One thing that I have seen happen in a couple games that I've watched (but not *yet* played myself) is that those games, at some point, do something outside the box, and I am wondering what your thoughts on this sort of thing is. For example (game names omitted to avoid spoilers):

Game 1: At a certain point, the game suddenly quits on you. When you start the game up again, the intro glitches out, then when you try to load your save, it's not your save, but rather someone else's save.

Game 2: At a certain point in the game, the game saves a file to your desktop, and to continue you need a code from that file. (Of course, part of the puzzle is realizing that the game did that.)

What do you think of games that do this sort of thing?

Game 1 sounds more like a bug than by design

Game 2 seems cruel, unless they promoted "expect the unexpected"

If the above happened to me, I'd rage quit and move on. I have a back log for back logs to suffer through that.

just go and play SuperHot

Those examples are too extreme for my taste. But a game can still be very out of the box in other more game-y ways. Hitman Blood Money's final level for example: you die and the credits start to roll as the camera pans about your corpse. Only you're not dead, and as you start pressing keys you can hear a feint heart beat getting stronger and stronger, until you suddenly wake up and start to kill everyone at your own funeral!

There are cases where both are parts of the game, and intended. Particularly applies to games with a "hacker" story in order to make them feel more real by giving you the impression that someone is in your machine, whether the game's main enemy is an AI, or opponent hackers (or the concept of the game is that you're investigating broken code and what happens are intended "bugs"). But it can apply to other types of story as well.

Reminds me of Undertale, which will intentionally at certain points quit the game on you and you have to relaunch it, it will also say your gamefile is 'corrupt'...

Ah, I'm unfamiliar with this game. Sounds like fun given the theme. If it were out-of-the-blue, I'd be plenty pissed off. I'm okay with a dev's creativity in these matters. Thanks for clearing that up.

Now, I don't know which game(s) dtgreene's talking about, and thus not what their theme is, but I do know that some games have used such methods.

My head is spinning here and at first I thought DT was drunk. :P

Been around a long time, been a gamer for a long time, but I have never even heard of any of this stuff.

Undertale for sure has some of these mechanics. When fighting the final boss, if you lose (and you'll lose a few times) he laughs at you, taunts you and then quits the game.. it completely closes...

Screwing with the playing isn't new. Some games will look like they are glitching, acting odd, or refusing to take input. Metal Gear Solid (the original) the psionic boss will be reading your controller input and you have to plug in the controller to slot 2 on the PS1 in order to fight him.

But these don't drop stuff on the desktop..

Actually, that's not a new idea. The Prisoner video game from way back in freaking 1982 had a simulated crash as a one of many elaborate attempts to get the player to use a certain code to "fix" the game, a code that the player must never "reveal" or he will lose the game.

Don't. Their names don't affect your question and can spoil the game for anyone who might want to play them.

Personally, I have little patience left for games that act up, and I'm no longer inclined to invest multiple hours or days to figure out what the problem is. I won't see game crashes as "cute", I'll see them as annoying. Wasting time scanning and scouring and testing my system only to discover the problems were intentional?? Way to get on my shit list.

Only, and I stress ONLY if I knew ahead of time that such things were possible with the game, such as someone else mentioning a computer hacker-type game, then yes, it could be fun.

Now that was an interesting game. Shame I wasn't really old enough at the time to understand all the nuances.

OneShot and Doki Doki Literature Club plays with this a bit. I think OneShot was the more effective of the pair, as Doki Doki seemingly ran out of steam. Which might have been a narrative point, but was disappointing all the same.