Over decades, video games have explored nearly every conceivable genre: from popular genres like war stories and science fiction to offbeat genres like romantic comedy and musicals. However, the genre that video games most often seem to struggle with is comedy. Many games attempt to hit comedy gold, but at least as many fall flat as find success.
Video games' struggle with comedy may be due to a few factors: lack of writers with comedy experience, desperation for laughs, or the complexity of timing jokes in an interactive medium. However, the games that overcome these hurdles and succeed can be funnier than most modern comedy movies.
10 Fall Guys Is All Colorful Slapstick
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout was a surprise hit when it came out in the summer of 2020. The addicting Battle Royale gameplay and the ridiculous title characters made the game a big success for streamers and a delight for gamers of all ages.
The best thing about the comedy of Fall Guys is that it largely comes organically from the players themselves. The Guys are so clumsy to control and can get hurled across the screen in so many unpredictable ways that hilarious situations will happen without any prior planning from the developers. It can get competitive, but even players who lose usually laugh.
9 Katamari Damacy Is Surreal Humor At Its Best
Katamari Damacy and its sequels make no attempt to hide how ridiculous their premise is. The player controls a small, oddly-shaped alien prince whose goal in every level is to roll a giant ball made of as many objects in the environment as possible.
Between missions, the player is treated to an array of bizarre skits and nonsensical characters whose pure and earnest weirdness will leave them laughing in disbelief. The sometimes messy physics of the Katamari that the prince has to roll can cause players some frustration, but it can also be chaotically hilarious.
8 The Outer Worlds Is Satirical Brilliance
The Outer Worlds follows in the footsteps of Fallout's capitalist satire, unsurprising since the developer, Obsidian, also worked on one of Fallout's most celebrated installments: New Vegas. However, while Fallout tends to waver between dark comedy and serious sci-fi drama, The Outer Worlds is a goofy parody of late capitalism and ineffective governments from beginning to end.
One way for players to get the most comedy out of The Outer Worlds is to set the protagonist's intelligence as low as possible. This turns the protagonist into a hilariously dense character and opens up dialogue paths that will confuse and infuriate the NPCs. It also opens up an extra ending where the main character decides to fly their ship directly into the sun for no apparent reason.
7 The Secret Of Monkey Island Introduced A Comedic Legend
Most modern-day gamers would assume that a game about a young man who wants to be a pirate would be a third-person action title or an action RPG. In 1990, however, The Secret of Monkey Island took that storyline and turned it into a silly point-and-click adventure in which the only combat is based entirely on who can come up with the best insults.
The Monkey Island games are consistently very funny and endlessly quotable, but Secret deserves credit for establishing some of the series' best gags. Stan's used vessels, the vegetarian cannibals, and the pun-based recipes are all jokes that would come back throughout Monkey Island's long history.
6 Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Is A Fun Game For Internet People
In the early 2000s, there was no animated web series as beloved and strange as Strong Bad Emails, short videos released weekly at Homestarrunner.com. Many fans who grew up with Strong Bad, The Cheat, Homestar, Strong Sad, and others can still recite the classic episodes by heart.
The height of Strong Bad's commercial success came in 2008 with the release of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, a point-and-click adventure from Telltale Games. The game consisted of five episodes released monthly. Some humor relied on the player's knowledge of the website, but the games turned out to have surprisingly clever puzzles and loads of new jokes.
5 Octodad: Dadliest Catch Is All About Fatherhood
Octodad: Dadliest Catch has an absurd premise; even Pixar would struggle to make a narrative out of it. The game is about a suburban father who is also an octopus. As the titular Octodad, the player must find ways to spend quality time with his family while keeping the neighbors from learning his true nature.
The wacky premise is made wackier by the beautifully inconvenient movement system. The player switches between controlling different tentacles on Octodad's body, trying to maneuver him while still disguising the tentacles as arms and legs. The goal is to complete each stage without causing a disturbance, but players might find it more fun to forgo progression in favor of spreading chaos.
4 The Hitman Trilogy Is Grim And Hilarious
The first installment of IO Interactive's Hitman franchise was released in 2000, but most fans agree that the series truly hit its stride in 2016 with the first game of what is now called the World of Assassination trilogy. Hitman, Hitman 2, and Hitman 3 all feature sprawling levels with an array of targets and an endless supply of side challenges for each map.
From an outside perspective, Hitman's stern protagonist, violent iconography, and played-straight cutscenes might give the impression that the games are taking themselves seriously. But once players enter the missions themselves, the games turn into fish-out-of-water comedies where the ridiculously self-serious Agent 47 uses exploding golf balls and bananas to murder his targets in elaborate fashion, much to the bafflement of confused bystanders.
3 The Portal Games Are Comedic Masterpieces
The Portal games are some of the funniest games ever made despite only featuring two characters who actually speak dialogue – not counting the cores and sentry turrets, who only have a few repeated phrases. The MVP of the Portal games is undoubtedly GLaDOS, the temperamental AI whose passive-aggressive quips and poor understanding of human emotions provide the game with its comedic spine.
Voice actor Ellen McLain deserves much of the credit for Portal's humor. Her performance mimics a robotic monotone with perfect accuracy, but she allows GLaDOS just enough non-robotic emotion to let just the right amount of irritation, arrogance, or amusement into her lines.
2 Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse Is Surprisingly Emotional
The classic Lucasarts adventure game Sam and Max Hit the Road is widely recognized as one of the pinnacles of comedy in gaming, but the Sam and Max games developed by Telltale Games should not be overlooked. Telltale's episodic series debuted in 2006 and concluded in 2010 with the final episode of The Devil's Playhouse.
What stands out about The Devil's Playhouse is that it concludes with an emotional and heartfelt ending in a surprising turn from a game franchise known for being irreverent and cartoonish. The Devil's Playhouse treats certain character deaths seriously, and Sam and Max's friendship has never felt more like true love. It's a funny game, but the biggest surprise is the drama.
1 The Untitled Goose Game Is Wonderful And Simple Comedy
The Untitled Goose Game could not be a less likely blockbuster. The player controls an average goose who sets out to complete his to-do list, which is full of basic tasks that only make sense in a goose's mind. Despite the simple premise and a pleasant-but-hardly-breathtaking art style, the game was a huge hit when it debuted in 2019, beating digital sales of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, released in the same week.
The charming chaos that the goose creates in the unnamed village is made funnier by the unclear motivations of the goose itself. Players hoping to learn why the goose needs to steal a young boy's glasses will find themselves out of luck. The goose's mysterious and hilarious nature has made it a video game legend in its own time, and fans still eagerly await a sequel.