Summary

  • Doki Doki Literature Club breaks boundaries by turning a dating sim into a psychological horror tale with self-aware characters.
  • Imscared mostly takes place outside the box, affecting your computer with creepy changes as you play through a low-res story.
  • Inscryption makes players give the opponent access to their hard drive during a fight, generating powerful cards based on selected files.

When we play video games, there are certain expectations we have. You have an interactive medium with set goals to achieve and narratives to follow. Ultimately, we have it in a box, the same way we have non-interactive mediums like movies or bookꦆs. However, some game devs realize that preconception and use it to great effect.

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They make it so the game can break out of that box and affect things that they normally don’t, usually to get uꦺnder your skin. Since this is usually done by changing things on your computer, that’s where you find these mind-bending twists, but it does happen on consoles occasionally. Ready to blur the lines? Here are some games that break their boundaries.

Since this is usually a trick to🐽 catch you off guard, by its very nature this list has many spඣoilers, from Easter Eggs to important plot points. Proceed at your own risk.

7 🧸 ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ Doki Doki Literature Club

Doki Doki Literature Club Characters Group on the game menu.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Doki Doki Literature Club is probably the most famous example of a game going out of bounds in recent history. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ostensibly an innocent dating sim, the game is actually a harrowing psychological horror tale. Monika, supposedly a secondary characte🧜r with no route of her own, becomes self-aware and is not happy about her position.

In console versions of DDLC, an in-game file manager exists, allowing you to access things you could normally only see on PC. It gets the job done but isn’t nea♑rly as surprising.

After a saga of bloodshed and confusion, she rewrites the game world so that it’s just you and her. From there on, that’s all the game will be. Of course, if you’re savvy,🐠 youౠ’ll know that, as a computer program, she exists in the game files. To reach the finale, you’ll have to dip into the game’s files and delete her to break her hold on the game.

6 Imscared

A White Face looks at the player from outside the window balcony in Imscared.

Imscared doesn’t so much break the boundaries as much as it mostly takes place outside of them. This tale of a rogue program, malevolent entity, or some other dark force takes place most✤ly in your file browser.

The game plays out like a low-res creepypasta, like one you’d find because a friend of a friend told you about the cursed game. Seemingly harmless, if a little🌄 spooky, the game ramps up since the entity known as White Face affects your computer by crashing the game or making oth⛄er sinister changes. All the while, the plot is told as it adds, deletes, or edits files in the game folder.

5 🍎 ✨ Inscryption

inscryption's first person view with your hand of cards visible and the board in front of you.

Already a strange game, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Inscryption dips into mind-bending territory after the first act. But in the fight against the Archivist in act 3, it gets personal. During the fight, you’re forced to give your opponent access to your hard drive. Not Luke, whose computer you’re using, but YOU – the pla👍yer.

Like in DDLC, console versions have an in-game compute🔴r, this one owned by Luke Carder, the guy in the cut𓃲scenes.

You’re prompted to choose a file and a card is generated based on that file, getting more powerful and sturdy the bigger and older the file is. To prove it&🅠rsquo;s legit, it will show you an image or play a clip of the audio if it’s a sound or image file. You’re also pr𓆏omised that the file will be deleted should the card die.

4 🍷 Irisu Syndrome! 𝕴

Irisu Syndrome screenshot showing a shape puzzle, with a character stood behind the board, and strange cat pictures in the background.

Irisu Syndrome is a deep-cut freeware puzzle game that you can find online if you’re ♎willing൩ to dig around for it. Released all the way back in 2008, in many ways this game is an unappreciated pioneer, likely being the first game to leave files for you to find in the game’s folder.

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It also has some tricks that haven't yet been replicated. This includes a picture file that changes as the story develops like James’ letter in Silent Hill 2. Or a much more chilling one where the titular Irisu approaches a victim from your desktop int𓆉o the game before putting her nail bat to work.

3 Outcore

Lumi stands underneath an open app, instructing the player to paint a key to fit a star shaped keyhole.

Most titles which decide to go outside the normal boundaries of a video game, usually do so as a trick or a pivotal moment. A way to show that the game might be more real than you think. ♋In Outcore, however, this is the whole conceit. Starting the game brings an aberration to your actual desktop, files, wallpaper, and all.

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You bring this aberration to life by guiding a file on your desktop to ꦆit, allowing it to spring forth as Lumi, a girl apparently inhabiting your computer. You then draw pictures in Microsoft Paint, the actual program, to open🍨 a door which is actually a file from your Documents folder that you’re trying to decrypt. This is just in the first few minutes of the game. The rest has to be seen to be believed, which is easy enough since the game is free on Steam.

2 ﷽♍ Metal Gear Series

Metal Gear Solid Psycho Mantis stood in front of a wall of paintings about to fight you.

The168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Metal Gear Solid games are pretty🧔 famous for blurring the line between video games and realiꦓty, and at this point, it’s a bit of a trademark for Hideo Kojima, the series’ creator. However, the prime example has to be Psycho Mantis, who codified the concept of messing with players directly.

In his fight in MGS1, he’ll read your memory card and comment on it, which was unheard of at🅘 the time. Even wilder, the best way to defeat him is by switching your controller to the second port so he c🥂an no longer read and dodge your movements.

If you had a Dualshock 3 plugged in instead, he’ll successfully vibrate your controller and exclaim proudly abouꩵt the feature’s return.

The fight is even referenced in MGS4, where the game mocks you for trying the same trick against Screamin🌟g Mantis, as well as an appearance from Psycho Mantis himself as he tries in vain to make your SIXAXIS controller vibrate.

1 OneShot

A OneShot screenshot of Niko sitting in a boat with someone rowing it.

⛎ In OneShot, you’re tasked with helping Niko by bringing light to a world with no sun. Not the royal you, either, you the player. Niko even addresses you by name. With your gamer skills, you have to guide Niko on her quest and help her inter𝐆act with the denizens of this dying world.

The game interacts with your computer by doing things like changing your desktop wallpaper, turning itself off, or generating text files in the🍬 game’s folder. These aren’t just for exposition either, but actually contain information that could give you solutions to puzzles or pass parts of the game that seem impassable.

The game lives up to its name too. At the end of it, you have to make a decision, either of which will render the game unplayable becauဣse as the title implies, you only have one shot. Or do you…?

The original free version of the game was even stricter. If you shut 🧜off the game before you get to the end, it counts as an endingᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ and you can no longer play it.

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