Games Where You Don’t Know You’re The Villain

Some games, like Undertale, the Infamous series, and the original Bioshock, allow players to choose between good or evil actions. Other games allow players to believe that they are a force for good in the world, before pulling the rug out from underneath them and showing them that they have been playing as the villain all along.

Some games do this masterfully, leading players to question their entire experience within the game world and making second playthroughs even more intriguing once the player knows the true nature of their role in the story. Here are some of the best games where the player character is revealed to be an antagonist or a force of evil in the game world.

8

Layers of Fear

An Artist Who Sees The World In Grisly Red

Layers of Fear introduces players to a haunted house where they take on the role of the Painter, a self-obsessed, struggling artist who is possessed by the compulsion to complete his magnum opus. As the player uncovers environmental secrets, they begin to learn how the Painter’s self-destructive behaviors tore his family apart — both emotionally and physically.

Players uncover the heartbreaking truth that the Painter neglected his wife in her time of need, culminating in her untimely death. In a gruesome twist, he is now using her decomposing body parts to finish his masterpiece. The Painter may find some peace at the end of the story by choosing to acknowledge the irreversible pain he has caused his family.

7

Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs

The Story Of A Man Who Engineers His Own Misery

Oswald Mandus, an idealistic Victorian businessman, returns a changed man after taking his children on a trip to an ancient Aztec temple. He wakes after an amnesia-inducing illness to discover that both of his sons are missing.

Oswald slowly recovers his memories and learns that the trip cursed him with visions of the 20th century, where he saw unimaginable horrors, including the horrific deaths of his sons during the First World War. To prevent their inevitable agony, he slaughtered them before returning to London with a mission to prevent all future human suffering — by bringing about our extinction.

6

Mighty Milky Way

This Adorable Game Has A Monstrous Secret

• Platform: Nintendo DSi
• Release date: May 9, 2011
• Developer: WayForward
• Genre(s): Action, puzzle

Little green Luna is an adorable alien on a secret mission to explore the stars and cause some candy-coated carnage, blowing up the odd planet as she goes. Whilst the game markets itself as an adorable space-based adventure similar to games like Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime, players will in fact discover that Luna is a selfish, vicious little monster with one goal in mind: to vex her ex-lover, a T. rex from planet Earth. The game ends with the player blowing Earth to smithereens before the dark truth is revealed — oops.

5

Cry Of Fear

A Young Man Must Face The Demons Of His Own Making

Cry of Fear is a fantastic psychological horror game with several endings, reminiscent of the Silent Hill series. In one of these endings, the protagonist, Simon, gives in to his inner demons and becomes a monster himself, killing his love interest, Sophie, as well as his therapist, giving in to his anger at his lot in life.

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The game’s true ending is much more hopeful. Simon realizes that he is trapped in a torture chamber of his own creation and confronts his inner demons, facing reality and finding some semblance of peace in an imperfect world and showing everyone facing the darkness that there is always a chance to move towards the light.

4

We Happy Few

A Tale About Terrible People Seeking Forgiveness

In We Happy Few, three people with muddy pasts must navigate an alternate dystopian history. In this timeline, the allied powers lost World War Two, and Brits turned to mind-altering happy pills to cope.

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As two of these characters reject the medication in favor of harsh reality, they learn the truth about themselves. Prim-and-proper Arthur remembers how he tricked his vulnerable brother into boarding a train to Germany, while wastrel Ollie learns that he sold out his neighbor’s daughter to the enemy in an act of petty revenge. The two characters fight against the system to redeem themselves, ultimately earning some closure.

3

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

No Evil Deed Goes Unpunished

The second Amnesia entry on this list sees players step into the shoes of Daniel, a young archaeologist who awakens in a dark castle to find himself with one instruction: to kill his host, Alexander of Brennenburg.

Throughout his terrifying adventure, Daniel learns the agonizing truth that he is far from an innocent man. In fact, he is guilty of great evil, having previously done Brennenburg’s bidding by torturing and murdering innocent people to extract a powerful substance known as vitae from their tormented bodies. Daniel can redeem himself in the eyes of the player by ensuring the destruction of the mysterious Alexander.

2

Mouthwashing

An Outer-Space Tale That Leaves A Bad Taste In Players’ Mouths

Mouthwashing finds players trapped on a crashed cargo ship drifting through space, with no hope of rescue and nothing but bottles of mouthwash to sustain the fracturing crew.

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The story takes an even darker turn as players play through the previous days’ events. They ultimately discover that the character they’ve spent most of the game playing, Jimmy, is a selfish monster who intentionally crashed the ship to hide the fact that he assaulted the only woman on the crew. It’s a bold, gut-wrenching story that does its sensitive subject matter justice.

1

Bioshock Infinite

The Circle Must Be Broken

Gamers will be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful game world than Bioshock Infinite’s Columbia, a city in the skies led by a tyrannical cult leader named Father Comstock. Players fight against the regime as Booker Dewitt, only for it to be revealed at the end of the game that Comstock is Booker from an alternate timeline.

Booker sacrifices himself by allowing his daughter Elizabeth to drown him at the moment when Comstock was born, during a baptism ritual. It’s a poignant scene which leaves players reflecting on the value of self-sacrifice, accompanied by a truly heartbreaking soundtrack.

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