- 13 minutes ago
Some developers just want to watch you suffer! We count down the video games that were designed to punish you for just buying them. From the intentionally awful Meme Run and Don't Buy This, to the wonky controls of Surgeon Simulator, Getting Over It, and Manual Samuel.
And yeh, we talk about The Day Before.
And yeh, we talk about The Day Before.
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TVTranscript
00:00Most video games are of course intended to entertain the player and get those dopamine
00:04receptors firing off in all directions to ensure they remain glued to the screen for
00:08as long as possible.
00:10But not all games have quite such lofty goals in mind, sometimes there's a clear active
00:14desire on the part of the developers to make players suffer and even punish them for the
00:18very act of opening their wallet and buying what they had to offer.
00:22Because I'm Sy, this is WhatCulture and these are 10 video games that punished you for buying
00:28them.
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00:42Just scan the QR code in this video or click the link below and it's all yours.
00:4710.
00:48Meme Run
00:48Let's kick this list off with a game that's unabashedly a troll in video game form.
00:53I mean heck look at it, there is a troll face staring at you the entire time.
00:57It is of course 2014's Wii U exclusive endless runner, Meme Run.
01:03As its title suggests, this runner is meme themed with the player navigating a series of
01:08memed packed levels.
01:10Pre-release sentiment criticized the game's evident low quality prompting 20 year old developer
01:15Jordan Shewitt to respond that the game itself was a feat of trolling before dubbing it Game
01:19of the year 2014 and I suppose he is entitled to that opinion but I don't think Jeff Keighley
01:25is going to be talking about this game anytime soon.
01:28Basically the developer made an intentionally poor game for the lols which in tandem with
01:33universally poor reviews really only left players to blame if they dared to shell out 5 bucks
01:38to play it.
01:39But they didn't have long to do so as Meme Run was removed from the Nintendo eShop less
01:43than 3 months after release when the creator of the troll face meme artist Carlos Ramirez
01:49filed a copyright takedown claim.
01:52Ah, what a shame.
01:539.
01:54Don't Buy This
01:55When a game's title straight up tells you not to buy it you can't really fault anyone else
02:00when you fork over your hard earned moolah for a disc full of near literal poo poo.
02:05Case in point we have Don't Buy This a 1985 collection of to quote the box art
02:10five of the worst games ever.
02:13Publisher Firebird decided to take the very worst games submitted to them for consideration
02:17and bundle them into an anthology on the ZX Spectrum priced at around £2.50
02:22admittedly only about a tenner in today's money.
02:25All the same anyone miffed by the end result being nothing more than a low effort collection
02:29of the naffest games imaginable couldn't really complain to Firebird
02:33who not only used the game's awfulness as a marketing hook
02:36but even encouraged players to pirate the anthology instead.
02:40Hilariously Don't Buy This pulled off a reverse psychology coup
02:44by becoming a major commercial success for the company
02:46making it slightly baffling that a planned sequel with working titles including
02:51Don't Buy This Too
02:52Don't Buy This Again
02:53and Don't Buy This Either
02:54never materialising.
02:568.
02:57Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
02:59Bennett Foddy made a name for himself developing maddeningly difficult games such as Quop and
03:04Grip which relished in their own unintuitive control schemes
03:08but Foddy well and truly outdid himself with 2017's Getting Over It.
03:13The game casts players in the role of a man residing inside a large metal pot for some reason
03:17who must use a sledgehammer for some reason to propel himself up a steep treacherous mountain
03:22and reach the highest point again for some reason.
03:26For starters the controls are intentionally finicky making it incredibly easy to misjudge or mistime
03:32movement and to rub salt into the wound the game has no checkpoints meaning you need to start from
03:37the beginning every time you fail.
03:40Oh in case that's not bad enough Foddy himself waxes philosophical about disappointment and missed
03:45opportunities whenever you screw up which really just makes the experience that much more emotionally
03:50draining. Sure getting over it does have fans and it's a fun experience for a short while but
03:55unless you're a sublimely patient human being you're really just forking over cash to become
04:00intensely angry.
04:027.
04:02Airplane Mode
04:03In case you haven't had enough of being shot through the skies in a tin can full of other
04:08people's farts in real life Airplane Mode lets you repeat the experience in digital form.
04:13The game's thoroughly sarcastic Steam page description says that it delivers all the thrills of a real-time
04:19six-hour commercial airline flight in coach which really says everything that needs to be said.
04:25This one seems coincidentally topical with all the talk at least right now about raw dogging flights
04:30have you seen this going on long flights and kind of sort of bragging that you didn't use the in
04:36-flight
04:36entertainment and you just sat there bored in your own brain for hours at a time well now you can
04:42do
04:42that digitally don't even need to buy a ticket you can raw dog flights at home.
04:47Because yes this is indeed an extremely boring simulation of what it's like to take a long-haul
04:52flight with quote exciting events including random incidences of turbulence busted wi-fi
04:57screaming babies and delays all the good stuff.
05:01Quite why even the most die-hard aviation enthusiasts would subject themselves to this and pay for the
05:05pleasure no less is anyone's guess. For extra insanity why not load it up on your steam deck or portable
05:11gaming device of choice while taking an actual flight. Number six the stroke the animal franchise
05:17developed by the shamelessly monikered outfit game achievements limited the stroke the animal
05:22franchise is a collection of no effort games in which you pay a few bucks to stroke an animal.
05:27Hamsters, dogs, hedgehogs, snakes, parrots just repeatedly hammer the x button and that's it.
05:33In reality as the developer's name clarifies the games are basically paid platinum trophies in thinly veiled
05:39disguise. All of the trophies involve nothing more than pressing a single button in order to stroke
05:44your animal of choice and you'll unlock trophies at regular intervals until you hit 2000 strokes
05:49at which point you'll pop the plat. Because this takes less than 10 minutes stroke the animal as a
05:55franchise has one of the highest trophy completion rates in the playstation ecosystem. And yeah because
06:00these titles are so transparently offering platnums for pay many are baffled that sony haven't
06:05stepped in and removed them from the service. But the thing is you see the developer TJ Gardner has
06:10raked in 280 000 pounds from the games and tony takes a 30% cut of that which amounts to
06:17about 84 000
06:18pounds for very little work so you could probably understand why they're still available. All the same
06:24these games are basically mocking players and their timeless fixation with hoovering up digital trophies
06:29making them a few bucks poorer while supporting their compulsive behavior.
06:34Number five Rock Simulator. Here's a game so utterly pointless it was even widely accused of being a
06:39secret crypto miner upon release. But alas Rock Simulator is precisely what it says on the tin,
06:45a game where you get to see what it feels like to be a rock across a series of picturesque
06:48locations
06:49and that's it. Progression is achieved by just sitting there and soaking in the sights. Sit there long enough
06:55and you'll level up which will earn you currency to buy in-game skins. That's really all the gameplay
07:01boils down to in Rock Simulator because of course you're a rock so why would you be able to do
07:06anything
07:06else? Even accepting that the game can be bought for a pittance all you're doing is giving money to an
07:11anti-game that laughs at the very notion of exchanging your hard-earned dough for an actual gaming experience.
07:17And unlike stroking animals getting to level 5000 in Rock Simulator and getting all the achievements along the
07:24way takes a lot longer so god help you if that's what you set out to do. Number four Manual
07:31Samuel.
07:32Though absolutely one of the better games on this list in that it's an honest to god attempt at making
07:37an actual game, Manual Samuel feels no less torturous as a result. Players take control of Samuel who makes
07:44a deal with death that he'll be given a reprieve of his demise if he can manually control his body
07:49for
07:4924 hours. By which I mean you are now aware of where your tongue is in your mouth you're welcome
07:55I'm so sorry. Players are left to perform every mundane action possible blinking breathing and so
08:01on and this quickly becomes nothing short of infuriating. In case it somehow isn't clear the
08:07game is 100% in on the joke and Manual Samuel is clearly made with enough passion and artfulness that
08:13one can't simply deem it a lazy cash-in like other games mentioned. However the artificial difficulty
08:20of its unwieldy controls still makes it a hair pulling slog to get through even at just two hours
08:26long which it seems is probably the point of the entire experience. Number three My Summer Car.
08:33My Summer Car is the game to test how much you love automobiles because it'll push all but the most
08:39devoted of petrol heads to the frayed fringes of their sanity. The basic goal is to build a car from
08:44scratch but the game offers virtually zero assistance in guiding the player. Yes you'll need to figure out
08:50everything yourself or more likely just use a guide but that's before we even get into the tuning and
08:56maintenance of said car which is a cluster migraine waiting to happen in its own right. Though the mind-boggling
09:02attention to detail on offer is undeniably laudable players are less likely to delight in the human
09:08life management aspects as you also need to keep the player alive by feeding and watering them. And so
09:14for anyone who heard the name My Summer Car and expected a nostalgic easy-going car building sim this
09:19is basically the exact opposite of that. Number two The Day Before. It stopped short of calling itself
09:26Don't Buy This but the day before may as well have been called Red Flag Simulator given the multitude of
09:32pre-release indications that the open world extraction shooter wouldn't meet expectations. While it earned a
09:38wealth of buzz online after being revealed in early 2021 there was much skepticism from the general
09:44games press and players alike that the small dev team would be able to deliver on the promises of
09:49its post-apocalyptic MMO ambitions. With numerous release delays and developer Fantastic's vagueness about
09:55precisely what the game actually was, some even speculated that The Day Before was an outright scam.
10:01Well it did turn out to be a game when it finally released in early access last December but it
10:06did still
10:07feel like a scam. The title was panned for its basic gameplay and overabundance of bugs. Basically
10:13the developer bit off way more than they could chew and within four days of release the day before was
10:18removed from sale with fantastic closing shop. Thankfully everyone who bought the game was
10:23automatically refunded on Steam ensuring that its legacy is to basically serve as a slap on the wrist
10:28to the many who insist on blindly pre-ordering things. If you did lose your money though you really
10:33only have yourself to blame given how obviously the game was going to fail.
10:38And number one, Surgeon Simulator. Surgeon Simulator might sound like a neat idea on paper but in
10:44reality it's designed solely to skyrocket the blood pressure of anyone who dares to play it. Surgeon
10:49Simulator is far from a rigorous scientifically sound simulation of medical practice. Trauma center but
10:55realistic this ain't. In the vein of something like Octodad or Goat Simulator it's instead a joke game in which
11:01the intentionally terrible controls make it an absolute nightmare to get anything done. It began
11:07life as a game jam project produced for a laugh in just 48 hours but in light of the rapturous
11:13response
11:13to its debut developers bossa studios fleshed it out into a full title. Despite the obvious comedic
11:19value of the game's style and the game did explode in terms of streaming, for anyone who threw down cash
11:25hoping to experience some kind of serious-minded medically accurate simulation this was nothing short of a
11:31colossal letdown. Plus given that Steam refunds weren't introduced until two years after its release
11:36miffed players couldn't even get their money back.
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