7 Innocent Looking Games That Are Secretly Super Messed Up

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.

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.

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

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?!

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.

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...

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

Every Kirby game once you know the lore.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I was surprised not to see Hatoful Boyfriend on this list. Especially with the hidden story arc.

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.

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.

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

Honestly, NO idea how this list could be made without Doki Doki Literature Club. The LITERAL DEFINITION of an unexpectedly dark game.

Sky: Children of the Light. Got the simplest and most adorable characters with kids running around floating on clouds but it's actually like that concept of hell where one day is on a forever loop.