[ SIMULATION ]
The always acid-frazzled Timothy Leary has a DOS "video game" that's actually more of a psychoanalysis tool and it's about as weird as you'd think. Probably the least accessible thing on this list.

[ ACTION / BEAT 'EM UP ]
Surrealist daymare of a 2D beat 'em up.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Bizarre point-and-click adventure game about an amnesiac waking up in the warped town of Harvest in the 1950s. Extremely violent, at times perverse, and full of nonsensical '90s adventure game logic.

[ SIMULATION ]
Japanese PS1 hot air balloon flying simulator. It has goals, but they're not particularly doable since your hot air balloon is mostly at the mercy of the winds, so it's mostly just a pleasant little exploration game. Customizable balloon colors!

[ ADVENTURE ]
A post-modern PS1 adventure game, now available in English on Switch. The "hero" of Love-De-Gard leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, and it's up to players to follow him, setting his wrongs right again. Collect Love to increase your Love Level, which allows you to perform more actions throughout each day.

[ ADVENTURE ]
An early Japanese exploration game for the PS1. Explore dreams in a series of environments that shift textures and contain chance events.

[ ADVENTURE / INT FIC ]
A companion piece to the serial experiments lain anime, in which a girl named Lain is troubled by nightmares and signs of mental illness—including hallucinations, delusions, and depersonalization. Her story is told through audio clips of diary entries, counseling logs, and diagnostic reports. Despite the difficult UI, it's actually easier to follow than the anime, and is a bit more grounded, though it's also much darker. Playable in-browser with subtitles.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Cult classic exploration game in which players explore the dream worlds of Madotsuki, who refuses to leave her room. Find "effects" laying around, encounter chance events, meet interesting characters. Slow gameplay, practically no dialogue, pretty surreal.

[ ACTION / FIGHTING / STRATEGY ]
Phantom Dust is one of my favorite games, but nothing about it is easy to summarize or describe. Here goes anyway: An entirely amnesiac society has moved underground after a dust from space falls onto Earth that makes people lose their memories and eventually turn into violent monsters after enough exposure. A select few people dubbed Espers, though, can bend the dust to their will, weaponizing it while they scour the surface for fragments of their former society. When two Espers in storage pods are discovered and broken out of stasis, a conspiracy unravels regarding a shared memory everyone still has—a location known only as the Ruins. Gameplay-wise, players spend time between real-time battles with monsters and other Espers building their deck of attacks, defenses, and other miscellaneous abilities, which all end up shuffled and doled out at random mid-match. It's a one-of-a-kind mix of arena fighting and deck-building strategy that really does require players to consider what the best arsenal will be for each mission, as going in with the wrong skill set can certainly lead to absolute destruction. Despite bombing on its initial release on the Xbox (not my fault—I bought one!), it had a dedicated following on Xbox Live during its heyday and is now available on PC for free via the Microsoft Store.

[ PLATFORMER ]
Psychonauts: the commercial-flop-turned-cult-classic. When I first made this list, I passed the Psychonauts games over despite them being favorites of mine—mostly because they don't really deviate from the kind of gameplay and mechanics one would expect from pretty much any other 3D collect-a-thon platformers. I couldn't get that decision out of my head, though—after all, it'd be a lie to say that Psychonauts isn't a little bit off the beaten path. It's a game with a weird and sometimes dark sense of humor about a circus boy named Raz who sneaks off to psychic summer camp, eventually uncovering a sinister plot involving the theft of brains by one of the camp's mentors. Much of the game takes place inside people's minds, and the levels get really surreal and imaginative, which pairs well with the occasionally absurd dialogue delivered by fantastic characters. The whole thing is super charming, and still holds up really well.

[ ACTION / ACTION-ADVENTURE / FPS/TPS ]
Harman Smith and his assassin personalities—collectively known as the killer7—take on the Heaven Smile, a terrorist organization of suicide-bombing mutants. Low-poly, cel shaded, and as stylish as the PS2 gets (though I'd recommend the PC port). Players traverse each level with limited movement in the third person, and must switch to first-person shooting mode when enemies arrive. There's lots of environmental puzzle solving as well. It's a hard one to get into, and I wouldn't exactly call the gameplay riveting, but killer7 is a rewarding experience for those willing to stick with it and pay attention. If you need content warnings for media, though, maybe look into those first.

[ PLATFORMER ]
Atmospheric 2D platformer about a crash-landed alien getting their spaceship parts back.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
A large collaborative Yume Nikki fan game in which players must guide Urotsuki, a girl who won't leave her room, through her dreams.

[ HORROR / PUZZLE ]
A mind-bending puzzle game with abstract solutions. It's also about cancer. Compare and contrast to Antichamber.

[ RPG ]
Cult classic RPG that became huge on Tumblr for a while and still maintains an active fanbase. The Batter embarks on a mission to purify the four Zones, small hubs of a strange and surreal world.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Well-known Yume Nikki fan game about Sabitsuki, a girl who uses her computer to explore a world within her mind. It has dark medical themes and is more overtly horror-themed than Yume Nikki.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Very short, jarring game about the fairness of being born at the expense of another. Use Flashpoint to play it. Full review on its page!

[ Adventure / RPG ]
A remake of an earlier game named Kinder. Shunsuke comes home from his grandparents' to find that the adults in his town have been slaughtered by a child with strange powers named Yuuichi, who forces the remaining children to play the "Friends Game." Kill the three Mistresses, and they will be freed. A strange RPG Maker game, with some frustrating sections, but ultimately quite good and worthwhile—at the very least for the incredibly funny sections and great music.

[ RPG ]
Funny and fairly short RPG about a sad man and a horse made of legs who go on an adventure to prevent the world they live in from becoming corrupted by glitches.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Short absurdist point-and-click adventure game with multiple endings and thecatamites's wild writing and signature sense of humor.

[ ADVENTURE ]
A pleasant exploration-adventure game.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Surreal exploration game about a girl trying to escape the mental torment of her abusive father. Extremely bleak. Would eventually get two sequel RPGs: LISA the Painful and LISA the Joyful. Only LISA the First is on here, but I highly recommend all three to those who can handle their themes.

[ ADVENTURE ]
A man dies, his only regret not being able to say goodbye to his love. Having been sent to Hell, he is promised the ability to speak with her once more by completing a Halloween ritual.

[ ADVENTURE ]
The thrilling sequel to Will You Ever Return? and the best in the series. Sent to Hell immediately after killing the person from the first game, a man must defeat his inner sins.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Small exploration game taking place in a club. Very bright, epilepsy warning indeed in effect.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Explore peaceful, procedurally-generated islands.

[ PLATFORMER / PUZZLE ]
Surreal puzzle-platformer with non-standard solutions and impossible geometry.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Science fiction exploration game with abstract, philosophical themes.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Hyper-surreal graphic adventure game tackling strange philosophies and... frankly, I couldn't really tell you anything much more specific than that.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Well-known post-modern adventure game about the relationship between the player, their avatar, the game's developer, and the game's narrator. Brilliant dialogue and voice acting. Though others have tried to replicate its wit, few are clever enough to succeed.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
A Yume Nikki fan game with a somewhat darker presentation. It's fairly small, and development was abandoned in favor of new projects, but still worth looking into.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Very abstract exploration game. Nice colors.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Seizure-inducing exploration game with strange beings roaming around. Simple and short.

[ ADVENTURE / MINIGAMES ]
An abstract and surreal game flickering between small interactive segments with an eerie atmosphere.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Help a troop of mice scout out the surrounding area as they seem to dwindle in number each day. From the person that brought you Space Funeral! Not an RPG, though.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Explore a vibrant space colony. Has an upcoming sequel of the same name.

[ ACTION / HORROR / PLATFORMER ]
Surrealist horror run and gun.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Short, linear exploration game.

[ ACTION / HORROR / PLATFORMER ]
Surreal horror run and gun.

[ ADVENTURE / RPG ]
Strange little adventure game made in RPG Maker 2000. A young one-eyed boy named Pigula wants to open a general store and happens to score a ¥50,000 property in a place called Farethere. The local inhabitants are colorful and kind, but something about the town is off and Pigula starts having strange dreams. The game goes into surreal horror territory without ever staying there for an extended period of time, which gives it a nice balance.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Body horror-themed Yume Nikki fan game. One of the more visceral, gory ones. Recommended, though development on the game has been finished.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Strange little dialogue puzzle-adventure game in which you have to uncover the lies of the Sacred Order, four individuals in charge of the Ossuary who are all competing for control. The puzzling involves some fetch-questing, but more interestingly the game asks players to spread sins to NPCs to bend their behaviors and attitudes.

[ ADVENTURE / MINIGAMES ]
What's billed as a collection of long-lost and unreleased Sonic the Hedgehog games proves to be much more... cursed. For Sonic fans, Sonic newcomers, and Sonic haters alike. Best suited for adults, though.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Walk along the beach as a fire-breathing seagull.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Players are provided with a couple televisions and a massive stack of VHS tapes, which they can play in any combination to receive a guest.

[ RPG ]
Surreal claymation RPG adventure in which the moon-headed Wayne quests to meet Gibby, King of the Moon.

[ PLATFORMER ]
Auto runner with strange dialogue and a vaporwave/synthwave aesthetic.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Explore a trippy and surreal procedurally-generated building full of TVs. No longer officially available, so you'll have to find a mirror.

[ ACTION / HORROR / SHOOT 'EM UP ]
Somewhat short horror-themed multi-directional shooter about an old village that threw everything it didn't want down into a pit. Tanky controls makes this feel like 2D Resident Evil. Blood is your health in this game, but also the currency you'll use to get bullets. Not as weird as many other games on this list, but it has the right "vibe" and needs more love and attention.

[ ACTION / MUSIC / SHOOT 'EM UP / VR OPTIONAL ]
A really good rail shooter with a Y2K aesthetic and a cool scoring system based on how many bullets you can target enemies with at once. I had initially passed this up for inclusion on the list, despite its somewhat abstract enemies and setting. After completing the base game and the new Area X, it seemed like it was just barely not "out there" enough to add. Unlocking the "Trance Mission" mode tilted my opinion into the other direction, though—an abstract, glitch-aesthetic endless mode scored by Oval, with enemies you can shoot at but don't present a danger. It's certainly the most fitting part of the game in regards to this list, and should please fans of abstract experiences (especially those with VR headsets).

[ ADVENTURE ]
A series of interactive set-pieces, several of which have a science fiction bend.

[ HORROR / RPG ]
An RPG about a 14-year-old mass-murderer on death row named Russell, who is incapable of feeling guilt. He ends up in an institution that makes him take Happy Dream, an experimental drug that causes him to dream about a small town inhabited by the people he's killed. If the dreams rehabilitate him, he might be spared. The plot itself is interesting, but this really makes the list for its often psychedelic and surreal approach to psychological horror. The colorful enemy designs and strange locations bring Yume Nikki to mind, and of course it gets bonus points for being an indie RPG Maker game with traditional combat that isn't actually tedious as hell. Check the site's content warnings on this one.

[ ADVENTURE / INT FIC ]
Super-short visual novel in which players interact with long-forgotten entities within a very old and corrupted game. Presentation is perfect and evocative.

[ ADVENTURE / INT FIC / MINIGAMES ]
An interactive zine in the form of an operating system containing several interactive programs. Touches on themes of mental illness, trauma, and the effects of the Internet on the individual. An abrasive experience in every regard. My (almost) full thoughts on this can be found on its page.

[ ADVENTURE ]
An exploration game contemplating the nature of life and everything, with some very interesting dialogue taken from a lecture by the late Alan Watts. Game mechanics revolve around taking control of various creatures and inanimate objects.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Brightly-colored exploration game about navigating trans spaces as a person going through their own transition. There are a few small areas to explore, and their inhabitants' reactions to your transition change depending on how you spend your skill points (hormones), which you also accrue through dialogue options.

[ MUSIC / SANDBOX / VR ONLY ]
Music-reactive particle physics sandbox. Great if you like looking at shiny things. My full review of this is on its page!

[ ADVENTURE ]
Explore procedurally generated worlds as a bird that can take on the forms of other animals you touch. Pretty chill, with some interesting customization options and multiple biomes to choose from.

[ ADVENTURE / VR OPTIONAL ]
Abstract and colorful exploration game. A lot of variations on just a few environments, but the visuals are brilliant. Compatible with Oculus Rift and, when beta is enabled, SteamVR and Vive.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Exploration game with progression through themed levels and some interactivity.

[ ADVENTURE ]
A small Yume Nikki fan game in which you must find and serve drinks to customers by entering each of the surreal worlds they provide access to. This one is on the more humorous side of things, without forgoing that classic YNFG atmosphere.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Absurd and crude adventure game with occasional fist-fighting segments. Feels like it was written by the coolest seven-year-old.

[ ADVENTURE ]
A small, mostly lighthearted exploration game in a blobbish environment with a couple blobbish people in it. The motion blur is pretty intense (seemingly on purpose) but the sound design and overall aesthetic are really good.

[ ACTION-ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Surrealist undead action-adventure and horror game with some eerie vibes and interesting enemy designs.

[ ACTION / ACTION-ADVENTURE / SHOOT 'EM UP / SPORTS ]
The first half of this is a tennis and bullet hell fusion—hard to describe, but easy enough to understand when seen or played. Gets difficult, but can be cheesed a bit. The second half is more in-line with some of the other games listed here, but I won't spoil it.

[ SANDBOX / SIMULATION ]
A simple game in which the player is tasked with cross-breeding plants on an alien world. There's no goal, so it's really up to the player to make their own fun, trying to get interesting new plants to sprout from their little experiments. It strikes a chill, cozy vibe without being twee about it.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Occult horror adventure game about feeding It—a pulsating mass that seems to grow with every beating organ you give it. About 45 minutes long, fifth-generation-style graphics.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Party with some rats in a sewer, take a few drinks, see their dialogue, stumble upon some minigames, and do some other stuff that shouldn't be spoiled.

[ CREATIVE / MMO / SANDBOX / SIMULATION ]
Social MMO in which players build museums wall by wall, floor by floor, art by art. As curators, players will receive art recommendations based on their apparent preferences.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Collect likes and go viral in this adventure game about exploring a set of vaporwavesque virtual worlds.

[ PLATFORMER / PUZZLE ]
When the King of All Cosmos goes on a drunken bender and destroys all the stars in the sky, the little Prince must take his katamari and roll up objects on Earth with it, creating stars in the process. A very not-indie entry into the list, and certainly one of the least "arthouse" games here, but its outlandish absurdism, its unique control scheme, and my favoritism all conspire to include it here.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
A fan recreation of the titular video game of the web series Petscop. Very well-made and convincing, despite the "Recreation" text always on the upper-right.

[ ADVENTURE / INT FIC / PUZZLE ]
Point-and-click adventure game in the form of a era sleep-time operating system, taking place in 1999 into 2000. Patrol Hypnospace as a community moderator and issue takedowns and warnings to its users. Delightfully funny, charming, and unique while flawlessly mixing the essences of early and modern Internet communities.

[ ACTION ]
A typing game in which players must carry out the punishments dealt to various figures in ancient Greek mythology. There is no winning here.

[ ADVENTURE ]
A short game about crowds and their behaviors.

[ ADVENTURE ]
A florist ends up in Dr. Habit's "Habitat," where unhappy people go to cure their sadness. Dr. Habitat doesn't appreciate it, however, when the florist starts cheering people up—claiming that they're spoiling the smiles meant to be reserved for the "Big Event." An offbeat first-person adventure game in which players must react to people's "yes" or "no" questions by physically moving the florist's head with their mouse.

[ ADVENTURE / SIMULATION / VR OPTIONAL ]
Powerful and fairly accurate outer space exploration simulator developed by an astronomer. Get far away enough from Earth and it will procedurally generate new planets and stars and stuff. Steam version costs money but is VR compatible. Not a particularly strange game, so it's a bit of an odd pick for the list, but I think it works well enough given it's an exploration-based game.

[ ADVENTURE / INT FIC ]
In GNOSIA, the titular infection takes over people's minds, making them turn on their fellow humans. Detecting the presence of GNOSIA, the spaceship's AI has now prioritized its destruction over the survival of the crew. As a compromise, the crew are allowed to play a game in which they determine who is or is not GNOSIA, putting one suspect to cold sleep before every warp. Every warp in which a GNOSIA infectee has survived, however, is a chance for another uninfected human to fall victim. It's a single-player social deduction (vs AI) game presented like a visual novel, in which each subsequent "loop" gives players the chance to learn more about the characters they're up against—as well as the experience points necessary to level up various performance-enhancing stats and ability unlocks. The strong mechanics make this fairly similar to tabletop hidden role games.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Yume Nikki fan game about Spencer, who begins to explore a long-abandoned MMO. No longer being developed, but still worthwhile.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Game Boy homebrew. Dark fantasy adventure about a girl who has become trapped in a land of lost souls, between dark and light. Some really fantastic character art, as expected from Kadabura. Some neat body horror in here.

[ ACTION-ADVENTURE / PLATFORMER ]
As Nova, clean up the Dust that has settled in sick people's bodies while tackling the meaning of the work you do as well as life itself. Not particularly abstract, and only surreal in certain sections, but fits well in this collection regardless. You can play this without playing the first one—you will only miss a few references.

[ ADVENTURE / CREATIVE / INT FIC ]
Explore an abstract, cartographic landscape, throughout which people have placed their short-form thoughts, feelings, and poetry. Players are no longer able to jot down their own works, but the library can still be explored.

[ ADVENTURE / DRIVING / SIMULATION / VR ONLY ]
Flying car simulator in which you explore a rainy cyberpunk city. Very chill experience with some nice tunes. Looks beautiful, though the setting is admittedly a bit small. Requires a high nausea tolerance but well worth checking out.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
When all of the children in town receive visions of an oncoming apocalypse, it becomes the player's duty to prevent it any way they can. A dark, occult-themed Game Boy homebrew game that works well on the system.

[ ADVENTURE / INT FIC ]
A short text adventure game in which you attempt to haggle a shopkeeper's food prices down. Or you could take a look around?

[ SANDBOX / SIMULATION ]
A sandbox that lets you do exactly what it says in the title. You also have dynamite, can change the structural makeup of the towers you spawn, and can control wind and gravity strengths.

[ ACTION-ADVENTURE ]
Embark on a quest to reconnect America after it is left in ruin by the effects of the Death Stranding—a world-scale event that connected the world of the dead with the world of the living. I was hesitant to include a triple-A game on this list, but it has just the right amount of exploratory gameplay, surrealist elements, and general weirdness to fit right in with the others.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Go deeper and deeper into an underground facility in this brightly-colored neon adventure. Non-binary protagonist! Horror stuff becomes more and more apparent as the game progresses, so warning for that.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Point-and-click adventure game in which an old lady must prepare her clients' final dishes. Incredibly dark and pretty funny.

[ ADVENTURE / PUZZLE ]
An adventure game requiring players to morph into objects and creatures that they've come across and observed in order to solve puzzles and progress further.

[ ADVENTURE / VR ONLY ]
An online virtual reality museum that hosts the works of various visual artists and game developers. I highly recommend experiencing this with a friend or two, if possible. Note that some of the DLC costs additional money and can only be accessed for a limited time.

[ ADVENTURE / INCREMENTAL ]
Instructed by its father, the king, to stay in the cavernous kingdom and wait for 400 days, a shade begins its long and lonesome biding of the time. The 400 days clock runs down in real time, including when you aren't playing, but can be made to go faster by improving the shade's living conditions and participating in activities.

[ ADVENTURE / PUZZLE / VR OPTIONAL ]
Surrealist puzzle-adventure game in which you help out animal-like creatures made of paper by manipulating the environment. Short and sweet, and has a sandbox mode after you've beat the game. It's a VR game, but has a "Folded Edition" for desktop (which I can't personally vouch for).

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
A surrealist graphic adventure in which a girl named Bree tries to find her sister, Sarah, who has become lost within the pillars of static that have cropped up in their small town—one that's becoming increasingly harder to live in due to the local mill shutting down. A bit clunky, with some odd bugs and unfriendly camera angles, but compelling and aesthetically powerful nonetheless.

[ ADVENTURE ]
Ori wakes up in a hotel bathtub, unsure of where he is. He soon meets the frightened and mistrustful Rem, and together, they travel through the corridors and rooms of the hotel and make their way through veils that only allow entry once certain conditions are met. Combines the surreal leanings of walkabout-type RPG Maker games with religious imagery and cryptic lore regarding beings called Celestials.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
Dark and very short adventure game about an oceanographer that becomes obsessed with finding Eden. If you have thalassophobia, this will be especially effective on you. Flawless art direction and presentation.

[ ADVENTURE / PLATFORMER ]
Human corporations cultivate worlds to assess their lifeforms for useful applications. As a camera-equipped scout working for one of these corporations, track down strange alien creatures so your bosses can determine their fate. Lovely low-poly PS1-esque open world exploration mixed with a bit of low-key monster hunting. Really enjoyed the environment in this one, and it's fairly short, so it doesn't outstay its welcome.

[ ADVENTURE / HORROR ]
A lone tree acts as a microcosm of the world, but by sustaining itself on water alone, the world has stagnated and not much is left of life. The player is tasked with changing the future by mixing the water with another substance in this surreal and dark adventure game with multiple endings. 5th-generation-style graphics.

[ ADVENTURE ]
An in-development furry Yume Nikki fan game that includes significantly more linear adventure-style gameplay than its contemporaries, as well as charming character dialogue.

[ ADVENTURE / INT FIC ]
Short psychological visual novel in which you must help a girl buy milk.