I’ve recently fallen down a rabbit hole of fake video games. Not fake like fraud, but fake like art; games that don’t exist to play, but do exist to tell their stories. I’m super into it but finding more is kinda difficult, so here we are!
What fake games do you like? Why do you like them? Pictures, links, videos, whatever.
I really enjoyed Petscop (video 1/25 linked) and Valle Verde (video 1 linked, Spanish with subtitles), both series are let’s play style, exploring fake games to tell their stories. Petscop is much more narratively involved, and tells a great story (you’ll probably want an explainer video afterwards… it’s involved) while Valle Verde is more ghost-in-the-machine horror.
I found this rabbit hole through this video, from Super Eyepatch Wolf about fake video games, why they are made and how they “work” as an art form. Their content is weirdly enjoyable to me, and pleasingly entirely too long. Plus they have their own fake video game.
Edit for clarity: Fake video games is a super broad category. Pictures with gameplay hud that implies a video game, videos of gameplay or cutscenes styled after games count (even those weird live action “games” people record for TikTok count), books or stories that describe gameplay for games that don’t exist count, even soundtracks modeled after game sound tracks count. So if it’s a game or part of a game that doesn’t exist, it counts!
I’m super into this. All of it. I don’t think it’s one thing but several and that makes it more compelling, because I’m honestly not super sure. Because I’m not familiar with any of it. It’s like reading about OS behavior on systems I’ve never touched.
You seem to be referencing a few people or channels or something, could you provide some links to their content so I can watch it? I’m genuinely interested, and I have enough time on my hands to go searching if all you can give me is a link to the creator. This sounds like exactly the sort of phantom goodness I want more of.
Whang!'s playlist on the Lost Evil Farming Game He does a lot of other stuff, old internet bullshit, gross out body horror, etc. but the lost media stuff is fun.
A playlist of Ashens’ talks at the Norwich Games Festival. ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNaDU7vnvSQuJ4SeFRiW8RmPZhY6Ga7Rb) Stuart Ashen, Ph. D., author of the book Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of and star of the hit film Ashens and the Quest for the Gamechild, has also spent most of the 21st century kneeling in front of a brown sofa making fun of shit he bought at pound shops.
RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst playlist. They’ve done a bunch of stuff, Best of the Worst is their hanging around, watching old videos (shitty B movies, instructional tapes, scams, cult propaganda, bizarre art major bullshit) and discuss. If you like MST3K you’ll probably like BotW. Playing Dangerous is in one of the earliest episodes made.