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!

  • 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.