Spoiler Warning
If it isn’t clear, there will be plenty of spoilers throughout this list. If you haven’t played these games, they’re definitely worth a try, but just be ready for endings that stick with you long after the game is turned off.
1. Soma
Starting with the arguably most-harrowing and shocking ending in gaming history, the conclusion of Soma leaves many players feeling marooned and confused. Throughout the story, you move as a consciousness in a machine, and there are hints that other versions of you are left behind as you make your way through the underwater encampment. However, just as you’re about to upload yourself into the ark, you find yourself still stuck in your robot body. It turns out a version of you did in fact escape, just not the version you’re stuck in.
2. FEAR 2
In this action-packed FPS, you wouldn’t expect the conclusion to involve being trapped in a sealed chamber with a supernatural being. Turns out being alone with a monstrous woman in a tight space is a recipe for disaster as it is later revealed that she is pregnant. Huh?
3. Bloodborne
Bloodborne is all about putting you in the hot seat as you try to understand the story by exploring the world. There is very little exposition, and instead you need to reach item descriptions and study scenery only to realize at the end that you’re a puppet caught in a cosmic horror about a birth gone wrong.
4. Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 has multiple endings for players to uncover, with the most notable being the In Water ending. In this ending, we learn that the character James is subconsciously controlling the world and it is a reflection of what he did to his wife.
5. Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite is an FPS that has you playing as hero Booker DeWitt as he rescues Elizabeth from a mysterious force. It’s later revealed that Booker himself is the antagonist and that he is actually the same person split across different realities. And Elizabeth? Turns out that’s his daughter.
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6. Limbo
As you start playing through Limbo, the dark atmospheric puzzle-platformer has you quickly catching onto the macabre nature of the silent world around you. It’s only as you navigate through the levels that you realize you’re looking for your missing sister, only for the story to end with you waking up again in an equally bleak world.
7. The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead is a Telltale game that follows Lee Everett as you make the right choices to protect yourself and a young girl named Clementine from a harrowing apocalyptic world. Your choices directly determine the conclusion of the story, but one of the biggest twists is having to give yourself up so that Clementine can endure and survive the world alone.
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8. The Evil Within
In this survival horror game, you play as Sebastian Castellanos as he tries to differentiate reality from fiction. The lines of which only blur further when it’s revealed that you’re trapped in a simulation and that everything you thought was real might just be a lie.
9. The Witch’s House
In the survival horror puzzle game, you play as a young girl named Viola who needs to find her way out of a scary mansion. The ending reveals that you are in fact the witch’s daughter and it’s actually you who is responsible for all the nightmarish happenings in the house—not the witch.
10. Spec Ops: The Line
In this third-person game, you play a U.S. military man who is sent to Dubai and must uncover the mysteries behind the city’s fall. It is later revealed that you have been hallucinating the entire time and are actually the one responsible for numerous atrocities.
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11. Omori
Omori is a turn-based RPG in which you play as a boy named Omori who must navigate a dream world and a dark nightmarish one. It is later revealed that these worlds are coping mechanisms as Omori is actually struggling with grief of his own due to the loss of a loved one.
12. Doki Doki Literature Club
This game lures you in with a false sense of safety, as it appears to be a high school dating sim where you join a literature club. However, it is later revealed that one of the girls is actually a self-aware intelligence that knows she is in a video game and will trap both herself, the other characters, and the players in her own simulation.
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13. Half-Life
Half-Life is another FPS where you play as Gordon Freeman, a scientist trying to combat alien creatures after an experiment gone wrong. However, it is later revealed that Freeman's actions were manipulated by a more powerful source. No matter what you do, your character is condemned by the end.
14. Signalis
In this survival horror game, you play Elster, a technician searching for her partner in a space station. However, it is later revealed that both Elster and her partner are part of a failed experiment and are caught in a never-ending loop of rebirth in space.
15. Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain is an interactive thriller game where you must uncover the identity of a criminal. To the surprise of no one, it is revealed that one of the characters themselves is the criminal, and depending on your choices, the bitterest outcome is already set in stone.
16. Braid
Braid is a puzzle-platformer where you take over the life of Tim, who is on the quintessential quest to save a princess from a big baddie. However, it is revealed that Tim himself is the antagonist terrorizing the princess. The game serves as a metaphor for obsessive behavior.
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17. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
In this first-person mystery, you play as a paranormal detective as you investigate and hopefully solve the mysterious disappearance of a young boy named Ethan. Naturally, it is revealed that Ethan never really existed, and he actually passed long before the events of the game ever occurred.
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18. Dead Space
In this survival horror game, you explore a mining ship overrun by necromorphs. You play Isaac Clarke as you search for an escape, only to later learn that the girlfriend he kept having visions of this entire time was no more than a hallucination who was gone way before the events of the game occurred.
19. The Last of Us
The Last of Us quickly blossomed from a game to a talked-about sequel to a TV show in its own right. However, the first game really plucked on heartstrings when it was revealed that the little girl, Ellie, who travels with hardened survivor Joel, actually possesses the cure to the virus. However, it’s only if she passes that the world can be saved, but Joel is unable to make this sacrifice.
20. Bioshock
The original Bioshock also left players stunned as they first explored the underwater city of Rapture. You play as Jack through this dystopian world, only to later learn that you were actually being brainwashed to obey a certain command throughout the entire game. Turns out you were little more than a puppet on a string.
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