way to receive a game over in yume nikki there are enemies which pursue the player called tordiningen warp madotsky to an inescapable room if they catch her forcing you to either wake up by pinching yourself or use an effect to warp back to the nexus these effects are essentially items which can range from really useful things like a bicycle that doubles your movement speed to poop hair some of these effects are used to access certain locations and events like the infamous uboa who has a 1 in 64 chance to appear when turning off the lights in a specific room some of the imagery in these events can be pretty intense like this face event which can only be encountered if you use the knife effect in a specific location and causes modotsky to immediately wake up as if she experienced a nightmare returning all 24 of the effects to the nexus and then waking up will allow you to see the game's ending though you might wish that you hadn't in this ending madotsky finds that a set of stairs have been added to the balcony leading over the railing after climbing up the steps and walking over the edge modolski plummets and everything becomes dark before a heavy thud resounds and a pool of blood fades into view there have been many theories attempting to explain why she chose to end her own life connecting the imagery of the dreams to traumatic events that may have led to her hikikimuri lifestyle though this is where the first game and madotsuki story ends yume nikki has since garnered a dedicated cult following which adopted these exploration and event-based gameplay elements into an extensive series of fan games perhaps the most popular of which are dot flow and yume tuki which was also created by a solo developer called lol is similar to yume nikki and structure though it takes a much darker and bleak tone as it follows a new protagonist named sabitsky this fan game stands out in its tone and visuals which depict rusty and decrepit locations events where blood and gore are much more common and glitch aesthetics as a call back to the fact that sabitsky accesses her dream world through a computer instead even the chaser enemies are much more grim dark in dot flow appearing as visually decaying school children called kaibutsu experiencing more of these nightmare sequences causes an erosion counter to climb as subitsuki's mental state declines causing more blood stains and eventually life support equipment to appear in the apartment whereas dot flow is more of a nightmare journal to yume nikki's dream diary yume tuki was intended to be the true successor to the original game and was the collaborative effort from users on the japanese website 2chan and the creators in the yume nikki fandom rather than a solo project in the spirit of this yume tuki has many quality of life improvements but also branches away from the simplicity of the original gang's black backgrounds in favor of more elaborate and interesting dream worlds to explore this change simultaneously makes the worlds less alien and trippy but also more dreamlike by grounding them in something familiar like an apartment complex or shopping mall yume tuki also has downright unnerving events that rivals those of dot flow like the infamous smile son who does this when you activate the phone effect rather than having a coherent story of his own yumatuki is more of a celebration of the yume nikki fandom which lovingly references many of the creators and fan games which have spawned as a result of the original dream diary james is an independent developer who has been making short but unique horror games since about 2018. something that games games have in common is the theme of learning about or discovering something horrible sometimes you're observing something dreadful and recording it for science like the body horror comedy discovered my body which comes off like a nightmare version of an edutainment cd-rom you might find at your local library discover my body urges you to stay composed and academic as a scientist undergoes painful symbiosis with a bizarre fungal organism all while that same scientist explains the process to you while demonstrating its effects on his skeletal and nervous systems other times you are exploring and discovering rather than just passively observing in water wombworld you play as an underwater researcher studying the ocean floor from your laboratory when suddenly you discover something you really wish you hadn't another interesting aspect of water womb world are its religious themes as james games also explore topics like original sin the ascension of man and even the concept of god itself sometimes these religious themes even take on a cosmic horror spin like the well where unearthing pagan artifacts from an abyssal hole deep in the earth ends about as well as you might expect whether you're ushering the old gods into our world or witnessing the next evolution of mankind games games are about confronting a horrifying situation and the lengths we will go to uncover the truth antemper is a surreal horror themed point-and-click adventure game inspired by games like dark seed but also films like hellraiser and event horizon the game's solo developer vile head describes it as the most personal creation they have ever made taking all of the fears nightmares sorrows and misery from a dark time in their life and turning it into a game while antumra does contain some provocative imagery and conceptually horrifying scenarios it is also rife with gags and humor that somehow make the whole experience come off as that much more deranged like this scene where jesus appears to save you from the nightmare only for the whole thing to be a fake out when he suddenly gets eaten by a pack satan beginning as many great point-and-click adventure games do you awaken in a strange place being pursued by a deadly monster while there are many ways to die in antembra the game overstates its own difficulty and requires less trial and error than other horror games which promise frequent death some of these game overs can be upsetting like this death where you accidentally provoke a lovecraftian creature covered in eyes and are forced to belittle yourself before being allowed to die seemingly as a reflection of the poor mental state which the developer claimed to be in at the time the game's convoluted plot will take you to all kinds of bizarre and foreboding locations like a beach which is inexplicably lined with corpses this post-apocalyptic city deep in the desert and even heaven itself it's tough to say exactly what motivations drive the player character to search for god but when we do eventually find him we learn that he is dying and needs to be reminded of his name scallion when you type it in he thanks you telling you that this isn't a game before the credits roll this has led some people to speculate that a scallion is a stand-in for the developer and he may be thanking people or reaching the end of his game since the post-credits message seemed to indicate that vile head does not expect many people to actually finish it fran bow and little misfortune are point-and-click adventure titles created by swedish studio kill monday games they would also as a interesting side note would go on to make a series of christmas themed projects featuring a sesame street elmo like character called mr red you can't make this stuff up starting with fran beau you play as a little girl of the same name who has trauma-induced amnesia as a result she has lost the ability to differentiate between child-like imagination which is often twisted into nightmarish and disturbing hallucinations and reality to make things worse for our protagonist the game is set in the early 1930s when trauma and psychiatric treatment were particularly barbaric which this game doesn't shy away from like with the twins clara and mia who reside in the forest where they lure and kidnap toads and black cats it's later revealed that despite being twins they're only conjoined as a result of a sick experiment done very similar to the kind of work joseph mengele was doing around the same time being told from the perspective of frambeau the entire game operates on dark dream logic which often represents real life morbid ideas and traumas another example found in this game is that fran may have been mentally ill before potentially causing the death of her parents and the reason why this game gets more bright and vibrant as the game goes on is a result of a experimental drug that quells her dark thoughts but also enhances the darker aspects of her imagination a lot of this story is up for interpretation but unlike some titles it's clear that these guys at least have a story here meanwhile in little misfortune you play as an adorable little girl named miss fortune who's a wonderful child from a not so wonderful family that the narrator will inform us will die today along the way to that unfortunate end we get to learn about miss fortune's backstory which involves a neglectful alcoholic mom and a physically abusive father the depictions of abuse through the environmental storytelling can be harrowing and it's more straightforward and based on our reality than fran beau ever was although it's still in this part of the list and surreal as hell the game's narrator known as the voice offers misfortune internal happiness but only as she plays along with his game i need to emphasize that this game is relentlessly cute with the main character which only well makes it more heart-wrenching when you hear about how they've interpreted their own trauma with the limited tools that she has the voice of the narrator which is in her head seems to be a demon that uses a unsettling soothing tone of voice to leader towards misfortune and danger at the end of the game it's unfortunately revealed that the little girl we've been guiding died due to a car accident and that the entire game that we well accompanied her through was actually just her walk through the afterlife [Music] it's hard to get excited about mobile games as many of them lack any real meat with the sole purpose of frustrating you into paying that said you me hell definitely caught our attention you me hell is a point-and-click game that follows the rather unstable couple of tor and tova tor is an awkward geeky fellow whilst tova is highly aggressive and irritable basically being a danger to anyone she comes into contact with including tova herself our two protagonists go to one of the final places one would expect to get couples therapy a journey through hell literally the gameplay is what you would expect of point-and-click adventure games from having to obtain certain items to proceed in the story to solving riddles and puzzles that will require you to do a bit of thinking the game is an interesting blend with a goofy art style and dialogue mixed with a comparatively eerie ost and storyline themes personally the song from the soundtrack entitled we are all in hell now perfectly embodies this mixture seeing that its lyrics and overall tone comes off grim yet also quite playful and is bound to get your fingers snapping as well this title will probably have you laughing and amused more than anything but seeing the links that our protagonists will go to please each other including flagrantly deceiving and harming those around them may be a bit unnerving a loose sequel titled you me heaven is also available if you're interested [Music] golden light is a first person roguelike game developed by mr pink and set in a procedurally generated reverse prop hunt hell hole called the gut the game begins when a picnic with the player character's apparent girlfriend ends in an abrupt abduction as she is pulled underground by an enormous meaty hand leaving the player to dive into the horrors of the labyrinthine gut in order to rescue her in the gut everything is made out of meat from the weapons you wield to the creatures you encounter and even the very dungeon itself this not only means that many of the objects in the game are edible but also that the gut is a living entity with an opinion of you that quickly sours as your runs progress further and you begin to outstay your welcome in this way the game encourages you to take a slower and more methodical approach avoiding creating too much noise or attacking neutral creatures or else you'll have to deal with even more of the game's bizarre meat monster enemies another reason to be cautious are the game's mimics which poses props in the environment until you get too close causing them to turn into screaming piles of meat and attack you should also watch out for doors and windows which may attempt to bite you or even grow arms and legs and try to kill you when you aren't in the gut you're usually riding your talking bicycle friend named snout through a foggy purgatory called the field which acts as the overworld the field is much brighter and washed out in comparison to the dim and grimy dungeons of the gut where most of the light comes from unnatural sources like computer screens golden lights graphics also use a filter that seems to shift everything just a little out of focus giving the game a found footage quality that takes a quick turn for snuff when things get violent and meaty lost in vivo is a first person shooter developed by akumakira which seems to draw inspiration from classic playstation horror titles like silent hill with its enemy and environment designs the player character is an unnamed mental patient who journeys into the sewers when their service dog dany is washed down a storm drain finding a sort of urban wilderness in the tunnels below further down you venture into the cramped subterranean tunnels the more reality itself starts to break down leading up to some diabolical fourth wall breaks like textures intentionally designed to mislead you make-outs involving your save file and sound design which leaves you constantly second guessing whether you're hearing the name lost in vivo comes from the type of vivo exposure therapy that the protagonist is undergoing which is a type of behavioral therapy designed to reduce the fear that a patient feels from certain triggers by exposing them to these feared situations in order to gradually desensitize them to it the main character is undergoing therapy to overcome their claustrophobia and much of the game seems to revolve around this theme along with other crushing social terrors like body dysmorphia paranoia and suicide the path made by the same developer as the graveyard tale of tales is not your traditional horror game nor as bad as the graveyard in my opinion instead of using jump scares or a dark tone slash color palette like every horror game uses the path purely sticks to abstract depictions of uncomfortable ideas the setting itself is bright and makes heavy use of vibrant contrast both in the colorful forest and figuratively in the change in tone the game takes once finding your bad wolf or reaching the titular grandma's house the path is a stylized version of the little red riding hood fairy tale and much like in other obtuse tale of tale games despite telling you to stick to the path doing so will actually cause the game to fail you instead you have to explore around in the force and eventually bump into your big bad wolf which is different for each of the game's main six protagonists in typical tale of tales fashion succeeding in this will earn you a b ranking there is no a ranking you you cannot actually achieve that i don't know why they put a ranking system in this each of the characters range from age 9 to 19 and their rules are supposed to represent a hardship that a girl might go through at that age for example the 9 year old robin learns that despite being young death is always just around a corner which is a terrifying concept as an adult but one that a child has few tools to understand meanwhile the series fan favorite the 15 year old ruby is a typical goth that wears some sort of leg brace and deals with her wolf charming wolf he represents peer pressure or falling in with the wrong crowd and this coupled with some dialogue ruby has seems to suggest that she has a strained relationship with her peers all of which causes ruby to view the world through this dark bleak lens the game today is jank and focuses on the tragic disturbing experiences that specifically a female youth might go through all with the goal to prove that youth isn't entirely enviable adults look back at those times like they were great when in reality you were naive as hell emotions were not under your control at all all while dealing with the same life that you ultimately had little to no control over this in addition to the idea that your life may be over before you even realize it is all told in the weird abstract tale of tales way my name is addiction it's a visual novel created by claro calamity studios which plays out like a character study of the game's protagonist who struggles with a severe addiction to pornography that invades their thoughts and interferes with their life constantly the game sheds light on cycles of dependency and relapse as the protagonist struggles to overcome his addiction seeing himself as more of a monster each time he falls back into his old habits the protagonist dehumanizes himself to such an extent that he seems to forget his own name the text box is swapping between male names from scene to scene and even from line to line this dehumanization is also conveyed through the game's hand-drawn art style creating an emphasis on imperfection that mirrors the protagonist's self-critical attitude this art style gives my name is addiction a surreal quality flashing intense images which metaphorically represent the internal struggle that inevitably gives way to self-indulgence one of the visual novel's most disturbing scenes comes from a meeting between the protagonist and his therapist who tries to explore why he feels as though he has no control over his cyclical habits this leads to the protagonist reflecting on the circumcision he was subjected to at birth due to his parents religious views seeing it as the beginning of a lifetime of having no agency over his own pleasure or genitals as if the subject matter weren't already uncomfortable the circumcision is shown on screen as the protagonist laments this non-consensual mutilation this is where the game starts to show many heavy political themes since the protagonist ultimately decides that being circumcised beats being aborted the game's protagonist seems to hold strong pro-life sentiment due to his reactionary views which may be a barrier to entry for some that said if you made it this far in the video you've probably got some pretty strong mental defenses so you should make of this message what you will [Applause] the faith series developed by erdorph games is an ongoing trilogy of lo-fi horror games with the third title still in development faith casts you as father john ward a catholic priest returning to a farmhouse in rural connecticut one year after an attempted exorcism proved fatal leaving him and the possessed amy martin as the only survivors now armed with his crucifix and white clerical collar john ward is back to finish what he started no matter the cost not only is faith heavily inspired by media like the exorcist in its plot in visuals but also by the satanic panic which occurred during the time period where the game is set one thing that will probably stand out while seeing footage of faith are the pixelated graphics reminiscent of oregon trail or other ms-dos games this low-fidelity art style works with its limited color palette and some clever sound design in order to create a tense atmosphere as the player begins to second guess what's on screen supplementing the horror they see with the horror they imagine mind you this isn't to say that faith is lacking in complex visual horror one of faith's heaviest punches are animation sequences like these where it suddenly breaks the mold of its low pixel and animations aesthetic to turn its threats into flashing rotoscoped nightmares this technique is used sparingly enough to be unexpected when it does make an appearance keeping these scenes impactful though this sudden change in graphic detail and even the number of frames of animation is very unsettling especially in conjunction with the sound design we mentioned earlier while the soundtrack of faith is worth mentioning because of the consistency it lends to its low fidelity design sensibilities what absolutely steals the show is the game's voice synthesizer which is used to narrate all of the game's dialogue the synthesized voice is unnatural to say the least not only compressed to near unrecognition but also garbled and stilted in its delivery definitely falling within the uncanny valley of mere familiarity 1987. it's been one year since i first went inside that house the sound and visuals of faith work together to create something that feels like it could have conceivably been played on an atari 2600 in the 1980s only with occasional breaks in this consistency using rotoscoped animations to make you feel like you're playing something truly cursed with a third installment on the way the faith series is one that we can confidently recommend if you're interested in a short and inexpensive game that effectively creates atmosphere with its deliberate technical constraints the cat lady is a graphic adventure game developed by harvester games it is one of three entries in harvester's devil came through here trilogy alongside horror games downfall and lorelei which we will likely cover another time in this title we follow susan ashworth a chronically depressed middle-aged lonesome woman the only friends she has are you guessed it cats which are drawn to her flat whenever she plays the piano unfortunately desiring to just vanish and finding no value in living susan ends her own life her journey continues as she wakes up in a strange world which you find out is the afterlife she encounters an old lady who calls herself the queen of maggots who then grant susan immortality susan is then tasked with killing five psychopaths who the queen of maggots labels parasites giving this game a revenge fantasy vibe as if the game's rather bleak design weren't disconcerting enough the world around susan will become distorted and horrifying as you follow her journey this game may not exactly scare you but like most other psychological horror games it may freak you out with every couple of jump scares here and there you are also treated to some south of heaven macabre imagery all of which paint susan's world with strokes of unease and dreariness susan's encounters with some of the key parasites will definitely make for some nightmare fuel though the gameplay is straightforward the storytelling makes up for it taking the player on a chaotic yet poetic journey through someone confronting their own demons talking about omori is something that's actually a lot more difficult than i expected it to be i must have rewritten the segment at least five times before getting it into the state that it's in now and even here sitting recording i don't really entirely feel satisfied with it but to give the bare minimum without spoiling omori is an rpg maker game created by studio omocat that begun life as a relatable webcomic tumblr blog this blog was a way for the game's director uncoincidentally also named omocat to cope with problems during a confusing part in their life eventually this blog would turn into a kickstarter which was fully funded june 5th 2014. even unfortunately after running out of kickstarter funds omocat's team was able to support the development of their title through merchandise sales which can be found to this day at omocatdashshop.com despite being funded in 2014 omori didn't come out till christmas day of 2020 a full six years of development and a labor of love for all those that worked on it in omori you play as a nameable main character in the real world and is alter ego omori while he's in a overworld hub called headspace which is where a majority of the gameplay even takes place the community calls the nameable character sunny and he's a hikiki omori who has not spoken a word in four years after some mysterious tragic event in his head omori and friends must fight cute monsters and fun bosses using the power of emotions to overcome adversity but more importantly overcome past traumas related to sonny's familial relationships sunny is moving in three days which have multiple routes that change the endings you get in minor ways while the game is stuffed with humor and funny little things that i could only describe as quirky under that is a very dark core which makes everything in this game feel almost bittersweet sure fighting this rabbit thing may be fun and cute but it's just an illusion to hide from bigger problems that are hiding just under the surface making it very hard to enjoy even some of the best designed fights some of these endings even depict self-ending with a heavy focus on toxic escapism omori deserves to be talked about in the same breath as lisa the painful as one of the best things rpg maker has to offer and that's all i can say without giving a spoiler warning if spoilers don't bother you or you've played this game well let me dissect it a bit more in what the community calls the sunny route it comes as a surprise when the friend group you've had in headspace in reality have actually grown apart over the course of this three-day period in game you meet kell aubry basil and hiro who all slowly come to the understanding that they failed to be there for each other after the self-end of sonny's sister who died on the night of a big recital sonny's sister mari can actually be found in headspace before you learn this information by these picnic baskets that also serve as save points each of the characters were impacted in their own way and code to fit differently in isolation from one another i'd actually like to go into more detail perhaps in a different video but for now in the real world sunny and kell hang out and slowly reconnect with aubry and basil who are having a dispute over photographs which will make sense later eventually this helps sunny open up a bit and overcome his fears which in turn helps open up new areas in the headspace overworld aubry's story is one that always particularly disturbed me like when you go to her house near the end of the game and you see this knowing that aubry really had nowhere to escape or process this and was dealing with external abuse on top of that it really made my stomach churn in fact the scene is actually pretty comparable to the child abuse scene from lisa to painful where brad comes home to this in the opening scenes of the game in the end we learn the truth behind marty's untimely passing she was getting busier and busier of college prep and sunny opted to pick up the violin again so he could be with his sister again who was slowly withdrawing to focus on her own skills unable to keep up and overcome with anger sunny breaks his violin the night of a big recital prompting an argument between siblings that resulted in mari being accidentally pushed down the stairs basil walks in on the scene and tries to help but she had already died causing sunny to shut down leading to the creation of white space and his alter ego omori in an attempt to help his friend basil came up with the idea of staging the accident as a self-end in a disassociative state sunny defaced all the photos of mari basil took which caused him to take the blame in order to protect sunny aubry already struggling to deal with the situation started to pick on basil which in turn got other kids to join in with sunny moving in free days basil starts to mentally break down which sunny at least subconsciously knows about because you spend your time in headspace looking for basil this all culminates in a scene where sunny aubrey kell and hiro almost endearingly resolved not to leave bazel alone during a panic attack staying at his house for the last night that sunny is here late at night while everyone is asleep sonny must confront not only basil but the trauma he had been hiding from since the beginning of the game which is represented by a fight between sunny and his alter ego omori this is actually one of the more difficult fights and the end is also unwinnable however once you lose you're given a unique game over screen normally when you lose you're given the option to retry to fight however here if you choose to continue sunny refuses to surcom and actually beats omori not by fighting him or playing the game that you've gotten used to playing this whole time but rather by playing the song that he never really got to experience with his sister finally moving on from that trauma and overcoming it sonny will then wake up in a hospital where he finds his friends and says the first line of dialogue he has in the entire game which is simply i have something to tell you this implies that sonny is going to tell his friends about what exactly happened with his sister with it being left mostly ambiguous about how others take the news regardless of what actually happened sunny and basil seem to be okay with themselves remember how i said that the choice to continue or not is taken a bit more literally if you choose to not continue you wake up in this silly room from headspace which is where a lot of adventures up until this point have begun you climb the steps like you have so many times before only for it to be revealed that instead of going on another adventure sunny is unable to keep up the delusion he needs just to cope with reality and unable to continue he opts to end it there are also plenty of other endings which are equally grim and bittersweet which i feel like is a perfect way to describe this title it's something that i plan on covering more detail in the future but for now omori is one of those special games that comes once in a lifetime that in its own little [ __ ] up kind of way is able to take these happy moments and twist them into something that's genuinely depressing there are moments in omori that disturbed me to my core that i didn't even have a chance to talk about so if you're thinking about grabbing this one it's one of the most tactful and disturbing games that i've ever played and it looks like we've completed another entry in the disturbing iceberg we only have a few more to go but i'm probably not going to make another one right like as my next project because i'm going to need some time to research and do some actual playing of these games before moving on so we're probably going to do something cartoon related hopefully sometime very soon first of all i'd like to thank all the patrons that made it possible for me to float these last couple of months while i got my ducks in a row a lot has changed and i'm hoping to ramp up the process of making videos so that way you guys have more content to watch regularly because why would anyone wait two months to watch this if it wasn't for the patrons the cool awesome sounds that you hear that are on the channel probably wouldn't be able to be a thing i use the patreon money not only to pay my editors but also to get original stuff for the channel like new animations music and anything that i can't do myself that needs to be offloaded the patreon is basically a tip jar and anything that i make for the channel like music or whatever will be given to the patrons for free and forever as well as access to exclusive discord that's basically there for anyone who's given me any money and would like to have a direct line of communication to ask for updates about the videos or maybe even add their own input currently i'm playing the evil dead game in there and having a blast with that out of the way i'd like to thank each and every one of you that patiently waited and got to this point in the video it still amazes me how far i've gotten in this whole youtube thing and every time i think about it it's still a wild ride i've been lucky enough to have the chance to have an audience since i was in high school it's been almost one third of my life has been spent doing this entertainment thing for all of you and i don't know i'm just oddly sentimental about that right now hopefully i'll have a new video out soon i've been your host that creepy reading and i'm hopefully disturbing you and signing off [Music] you