7 Innocent Looking Games That Are Secretly Super Messed Up

Sometimes, seemingly innocent games can take unexpectedly dark twists, turning the sunny experience you were expecting into a harrowing ordeal you weren’t. You can prepare yourself for the horror, however, by checking out these seven innocent-looking games that are secretly super messed up, and subscribing for more videos like this from Outside Xbox!

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[Mankoi]

If you think Sonic Adventure is messed up, you should see Sonic Adventure 2, where a major plot point is a young girl getting murdered by paramilitary forces, causing her grandfather to go insane and trying to destroy the world. Additionally, when said grandfather's posthumous video log explaining how the world is about to end plays, the last few seconds make it painfully and traumatically clear that the recording you're watching is his last words before he's executed by firing squad.

[frodobaggins]

My favourite part of the Sonic Adventure stuff is that at the end, Tails rounds the game off with "all's well that ends well, right?" Tails, how many people died?!

[CaitlinRC]

I have one word for you - Bugsnax. Remember folks, you are what you eat.

[lstndamned]

Echo the Dolphin. It's a pretty game about a cute dolphin trying to find his missing friends. It's also surprisingly hard, sometimes has a bit of a survival-horror vibe going on and it turns out his friends are missing because a Lovecraftian monster sucked them through a blender.

[videogamine]

I mean Doki Doki Literature Club is an obvious choice, but when it first came out I saw even people who knew about the twist shocked by how intense it got.

[DJDroz-ghnt]

A lot of modern horror games seem to follow this "creepypasta" style of starting out innocent before becoming corrupted and horrifying. They usually have some mandatory warning though on its rating. Of course no one ever reads those or they see them as a "good sign" if they're a fan of that kind of thing.
One of my favorite warnings is the DDLC "not for those easily disturbed" message because of the chance of it changing to something creepy.

[nicholascross]

What remains of Edith Finch, a lovely walking simulator about revisiting a childhood home.... then the frog.

[waveeyes]

One that comes to mind for me is Spyro: Year of the Dragon The game's story is basically that a sorceress has stolen a bunch of dragon eggs. Supposedly to "restore the magic" to her home world.

However, eventually it is revealed that she plans on killing the baby dragons in order to make herself immortal. And to make it even more messed up, she outright says she doesn't "have to" kill them, doing so just makes it easier for her to then cut off the wings which is what she actually needs.

[ZorillaMyrid]

The double edged sword of using videos like these to find games you want to play, but having the twist spoiled instead of stumbling upon it naturally...

[andredias]

Little Misfortune is another one that few people point out. A friend did tell me to play it and still regret it to this day.

[octochan]

I've been playing a Animal Crossing like game called Cozy Grove that on the surface is cute and fun, but when the setup is that I'm some kind of Cub Scout sent to an island to help out a bunch of friendly, personable ghosts, things get pretty dark when you get into the backstories of how they died and why they aren't moving on. Also the implications that I can't get off the island and my Scout Leader has left me for dead, too. But hey, let's just collect the resources, cook recipes, catch bugs and fish, do little daily quests, don't mind all that.

[owokayisee]

Even though it was a flash game, I'm surprised Can Your Pet? isn't on here. That was my first experience with a cute game that was secretly dark. You raise a cute chicken and dress it up and play with it and then BOOM! Childhood ruined.

[gemhunter]

Cooking Companions should be on this list. Super friendly, *super dark*

[Maria.Annette]

May I interest you in Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion? It starts out innocently enough, with the mayor making you his errand boy to pay off your taxes. But the further you get, the more you realize that something is seriously wrong in this cartoony little world.

Not going to lie, I literally started crying during one of the boss fights. And no, I'm still not over it.

[trustindean]

How do you not have Bugsnax on this! You couldn't have more of a contrast between the cute start and the horror movie at the end.

[vera-linnlanangen]

Stardew Valley? Suicide? PTSD? Alcoholism? Abuse? All in a cute neat little package.

[hobbes]

I dunno if this counts, but Zelda: Links awakening? Didn’t realize it til I got much older but to leave the island you have to wake up the wind fish, and you learn by waking the wind fish you destroy/erase the existence of the island and everything on it, as if they were nothing more than a dream

[MegaGreenbunny]

says something about how messed up duck hunt is that just seeing the dog fills me with dread.

[healsallwounds]

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It presents itself as a fun, light-hearted, whimsical adventure in the beginning levels, albeit one with a serious goal: finding a magical spring to cure your dad.

And then ... and then ... AND THEN ...

[Yoxiv]

Rime. At first you think it's a whimsical adventure of a young boy on a colorful island full of puzzles. Then you get snippets of the boy's past, seemingly losing his father in a storm before crashing on the island. It's just a little ways before the end when you realize that the boy is the one who was lost in the storm, and that he actually drowned, leaving his grieving, widowed father all alone. While the game was clearly inspired by the likes of Ico, it hides the darker stuff under brighter colors and lacking any kind of combat.