There are plenty of games out there that can touch our hearts and take us on deep emotional journeys. However, sometimes when we sit down after a long day of work, we don’t want to interrogate the depths of the human soul, we just want something to cheer us up.
Games can cater to that too. Plenty of great games have their fair share of comedic moments, but what’s truly exceptional is when comedy is baked into the essence of a video game. Sometimes this means implementing an upbeat story to carry the gameplay, but sometimes the comedy is the gameplay, which can make for unique experiences.
These are the best comedy games to give you a giggle.
Bully
Rockstar games always have a comedic edge to them, and while you may get a good laugh out of Trevor going off the rails in GTA 5, it can be a bit over the top, and often quite dark. Bully is the best cure for this because everything is played with a much lighter tone. It’s set in a school, which means you never get bogged down in the dark underbelly of society, the excellent joke writing is allowed to shine through on its own merit.
Saints Row
To pick one game in the series would be doing a disservice to all of them. Where series like GTA try to stay grounded in realism, all bets are off in Saints Row, which helps have a bit of something for everyone. Do you prefer whacky scenarios in a grounded gang-war plot? Then Saints Row 2 will be best. Do you want off-the-chain sci-fi silliness? Saints Row 4 is where you should look.
The Secret of Monkey Island
Point-and-click adventures are a great genre to inject comedy, as the relatively laid-back gameplay gives you ample opportunity to create setups and punchlines that the player will never see coming. There are a handful of great games from this era, but Monkey Island is definitely the best, with so many memorable sequences that we won’t dare spoil.
Untitled Goose Game
For one shining moment in 2019, Untitled Goose Game seemed to be all anyone could talk about, and it’s easy to see why. The premise is eye-catching and the comedy has this comforting jovial nature to it. Goose Game doesn’t take itself very seriously, and that makes it a joy to play around in, plus there are some clever puzzling mechanics in there too.
Psychonauts
Arguably Double Fine at their very best, Psychonauts makes the most of its weird premise. This action platformer sees you dive into the minds of various people, seeing the wild worlds inside. The settings are memorable, the writing is brilliant, all building to tell interesting stories about what makes these over-the-top characters who they are.
There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension
Many games try to play around with meta-humor – using video games to make fun of video games – but the ones that succeed are the ones that ironically show true love and understanding of what makes them great.
There Is No Game is a puzzle point-and-click adventure that works as a send-up of various genres and business practices, but it’s told through a brilliant lens. You see, you’ll have to spend quite a lot of time on the main menu because the narrator doesn’t want you to play the game, and he’ll spend the entire time convincing you to quit. It’s fiendishly clever and utterly hilarious all in one package.
Fable
Maybe it’s just my Britishness showing, but everything about Fable is so endearingly funny. Despite the baggage of the games falling short of what was promised, they’re still regarded as some of the best RPGs ever because of the series’ wonderful world and memorable characters that populate it. In what other game can you see Stephen Fry play a fiendish aristocrat with no self-awareness? Exactly, none.
The Henry Stickmin Collection
More meta-humor, but where There Is No Game uses it to deconstruct video games, Henry Stickmin shoves in as many references and jokes to gaming history as it possibly can. They’re not lazy references either, every joke makes pitch-perfect use of the game it’s based on that any fan of that series would genuinely enjoy. There’s not a moment wasted and it’ll keep you laughing from start to finish.
Portal
Once again, picking one Portal game is impossible, as both are brilliantly funny games. Both are excellent puzzle games, but the jokes are what you’ll remember. The first game uses Glados as a quirky and untrustworthy narrator that you’re able to laugh at while still remaining slightly scared of. Then the second game leans into that quirky nature, introducing new characters to play around with, creating some great dynamics.
The Stanley Parable
The Stanley Parable is the funniest game you will ever play, it’s that simple. It’s seeped in meta-humor, but it doesn’t just break down video games, it breaks down the very essence of storytelling.
The best way to sum up the game without spoiling much is to explain the very first choice the game gives you. You approach two open doors, and before you make your move, the narrator tells you “Stanley went through the door on the left” giving you the option to go in the door on the right and ruin the story. From there, paths branch out to a ridiculous degree and will take you on all sorts of wild adventures that will have you in stitches.
Plus, now there is the Ultra Deluxe edition, which doubles the original game’s content, so there’s no end to the fun.
Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
