Sometimes the most satisfying of endings are the ones that leave you feeling hauntingly
unsettled.
Video games are no exception – there’s been many a game to bust out a creepy ending
that left players with a range of emotions, from discomfort to existential dread.
And we adore the crap out of them.
So in celebration of these games, we’re counting down our picks for the top 10 creepy
endings in video games.
Also, be warned – there’s a ton of spoilers on this list.
We are talking about endings after all.
So with that in mind, let’s jump in.
10 Knuckles Chaotix Starting off this list with something a bit
more tame, Knuckles Chaotix is a bit subtle with its creepy vibes.
By the end of the game, if you don’t manage to collect all of the chaos rings, it’s
heavily implied that Knuckles and Sonic die.
In addition to that, when the credits roll by, you get a great visual of Robotnik floating
in the sky as the city below him burns.
Talk about sinister.
9 Pikmin It’s hard to believe that Pikmin could be
anything but a happy feel-good game.
You play as Captain Olimar, an alien who is stranded on a planet inhabited by creatures
called Pikmin, who help you collect all of the parts you lost when your spaceship crashed.
But if you fail to repair your ship, the true motivations of the Pikmin become clear: that
they’ve been waiting for you to fail so that they could turn you into one of them.
Except the Pikmin you turn into doesn’t look too hot.
8 Home Home is described as a unique horror adventure
set in a beautifully realized pixel world.
Which is pretty accurate – you follow a man who wakes up in a building with a bummed
leg, and you journey your way back home to your house, all while in search of your missing
wife.
And you have amnesia.
All you have to navigate with is a flashlight, and all else is silent minus the sound design
of the world around you.
It’s incredibly eerie, especially when playing in the dark with the sound up as the game
suggests.
What makes Home so creepy is that depending on how you navigate your way back to your
house and what evidence you find along the way, the assumptions your character makes
about what happens changes.
Even then, it’s still highly subjective and opened ended.
Many players have speculated that you are responsible for deaths of your wife, your
co-worker and the dead women out in the forest, while others think that you may have murdered
your wife, but the other events were mysteries are red herrings that you just happened to
unearth.
7 The Suffering In The Suffering, you play as a man named
Torque who was convicted for murdering his wife and kids, who has amnesia of the crimes.
Throughout the game, you try to escape the prison you’re in, since its overrun by homicidal
monsters.
Depending how you play the game and if you throw all morals to the wind, you’ll end
up with the bad ending, where you remember (and see) how you murdered your family.
And then you yourself turn into a monster and saunter back into the prison.
6 Fatal frame 2 The Escape Ending in Fatal Frame 2 has a good
old creepy jump scare at its end.
Also known as the Lingering Scent ending, this one occurs when you choose to not go
after your sister Mayu (my-u).
As you are escaping the village, you hear a voice say “Are you leaving me again?”
Itsuki’s voice then warns you not to turn around, but what do you do?
Turn around.
And guess what you see?
Sae’s ghost, coming right at you.
You then wakeup in a forest, in the same spot where you and Mayu sat at the beginning of
the game, except this time, you’re alone.
And you can hear Mayu and Sae vowing to wait for their sisters forever.
5 Condemned: Criminal Origins Condemned is a first person survival horror
game set in a fictional American city where you play a crime scene investigator who has
been framed for murder by a serial killer.
Meanwhile, you’ve got to fight off a bunch of psychotic citizens who have been driven
to madness by some unknown extraneous force created by a creature known as The Hate.
By the end of the game, you’re given an option to choose revenge or compassion when
you discover that the serial killer, who turned out to be your friend’s nephew, is still
alive in the trunk of your friend’s car.
If you choose to show him compassion, Leland commits suicide, and in a cut scene that occurs
later on, you go into the restroom of a diner, look in the mirror, and watch as your mouth
transforms into one of The Hate’s mutations.
4 Outlast 2 In Outlast 2, you play investigative journalist
and camera man named Blake.
You and your wife Lynn are headed to a remote county region in Arizona in search of answers
about the mysterious murder of a young pregnant woman, but your helicopter crashes, and you
end up in the thick of a town consumed by a religious cult in the midst of a conflict
with another rival cult.
Your wife has gone missing.
The apocalypse is on its way.
On and you keep having hallucinations about your childhood at a super catholic school
in which one of your friends named Jessica was being molested by a priest who is dead
because of the abuse.
By the end of the game, you end up finding your wife, who somehow became 9 months pregnant
and is giving birth.
She dies, and the cult leader slits his own throat, you discover that all of his followers
have committed mass suicide in preparation for the apocalypse, and you and the newborn
are engulfed in light.
You wake up with Jessica, whose neck is fatally bruised, and she promises to never let you
go as you begin to pray.
3 Silent Hill 2 Silent Hill 2 has six endings in total, with
two very absurd ones, but for the purpose of this list, we’re going to talk about
the Rebirth ending of the game.
James kills Maria, and then he rows a boat with his wife’s corpse to the Church of
the Rebirth with the intention of resurrecting Mary by confronting the olds gods of Silent
Hill.
This ending can only be achieved on your second play through by obtaining the White Chrism
in Blue Creek, the Obsidian Goblet at the Historical Society, the book Lost Memories
at Texxon Gas and the book Crimson Ceremony in the reading room of the Lakeview Hotel.
On the flip side of this, there’s also a secret dog ending, so the grass is always
greener on the other side I guess?
Doki Doki Literature Club subverts the visual novel dating sim genre.
What appears to be a typical dating sim soon becomes a psychological horror story, when,
spoilers, one of the girls in the high school literature club you’ve joined turns out
to be sentient, and fully aware that she’s trapped inside of a game.
She starts manipulating the events and behaviours of the other girls in the club as a means
to pursue you – and ultimately pursue happiness – which leads to the suicides of two of
the members.
The game eventually leads you to delete her character file, and things get horrifically
existential and dark.
The games have various endings, depending on what Acts you progress to, and all are
bleak.
We recently did a full list on Doki Doki Literature Club, so if this number sparked your interest,
I definitely suggest checking out that video, too.
1 Limbo Sometimes simplicity can achieve the most
chilling of narratives.
Limbo has been hailed as an example of video games as an art form; minimal, stark and morbidly
elegant, the game presents itself to you with barely any explanation except “uncertain
of his sister’s fate, a boy enters Limbo” – you play as a small boy in search of his
sister, travelling through what appears to be purgatory.
This vagueness has led to players speculating and theorizing about the proper interpretation
of the game.
At the end, after you finish the last puzzle, the boy is thrown through a pane of glass
and back into the forest where his journey begun.
You walk a short distance until you encounter a girl who stands up when you approach, her
back still turned to you, and the game suddenly ends.
Based off of this positioning, and that this is the scene we see when we return to the
menu, that the spots where both those characters stood is where they died.
On the menu screen, the spots they ended the game in are now preoccupied by flies.
Some see this to mean that perhaps in life, they both fell from their tree house and died,
and the sister, who has no eyes, is not aware that she is dead.
There we have it friends!
Which of these endings freaked you out the most?
And which ones did we not mention do you think should have made this list?
Let us know in those comments below!
If you dug this video, please show us some love by hitting those like and subscribe buttons,
and share it with a friend!
And if you feel like more awesome videos on games, why not check out our most popular
uploads playlist that’s flashing on your screen right now?
In the meantime, thanks for watching!
I’ve been Kelly Paoli and this has been top 10 gaming.
Catch you all in the next one!