Simulator games are incredibly popular and addictive. While you may be living the life of your dreams, there is also a chance that things can go very wrong. When developers try to mimic the nuances of complex events and processes, players can make decisions that distort the reality of the game. One minute you're trying to understand jet propulsion, the next you're throwing little devoted science minions into the ether to die in the vacuum of space.
Did the developers intend for these games to make players question their own moral integrity and significance in the vast expanse of the universe? Probably not, but that doesn't make the existential dread they inspire any less terrifying.
BeamNG.drive
Liminal spaces and merciless physics
The physics-defying polygon-warping, soft-body crushing chaos that is BeamNG.Drive is a wonderful physics sandbox. Players have enormous freedom to create complex races and innovative devices. Alternatively, they can create a liminal hellscape from which there is no escape. Add the user-made BeamNG.drive mod to the mix and you have a recipe for disaster.
The vanilla game is largely unpopulated and the environment is eerily quiet. Some have been carefully crafted, others are eerily empty with empty squares stretching as far as the eye can see. If the empty liminal spaces don't scare you, maybe the lifeless looks of the crash test dummies and their violent deaths at the hands of the players will.
Absolutely accurate battle simulator
A terrible march of existential horror
Where else can you send one lone bard into battle against an army of snake throwers and have him blindly walk towards certain doom with a blank look on his face? Absolutely accurate battle simulator is a charmingly goofy game that simulates unlikely battles in the most hilarious way possible.
Players pit armies against each other and these units then slowly march towards each other and attack according to their type. Archers shoot bows (or snakes), hobbits inefficiently swarm enemy units, and Zeus units literally throw lightning bolts. Obviously, some units are better equipped for combat than others Tabs he 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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Although simulation games tend to mimic real-life experiences, they can be fun to play, especially those with a co-op mode.
Cities: Panoramas
Are the citizens there just to suffer?
Cities: Panoramas is a fine and detailed city building and management simulator that allows players to create a prosperous society. Some people strive to create profitable megacities, others strive for a utopian city, and a select few creators enjoy creating terrifying purgatories for their citizens bombarded by endless natural disasters (with the “Natural Disasters” DLC).
Deliberate sabotage and despotic rule aside, it's very easy to accidentally turn a city into a miserable hell for its inhabitants. Players can randomly find themselves battling a disease of pandemic proportions, a catastrophically high crime rate, or a city on fire. It's all part of it Cities: Panoramas experience.
Two point hospital
How much is a human life worth?
is Two point hospital a cute simulator of medical administrators, or a bleak, scathing indictment of the for-profit medical industry? It really depends on who is playing it. There are many ways to accidentally or intentionally cause existential dread, from cruel mistreatment of employees to goofy diseases with terrifying consequences. Should you treat their bizarre illnesses or leave the patients to suffer in the halls of your hospital?
When a patient dies on the ward, they calmly get out of bed, go to the dressing room, get dressed and then collapse on the floor. If this death ritual wasn't grim enough, patients who died on the premises linger as ghosts, haunting the corridors and leaving ectoplasm everywhere.
Planet Zoo
Maybe the player should be in the zoo
If any type of simulation game is meant to make someone question their own morality and what it means to be human or humane, it's Zoo Simulator. Planet Zoo it really makes the player question who should be in charge of this situation, along with whether humans should be in the zoo. It's so easy to inadvertently make life a nightmare for endangered species.
Planet Zoo: Achievements / Trophies Guide
Planet Zoo is a great simulator with a decent number of trophies/achievements to hunt, some taking longer than others.
Animal rights are not the only issue Planet Zoo. Staff are often mistreated and guests can get stuck in a literal tourist trap. Even the best player can end up being a total disaster that violates numerous human and animal rights agreements.
A long way
It drives players crazy
Apart from the obvious horror elements A long wayThe sheer insane loneliness and isolation can cling to the player. The player embarks on a seemingly pointless one-way journey with only monsters and a blow-up doll for company. Many are starting A long way expecting a strange and unsettling survival simulator experience that ends up being a full-blown existential nightmare.
Procedurally generated environments can be extremely cruel, with some players ending up on a relatively spooky but lifeless journey and others ending up in an unsettling dystopian wasteland. It is a lucky draw that can be said for life in general.
Gas station simulator
Nothing creates existential terror like isolation.
When you're on an endless journey through procedurally generated purgatory, why not stop at the most cursed gas station since Kentucky Route Zero? While certain elements of this unconventional simulation are intentionally unsettling, the muted look and quick, physics-defying departure of NPCs will probably be enough to make most players nervous.
Customers make strange statements and bizarre environmental stories are scattered across the landscape. It's one of those games where it's hard to tell where thoughtful offbeat design ends and random horror begins.
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Cooking simulator
The loneliness of hospitality purgatory.
One person, locked in a kitchen, is forced to serve food to an increasingly demanding, faceless customer base. Is anyone there at all? It's a horrible capitalist nightmare of an inevitable kitchen without human contact. No wonder many enslaved cooks from Cooking simulator they decided to end their time in the kitchen using highly flammable gas canisters and an oven.
Subsequent installments and DLC have refined the universe a bit, but even so, disturbing details remain. For example, why is Cooking Network show audience made of cardboard? And why can you enter Super Hot mode? It's all very disturbing.
Kerbal Space Program
Sacrifice them for science!
Kerbal Space Program asks players to advance scientific endeavors and try to improve space travel at any cost. For some reason, the best way to do this is to entrust countless Kerbal lives to an untrained human. In a similar way to blindly loyal units Absolutely accurate battle simulatorthe player repeatedly sends adorable, smiling astronauts to their near-certain doom.
These little guys are ready to die for your scientific ambitions. As with many sims, power is dynamic Kerbal Space Program is incredibly disturbing and can fill the player with deep moral conflict and existential dread if they think about it too much.
The Sims 2
Hell is other people.
Few games present a physical incarnation of death for the player to negotiate or dramatize the process of family disintegration. 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 Sims themselves get stuck in, to the cursed social bunny appearance that appears when certain Sims' social networks get too low, The Sims 2 it often looks like a terrifying fever dream. This tradition of surreal, existential horror would continue in subsequent installments and became somewhat of a beloved quirk of the series.
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