Highlights
- Open world games are becoming weirder, with settings like an alien planet covered in water (Subnautica) or a town where players control a goat (Goat Simulator).
- Dead Rising takes the zombie game genre to new levels of strangeness with a constantly changing mall, crazy characters, and a photography mechanic for gaining XP.
- Disco Elysium stands out as a dialogue-heavy open-world RPG with minimal combat, challenging players to solve a murder case and navigate internal arguments.
As gaming evolves, so does the potential of what players can do within gaming worlds. Open-world games are fascinating and give players far more opportunity than most games to roam freely and see what else there is to find within the large confines of these fantastical settings. But sometimes this comes with possibilities, characters, and places that players cannot possibly imagine.
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These survival games feature questionable themes while offering an engaging gameplay.
This goes further than simply introducing silly aspects, although that is one great part of it. Some of these games have gone even further, though, and let players freely roam within worlds so strange and original that they could hardly have been anticipated, from colorful alien worlds to insane dreamscapes, and worlds that players can hardly comprehend, open-world games really do just keep getting weirder.
7 Subnautica
Terror Beneath The Seas
One of the most bizarre settings for a survival game, Subnautica doesn’t set players in space or on a deserted island. Instead, players begin the game crashing onto an alien planet covered in water, where they receive very little instruction about what to do next.
Survival is the key in Subnautica, and the vast open water world contains plenty of terror, but also many possibilities for base-building and exploration. Between the giant monstrous creatures hiding in the depths, the secrets of the planet, and the nature of such a huge open-world game being set almost entirely underwater, Subnautica ends up feeling like a very strange survival game.
6 Dead Rising
Zombies Across An Open World
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Initially, the idea of a zombie game with an open-world set in a shopping mall isn’t all that bizarre. However, there are a few particular details that make Dead Rising and the setting of Willamette Mall particularly strange. This comes from the fact that the zombies and the entire mall completely change from day to night, to the absolutely crazy cast of characters that players are charged with saving over the course of their stay.
Of course, there is also the fact that Frank West can take photographs to gain XP and the bizarre main journalist narrative running throughout the game. Dead Rising continues to get wackier and weirder with every entry, and the variety in weaponry on top of the weirdness of the cast and the crazed lunatics chasing after players help make this an especially bizarre game, and the rest of the franchise is just as crazy.
5 Dredge
Fishing ft. Eldritch Horrors
Initially, Dredge appears to be a fishing game, and it is, but with a totally bizarre twist. Players can go out on the water when they wish, watching the day and night cycle closely, and as they venture further out into the open world in which they’re able to fish, they begin to realize something else is going on.
That something is Lovecraftian horrors, which surround the island the player is based on and can attack their boat. If the player is out for too long at night, their panic meter begins to rise, and they will see hallucinations and reality changes that can actually damage their boat. This fun and scary open-world survival game is brilliantly weird.
4 Maneater
Live Life As Jaws
One game that can definitely be considered unique, Maneater is another open-world game that takes place in the ocean, but instead of playing as a person trying to survive in the water, the player takes control of a deadly shark trying to continually evolve.
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The premise of Maneater involves a fisherman who disfigured the player’s shark when she was young and killed her mother. This leaves the shark wanting revenge, but it must first evolve and become strong enough to fight the fisherman. Maneater is a very strange game, but one of the best games that allows players to control an animal, with plenty of surprising things to do.
3 Disco Elysium
Argue Inside Your Own Head
Disco Elysium
- Platform(s)
- PC , PS5 , PS4 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Stadia
- Released
- October 15, 2019
- Developer(s)
- ZA/UM
Usually, players will find that an open-world RPG will feature a lot of combat, so one of the most jarring and unusual things about Disco Elysium is that it features almost no combat. Instead, this dialogue-heavy game where players take on the role of a detective forces them to really think their way through a murder case.
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Disco Elysium is very unlike other games that involve mysteries, as there are various endings depending on what kind of detective players choose to be. Players also argue with their various personality traits inside their own heads throughout the game, and have an inventory system for thoughts, making Disco Elysium one of the most bizarre but excellent open-world games around.
2 Goat Simulator
Life As An Insane Goat
If other games that allow players to take control of an animal seem strange, Goat Simulator is totally unconventional. Players take control of a superpowered goat in an open-world town filled with people, and the goal is generally to ragdoll people in various ways.
Not only is the player being a goat that attacks people pretty strange, but this goat is also able to lick things with an incredibly long tongue and jump much higher than a regular goat. This all makes the game seem highly unusual, particularly since it comes with a scoring system comparable to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
1 Saints Row 4
Superpowered President Fights Aliens
The Saints Row franchise has always been pretty bizarre, but Saints Row 4 took this to another level with the leader of the Saints becoming president before everyone was placed into a realistic simulation of a city where they can gain superpowers to try and fight against the aliens that created the simulation.
The most bizarre idea for an open-world game, and one of the most completely strange games of all time, Saints Row 4 is a hilariously over-the-top parody game, as most entries in the series are, that comes with some incredibly weird mechanics and choices.
