I’ve recently fallen down a rabbit hole of fake video games. Not fake like fraud, but fake like art; games that don’t exist to play, but do exist to tell their stories. I’m super into it but finding more is kinda difficult, so here we are!

What fake games do you like? Why do you like them? Pictures, links, videos, whatever.

I really enjoyed Petscop (video 1/25 linked) and Valle Verde (video 1 linked, Spanish with subtitles), both series are let’s play style, exploring fake games to tell their stories. Petscop is much more narratively involved, and tells a great story (you’ll probably want an explainer video afterwards… it’s involved) while Valle Verde is more ghost-in-the-machine horror.

I found this rabbit hole through this video, from Super Eyepatch Wolf about fake video games, why they are made and how they “work” as an art form. Their content is weirdly enjoyable to me, and pleasingly entirely too long. Plus they have their own fake video game.

Edit for clarity: Fake video games is a super broad category. Pictures with gameplay hud that implies a video game, videos of gameplay or cutscenes styled after games count (even those weird live action “games” people record for TikTok count), books or stories that describe gameplay for games that don’t exist count, even soundtracks modeled after game sound tracks count. So if it’s a game or part of a game that doesn’t exist, it counts!

  • EponymousBosh@awful.systems
    1·
    15 minutes ago

    The game Look Outside has a bunch of fake video games in it that your character can play to get XP and learn skills, and there’s some funny character interactions with them. Likewise the Sims series has games that your sims can play.

    There’s also SBURB from Homestuck (which starts as a video game at least) and the various games from Kidd Radd, which I don’t know if that’s archived anywhere but I hope it is.

  • Björn@swg-empire.de
    5·
    6 hours ago

    I love to hate the video game depicted in the X-Files episode First Person Shooter. It is about some kind of VR game that is so realistic that people die in real life. The single enemy NPC Maitreya is just too good at killing.

    When they entered the game it looked just like real life. Except the most enticing gameplay they could think of was standing in front of each other and shooting all guns they had.

    It was released in early 2000 so there should have been tons of games with enticing gameplay to pull from. But no, standing somewhere for a long time and shooting big guns is exactly how trained FBI agents would act.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    8·
    12 hours ago

    Aight, if there are no wrong answers I wanna mention a real old one I’ve had a soft spot for since childhood: The Dreamcast-like music video Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

    There aren’t a ton of examples from pre-social media, I wonder if there are any others that people can think of that’re even older?

    Edit: Actually reading a few there are some from the 90s, like Simpsons. I forgot all about them, lol.

  • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
    9·
    13 hours ago

    Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada

    If only because I would love to be recruited into space for beating a video game.

    By far my favorite movie about a video game that doesn’t exist.

  • Apeman42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    14 hours ago

    If Sugar Rush looked as good as it does in Wreck-It Ralph, I think it’d be a fantastic kart racer.

    Also Roy from Rick and Morty. Holy shit, a game that could compress time would be fucking insane, even as mundane as it is.

    • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Oh man yes actual time dilation as a core mechanic of the game sounds awesome. Disorienting as hell, but awesome.

      I bet a game like that could be used for therapy, too, like in a big way… let people live out where their life is headed, or the life of someone they’d target for hate crimes or whatever. Let them struggle. Maybe they’d come out wanting to make some changes. That’d be cool af. I’d totally playtest that. Repeatedly. And end up like time-frozen Jessica after she wakes up 😜

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
    25·
    17 hours ago

    The Giant’s Drink from Ender’s Game always seemed really compelling to me. The emergent gameplay reacted to your state of mind and serving as some sort of arcane test of your mind.

    • Pronell@lemmy.world
      10·
      17 hours ago

      Ooh, good answer!

      Those books were so important to my teenage self. Such a shame Card himself is such a whackjob.

    • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Demakes are so interesting. They are more constrained than coming up with something new for an old system, but, seemingly because they use IP people are already familiar with, they can leave more unsaid/unshown and just implied, and still have it be cohesive.

      That was a really good one, I can see why it’s your fave!