Mind-bending video games don’t often come with the most enjoyable stories, but when executed with careful detail and brilliant, immersive game design, they’ll be some of the most cherished experiences you can have in the medium. And most of the time, you see this style done in the horror and puzzle genres.
These games aim to create visceral and trippy, surreal worlds where you start to question reality. The mechanics are often quite original and try something that you’ve perhaps never encountered, and the narrative direction can be very fun and chilling at the same time. The ones below are sure to scratch the mind-bending itch.
A compelling, mind-bending psychological horror game to check out is Karma: The Dark World, from the publisher that also gave you Martha is Dead and Deliver Us the Moon. The Silent Hill inspirations are very clear, as are its nods to David Lynch, perhaps the most obvious being a section in the game that mimics the Red Roomfrom Twin Peaks.
The dystopian premise and atmosphere are very similar to Observer, and it’s set in an alternate timeline in 1984 East Germany. You play a Roam Agent working for the Leviathan Corporation’s Thought Bureau, meaning you’ll use a device that can get you inside the mindscapes of suspects, and some unbelievably shocking mysteries lie ahead.
9The Stanley Parable
One of the most cerebral and mind-bending TV shows is Apple TV+’s Severance, a workplace drama with elements reminiscent of Black Mirror. The Stanley Parable is a game that originally launched in 2013 and broke a lot of rules (and often the fourth wall) to become a meta-narrative workplace satire that actually inspired Severance, as revealed by the show’s creator.
The Stanley Parable is a first-person walking simulator-style game that’s different from any you’ve played.You have a narratorwho speaks directly to you and whom you’ll find yourself in conflict with. The objectives and puzzles around the office space, especially how each of the corridors and rooms are utilized and transformed, make it a very unique and surreal experience.
If you’re a fan of Little Nightmares, Limbo,Tim Burton, and David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Darq is a horror puzzle platforming game that feels like a healthy mix of that bunch. It’s very atmospheric and quite creepy, especially since the protagonist’s head comes off at a certain point and can roll around as part of the puzzle mechanics in the game.
In Darq, you are Lloyd, who is exhibiting an out-of-body experience while in a dream world that’s now being overrun with hostile enemies. Where the mind-bending aspect comes in are the changes in perspective in Lloyd’s world, as he can climb ceilings and walls, with rooms able to be shifted and rotated as well, even when attempting to outrun enemies.
The sound design in Darq was developed by Danish sound designer Bjørn Jacobsen, who also worked on the sound for Cyberpunk 2077 and IO’s Hitman series, including Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2.
Viewfinder is a first-person puzzle game where everything can be achieved and alteredthrough an instant camera. As you move through vibrant 3D environments, you’ll use the camera to surpass obstacles in a way that changes the perspective of the environment to blend with your photo, giving you astonishing and breathtaking results.
Viewfinder truly pushes the puzzle genre to new creative avenues, set in a mysterious and colorful world that’s like The Witness, but with an even trippier feeling and photography mechanics involved.
Returnal isa time loop gamewith roguelike mechanics and a very mind-bending narrative set in space. Following a signal called the “White Shadow,” astronaut Selene Vassos crash-lands on a planet called Atropos, but not all is as it seems. She finds that she’s been dying over and over again, returning to Atropos at the start of each loop by chasing the same mysterious signal.
The combat and world-building are the best elements of Returnal, and then the story gets very complex and twisty, throwing you for a loop about what’s really going on with Selene. Why is she seeing her house appear on an alien planet, or what does a car accident have to do with anything here?
Another puzzle game with mind-bending perspective mechanics is Superliminal. It’s like Portal without the portal gun mechanic and instead focusing on optical illusions and incredibly brain-breaking puzzle design. Each level is super creative and some of the most fun you’ll experience in the genre.
You move through the environment from the first-person, playing around with the perspective of objects to unlock your next objective and puzzle room. The story is that you’re part of a dream therapy experiment, which is how these mind-bending environments are being created, and you must now successfully guide your character out.
Oxenfree is from Night School Studio, an indie developer co-founded by a former Telltale employee, and this series puts an amazing original spin on time loops, the supernatural, and alternate dimensions. The first game follows Alex, her step-brother, Jonas, and their friends, who are all dealing with the tragic passing of Alex’s biological brother. Throughout their night at Edwards Island, strange occurrences transpire.
The sequel, Lost Signals, sees Riley and her work partner Jacob experiencing these otherworldly, reality-altering phenomena and time loops, with the story brilliantly connecting to the first game and introducing new locations, characters, and mechanics. One of the most essential aspects of Oxenfree is using your radio to create interdimensional rifts and communicate with the other side.
By now, it’s no secret that Konami’s Silent Hill series was heavily influenced by Twin Peaks andthe mind-bending psychological thriller, Jacob’s Ladder. Silent Hill 2 has the most iconic story, which received a stellar remake from Bloober Team, the developer behind Layers of Fear and The Medium, which only enhanced the original’s storytelling, level design, and enemy and boss designs.
Silent Hill 2 sees James Sunderland enter the fog-ridden town after he gets a strange letter from his wife to come find her there, despite her being deceased. What unfolds is a hellish nightmare of frightening creatures of all sorts and the parallel dimension of the Otherworld,along with a harrowing maze sectionand a strangely familiar character named Maria.
The original BioShock already had a great twist with its protagonist, but BioShock Infinite ultimately decided to top that. In Infinite, you play P.I. Booker DeWitt, who journeys to the city in the sky called Columbia in the early 1900s in search of a young woman named Elizabeth, who’s locked in a tower. Elizabeth eventually becomes your companion, and you must protect her from Father Comstock’s forces.
Elizabeth has the ability to open tears in the environment that lead to a parallel world, and the plot is centered around alternate realities and gets very mind-bending toward the end, especially with the plot twist. You still have your weapons, Plasmids (now called Vigors), tons of new enemies, and also grapple traversal.
Remedy’s Sam Lake is likeChristopher Nolancombined with David Lynch, and the Remedy Connected Universe of Alan Wake, Control, and Alan Wake 2 is certainly an opus of mind-bending storytelling and gameplay. Alan Wake 2 is a survival horror masterpiece with parallel dimensions, trippy mechanics, andeven a musical section, but to better understand it, especially the DLC, you also need to play Control.
Control is more action-oriented than horror and comes with even more complex lore. You play Jesse Faden, entering the building of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) in search of her brother, Dylan. There are all these weird things, like Objects of Power, The Board, Ahti the Janitor, and then the Ashtray Maze sequence.
