As a relatively young medium, Video Games as an art form have had a lot of pressure to compete with established industries. The text-adventures of old tried to be interactive books. The modern, AAA title tries to be like blockbusters. Casinos make, well, online casinos. If there’s a genre, someone has tried to adapt it into a video game. Action, horror, mystery, romance, superhero- they’ve all been applied to games. Heck, someone even managed to figure out how to turn abstract art into a video game (it’s called Superliminal- check it out!).
Comedy, however, is a genre that’s difficult even for the established industries to get right. Sometimes you get masterpieces (Spaceballs, Coming to America, Jojo Rabbit), but there’s also a lot of garbage (Ghostbusters (2016), anything made by Seth Rogan). Video games have tried to get witty, and have had just about as much luck as anyone else in the genre.
Disclaimer: I’ve only listed games I’ve played and found to be hilarious. I’ve also avoided adding adaptations of media from film, comics, or TV because I want a list of games that were built first and foremost to be games and are funny. Also, I refused to put any game that’s funny just because “lol look at me, I’m so random! So quirky! Here’s a banana!” (I’ll list some games that didn’t qualify in the honorable mentions paragraph).
With that out of the way, here are the five funniest video games that will have you falling out of your seat!
5. West of Loathing
West of Loathing is just wholesome and fun from head to toe. The gist is, you are a cowboy in the wild west, trying to make your way in the world, just as it’s being invaded by cows… from hell. There’s nothing particularly special about the gameplay, but the stick figure art style sells the lighthearted tone the game is going for.
At its core, the gameplay is a simple turn-based RPG with exploration and random encounters. West of Loathing rewards you for returning to old areas with new skills, and some of the puzzles will require you to scour every inch of the map to get the right information (that d*mn graveyard puzzle comes to mind), and the punny writing will make any dad proud.
Whatever you do, don’t look in the spittoons.
4. Half-Life: Alyx
As a pioneer in VR and being a canon addition to the Half-Life franchise after a thirteen-year hiatus, Half-Life: Alyx had a lot of hype to live up to. I can happily confirm that this game met every one of my expectations, and then some.
The story follows Alyx, an established character from the previous games, and explores what she got up to in between the first two games. When the Combine, a race of evil alien overlords who have conquered Earth, bust down her apartment door and arrest her father, it’s up to Alyx to break him out and save the day.
One of the most incredible things about this game is the gameplay itself. It’s by far the most well-developed Virtual Reality titles to date, and it’s clear that Valve pushed the technology to its limits in order to really take advantage of its hardware. It’s also one of the funniest games ever made, with lots of love put into even the smallest bits of dialogue.
Oh, and that ending- I won’t spoil it, buuuut… Half-Life 3 confirmed?
3. Portal
The fact that not one but two Valve titles made it to this list is truly indicative of the quality of their writing. Portal is perhaps one of the most popular, if not the most popular, puzzle games ever.
The premise is fairly simple. You wake up in a strange facility and are asked to test the capabilities of a Portal Gun, and you solve puzzles at the behest of an AI that has been tasked to watch over you. With no abilities other than a gun that lets you get from one side of the room to the other, you’ll find yourself exploring an extensive laboratory filled to the brim with death traps, solving puzzles, and navigating convoluted rube-Goldberg machines to escape with your life.
Aside from being one of the most robust and well-designed video games in the industry, Portal also features some of the best writing the industry has to offer- and the main character doesn’t say a single word! Glados, the aforementioned AI, is clever and witty. The random pre-recorded messages that play over the loudspeakers are punchy and whimsical, and once the sequel introduced some proper characters, it all became downright hilarious.
Just play it- you’ll get cake!
2. The Stanley Parable
I spent a long time considering whether or not this game deserves a second or third place on this list. I then decided that since this is a list of the funniest games, it deserved second place.
You play as a man named Stanley. He works in an office, doing a boring job, when one day, all his coworkers disappear. Everything in this game is narrated by the effervescent Kevan Brighting, and obeying or disobeying the narrator’s commands is The Stanley Parable’s core gameplay. Hilarity ensues as simple binary choices lead you down a rabbit hole that slowly starts breaking the narrator’s composure and the game itself.
It’s simple, effective, and will have you rolling in the isles. Personally, the Broom-Closet Ending was my favorite.
Honorable Mentions
I’d like to throw in a few titles that didn’t make the list but deserve your attention. I didn’t list Grim Fandango or Day of the Tentacle because I’ve never played them, but I have heard that they’re great. I did not list Deadpool or South Park: The Stick of Truth because they’re adaptations, but the latter is particularly hilarious. Goat Simulator and Totally Accurate Battle Simulator fall into the “lol I’m so random” category, which can be funny, but their humor quickly wears out, in my opinion.
1. Undertale
There is so much that can be said about Undertale. It’s an incredible game, and there’s nothing else quite like it.
You play as a little girl, who falls into a hole one day and ends up down deep underground in a world of monsters. Escaping the underground leads you through a colorful society of fun and lovable characters, as you meet friends or foes in your journey to reach the surface.
One of the most incredible things about this game is just how well the narrative and gameplay mesh together. While on the surface the game gives the impression that it plays like a classic JRPG, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s a lot of deeper meaning behind everything.
One of the most important features of Undertale is it’s Morality System- a not altogether unique idea, but I’ve never seen one so thoroughly implemented as it is here. You get rewarded for being good, and… well, I won’t spoil what happens if you’re not.
While the other games on this list can chalk up their comedy to strong writing, Undertale takes it a step further and makes the visual gags just as funny as the writing. Yeah, that seems like an obvious part of the comedy, but it’s less common in video games than you would expect.
The comedy here is done in a unique way that only video games can. The characters are some of the most memorable and heartwrenching ever, and the gameplay and narrative are more cohesive than any other game I have ever played, and it all accumulates into creating one of the funniest, gut-busting, and tearjerking experiences I’ve ever had.
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