Video games, no matter what genre they fall under or what they are played on, are meant to be entertainment. The first video game ever created was made in the late 50s by Physicist William Higinbotham to make a scientific exhibit more fun and “interactive” for people touring the lab at Brookhaven’s National Laboratory. While its graphics didn’t hold a candle to even the simplest of games of the present day, the game Tennis for Two became a smash hit, paving the way for the gaming industry that we enjoy and participate in today.
Most games have the same basic three core components. One is an objective, the reason why a person wants to play it. It could be because the story of the game has them play the part of the hero (or villain), or the objective is more about a personal gain like achieving the highest score. Another core component is a rewards system, it could be about earning points and trophies or unlocking items and even characters. And the third is offering different levels of difficulty. Games aren’t really fun if they’re too easy or too hard for the target demographic. Making things challenging enough to keep players interested, but not too challenging that they want to rage quit is an important balance that most game developers should keep in mind.
Though some game devs seem to have a different idea of what makes a game fun and they add in hidden (or not so hidden) elements that can really mess with a player’s game and even their head. Here are 20 Games That Trolled Players, and 10 Times Players Trolled Game Devs.
30 Trolled Players: Batman Arkham Asylum: Scarecrow Fight
Batman: Arkham Asylum has players take on the role of Batman as he faces against the Joker and many other adversaries in Arkham Asylum. Among them is Scarecrow, who uses his fear gas to trap Batman in his own hallucinations. There are three levels of morbid hallucinations during the fight with Scarecrow and on the final level, the game suddenly freezes and then crashes, probably invoking fear in most players. Things get more confusing as the game’s intro plays again with Joker behind the wheel of the Batmobile, taking Batman into Arkham.
29 Trolled Players: Far Cry 5: Resist Ending
Far Cry 5 has players taking the role of a rookie Junior Deputy who goes to arrest Joseph Seed, leader of a doomsday cult. Throughout the game, players dismantle the control Seed has on Hope County. Spoiler warning for the end of the game, but eventually the player can choose to either “Give In” or “Resist.” Resisting means a fight with Joseph who has brainwashed all the allies made in the game. Just when it seems like things would end on a happy note, a nuclear bomb detonates in the distance sending everything into chaos. And that’s the “good ending”.
28 Gamers Trolling: GTA V: Doomsday Heist Orbital Cannon
Grand Theft Auto Online allows players to explore the open-ended world of San Andreas and work together or compete against one another in matches. But as with all good things there comes along those that want to spoil the fun for everyone. And the fun of the Doomsday Heist was quickly ruined, according to Cracked.com, by spammers and hackers abusing the use of the orbital cannon made available with the update. Trolls had found workarounds to gain easy access to the unstoppable and overpowered weapon that lets players target other players and destroy them with one shot.
27 Trolled Players: Doki Doki Literature Club: The Whole Game
Doki Doki Literature Club gives off the appearance of an anime-style dating simulation game. Players can pursue one of the three available girls; Sayori, Natsuki, and Yuri. Spoilers for anyone who haven’t played through the game, but in reality, the game is a psychological horror game that breaks the fourth wall. The game presents dark (and disturbing) subject matter the longer it’s played and seems to have a mind of its own (and it sort of does) as it “glitches,” restarts, deletes save data, and more. There are multiple endings which require multiple playthroughs, re-installations, and hard resets.
26 Trolled Players: Breath Of The Wild: Collect All 900 Korok Seeds
Breath of the Wild lets players control Link as he awakens from a long sleep to a world that had been devastated by the sinister force of Ganon. Players complete quests and collect weapons and items to aid them in their goal to assist Zelda and defeat Calamity Ganon. One of the items that can be collected are Korok seeds, which can be used to add more slots for weapons, shields, and clothing. There are 900 seeds to collect hidden in puzzles all over the world. And the reward for collecting all the seeds? A pile of Korok #2.
25 Gamers Trolling: The Divison: Launch Day
In The Division players take on the role of a Special Agent tasked with keeping order after a smallpox pandemic brings New York City to its knees. On launching day of the game, all players found themselves loaded into the same lobby. A few players realized that it’s pretty easy to prevent others from entering the game’s first safehouse by standing in the open doorway.
There is a workaround to be able to phase through players who do this, but it wasn’t well known at the game’s launch, so many players found themselves unable to progress.
24 Trolled Players: Diablo III: Whimsyshire
When the third installment of Diablo 3 came out it seems as if the majority of the fanbase were disappointed by it. Server issues and the new feature of auction houses really left a sour taste in players’ mouths, as well as many thinking that the game’s new graphics were “too bright” and “cartoon-like.” While Blizzard eventually shut down the auction houses their responses to criticism over the game’s art style were to make a secret level called Whimsyshire. Whimsyshire features teddy bears, pink flowers, and unicorns as monsters and all the normal world objects are replaced with cute objects.
23 Trolled Players: Witcher 3: Romancing Both Yennefer And Triss
The Witcher 3 includes many characters from the past two games including Ciri, Yennefer, and Triss. Just like in the previous games Geralt can romance either Yennefer or Triss and potentially gain an ending based around either woman. However, if the player tries to romance both women equally they’ll get a special cutscene.
Yennefer and Triss trick Geralt into thinking he could have them both and then leave him in a pretty compromising position.
After that, any further conversation leads to both women saying they want nothing more to do with him. It doesn’t pay to be a player.
22 Gamers Trolling: Dark Souls III: Iron Pineapple
Dark Souls III is considered to be a pretty challenging game, and players like Iron Pineapple only make it harder. Some of his exploits include armor known as “The Armor of Thorns” to take out invading players. It deals damage while it rolls and in a group it makes for a pretty effective way to take out invaders.
He’s also dressed up like Shrek to battle other players, and created “traps” for treasure hunting players.
As far as trolls go, Iron Pineapple isn’t mean-spirited and, according to this interview with him, most players enjoy his antics.
21 Trolled Players: GTA V: Epsilon Missions
GTA V is pretty full of “trolling” moments, but probably the most obvious of the game are the “Epsilon” missions. They are a collection of missions Michael takes on during his “Strangers and Freaks” questline, where he has to do tasks for a “cult-like” religious group. For most gamers, these missions are some of the more boring ones, where players have to do things like run five miles through nothingness, wear clothing called “Epsilon robes,” etc. What’s the real kicker is that the “reward” for completing all of the missions is nothing more than a tractor.
20 Trolled Players: Sega Genesis X-Men: Hitting The Reset Button
X-Men for Sega Genesis came out in 1993 and is considered by many to be one of the best X-Men games made. It’s also considered to be one of the toughest X-Men games so after facing the last boss and getting the message saying to restart the system, it isn’t hard to imagine most players hesitated to do so. What gamers were supposed to do was to lightly tap the “reset” button on the console to progress, but it was so easy to push it too hard and lose all the game progress as there wasn’t a save function.
19 Gamers Trolling: Online Casino Games: Tricking Dealers With Fake Names
For people who want to experience the thrill of gambling but don’t want to go to an actual casino, online gaming has made it possible to gamble from home with real-time online casino games. With most online casinos the dealers greet the player by their name. And some trolls, who apparently haven’t gotten passed grade-school humor, come up with “creative” ways to trick dealers into saying rude words. Abbreviating the first names of players like “Peter Ness” makes for a chuckle here and there that most online dealers seem to be in on and take with humor.
18 Trolled Players: Eternal Darkness: “Sanity Effects”
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is a psychological horror game published by Nintendo for the Gamecube. What sets it apart from other games and puts it on this list is its gameplay features called “Sanity Effects.” In Eternal Darkness, players take on the role of several different characters.
Players have a sanity meter that decreases whenever they spotted by an enemy, if it gets too low then the game’s “Sanity Effects” come into play, causing unusual events to happen. The effects can range from a skewed camera angle and weird audio sounds to error screens and characters suddenly perishing.
17 Trolled Players: This Is The Only Level: The Whole Game
This Is The Only Level is a game developed by Armor games and programmed by flash game creator, jmtb02. It’s a simple platforming game with, as the title suggests, only one level. Or is it? Players control an elephant and must help it escape from the room. Just as they think they’ve won the game, they’ll find themselves back where they started. Players must repeat the level over and over again, though each time something within the level changes. The one level is broken up into thirty variations, or stages, with each one more challenging than the next.
16 Gamers Trolling: Metal Gear Solid: Cardboard Box
Metal Gear Online required players to use stealth to complete objectives. They were given “non-lethal” weapons along with “lethal” ones. One of these non-lethal weapons was a cardboard box, meant to trick NPC guards. Against other players, it doesn’t have the same effect, but YouTuber TheRob5896 found a way to turn it into a pretty effective weapon. Rob5896 found that players can use the box as a battering ram by waiting at the top of any place only accessible by a ladder. When an enemy reaches the top players could tackle them off, letting them fall to their demise.
15 Trolled Players: Metal Gear Solid 2: Raiden
For most gamers, there are developers who are famous enough to be known by name, and one of those is the Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima. Kojima has worked on a number games, most famously the Metal Gear series. Gaming forums like PushSquare.com peg Kojima as a “Master Troll” and one of his earliest examples of it was with the release of Metal Gear Solid 2. When the game was advertised fans were excited at the return of Snake. But to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t Solid Snake that the players had control of but of a new protagonist named Raiden.
14 Trolled Players: Borderlands 2: Bane Gun
In Borderlands 2 one of the unique and probably the most useless (and annoying) weapons of the entire game, is the Bane. Players receive this weapon after completing the side mission The Bane, that has them following the rumors of a cursed legendary weapon. It just very well might be cursed because, while the Bane has some pretty serious damage for a submachine gun, it slows the player’s movements down a considerable amount, making it useless in all but a few specific combat situations. It also has some pretty annoying sound effects when switching weapons, firing, and reloading.
13 Gamers Trolling: Team Fortress 2: McDuck
One of the characters in Team Fortress 2 is a spy and has the ability to camouflage himself and attack other players from behind with his weapon. In the game, it is usually pretty hard to sneak up on other players, but one player has discovered a pretty… alluring trick to get the job done. McDuck uses the game’s feature that allows players to paint images on the level’s walls and puts up some pretty salacious images that draw the interest of his opponents. Once they’re good and distracted he sneaks up and takes them out.
12 Trolled Players: Dark Souls: Pendant
The Souls series has deep and elaborate lore, where even the simplest of items hold special meaning. One such item was thought to be a pendant that players could take as a starting gift in Dark Souls.
The pendant that had no power in the game was the center of many conspiracy theories in the community and had developed a lore of its own.
But, as shown in this interview, the series’ creator Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed that the hidden power of the pendant was… that there was no power. The whole “lore” surrounding the pendant was a prank on Miyazaki’s part.
11 Trolled Players: Ghosts N’ Goblins: Fake Ending
Ghosts N’ Goblins is a real old school game from Capcom. This platformer has a reputation for being incredibly difficult. So it’s understandable why most gamers who were trolled by this 80s run-and-gun game felt inclined to throw their controllers against the wall. Anyone who played the game for the first time and got to the end would learn that everything they had just done was an illusion and that if they wanted to get to the “true” ending, they’d have to play the game a second time. Adding insult to injury the second playthrough was allegedly even harder.
