The best games are the ones that make players feel things. Unlike watching a movie, games push players to do the hard things, so the feelings they get are much stronger. A game that does this is not just fun; it stays with them long after they stop playing. When a game is over, players might feel sad, tired, or just empty. This feeling means the story worked. It shows that the many hours players spent caring about the characters and the world were important.
8 Games That Explore Human Emotions
Looking to dive deep into human emotions? The following video games put the human experience at the center of the plot.
These games do not tell simple stories about heroes and bad guys. They focus on the messy truth of surviving hard times, the heavy weight of making choices, and the pain of saying goodbye to people you care about. The games below are the best at this, but by the time you reach the end, they'll leave you emotionally devastated.
There are Spoilers Ahead.
Life Is Strange
The Pain Of Choosing Who To Save
- A teenage girl gains the power to rewind time, only to realize that fixing small problems can lead to massive, tragic disasters.
- Captures the raw emotions of growing up and the realization that you can't protect everyone you love, no matter how hard you try.
Life Is Strange hurts in a very special kind of way. It builds emotion through ordinary teenage moments like posters on the wall, late-night calls, awkward jokes: the memories people usually forget until nostalgia pulls them back. Max and Chloe’s friendship grows through these tiny beats, and because the writing sticks close to their personal world, the emotional stakes rise slowly and naturally.
The rewind mechanic in Life Is Strange feels fun at first, like a playful tool that lets Max fix any mistake, but the game uses it to set a trap. Every time Max tries to “fix” something, reality bends in a darker direction. The more she tries to help Chloe, the more the world breaks around them. The guilt starts creeping in during the alternate timelines, like Chloe’s wheelchair, the broken family, and the quiet despair in her father’s eyes. None of this is played for shock; it’s all built to show how one choice, no matter how loving, can ripple into a disaster. The real kicker is when Max is forced to choose between saving Chloe and saving everyone else.
Red Dead Redemption 2
The Heavy Price Of Seeking Redemption
- Play as an outlaw watching his world disappear, forced to decide what kind of man he wants to be before time runs out.
- The slow build of loyalty and betrayal within your gang makes the final moments feel like a personal heartbreak.
The heartbreak in Red Dead Redemption 2 comes from watching Arthur Morgan discover who he wants to be just as his time runs out. The story doesn’t rush toward tragedy; it lets players live through Arthur’s daily life. He feeds horses, teases friends around campfires, and makes awkward apologies when he realizes he’s hurt someone he cares about. Those little moments in Red Dead Redemption 2
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But Arthur doesn’t crumble. Instead, he starts doing small acts of good, like helping a widow fix her house, saving a stranger’s wagon, or giving away money he once would’ve pocketed. He tries to rewrite the end of his story through kindness. The tragedy is that the gang he once believed in is falling apart faster than he can fix anything. By the time Arthur faces his final sunrise, the game has turned him into someone the player deeply respects. His death isn’t shocking. It’s actually quiet, earned, and completely devastating because it feels like losing a friend who finally understood himself.
This War Of Mine
Civilian Survival In Wartime Chaos
- Unlike most war games, players control regular people trying to find food and medicine in a city under attack.
- Every night brings a terrifying choice.
Nothing in This War of Mine tells you what the right choice is. That’s why it sticks. It leaves you thinking about the lives you couldn’t save. It removes the safe distance usually found in war stories. Instead of soldiers, the focus is on a group of civilians who wake up hungry, cold, and exhausted. Their world isn’t built around missions or heroism; it’s built around whether there’s enough food left for breakfast.
Another thing about This War of Mine is that every decision cuts deep. Stealing from an elderly couple feels awful because the game doesn’t frame it as “loot.” The old man begs players to stop, clutching a photo of his wife. Refusing to steal is no easier because it means someone in the shelter may starve tomorrow. There are no easy choices, but those choices must be made regardless.
The Last Of Us
Finding Hope In A Ruined World
- Follows a grieving father figure and a young girl traveling across a dangerous country filled with monsters and desperate people.
- It challenges you to consider how far you would go to protect the person you love most, even if it hurts the rest of the world.
When talking about games with strong emotional impact, the messy bond between Joel and Ellie can’t be ignored. They are basically two damaged people trying to live in a world that keeps taking things from them. The Last of Us leaves players uneasy because it shows love at its most dangerous and most desperate.
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The final stretch inside the hospital is where everything snaps. Joel’s decision is shocking not because it’s violent, but because it feels painfully human. He can’t let Ellie go, even if saving her could doom the world. Players can feel the doubt, betrayal, love, and heartbreak behind Ellie’s final word: “Okay.” The Last of Us really shows that a zombie game can be just as emotional as it is scary.
SOMA
The Horror Of Consciousness
- A deep-sea sci-fi horror game that forces you to question your identity and what it truly means to be human in a world without life.
- An unnerving exploration of transhumanism and artificial intelligence, culminating in a devastating choice about the future of the human mind.
While most horror games focus on jump scares and monsters, SOMA is about the chilling thought that a person’s identity might not be held where they think it is. Simon, the protagonist, wakes up in an underwater facility and slowly realizes that his mind has been copied. There are multiple “Simons,” each alive in their own reality.
The first big emotional rollercoaster comes when Simon must shut down a version of himself that is begging to stay alive. The begging isn’t robotic or cold. It sounds exactly like a person fighting for his life, because he is. The game forces players to confront the possibility that both versions are equally real. If that's true, then what truly makes us, us?
Telltale's The Walking Dead
The Ultimate Sacrifice For Shelter
- Play as a man with a dark past who becomes the protector of a little girl named Clementine during the zombie apocalypse.
- The bond you build with Clem makes every tough decision feel heavy, leading to one of the most famous and tear-jerking endings in gaming history.
This story hurts because it grows slowly, like a bruise. Lee doesn’t start as a perfect hero or a smooth talker; he’s a man with a messy past, trying to keep a frightened child alive while the world falls apart around them. Their connection isn’t forced. It comes from teaching Clementine how to fire a gun, helping her braid her hair, or calming her down after a nightmare.
The most painful part of The Walking Dead Season One is when Lee is bitten. He becomes weaker, slower, and more desperate to prepare Clementine for a world that won’t protect her. The last scene, where Clementine must decide whether to shoot Lee to spare him from suffering, is simply unforgettable. It’s one of the best horror games with a painful ending.
Mass Effect 2
Leading Your Team On A Suicide Mission
- Travel across the galaxy to recruit a crew, knowing that many of them might not return from the final battle.
- Because you spend so much time learning their personal stories, losing even one teammate feels like losing a real friend.
The Mass Effect series gets its emotional weight from the tension, loyalty, and the constant threat of permanent loss. There’s a way these games force players to care, and then they tell them that they might lose everything they cared about in the span of a single mission.
The emotional blow hits hardest when Shepard walks through the debris at the end of Mass Effect 2. If the player made mistakes, the silence on the ship is heavy; missing faces turn victory into something hollow. If everyone survives, the relief isn’t that palpable either. It feels like an escape earned through fear and trust, not heroics.
NieR: Automata
A Cycle Of Sadness
- A fast-paced action RPG about android soldiers fighting proxy wars that morphs into a profound meditation on existence, purpose, and the cyclical nature of conflict.
- By the time you reach the final ending, the game asks you to make a selfless sacrifice.
NieR: Automata is another open-world game that will wreck you emotionally, and it uses repetition and perspective shifts to create the emotional impact. Players first control 2B, a stoic android soldier who seems designed for nothing but combat, but the deeper the story goes, the more cracks start to appear.
Everything in NieR: Automata changes once you see the credits for the first time. To continue the story, game forces players to replay the story from 9S’s point of view. Missions that once felt simple now reveal layers of suffering. Machines beg not to die. In fact small villages of harmless robots are massacred out of fear.
Life What Remains Of Edith Finch
The Pain Of Walking Through A House Of Memories
- Explore a strange house to learn how every member of a family died, seeing their lives through their own eyes.
- It is a quiet and poetic experience that shows how a family’s history is built on both wonderful imagination and deep sadness.
The heart of What Remains of Edith Finch lies in the way it treats a family home like a memory box that’s been locked for years. Edith walks through each room knowing that the stories inside belong to people she never got the chance to know. She’s basically trying to understand a family curse that has taken almost everyone she’s ever cared about.
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Every story she finds pulls the rug out from under her in a different way, but one of the most devastating stories is the one involving the cannery. A young man keeps escaping into his imagination while working a repetitive factory job, and the game splits the screen to show his daydreams swallowing him whole.
Outer Wilds
The Pain Of Finding Peace At The End Of The Universe
- You're trapped in a time loop that resets when the sun explodes, giving you just enough time to learn the secrets of an ancient race.
- Instead of being scary, the game teaches you how to say goodbye and find wonder in how everything must eventually end.
Outer Wilds breaks people in a completely different way. It’s not a tragedy in a traditional sense; it’s more about that feeling of learning the truth too late to change anything. The game begins as a cute, curious space adventure, and then slowly turns into something far more emotional.
Outer Wilds hurts because it makes players care about a universe they know they can’t save. And when the end finally arrives, it feels less like destruction and more like saying goodbye to something wonderful that was never meant to last, which many people can relate to. That's why Outer Wilds is one of the best indie games to make you cry.
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