Simulator games are incredibly popular and addictive. While you can live the life of your dreams, there is also the chance that things can go very wrong. When developers attempt to mimic the nuances of complex events and processes, players can make choices that break the game's reality. One minute, you are attempting to understand jet propulsion, the next, you are flinging small dedicated science minions into the ether to die in the vacuum of space.
Did the developers intend for these games to make the player question their own moral integrity and significance in the vast expanse of the universe? Probably not, but that does not make the existential dread they inspire any less terrifying.
BeamNG.drive
Liminal spaces and unforgiving physics
BeamNG.Drive
- Released
- August 3, 2013
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- BeamNG
- Genre(s)
- Racing, Simulation
- Platform(s)
- PC
The physics-defying polygon-warping, soft body-crushing chaos that is BeamNG.Drive is a delightful physics sandbox. Players have a huge amount of freedom to create intricate races and innovative contraptions. Alternatively, they can make a liminal hellscape from which there is no escape. Add user-generated BeamNG.drive mods into the mix, and you get a recipe for disaster.
The vanilla game is largely uninhabited, and there is an eerie stillness to the environments. Some that have been painstakingly created, others are eerily vacant with blank squares stretching out as far as the eye can see. If empty liminal spaces don't creep you out, then maybe the lifeless stares of the crash test dummies and their violent deaths at the hands of players will.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
The terrible march of existential horror
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
- Released
- April 1, 2021
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Landfall
- Genre(s)
- Strategy
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch
Where else can you send one lonely bard into battle against an army of snake throwers, and he will blindly walk towards certain doom with a blank look on his face? Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a charmingly goofy game that simulates improbable battles in the most hilariously reductive way possible.
Players set up armies against each other, and these troops then slowly march towards each other and attack according to their type. Archers shoot bows (or snakes), hobbits ineffectively swarm enemy units, and Zeus units literally throw lightning bolts. Obviously, some units are better equipped for battle than others, and TABS has no problem letting you send a harmless lute-playing idiot to his death at the hands of the god of thunder.
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Cities: Skylines
Are the citizens there just to suffer?
Cities: Skylines
- Released
- March 10, 2015
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Colossal Order
- Genre(s)
- City Builder
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Seires X, Xbox Series S
Cities: Skylines is a nuanced and detailed city-building and management simulator that allows players to establish a thriving society. Some people endeavor to make profitable megacities, others strive for a utopian city, and a select few creators delight in making terrifying purgatories for their citizens bombarded by endless natural disasters (with the "Natural Disasters" DLC).
Deliberate sabotage and despotic rule aside, it is very easy to accidentally turn a city into a miserable hell for its inhabitants. Players can accidentally find themselves contending with illness of pandemic proportions, catastrophically high crime rates, or a city that has caught on fire. It’s all part of the Cities: Skylines experience.
Two Point Hospital
How much is a human life worth?
Two Point Hospital
- Released
- August 30, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Two Point Studios
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Is Two Point Hospital a cute medical admin simulator, or a bleak, scathing indictment of the for-profit medical industry? It really depends on who is playing it. There are plenty of ways to cause existential dread accidentally or on purpose, from the grim mistreatment of employees to goofy diseases with terrifying implications. Should you cure their bizarre ailments or let patients suffer in the halls of your hospital?
When a patient dies in the ward, they calmly get up out of bed, go to the changing room, get dressed, and then collapse on the floor. If this death ritual wasn’t bleak enough, patients who have died on the premises stick around as ghosts, haunting the hallways and leaving ectoplasm everywhere.
Planet Zoo
Maybe the player should be in the zoo
Planet Zoo
- Released
- November 5, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Frontier Developments
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
- Platform(s)
- PC
If any type of simulator game is going to make somebody question their own morality and what it means to be human or humane, it’s a zoo simulator. Planet Zoo really makes the player question who should be in charge of this situation, along with wondering whether humans should be in the zoo. It is so easy to inadvertently make life a waking nightmare for endangered species.
Planet Zoo: Achievement/Trophy Guide
Planet Zoo is a great simulator with a decent number of trophies/achievements to hunt for, with some taking longer than others.
Animal rights aren't the only concern in Planet Zoo. Employees are often mistreated, and guests can be trapped in a literal tourist trap. Even the most well-meaning player can end up with an absolute catastrophe that violates multiple human and animal rights agreements.
The Long Drive
Driving the player to road madness
The Long Drive
- Released
- September 25, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Genesz
- Early Access Release
- September 25, 2019
- Genre(s)
- Simulation, Open-World, Survival
- Platform(s)
- PC
Aside from the overt horror elements of The Long Drive, the sheer maddening loneliness and isolation can stick with the player. The player embarks on a seemingly pointless one-way journey with only the monsters and a blow-up doll for company. Many start The Long Drive expecting a weird and unsettling survival simulator experience, only to end up in a full-blown existential nightmare.
The procedurally generated environments can be extremely cruel, with some players ending up with a relatively creepy but uneventful journey and others ending up in a disturbing dystopian wasteland. It is the luck of the draw, which can be said for life in general.
Gas Station Simulator
Nothing creates existential terror like isolation.
Gas Station Simulator
- Released
- September 15, 2021
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- DRAGO entertainment
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
When on an endless road trip through a procedurally generated purgatory, why not stop off at the most cursed gas station since Kentucky Route Zero? While there are certainly elements of this offbeat simulation that are intentionally unsettling, the silent appearance and rapid, physics-defying exit of the NPCs will likely be enough to put most players on edge.
Customers make strange utterances, and there is bizarre environmental storytelling scattered throughout the landscape. It is one of those games where it is hard to tell where the deliberate uncanny design ends and the accidental horror begins.
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Cooking Simulator
The loneliness of a hospitality purgatory.
Cooking Simulator
- Released
- June 6, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
One person, locked in a kitchen, is forced to serve food to an increasingly demanding faceless customer base. Is there anyone even out there? It’s a terrible capitalist nightmare of an inescapable kitchen with no human contact. It’s no wonder that many enslaved chefs of Cooking Simulator choose to end their time in the kitchen with the aid of highly combustible gas canisters and an oven.
Subsequent installments and DLC have fleshed out the universe a little, but even then, unsettling details remain. For example, why is the Cooking Network show's audience made of cardboard? And, why can you enter Super Hot Mode? It’s all very concerning.
Kerbal Space Program
Sacrifice them for science!
Kerbal Space Program
- Released
- April 27, 2015
WHERE TO PLAY
- Franchise
- Kerbal Space Program
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
Kerbal Space Program asks players to advance scientific endeavors and attempt to refine space travel at any cost. For some reason, the best way to achieve this is to put an untrained person in charge of countless Kerbal lives. In a similar fashion to the blindly loyal units of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, the player repeatedly sends adorable smiling astronauts to their almost certain doom.
These little guys are ready to die for your scientific ambitions. Like many sims, the power dynamic in Kerbal Space Program is incredibly troubling and can fill the player with deep moral conflict and existential dread if they think about it slightly too hard.
The Sims 2
Hell is other people.
The Sims 2
- Released
- September 14, 2004
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Maxis
- Platform(s)
- PC, macOS, Nintendo Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Nintendo DS, PS2, PSP, Xbox (Original)
- Genre(s)
- Life Simulation
Not many games present the player with a physical incarnation of death to bargain with or dramatize the process of a family falling apart. Any of the entries in The Sims series can be existentially terrifying in the right hands, but The Sims 2 has some of the weirdest semi-random events in video game history.
From the bizarre and self-destructive loops that the Sims themselves get stuck in to the appearance of the cursed Social Bunny, who shows up when certain sims socials get too low, The Sims 2 often seems like a horrific fever dream. This tradition of surreal, existential horror would continue throughout subsequent installments and has become somewhat of a beloved eccentricity of the series.
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