Sim Games That Are Existential Nightmares

Simulation games are hugely popular because they let you experience different lives and scenarios. However, sometimes things can go hilariously wrong. When developers try to realistically recreate complicated systems, players often find ways to push the boundaries and break the game’s logic. You might start trying to learn how jet engines work, and quickly end up launching tiny scientists into space, where they unfortunately don’t survive.

It’s unlikely the game creators deliberately set out to make players doubt their own morals or feel small in the universe. However, the games still manage to create a truly unsettling sense of existential dread.

BeamNG.drive

Liminal spaces and unforgiving physics

BeamNG.Drive is a wonderfully chaotic physics sandbox where you can bend, crash, and generally destroy things in incredibly realistic ways. Players can build elaborate race tracks and inventive vehicles, or just create total mayhem. With the addition of community-made modifications, the possibilities – and potential for disaster – are endless.

The base game feels strangely empty and quiet. While some areas are beautifully detailed, others are vast and barren, with endless empty space. If these lonely landscapes don’t bother you, the unsettling presence of the crash test dummies – and the often brutal ways players treat them – might.

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator

The terrible march of existential horror

What other game lets you pit a single, unsuspecting musician against a whole army of snake-throwers, watching them bravely (and foolishly) march towards defeat? Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a wonderfully silly game that creates unbelievably chaotic battles in a simple, yet hilarious way.

In the game, players build armies that clash against each other. Different types of troops move into battle and attack in unique ways – archers fire arrows, hobbits try to overwhelm the enemy with numbers (though not very effectively), and powerful Zeus units unleash lightning. Some units are much stronger than others, and the game doesn’t shy away from letting you sacrifice weaker, comical units, like a lute player, against formidable opponents like a god of thunder.

Cities: Skylines

Are the citizens there just to suffer?

Cities: Skylines is a complex and realistic game where you build and manage your own city. Players can focus on creating successful, bustling metropolises, idyllic utopian communities, or, with the Natural Disasters expansion, even challenging cities constantly threatened by catastrophes.

Even without intentionally trying to ruin things, it’s surprisingly easy to create a terrible city for your residents in Cities: Skylines. You might unexpectedly face widespread disease, soaring crime, or a massive city-wide fire – and that’s just part of the game.

Two Point Hospital

How much is a human life worth?

Two Point Hospital can feel like a charming hospital management game, or a surprisingly critical look at how healthcare businesses operate – it really depends on how you play. You can easily create a stressful environment, whether you intend to or not, through things like poor staff treatment and strange illnesses that hint at deeper issues. The game puts you in a position to decide whether to heal patients or let their conditions worsen.

Patients who pass away in the ward don’t simply lie still. Instead, they rise from their beds, get dressed in the changing room, and then fall to the floor. To make matters worse, those who die within the hospital remain as ghosts, wandering the halls and leaving behind a ghostly residue.

Planet Zoo

Maybe the player should be in the zoo

Zoo simulator games are uniquely capable of prompting players to think about ethics and what it means to be human. Planet Zoo especially makes you consider who should be managing animal care, and even whether humans themselves belong in captivity. It’s surprisingly easy to unintentionally create terrible living conditions for the endangered animals in your care.

While animal welfare is a focus in Planet Zoo, the game also highlights issues with how employees are treated and how guests can get stuck. It’s surprisingly easy, even with good intentions, to create a park that disregards both human and animal rights.

The Long Drive

Driving the player to road madness

Okay, so The Long Drive is scary, yeah, but honestly, the real horror isn’t the monsters. It’s how unbelievably lonely it is. You’re just driving, and driving, on this endless road with basically nothing around – just creepy creatures and… a blow-up doll. I went in thinking it’d be a strange survival game, but it quickly turned into something way deeper and messed with my head. It’s not just about surviving, it’s about… well, it’s an existential crisis on wheels, honestly.

The game’s environments are created randomly, leading to vastly different experiences. Some players might find themselves in mildly spooky, quiet areas, while others are thrown into truly unsettling and desolate worlds. It’s all down to chance, much like life itself.

Gas Station Simulator

Nothing creates existential terror like isolation.

Imagine driving through a strange, ever-changing world – a digital limbo, if you will. Why not pull into the creepiest gas station you’ve ever seen, reminiscent of the atmosphere in Kentucky Route Zero? While the game has unsettling moments, it’s the strangely silent people who appear and vanish in a blink that will probably really unnerve you.

The game features odd things customers say, and the world itself tells unsettling stories through its details. It’s the kind of experience where it’s often unclear if the creepy atmosphere is intentional or just a result of glitches and imperfections.

Cooking Simulator

The loneliness of a hospitality purgatory.

Imagine being stuck in a kitchen, endlessly preparing food for customers you never see and who keep asking for more. It feels like a bleak, never-ending cycle – a harsh reflection of modern work. It’s no surprise that in the game Cooking Simulator, many players choose to dramatically ‘end’ their chef’s career with a gas oven.

While later updates and expansions have added more to the game’s world, some strange things still don’t make sense. Like, why are the viewers on the in-game cooking show made of cardboard? And what’s the deal with being able to activate Super Hot Mode? It’s all pretty weird.

Kerbal Space Program

Sacrifice them for science!

In Kerbal Space Program, you’re tasked with making progress in space exploration, even if it means taking big risks. Surprisingly, the game puts you in charge of a space program with inexperienced leadership, and you’ll be sending lots of cheerful Kerbal astronauts on missions they probably won’t survive – much like sending expendable units into battle in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator.

In Kerbal Space Program, you’re essentially sending little characters to their likely deaths in the name of science. The game creates a strange power imbalance that can make you question what you’re doing – and even your own existence – if you stop to think about it too much.

The Sims 2

Hell is other people.

I’ve played a lot of games, but it’s rare to actually deal with death as a character, or to see a family really crumble in a meaningful way. The Sims games can be surprisingly scary if you let them, but The Sims 2? That one had some seriously strange, unpredictable things happen – some of the weirdest events I’ve ever seen in a game, honestly.

Whether it’s Sims repeating strange, negative behaviors or the unsettling appearance of the cursed Social Bunny when a Sim is deeply unhappy, The Sims 2 often feels like a bizarre and disturbing dream. This tendency toward surreal, unsettling moments continued in later games and has become a quirky, well-loved part of what makes the series unique.

2026-01-19 02:38