Great unusual videogame themes and settings

[Erik_Twice]

Like with anything, there's a lot of bland. High fantasy, space, yadda, yadda, what about something more fun? This is a thread to discuss and praise all this weird little games! Add your own!


I have always been very found of Marble Madness abstract world and music. It has a very focused quality in it that makes you focus on the game itself instead of possible narratives. They could have easily given it a more common or marketable theme but it wouldn't have made it so unique. The game gets on your mind on a very raw level and I think that's great.

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[Hobie-wan]

Realm of Impossibility also had an abstract layout.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/zombies_/screenshots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdGBA0FG7Gk

The dungeon at 15:55 starts messing with you. I thought the game was glitching the first time I made it there.

[J T]

I love the far out, hypnotizing, psychedelic imagery of Grid Runner Revolution.


*click for video*

It's like you're playing a game and watching a music visualizer program at the same time. It's the videogame equivalent of an acid trip. It's so abstract and strange that your brain can never quite grasp what it's looking at, but it can make enough sense of the surroundings that the game is still highly playable. The music is great and the sound effects are so startling with their mix of air raid sirens, bleeting sheep, and old school arcade machines that the whole thing just feels like some sort of synaesthetic experience.

Of course, then we should mention Rez.


*click for video*

I played Rez during the height of my raver days, which was also the height of the rave scene. When that kind of music felt like it was at the cutting edge of futurism, Rez felt like it was 100 years ahead of that. It was just a different kind of game. It's been over a decade since Rez was released and if you play it today, it still feels like a different kind of game, and it still feels futuristic because of the visuals, though the music is a bit dated now. That's how forward thinking the visuals and concept of Rez were.

[Gamerforlife]

I love the black hole in Starfox. So wonderfully eerie and creepy, the music fit perfectly. Black holes are a mystery in real life. Where does it all go? What's on the other side? This plays off of that really well. The game adds an extra layer of mystery by stating that this is where Fox's father disappeared, never to be seen again. Props again to the music. The soundtrack is so integral to this game and one of the reasons I prefer it to Starfox 64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_2Y_Tt9Ij8

I also love the world of The Dishwasher Vampire Smile. It's this gritty, noir-ish, weird, post apocalyptic world full of robot dragons, cyborgs, undead samurai, killer chefs, blue-eyed assassins committing seppuku, a crazed hockey player, crazy men in black and all sorts of craziness. There's a psychedelic quality to some parts of the game too with characters hallucinating and a boss that sends your mind to an alternate, 8-bit world. There's an edginess to the Dishwasher games, particular vampire smile. Playing through the game as Yuki, you feel like she's teetering on the edge of sanity. The whole game seems to be teetering on the edge of sanity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6j6l1cICzY

Music games have some of the most imaginative worlds and characters like PaRappa the Rappa, Bust a Groove and Unjammer Lammy. PaRappa has a rapping, kung fu master with an onion for a head! Bust a Groove has you dancing off against a giant robot the size of a building! Also, Space Channel 5 is full of wonderful, original character designs, crazy looking aliens and fun levels that feel like a really awesome interactive music video. Every level of that game felt a big, elaborate, imaginative, immaculately choreographed production from beginning to end. Also, Space Michael! You can't beat that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKodXgtMkZ8

I'm also fond of the surreal, bizarre and loony worlds of Earthworm Jim and Conker's Bad Fur Day. Both of those games created a sense that anything could happen from Crows tossing puppies from windows, to fighting lawyers in a hell ruled by a cat, to cows flying through space, to bunging jumping with a anthropomorphic ball of snot, to riding a giant hamster, to a bee trying to copulate with a Sunflower, to you flying around as a bat dropping guano on crazed villagers before feeding them to a vampire, to you fighting the Terminator while hopping around on a talking pitfork, to suddenly being in the Matrix, to fighting Natzi teddy bears, to fighting a giant, opera singing, pile of shit! You'd have to be high on something to come up with games like that!

[Ivo]

The one that come to my mind before coming into the thread was Chrono Cross's Escher inspired world as it was very striking, but that is probably only because I played it recently. Near instantly that lead me to think of Marble Madness and that I should come to post about THAT instead - but that is covered in the original post already

I support Earth Worm Jim, I agree it has some rather original themes and levels there.

I don't know how original it was (i.e. how many other games covered those themes before that), but when I was younger I quite liked the sweets-based themes in games I played in the Amiga - I'm probably more fond of the levels in James Pond 2: Robocod, but Zool also comes to mind.

I think I probably played a lot of relatively original stuff in the Amiga as the Euro developers tended to be a bit more original than the U.S. ones (or maybe I'm just biased). Of course it is hard to top some of the Japanese devs weirdness But there are a bunch of extremely offbeat Euro examples.

Very interesting thread, looking forward to checking out some other suggestions. I'll see if I can think back to any other original themes. Jeff Minter's stuff comes to mind.

Ivo.

[Erik_Twice]

GWISE FROM YOUR GWAVE!

Attention citizen! This thread has been bumped by your friend the Computer! Fun is mandatory and failure to think this bump is fun is treasonous. This thread is NOT about videogames only, this has always been the will of the Computer and the Computer is never wrong! All hail the Computer!

Paranoia is a pen and paper roleplaying game whose setting has been described as 1984 meets a Marx Brothers films. Alpha Complex, an underground city is controlled by the "friendly" Computer, a sentinent AI which is obssesed with the threat imposed by Secret Societies, mutants and Communism. And being the satirical game it is, everyone on Alpha Complex belogs to a society, are mutants thanks to decades of radiation and Alpha Complex is pretty much a communist state.

There are actually very few comedic games but dark comedy? That's really, really rare.

Keep your laser handy!

[Erik_Twice]

Realm of Impossibility also had an abstract layout.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/zombies_/screenshots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdGBA0FG7Gk

The dungeon at 15:55 starts messing with you. I thought the game was glitching the first time I made it there.

Holy crap, that's great! And the game looks fun, I will add it to my list!

Thanks

[Menegrothx]

LSD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70gtHWz70Z0
More or less a virtual drug trip (or a "dream emulator")

Weird dreams
Kinda like a 2D predecessor of LSD

Nights into dreams...
A very colorful, trippy and oddly relaxing game. I said it before and I'll say it again, a game like this could never become a flagship game for a console in 2012 (it was one of the most prominent Saturn exclusives back in 1996)


Planescape: Torment
Fights many RPG cliches and stereotypes and has a bunch of unusual characters. Rats are one of the most fearsome enemies in the game (when connected to a hivemind), some of the undead NPCs are on of the most sympathetic characters in the game, dying is actually a helpful way to advance the plot of the game and so on. The whole Planescape setting quite unusual when compared to more regular cookie cutter fantasy (Forgotten realms?)

Sam and Max hit the road: Mystery vortex

I played Rez during the height of my raver days, which was also the height of the rave scene. When that kind of music felt like it was at the cutting edge of futurism, Rez felt like it was 100 years ahead of that. It was just a different kind of game. It's been over a decade since Rez was released and if you play it today, it still feels like a different kind of game, and it still feels futuristic because of the visuals, though the music is a bit dated now. That's how forward thinking the visuals and concept of Rez were.

I think you might enjoy N2O
A very trippy and disorientating PS1 space shooter with a great soundtrack by The Crystal Method
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2GFucoBxGE&t=20m10s