10 great meta video games

TV shows and video games described as ‘meta’ recognise the rules of their context and break them. A movie example could be Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974), which culminates with its actors crashing through the set and into the Warner Bros studio.

This month sees the release of The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, a video game styled as the final hour of a lost 90s adventure. It’s one of many games that knows it’s a game – and that the player is in on the illusion.

The original featured a boss who could read your memory card and hijack your controller. How do you get more meta than that? By introducing a protagonist who – like you – is in awe of the series hero. Spoiler alert: by the end of the story in Hideo Kojima’s epic sequel, new guy Raiden receives a call from his handler ordering him to “Turn the game console off right now.” Is it a direct order or an Easter egg?

A selling point for narrative games is replay value via multiple endings. 2K’s shooter set in an underwater dystopia questions how much free will players really have – would you increase your kill count or carry out immoral missions if it means you’ll receive a weapons upgrade or a new conclusion to the story? As BioShock reveals, sometimes it’s better to keep shooting and not think.

Yager Development’s combat sim suggested that playing at gunfights might be as morally questionable as pulling the trigger for real. Spec Ops: The Line begins with its gung-ho Delta Force operator embarking on a recon mission in fallen Dubai – but then undergoing PTSD symptoms and desensitisation. As hero Walker upgrades from pistols to sniper rifles and rocket launchers, he appears in need of some remedial Tetris (a real-world experimental antidote to traumatic events).

This interactive riddle from Galactic Cafe puts us into the shoes of an office worker who clocks on one morning to find his colleagues vanished – and the partition screens of reality (and gaming) collapsing around him. With only a wise-cracking narrator for company, Stanley must break the Kafkaesque time loop of his workplace without losing his head the same way he’s lost his line manager.

Beginning with an 8-bit flower explaining to the player how humans and monsters used to live in harmony, Toby Fox’s Undertale looks like any another digital nostalgia trip. Then your HP drops to zero, a prompt on screen reads “DIE” and your flower-narrator is suddenly as malicious as man-eating plant Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors (1986). Undertale’s “bullet hell” system requires you to shift between gameplay styles to survive. It also lowers you into a very deep RPG rabbit hole.

Icey is a sword-swinging bad-ass who cuts her way through an onslaught of 2D monsters. But her biggest battle is with her game’s narrator: obeying his prompts will buy you some gratifying brawls, plus a ton of exploration if you’re willing to backtrack. Disobeying him – by not fighting bosses or even not moving around – will unlock even deeper secrets.

Prepare for a recent point-and-click adventure that will have you convinced you never left the 90s originals. Designed by Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert and marketed as a lost LucasArts game, Thimbleweed Park features a detective duo plot that draws from Twin Peaks (1990-91) and The X Files (1993-2018) as well as cameos from characters seen in Maniac Mansion (1987) – which Gilbert also created.

At first glance it appears to be an anime-inspired dating sim targeted at “hikikomori” gamers (men prone to social withdrawal). But after some introductory gameplay, Team Salvato’s visual novel reveals why it’s received the horror tag. Why is schoolgirl Sayori depressed? Has she really vanished or did a bug in the game delete her? NPCs have rarely felt so fragile.

Daniel Mullins’ deckbuilding game begins with the player locked in a cabin from which there’s no escape: just a tabletop overseen by a glowing pair of eyes. A few hands of cards later and you might wish you’d picked up that conventional pack of Waddingtons instead of your controller, because the cards in Inscryption appear to be alive themselves, reacting to every bad play.

It’s a lush adventure game in which you’re at the bottom of the food chain: a ball of protoplasm who has to run or dodge instead of fighting the bad guys. To survive you must use the items you collect (such as fireworks and bubble-spraying wands) in unorthodox ways. But even when empowered you’re still faced with an existential dilemma: how do you beat a platformer if you’re the type of lifeform that Mario usually jumps on?