Whether the game is triple-A or indie, some stories don’t necessarily make sense. This doesn’t mean they’re badly written — they just require more interpretation than the average game. Sometimes, you’re dealing with an abstract plot with no dialogue, while other times, you’re facing a random hodge-podge of enemies or concurrent storylines in one game.
These complicated stories can either make your gameplay more interesting or entirely distracting. If you have to look up an explanation for a game’s story or ending, you know you have a perplexing plot on your hands. These are some of the best horror games with confusing storylines.
Little Nightmaresis a bit abstract, and it’s likely you’ll have no idea what’s happening until you watch an explanation video. The plot of Little Nightmares follows a young girl named Six aboard a vessel called the Maw. Six is starving and searching for food while on the ship.
The information you’re given is very limited, so you must explore the Maw while going through the motions. You’ll have run-ins with agiant janitor blinded by his own skin peeling off his face, twin chefs who’d like to cook you alive, and ravenous guests. There are many theories about who the characters are and what’s going on, but nothing is immediately clear without a deep dive.
A prequel to the first Little Nightmares, Little Nightmares 2 is another abstract horror game. This time, a young boy named Mono encounters Six, who wanders through a decrepit place called the “Pale City.” The pair aim to reach the Signal Tower, a strange source of power affecting televisions that causes the city’s residents to grow violent.
The Thin Man, an incredibly tall and thin faceless man, is pursuing you all the way, but you don’t understand why until you finish it. You’re also encountering a surgeon who crawls on walls, a teacher with a neck like a giraffe, and unruly schoolchildren. Just like the first game, Little Nightmares 2 has no dialogue, so everything is up to your interpretation.
The concurrent dual storylines are what make the plot ofOutlast 2so confusing. On one side, you’re investigating the death of a local woman in a remote area of an Arizona mountain range, and on the other, you’re experiencing flashbacks to your traumatic childhood in a Christian school.
The connections are both clear and unclear.There’s an obvious parallel between religion and its misuse by evil people, but it’s hard to understand how it is truly relevant to what Blake’s experiencing in the present day. Blake is already thinking of Jessica before he knows anything about the cultists, Scalled, and heretics, making the memories and the story seem more coincidental than intentional.
Resident Evil Village, the eighth game in the main series, has a lot going on. Every level you enter feels like a new game, and a lot of that is due to the houses in the game. It seems that the writers couldn’t settle on one thing, which makes for a plot that’s just as confusing as it is fun.
In one area you have agiant vampire woman with daughters who are made of bugs, while in another you’re dealing with werewolves, which are randomly controlled by a man who can manipulate metal with his mind. The giant baby following you around a creepy doll house and the mutated fish man living in the reservoir is just the icing on the cake.
4Silent Hill
Part of what makesSilent Hillso confusing is the lore. This story has so much depth, and plenty of players have set out to make hours-long videos to explain the plot. There are layers upon layers to this story.
A big part of this is due to the fact that the game is overflowing with symbolism, meaning that certain things may not be readily obvious without pondering a bit. If you have to play other games, especially ones succeeding it, to understand a story, you know you have a confusing journey on your hands.
3Inmost
A platformer horror game, Inmost’s plot is tricky due to the three overarching storylines you play through. There are three playable characters; a little girl, a knight, and a man. Each of their stories is somehow connected, but it takes some time before you start to realize how. Most context is given by the narrators, who reveal the connections between each story.
However, it’s not until the very end that things begin to make sense. While the narrators tell the game’s story, only one grounds it in reality. These stories are tragic and heartbreaking, and though some background is given, many players still have their own theories regarding the plot and what it all means.
2Dinner With An Owl
Dinner with an Owl is likely one of the strangest games ever. The story begins with the protagonist, Mr. Webb, visiting a business partner, Mr. Brown. Unbeknownst to Webb, his business partner is a man with an owl’s head, which is understandably shocking. Instead of anyone answering Webb’s questions about the owl in the room, Mr. Brown insists on dining with you and the other guests.
The point-and-click game is short, taking you through a recurring sequence of events with no explanation whatsoever. You never discover what business they have together or why the other characters are there. Instead, you’re forced to accept the circumstances alongside the protagonist trying to solve this psychological puzzle.
1Inhuman
For such a short game, Inhuman definitely manages to make you wonder what’s going on throughout the entire playthrough. The game begins with a short cutscene, showing a distressed woman bound on a chair with no context. Then, in the first person, you wake up, searching the house to understand where you are and why.
While you’re searching, you’ll come across random objects with no context. Letters around the house will say things like “You didn’t say that,” “Dare to do bad things, not afraid of ghosts knocking on the door,” and “I heard that you like to eat fish very much, I specially bought a lot of fish for you, oh, eat, ha, how to eat can not finish.” Maybe things are being lost in translation, but it certainly leaves you with more questions than answers.
