As we know, the genre of humorous games does not exist. Yes, there are many interesting and original representatives of this caste, but their genres are always ordinary – quests, shooters, RPGs. And yet, humor may well be the system-forming element thanks to which the game will be remembered and loved, and the game itself will be able to stand out from its competitors, even without superiority in typical quality measures such as graphics, plot, location design, world elaboration, gameplay and others.
It’s simple: people love to laugh. A good comedy, even with the smallest budget, has a greater chance of breaking the bank at the box office than an equally cheap thriller or action film.
But in order to be one of the truly funny projects, a game needs a little more than a film. It is necessary to take into account genre features – it is difficult to make humor the main element of racing games, for example. Interactivity is also something to keep in mind before trying something fun. There is a high probability that none of the players will notice the humor at all, as they will run past or skip the cutscene.
In general, making games funny is not so easy, unless, of course, you take into account the numerous bugs, the entertainment value of which the authors most likely did not count on.
However, the industry is full of creations that may well bring a smile to your face, or even a Homeric laugh. And they all do it differently.
Parody.
If desired, parody can be found almost everywhere, but some have gone much further in this regard than others.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.
A hyperbolic parody of the harsh eighties. All conceivable and inconceivable significant films of the VHS era are not so much ridiculed as elevated to cult status. Universal Soldier, Aliens, RoboCop, Terminator and others. In Bloody Dragon you can recognize many of your favorite childhood films, if, of course, your childhood passed during those years.
A trashy pretentious plot, acidic location design, salty phrases from a cool main character and the opportunity to show the notorious “fuck” – well, what could be cooler, really??
And there are a lot of banal references to modern games here. Take the local training equivalent: “Press the run button to run.”. "Enemies within range can be hit". And the main character swears, they say, how long can I walk around uselessly, give me the opportunity to kill someone.
With all this, Blood Dragon is just an addition, and the publisher clearly counted on the popularity of the original and a big name, otherwise it would hardly have risked money.
A tiny indie craft that you can complete in a couple of hours without really straining yourself. Perhaps it does not provide any special gameplay experience and does not bring pleasure to the gameplay, but it easily makes you laugh with its spontaneity. The game is a caricature, a mockery of the modern politics of large and not so large publishing houses, which so often release various useful and useless DLS.
The whole point of the action lies in the constant spending of money on add-ons. Wanna jump? Pay a coin. Need a weapon? Please purchase dls. Or maybe you need horse armor?? Of course, it’s not needed, since it’s of no use, but you’ll still have to pay money. Why, you won’t even be able to press pause without spending your own money on it.
Not without ridiculing cliches. There should be zombies in the game, because the marketing department decided so, says the game. Or a sign that says "the bad guys have gone to the East".
Unfortunately, the whole charm of the project lies in the constant attempts to make fun of the industry; it has no other advantages, except perhaps for its transience. And not everyone may like this. But to make you laugh and give an hour or two of positivity is quite.
Stubbs the Zombie.
Parody in reverse. The most popular characters from films and video games, the living dead, suddenly evoke sympathy from anyone who starts Stubbs. Zombies are bad, the apocalypse is near, exterminate them – says the movie classic. Stubbs decisively crushes stereotypes, loudly pushing Jodor-like speeches about the importance of brains for the body of the canonical zombie.
The dominant role of black humor and abundant citation of the most important zombie events in the cultural sphere, an atmosphere of total idiocy and a wonderful soundtrack – the game cannot leave almost anyone indifferent. “Stop eating me, please,” people beg for mercy, but Stubbs and his associates know no pity: the brain diet is not conducive to sentimentality.
And the opportunity to throw your own limbs, tear off your own arm and make it crawl in search of food, and recruit legions of new allies from people who have been injured and transformed into zombies is simply priceless.
In terms of game mechanics, the project turned out to be much more worthwhile than the tiny DLC Quest, which is focused on the momentary ha-ha, for example, which tells us about the advisability of releasing large titles built on parody and breaking templates. The main thing is to do them conscientiously.
The Bard’s Tale.
A hilarious parody of all https://spins-castle.co.uk/mobile-app/ role-playing games combined. What is there – cynical and politically incorrect satire. When the main character turns out to be a boorish and selfish drunk; a princess who, as usual, needs to be saved by a natural demon; NPCs for the most part are on the social bottom, devoting their free time to theft and drunkenness; and the classic plot meanders along unexpected paths and blows your mind from the very beginning – you inevitably become imbued with the spirit of general carelessness and begin to greedily absorb numerous mockeries of the usual cliches and cliches.
This game takes over with its dialogues, and the hero quarrels not only with civilians, but also with the narrator. Yes, there is one here too. The latter deliciously describes the adventures of the bard, marveling at the gold coins falling from the animals. “What’s more, once a whole chest was found in a killed rat,” the bard echoes him.
How do you like the typical starting missions, in the spirit of “kill the rat that has settled in the basement”? But for some reason no one warned that the rat is the size of a truck and can breathe fire.
Would you like to talk to a person?? No one forbids you to be blatantly rude to his face; on the contrary, you get special pleasure from such role-playing. The caustic nature of the local narrator keeps you engaged until the very end of the game, despite numerous problems in the game mechanics and game design. But jokes, songs, gags and colorful characters, coupled with the banter of the genre as a whole, bring Brian Fargo’s project to the big league.
Games can make you laugh not only through constant ridicule of everything and everyone and a well-developed plot, but also through a purely external component. Sometimes the madness happening on the screen contradicts all the laws of logic, but still causes wild delight. One of the representatives of this group can safely be called the Worms series.
When the main characters of the game become cartoonish battle worms, waving a shotgun and a banana with war cries, the world twists its finger at its temple. And then he enthusiastically plunges into this incredibly addictive thing. The turn-based strategy, with the ability to play with friends, tons of weapons and complete destructibility, is interesting in itself, but it would never have been able to achieve such wild success if not for the design and voice acting.
Starting from the second part, the worms became the most comical, cartoonish characters who are always ready to make a hilarious face and make sad jokes at your unsuccessful actions (everyone remembers the famous “stupid”?), put on a headband in the style of Liu Kang and demonstrate a karate move; and in the event of an explosion, it’s sad to cry out “oh-oh-oh” and stick your head into the ground with a cute sound.
The deadly arsenal was especially thrilling. Here you will find not only pistols, machine guns, grenades and rockets. There are grunting and exploding old ladies, flying sheep in superhero capes, exploding bananas, the holy hallelujah bomb from Monty Python, a squadron of moles falling from the sky and a monumental all-crushing donkey that causes irreversible destruction and pierces the playing area to the very foundation.
Unfortunately, the best part of the worms came out more than a decade ago, and since then the developers have not been able to get closer to their own brainchild.
Rayman Raving Rabbids.
Initially a set of mini-games, a branch from the main series, which somehow smoothly pushed Reiman himself into the background. Why? Yes because AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA©. Rabbits are not only valuable fur, but also several hours of hilarious fun and healthy laughter. Charismatic actors managed to outshine even the above-mentioned little worms. Mad creatures, armed with plungers (which in itself is unusual) jumped, ran around like crazy, sang songs, danced and screamed heart-rendingly with their signature scream.
Absolutely nothing, like a complex game, but total fun, like a feast for the eyes and ears. Charming creatures hypnotized viewers in an absolutely incredible way, riveting them to the screen, forcing you to play football with them and feed them sausages. An ideal example of how the crazy imagination of the developers managed to create a visual paradise, drawing out unremarkable gameplay and the lack of meaning as such.
Earthworm Jim.
If there are worms in the heroes of the game, then everything is fine with the latter. This statement is true not only for the above series of strategies, but also for the magnificent Jim the Worm.
The recipe for success is simple. We take the most unrealistic protagonist. An earthworm will do just fine. We dump on his head a fantastic space suit, a cloud of deadly weapons (from a pistol that shoots useless bubbles, to a cannon, the shot from which even the hero himself does not have time to see), gadgets (like the ability to use his own body as a whip) and funny enemies. Let’s draw beautiful locations and move on.
Jim is a great example of surreal humor. Everyone still remembers the wonderful dog that should never be hurt… Hamsters that can be ridden. Giant cats that made adorable pug-like faces when you covered them with tools. Grandmothers who fell from the sky, trying to knock on you with an umbrella in bonus missions. And much, much more. Well, Jim’s love for very original ways to move to the next level.
A delightful game in every way would hardly have been able to win people’s love if the developers had not added so much humor and cheerful delirium to it. Well done ©.
Do you know what madness is?? When something unimaginable happens in the game, when figurative expressions are presented as literal; when Albert Einstein invents weapons of mass destruction for the Soviet Union, and a horde of goblins helps the dark lord free the unfortunate people from a host of snickering heroes.
Dedicated to lovers of alternative history. The red alert immediately hits your brain hard. Entering the field of classic strategies, the game diligently showers you with generous streams of cranberries, brazenly and with particular cynicism distorts key historical events, and in all seriousness proposes to use the latest achievements of engineering in battle, such as the notorious “Iron Curtain”, which gives temporary invulnerability to your troops.
She desperately laughs at herself, not forgetting to please the viewer with the twists and turns of a completely delusional plot, a selection of units with amazing abilities, excellent videos with the inevitable “unexpected turns”.
With each new part of the series, the developers set a new bar for the absurdity of what was happening, while carefully trying not to go beyond the imaginary reality. In other words, you could well believe in such a structure of the world (no superhero worms and exploding bananas), but no one is safe from a brain explosion after another mission to destroy the Statue of Liberty with Kirov airships and the victorious speech of your commander-in-chief in the subsequent video insert.
The apotheosis of madness – bonus missions to destroy giant ants, which deviate a little from the invented rules, but do not interfere with believing in bears with parachutes.
Sometimes in the world of victorious good there is a place for reflection. And what could happen to the good that generously fell on the heads of the inhabitants of the world?? Will former heroes turn into an inflorescence of all known sins at once?? Will they become even greater evil, preventing the unfortunate residents from breathing?? And if they do, what’s the last thing to do?? That’s right – call evil for help.
In Overlord, everything is immediately turned on its head. An atmosphere of madness envelops this world, snickering gnomes, unicorns with the inclinations of Hannibal Lector, disgusting-looking elves and all the smart analogue of Sauron – the main character. He’s a villain. But the latter is constantly being questioned. An army of goblins who are quite ready to compete with worms or rabbits helps you solve problems. They are quite ready to give their lives for you, but it is a pity to kill them, because such a powerful charge of positive emanates from them that it is simply impossible to resist laughing.
It’s not so easy to explain what the charm of Overlord is, you just have to play both parts. After this, you will look at the usual stories about the struggle between good and evil from the other side and forever fall in love with the faithful minions.
The madness of the world of psychonauts is not based on rollicking cranberries or mocking reflections on the canonicity of the confrontation between good and evil; the game world surprises mainly with a literal interpretation of well-known metaphors. This is when emotional baggage looks like a sobbing suitcase with a screaming handbag. This is when a critic remains a critic in any situation, sarcastically mocking you at the moment of a fight with his loved one. This is when the mind of a military man is all about combat operations and anti-tank hedgehogs. When the recesses of the mind are overgrown with cobwebs, and the fruits of the imagination can be collected.
The platformer about children with psionic abilities stands out primarily for its healthy international humor, despite the fact that sometimes the latter borders on madness.
The extravagant main character Razputin will have time to see for himself and show the player so many unusual and mind-blowing things that would be enough for several similar games. If the idea of traveling through other people’s brains and what you might find there doesn’t scare you, this game is for you.
Original source.
There is a special subclass of games based on a powerful source material, which in itself is of interest. In the case of them, the developers’ task comes down to not spoiling the original and conveying its atmosphere as faithfully as possible. There is plenty of funny stuff in the world of comics and animated series, which means there are a couple of interesting game projects.
Deadpool is catastrophically unlucky with various adaptations, there is no normal appearance in movies, there are rare minor roles in cartoons, but he managed to get himself a whole game. Exactly what we managed to get, the game itself begins with our hero, sitting on a shabby chair, demanding from the developers a game about himself. How to refuse such a charismatic protagonist?? True, during development you may run out of money, which is why you will have to place it in 2D levels, but yes, these are the little things in life.
Critics were very skeptical of the final product, but the point is not that Deadpool is an unsuccessful character. It’s just that everything that happens in this crazy world is done in order to be as close to the original source as possible. A crazy but charming semi-villain constantly makes fun of everyone, masterfully breaks the fourth wall and mocks his comic book colleagues. And this aspect is executed simply perfectly. But, alas, they didn’t deliver sane gameplay and level design.
South Park: The Stick of Truth
In this case, the primary source is a scandalous, obscene animated series, in a childish satirical form, ridiculing everything that can be reached, without disdaining out-of-the-box humor, vulgarity, smut and provocations.
The game turned out to be no less politically correct – Cartman notes with surprise that he has never seen a white thief if the player chooses this class, and among the classes there is a Jew, armed with the unique skill “Jew-Jitsu”.
And that’s what South Park is all about. The script for the game was written directly by the authors of the series, so you know what to expect. Very close to the original source, with the same jokes and everything else, a parody of role-playing games. It all feels exactly like the series of the same name, but in this case the game mechanics didn’t let us down either – after all, Obsidian know and love their job.
And this is not the entire list of funny and amusing games, in fact. Just remember the great shooters about Duke Nukem and Serious Sam, the parody-spy No One Lives Forever, the funny GTA clones Total Overdose and Saints Row, as well as a whole layer of gaming culture in the form of classic quests of the eighties and nineties from such luminaries of the genre as LucasArts and Sierra Entertainment, about which you can write a separate article – there were so many of them.
Even now, on the shelves of virtual (and not so virtual) stores you can find unusual and selfless things, like the mind-blowing The Stanley Parable. A game that grew out of a simple mod for Half-Life, but managed to change our understanding of games and make a lot of fun at gaming conventions, giving a lot of positivity and positive emotions.
But despite this large number, the population of funny games is still much smaller than we would like. On the one hand this is for the better. Comedy and parody games tend to become boring, many of them lack originality and are repetitive, and a rare but apt appearance makes such projects more vibrant and desirable. After reading the article, you could understand that not all of them, moreover, have clear gameplay and design, but only a few manage to combine the power of AAA projects and a humorous basis. Which is really not surprising: publishers need money, and it’s much easier to get it in the usual ways, like constant dynamics, action, interesting online features, and perhaps large single adventures for a hundred hours. You can cram a little humor into all this, but few will dare to put it at the forefront.
However, in the world of cinema, comedies have never been high-budget projects, so there is no need to worry – there are enough funny and interesting games for our time; in extreme cases, you can always go back and get acquainted with the timeless classics.