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Better Than It Sounds / Video Games N To R

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Ah, video games. No other media allows Refuge in Audacity so often. And most of the time it works.

Please sort new titles alphabetically to avoid duplicate entries.

  • N: A pacifist stickman ninja runs and jumps across simplistic monochrome landscapes, dodging killer drones and collecting lots of gold.
    • N+: The same thing, but on a smaller screen.
    • N++: The same thing, but on a larger screen.
  • Namco High: After you get stuck in detention, you decide to romance the potentially unstable weirdos that landed in there with you. People only like it because the creator of some internet comic snuck his original characters into it. You can't even find this game on the original website it was made on, because it got deleted!
  • Nancy Drew: A series of games based on classic books that have nothing to do with the books. The best part is repeatedly killing the protagonist, then taking the option of going back to kill them again.
  • Narcissu: A car thief and his depressed friend wander around the countryside looking at flowers because they have nothing better to do.
    • Narcissu -Side 2nd-: The depressed friend from the first game spends her summer vacation tagging along with a jaded ex-Catholic.
    • Narcissu 3rd: Die Dritte Welt: A collection of stories vaguely related to the first two, now with a bigger price tag and probably No Export for You.
  • NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD Being an online influencer sucks: The game.
  • Nefarious: A man witnesses a romantic breakup and decides to Take Over the World in response.
  • Neko Atsume: Indulge your inner cat lady by collecting pictures of cat butts.
  • Neko Para: Your harem consists of your cats... and your sister.
  • Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent: A government agent wanders a Quirky Town in the dead of winter, chewing used gum and solving puzzles in order to break into a factory. A cult of lawn-gnome worshipers is somehow involved.
    • Puzzle Agent 2: The government agent goes back to the Quirky Town to deal with some unfinished business. He chews more gum and solves more puzzles while running afoul of murderous astronauts.
  • NeoGeo Battle Coliseum: Mascot characters of varying obscurity have to fight each other for five minutes in teams of two. Then you have to fight a cloned nihilist, an alien with a god complex, a Blood Knight and a ripoff of a certain someone. Good Luck.
  • NEO Scavenger: You control an amnesic wiki curator who wakes up in a crappier version of Michigan. You then live as a traveling hobo while cannibals, cultists, evil spirits, diseases, and the weather tries to kill you.
  • Neon White: Move fast and shoot things to Machine Girl.
    • Or according to a Steam comment: Horny assassin with zero self-esteem dragged into heaven and spends entire time searching for contraband to make his former crew like him again.
    • Or, Games Done Quick: The Game.
  • Neptunia: Console Wars AS A VIDEO GAME!
  • NES Remix: Simple tasks in 8-bit games in the style of WarioWare. Known for its Game Mod-esque stages.
  • NetHack: A single link on NAO proves that there are over 5,000 ways to lose. And only one way to win.
  • Neutopia: A ROM hack of The Legend of Zelda, featuring no nonlinearity and 90% of the secret hidden passageways don't give you anything.
    • Neutopia II: A ROM hack of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, featuring no dark world and the secret passageways still don't give you anything. The hero from the first game dies and leaves his son some of his defective equipment as inheritance.
  • Neverending Nightmares: A boy walks down a series of hallways, pausing only to die horribly and wake up in bed.
  • The Neverhood: A guy made of clay must fulfill a quest in a deserted world; however, he has no idea what it is he's supposed to do. It turns out he was created to fix his world's interrupted creation myth.
    • Alternatively: A guy made of clay wanders around an abandoned island and finds his family members along the way. If you get the good ending, his brother gets shot and his father gives birth.
    • Skullmonkeys: The brother of the guy made of clay falls on a planet full of monkeys. Upon arrival, his first action is to skin a monkey alive. Then the guy made of clay has to turn off a machine.
  • Neverwinter Nights: Experienced, heroic champion of light hires a low-level adventurer and their henchmen to stop a plague.
    • Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark: Hero gets lost underground, gets manipulated into helping some residents of the underground fight the rest, and beats up a giant red guy with wings.
    • Neverwinter Nights The Bastard of Kosigan: French (Burgundian!) hero with serious family issues runs off to Germany. Then things get worse.
    • Neverwinter Nights A Dance with Rogues: Spoiled princess gets deposed, her family destroyed, her city overrun with hostile soldiers out to kill her and her friends. This all in the prologue; there's worse to come.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Main character runs errands and builds a castle with a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits all willing to betray them for their own gain.
  • Ni no Kuni: Kid Hero tries to stop the Big Bad from taking people's positive emotions by taking other people's positive emotions.
    • Or: A young boy who recently lost his mother is sent to a parallel world to save her alternate half. He fails.
  • Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom: The president of Not-America is sent to a parallel world to help a young catboy ending a mice rebellion and Take Over the World. They are the heroes.
  • Nicktoons Unite!: Sentient sponge, spandex ghost, guy with bizarre hairdo and non-manly guy wearing pink battle Tim Curry.
  • Nicktoons MLB: Sentient sponge, spandex ghost, secret agent dog, bald kid, green omnicidal maniac, gross kitty and more face-off against real baseball players. No, you are not high.
  • Nidhogg: Two fencers fight to be eaten by a dragon.
  • NieR: Single father or older brother goes looking for medicine to cure his daughter or younger sister from extreme graphophilia. Players weep.
    • Or: The apocalypse happens twice. Both times it is your fault, but you don't find that out until later.
    • Or: The adventure to save a loved one ends up with all your friends dead.
    • Or: The world was already about to end, but you still somehow manage to make everything worse.
  • NieR: Automata: Likeable robots beat the crap out of each other to cope with existential crises.
    • Alternatively, a no-nonsense harijuku goth lolita robot lady and her chatty, analytical robot boy compatriot run around and tear apart adorable, bulbous-headed alien machines, all for an organization founded on a great big sham. Revelations throughout each playthrough flip this flashy action game on its head and the robot boy doesn't take them too well. Once again, players weep.
    • Alternatively: Androids and robots continue fighting a war in the name of their creators despite both masters being dead for a long time.
  • Night in the Woods: Furries shoot the breeze in their sleepy town. Everyone is immensely more well-adjusted than you are. Also, Cthulhu might be involved.
  • Night Trap: The player helps a former child star fight vampires that are slightly less threatening than Count Chocula using tactics straight out of an episode of Scooby-Doo. A very small number of the vampires can shoot lightning out of their hands for some inexplicable reason.
    • Or: A surveillance simulator where you save girls from vampires using booby traps. This created the ESRB rating system.
  • NiGHTS into Dreams…: An androgynous creature enters the minds of children and absorbs their spirits into itself. And they're the good guy.
    • NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams: Same androgynous creature does the same thing again, this time with different children, and also manages to confuse everyone by having a woman's voice. Also, an Owl constantly reminds them to collect DreamDrops, which if done, results in a cameo of the two children from the first game.
  • Nights of Azure: A half human half demon woman has to choose between saving the world or her one true love. Yuri ensues.
  • Ninja Gaiden (original): Everyone, good and bad, wants you dead, and all you want is your family heirloom, which inadvertently tries to destroy the world.
    • Ninja Gaiden (Xbox game): A Ninja finds much of his extended family dead after he returns from a visit to his uncle's and goes after The Empire responsible.
    • Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360 game): A Ninja travels the world to get back a statue. In the meantime he fights giant spiders, a big deathmachine with a sad face, dogs, a four-armed werewolf, ninjas with automatic rocket launchers, the devil who rephrases Shakespeare and Zombie Ninjas. Also, did I mention the one who took the statue is a butterfly?
  • Ninjala: Highly Visible Ninjas are here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and they've got plenty of gum.
  • The Ninja Warriors: Two robots kill a fat dictator.
  • Nintendo Badge Arcade: A skill crane simulator that's nothing but Product Placement. It also uses Microtransactions and is very blatant about it.
  • Nintendo Puzzle Collection: An Italian man does double-duty as a medical doctor and baker along with his reptilian buddy. Meanwhile, a fairy reunites her friends after a devil's curse splits them apart by smashing everything with colorful blocks
  • Nintendo Wars: The four major nations of World War II, or at least two of them, have a friendly rivalry with each other but constantly end up warring due to a series of misunderstandings.
    • Alternatively: Go to war, and have fun with it! War in its nicest, funniest way, rarely taking itself seriously.
    • Famicom Wars: In World War I, the two of those four nations battle each other on various territories. Samus Aran and a few other cameos are commanders around certain territories.
    • Super Famicom Wars: World War I is retold. This time, all 4 nations participate. Also, trains are involved.
    • Game Boy Wars 1/2/Turbo: In these 3 games for the price of 3, World War I takes place on various territories. The second of the two nations uses a different color.
    • Game Boy Wars 3: World War I takes place on various territories, with the second of the two nations again using the same different color. Military Madness occurs.
    • Advance Wars: World War II starts when Russia invades America, except it's all a Batman Gambit by an evil alien robot Snifit to take over the world. A key part of his plan is making robotic doubles of an American officer who is 15 and doesn't know what an airport is. When the plan falls apart, he drops meteors on the troops.
    • Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising: The evil alien robot (who is no longer a Snifit) decides to go with the direct approach, stealing military resources through a series of tubes. As subcommanders, he hires a man dumber than the Hulk, a 12 year old Perky Goth Mad Scientist, a possibly gay man who wears blush and has no useful abilities whatsoever, and a frighteningly competent and collected lieutenant. Hiring the last one was a mistake.
    • Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Military commanders discover that by taking turns leading a single army, they can rend the very fabric of time. The hero shoots an old man's wheelchair.
    • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: Survivors of an apocalypse fight over what's left of Earth. This all falls away to focus on the most biology-failing clone family this side of Solid Snake.
  • Nintendogs: Take care of familiar creatures that never grow up, learn a limited number of tricks, and get freaked out by various things.
  • Nioh: A Historical Domain Character who looks a lot like Geralt of Rivia travels to Japan to hunt down demons while the east and the west are about to go on a war. You're gonna die... a lot.
  • Nitrome Must Die: Two kids get real angry about losing a video game, then enter the headquarters of the company who made that game and shoot everyone dead.
  • no-one has to die.: At least twelve people horrifically burn to death so you can go back in time to make the fire extinguishers work properly.
  • No More Heroes: A shameless anime otaku wins a Laser Blade in an online auction, and uses it to carve his way up the leaderboard of an assassins' guild.
    • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Shameless anime otaku, now hellbent for revenge, carves his way up another leaderboard of an assassins' guild. Along the way, he's helped by his Irish twin brother and a female Afro Samurai.
    • No More Heroes III: Shameless anime otaku carves his way up yet another leaderboard... but this time from intergalactic assassins. The top-ranked alien also presents himself to his rival by obliterating a big part of the otaku's homeland.
  • NOBY NOBY BOY: A giant snake eats people then takes a huge dump.
  • Noita: A greedy apprentice witch tries looking for gold and spells in an overly fragile mountain.
  • Noitu Love: A small child stops an elderly man from inaccurately reversing evolution by beating the hell out of everything that moves.
    • Noitu Love 2 Devolution: A young woman finds her city is turning into a historical tourist attraction and responds by beating the hell out of everything that moves.
  • Nostalgia (Red Entertainment): British swordsman inherits his father's sweet ride and travels the world (or something like it) to find him.
  • No Straight Roads: Two rock-and-rollers get mad about an energy crisis and being rejected from a record label, and proceed to beat up a bunch of electronic musicians.
  • Not for Broadcast: A Janitor working in a news studio gets an unexpected promotion at work. Their new job? Propaganda Minister for a tyrannical regime headed by a lawyer and a drunk TV personality.
  • Not Tetris: Tetris with a Physics Engine.
    • Not Pac-Man: Pac-Man with the ability to tilt the maze.
  • Nova Drift: Asteroids but it's a roguelike.
  • Obduction: A giant flying pinecone teleports you to an alien planet. To get back home, you must water some trees.
  • Observation: On the International Space Station, a young woman and her AI companion find themselves again and again.
  • Octodad: A Standard '50s Father goes through his morning routine. By the way, he's an octopus.
    • Octodad: Dadliest Catch: A Standard '50s Father who is secretly an octopus goes grocery shopping, is tricked into a trip to the aquarium, and befriends a PTSD-ridden sushi chef who wants him dead.
  • Octopath Traveler: Eight people solve their own personal problems, usually through murder. Seeing as they're on a roll, they attack and dethrone god as well.
    • Ophelia: A young cleric teaches her sister the value of life by committing murder.
    • Cyrus: A scholar attempts to return the Necronomicon to his local library, as it was overdue.
    • Tressa: A young merchant goes on a road trip, but the real treasure was the friends she made along the way.
    • Olberic: A knight from a fallen kingdom reconciles his feelings for a traitorous friend by killing his boss.
    • Primrose: A belly dancer avenges her fallen law-enforcement father by becoming a serial killer.
    • Alfyn: An apothecary learns that if medicine fails to cure evil, murder works pretty well as a second opinion.
    • Therion: A young thief steals balls from his jilted gay lover. He learns the value of not committing murder, only for the murder to happen 5 seconds later anyway.
    • H'annit: A huntress who speaks like a rennaisance faire actor attempts to hunt the most dangerous prey. Turns out it's man.
  • Octopath Traveler II: Eight more people go on a road trip to solve their personal problems. They do not dethrone god, but they do attack her right as she's trying to get comfy in the chair.
    • Ochette: The local furry attempts to collect legendary pokemon to stave off an alien invasion, eating the wildlife as she goes.
    • Castti: Surviving her near-death experience with a newfound bloodlust, the local harmicist attempts to save lives by committing murder.
    • Temenos: A young gay cleric who moonlights as an ace detective attempts to solve the pope's murder by committing several more.
    • Osvald: Not satisfied with breaking out of prison, a black mage goes on a murderous revenge against his jilted gay admirer. The power of love turns out to be a laser beam.
    • Partitio: A venture socialist cowboy starts the industrial revolution. He cannot suplex a train, but he can bribe it to take the day off.
    • Agnea: Rural country dancer aspires to be a star, no matter how many people she has to beat up in the process.
    • Throné: Attempting to leave the mafia, a young thief/assassin takes the phrase "over my dead body" very literally. Her family turns out to be amazingly messed up.
    • Hikari: A young samurai prince realizes too late that "I'm level 50" is a valid claim to the throne, and goes on a powerleveling trip to murder his way back into power.
  • Odama: Feudal Japan is at war. Talk to one side while playing pinball to achieve victory.
  • Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey: Slave frees his race from being turned into food.
    • Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus: Slave is told to free race from becoming beer by ghosts. Leeches hang from trees.
    • Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee: One legged wheelchair fish electrocutes doctors and Nurses, frees Hairy meatballs with teeth.
      • Alternatively, Slave and One-legged wheelchair fish work together to destroy the economy. This is a good thing.
    • Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath: Bounty hunting centaur attempts to bring down water bottling company by throwing animals at it.
  • Odin Sphere: Once upon a time, five strangers took up gardening. There were no survivors.
  • OFF: A religious man goes on a world-wide killing spree. Shortly before he causes everyone remaining to die, including himself, you have the option of helping a smiling cat beat him to death.
    • A Jerkass, a bird, and a fat guy get their asses wrecked at baseball. Then a guy goes home and beats up his family.
    • HOME: You help the cat beat up the religious man, as well as the same people the religious man was targeting, most of whom were friends with said cat.
  • Offspring Fling: A cute woodland creature, separated from her many children, picks them up and tosses them into walls to get them home safely.
  • Okage: Shadow King: A family sells their son's soul to a demon in order to free their daughter from a curse causing her to speak Pig Latin.
  • Ōkami: A magical wolf paints her way to victory.
  • OMGWTFOTL: DON'T GENUFLECT. EVER. Other than that... good luck figuring this one out.
  • OMORI: Boy attempts to reconnect with old friends.
    • Alternatively, you spend the majority of the game playing as The Antagonist.
  • Onechanbara: Hot chicks with swords fight zombies while trying not to get their clothes dirty.
  • One Chance: Choose to either save the world from a cell-devouring pathogen you created or spend the rest of your time in peace with your family.
  • One Night at Flumpty's: Play a deadly game of hide-and-seek against a giant egg and his cartoon gang.
  • one night, hot springs: Three girls go to the hot springs.
  • One Shot: A lightbulb has gone out; rather than replacing it, you tell a small child how to.
  • One Way Heroics: A hero has to keep moving forward, lest he/she get swallowed by the darkness destroying the world.
  • Oni: Motoko Kusanagi ersatz fights terrorists and her former employers, mostly with her bare hands.
  • Onimusha: Warlords A samurai in a quest to rescue a princess gets chosen by some good monsters to fight against evil monster, collecting souls on his way to beat gigantic wasps and humongous snakes only to have another one take the snake's place as Evil Overlord.
    • Or: The princess has been kidnapped by demons. Are you a bad enough samurai to save the princess?
    • Onimusha 3: Demon Siege: Samurai from medieval Japan ends up in today's Paris, a policeman from today ends up in medieval Japan. Timetravel extraordinaire to beat even more monsters and the Evil Overlord from the previous game. Again.
  • Onmyoji: A multiplayer game featuring terribly inaccurate portrayal of Japanese history, where your success depends entirely on luck and how much real-life money you are willing to spend.
  • Operation Flashpoint: You're fighting to prevent World War III and liberate Ruritanias at the ass end of nowhere. You can drive anything, including tractors. Oh, and you die in two shots.
  • Orbiter: The Free Spaceflight Simulator. First, you study loooong instruction manuals. Then, you finally fly various missions. Most of them are mundane hard work. Piloting a spacecraft is not an easy job.
  • Orcs Must Die!!: A cheerful idiot watches his old mentor die, and then genocides millions of incredibly oblivious orcs and other fantasy creatures running down hallways, for fun and profit.
    • Orcs Must Die!! 2: The lady responsible for sending the aforementioned orcs to their aforementioned genocide joins the aforementioned idiot for more aforementioned genocide, while the old mentor (who isn't really dead) approves.
    • Orcs Must Die! Unchained: The aforementioned orcs get even more genocided, as a pile of new heroes join the aforementioned lady and idiot and old man join in the trap-based violence-party.
  • The Oregon Trail: Five men travel west. Everyone dies of dysentery or a broken leg, and the leader gets a silly epitaph.
  • Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines: Your clan has been executed as a futile way to appease the gods. Luckly, they bring you and your siblings to life. Sadly, you will die in a short period of time. Luckly, the gods will help you making babies to secure your legacy.
  • ORION: Prelude: Hundreds of dinosaurs, including herbivores, are trying to kill you and your team. There is no reason why they do this, or why you are here, or why you have ridiculous hats.
  • Our Darker Purpose: Following a riot at a boarding school, a Cute Mute goes around setting people and things on fire, stealing people's toys, and getting killed repeatedly.
  • An Outcry: Harass your neighbors because you Must Have Nicotine, then be insulted by talking Feathered Fiends.
  • Outer Wilds: You're a new space cadet assinged a job to discover the remnants of a lost Precursor civilization. You have exactly 22 minutes to figure everything out before the sun goes kaboom, but don't worry, you still get to keep everything you've found, and you have all the time you need in the grand scheme of things.
  • Outpost: God drops an asteroid on the Earth. Your onboard Windows 95 computer won't let you take the off ramp to Mars so you spend about a hundred years flying to the next equally barren rock where you build an <ahem> outpost of civilization.
  • Outlast: Journalist tries to document story of a defunct mental asylum, but the residents don't want to be filmed. Oh, and a ghost is involved.
    • Whistleblower: An escaping inmate soon discovers the meaning of true love with another inmate.
    • Outlast II: A different journalist crash lands in the middle of a town in Arizona. His wife gets pregnant, and one particular cultist develops an... attraction to the journalist.
  • Outpost 2: God drops an asteroid on the Earth ... has a novella backstory.
  • Out Zone: Two fragile cyborgs on limited fuel supply destroy aliens.
  • Overcooked!: Too many cooks spoil everything.
  • Overlord: The world's most benevolent Evil Overlord and his goofy sidekicks seek revenge on a morbidly obese hobbit, a lecherous knight, a lazy elf, a gold-crazed dwarf, a self-hating thief, a possessed wizard, and a barbarian with anger management issues.
  • Overwatch: A multiplayer First-Person Shooter with all sorts of weird characters from all over the world in a Pixar-inspired universe fight each other to death in objective-based games. The story is All There in the Manual. A skeleton wears a hoodie.
  • Oxygen Not Included: Colonize far-off asteroids using a bunch of tiny, mentally imbalanced idiots and a machine to clone more tiny idiots. Make sure the idiots don't run out of oxygen, the air's nasty (and complex) in there.
  • Pac-Man: All-consuming glutton shaped like pizza takes illicit substances to consume ghosts.
    • Alternatively, a lone man is lost in an endless labyrinth, haunted by the ghosts of his past. He constantly pops pills to keep the ghosts away, but, as he builds up a tolerance, the effect of the pills lasts for less and less time. In the end, the very walls of reality come crashing down, and there is only meaningless chaos.
    • A third interpretation: A man enters a haunted house to try to eat all of the ghosts' snacks they leave lying around everywhere. Sometimes, fruits randomly appear in a corridor.
    • Ms. Pac-Man: Love interest does same.
    • Super Pac-Man: All-consuming glutton takes growth hormones.
    • Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures: All-consuming glutton settles down, becomes overemotional and can't do the simplest tasks unless you hit stuff with a slingshot.
  • Pac-Man World series: All-consuming glutton enters the third dimension.
    • Pac-Man World: All-consuming glutton's birthday is cancelled by a robot that sorta looks like said all-consuming glutton.
    • Pac-Man World 2: All-consuming glutton tries to bury a ghost under a tree.
    • Pac-Man World 3: Extraterrestrial being makes life for spirits miserable. All-consuming glutton and said spirits try to kill the extraterrestrial being.
  • Painkiller: Guy in Purgatory gets told he'll get to see his wife in Heaven again if he kills Satan. With a weaponized weed whacker and a whole lot of other weird-ass guns.
  • Pajama Sam: There's No Need to Hide When it's Dark Outside: A kid who can't sleep with the lights off falls into his closet armed with a mask, lunchbox and flashlight. Everything talks. Everything. And the kid wants to kidnap a black guy.
    • Pajama Sam: Thunder and Lightening Aren't so Frightening: The same kid goes into the attic and gets involved in office politics.
    • Pajama Sam: You Are What You Eat From Your Head to Your Feet: The kid is kidnapped by a box of cookies and tasked with averting a war.
  • Panel de Pon: A fairy princess frees her friends from brainwashing by dropping blocks of garbage on them. Today, the game is best known for a flower that appeared in a more famous video game.
  • Pangya: Players celebrate the exploits of an island hero by playing golf.
  • Panic!: A kid and his dog have to press random buttons to make sure a computer virus doesn't destroy the world. All because the U.N. was busy.
  • Panzer Dragoon: The Precursors learned how to control evolution and the environment, but this ended up leading to a Crapsack World, so it's up to a failsafe program that randomly activates in some animals to save the day from their mistake.
    • Panzer Dragoon Saga: You fall in Love at First Sight, then you're murdered, and then everybody else spends the rest of the game using your reanimated corpse.
    • Panzer Dragoon Orta: Sega found a way to turn Kick the Dog into a rail shooter.
  • Paperboy: A boy bikes down the street and delivers the morning paper, dodging a small army of unlikely obstacles.
    • Paperboy 2: Same as above, but now girls can do it too.
  • Paper Mario 64: Everyman tries saving a land of sentient fungi from a dragon turtle. The characters are flat.
    • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Everyman hunts down keys for a door, while his love interest gets stalked by a computer on the Moon, his brother goes on an unseen adventure, and the villain of the previous game parodies the first ever game the four appeared in.
    • Super Paper Mario: The wedding of the Fan-Preferred Couple nearly causes The End of the World as We Know It. Everyman fixes things by repeatedly breaking the third wall.
      • Or: A turtle marries a princess and dooms the whole universe. The day is saved when a man in a top hat marries a digital butterfly.
      • Or: The story of how true love saved all of existence. Mind you, it's that very same love that doomed it in the first place, but that's besides the point.
      • Or: A blue rectangle who stole Nightmare's cape tries to suck the world into a hole because his GF went missing, only for a purple clown to steal said hole and turn into a plumber jack-in-the-box.
    • Paper Mario: Sticker Star: Everyman fights alone against the corrupting influence of a beloved treasure using the power of adhesives and... things.
      • Or: Villain from the first game terrorizes three continents after getting a new crown. Everyman fixes things with non-flat objects and by repeatedly breaking the fourth wall.
    • Paper Mario: Color Splash: Villain from the first game, for completely non-villainous purposes, attempts to invent new forms of cosmetics. By accident, these cosmetics wind up dooming the people of a densely-populated island to Body Horror and extensive damage to the environment. Also, lots of NPCs get drunk, and peeling tape is Serious Business.
      • Or: Everyman saves an island and its population by painting everything.
    • Paper Mario: The Origami King: An emo takes up arts and crafts, and convinces the populace to try it out. The emo's sister is not a fan, nor is the Everyman.
      • Or: Angsty teen (or someone who looks and acts like one) rebels against his father by attempting a genocide; if not for the teen's sister's actions, he would've succeeded. Meanwhile, a bunch of office supplies spend their days bullying people. Peeling tape is still Serious Business, which works out because one of those office supplies is a roll of tape.
      • Or: A guy made of origami becomes Hitler because he can't read.
  • Papers, Please:
    • Bureaucracy-simulator, where the player is a border inspector.
    • Investigate the banality of evil via paperwork.
    • A video game where the objective is to stamp passports.
  • ParaParaParadise: Wave your hands to the tune of fast-paced eurobeat music.
  • Parappa The Rapper: A dog repeats what people around town say in order to court a flower. Along the way, he repeatedly makes a fool of himself and earns the scorn of everyone around him.
    • OR: Rapping can solve all your problems.
    • Parappa The Rapper 2: A dog stops a brat with an afro from turning the universe into noodles using the power of cake.
    • Um Jammer Lammy: One of his friends from around town fronts an all-girl garage band.
      • Or: Woman spends a long fifteen minutes trying to go to work and then dies.
  • Paradroid: The player uses the power of Mind Rape to clear a spaceship of cleaners, battle butlers and even daleks.
  • Parasite Eve: Genetic warfare breaks out at the opera. Your organelles hate you.
  • Patapon: As God, you command dancing eyeballs with weapons to war. You cannot control them directly so you have to use commands more complex than they need to be and be forced to wait after each command.
  • The Path: An adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood in which following the game's instructions means Game Over.
  • Pathways into Darkness: The talking corpses of your friends give you tips on helping an alien get back to sleep.
  • PAYDAY: The Heist: Joker's bank robbery scene if it relied on teamwork rather than betrayal.
    • PAYDAY 2: Four masked robbers in tuxedos constantly scream for aid and yell at shitty equipment.
  • The Pedestrian (2020): You travel across public signs. That’s it.
  • Peggle: Various creatures, including a unicorn, a dragon, a cat, and a flower have a school dedicated to teaching the player how to become a master at shooting balls at orange pegs.
    • Peggle Nights: The teachers of the above school have wish-fulfilling dreams.
  • Penny-Punching Princess: An angry princess takes down hordes of monsters with her fists and a magic 10-key calculator.
  • Perfect Vermin: A news reporter berates you while you smash fake office supplies with a sledgehammer.
  • Peter Jackson's King Kong: A HUD-less first-person shooter based on a major film by a big-name director where the player uses guns and other environmental objects to kill dinosaurs while exploring a tropical island.
  • Phantasmagoria: A couple's marriage becomes so utterly chaotic that they eventually try to kill each other; the wife succeeds.
    • Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh: Bisexual half-human hybrid cubicle dweller has both his prospective girlfriend and boyfriend stalked by an evil plant counterpart from another dimension.
  • Phantasy Star I: A girl completely overthrows an interplanetary government because her brother died.
    • Phantasy Star II: A man is charged with terrorism just for doing his job. Earthlings are all villains.
    • Phantasy Star III: Centuries of racist conflict are finally solved by a hotheaded prince's grandson.
    • Phantasy Star IV: It turns out these particular planets exist to physically barricade evil itself. The man who discovers this is scared to rummage through cabinets.
  • Phantasy Star Online: You're hired to find out what happened to the daughter of the head of the spaceship you live on. You commit genocide on the planet you're trying to colonize only to discover the daughter's been absorbed by the Eldritch Abomination.
    • Phantasy Star Online: Episode 3: Later, you use trading cards to discover everything's a government conspiracy.
  • Phantom Brave: Incredibly cheery young necromancer raises the dead to fight and kill for money. Her clients are extremely stingy.
  • Phasmophobia: GhostHunters: The Game - The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You Edition
  • Photopia: A classic Author Avatar story where everyone talks about how much they love the Parody Sue who later dies a tragic death.
  • Pikmin:
  • Pillars of Eternity: Nietzschean philosophy, the game.
  • Pizza Tower: Anxious Italian man runs for his life from a giant pizza to save his restaurant from ultimate destruction.
  • Plague Inc.: Oddly-named disease tries to destroy humanity by evolving.
  • Planescape: Torment: An amnesiac resolves to find out how to kill himself in a game based almost entirely on talking.
    • Alternatively: Update Your Journal: the Game
    • Alternatively: A game so dark, that dying and going to hell is the Golden Ending
  • Planetside: Law-abiding oppressors, anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter terrorists, and machine-worshipping cultists slug it out across an entire planet. Because of nanomachines, no one ever dies and the war never ends.
  • Plants vs. Zombies: Gardening is your only hope of surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Plaque Attack: The game of dental hygiene.
  • Playstation All Stars Battle Royale: An insane entity with godlike powers gathers up a number of misfits and outcasts to fight each other, plus a few seasoned warriors, a girl and her cat, a happy amateur musician, and an even happier sentient toy. Likely cause of YouTube hiding video tags from the public.
  • Plok: Narcissist asserts his authority by killing a bunch of fleas. The soundtrack is listenable.
  • Plumbers Don't Wear Ties: A random assortment of photographs involving a heterosexual relationship have been dubbed over.
  • Pochi and Nyaa: Raining cats and dogs—literally.
  • Pocket Card Jockey: CARD GAMES ON HORSEBACK!
  • Pocket God: Be a dick to some islanders.
  • Pocket Tanks: Tiny vehicles with guns destroy the world with ridiculous weapons yet always come out unharmed. Fireworks ensue.
  • Pokémon: The player takes on the role of a child in a world where kids are allowed to leave the house at 10 years of age and traverse the world, capture, befriend, and battle with special animals, causing them to metamorphose from adorable pets into grotesque oversized monsters, and beat up the local crime syndicate.
    • Alternatively: Step into a world where pets are Serious Business.
    • Alternatively: Explore a magical region where mutated animals with bladed arms and powers thrive, the civilians have no cars, the police have no guns, the hospitals have free all-in-one healing machines, and animal cage-fighting with kids, adults, and criminals is mandatory to enter the next room or city. You're also 10 years old.
    • Pokémon Red and Blue: A young man defeats a gang of ruthless criminals while trying To Be a Master.
    • Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal: A young man or woman defeats the same gang of ruthless criminals while trying To Be a Master. Then they meet the guy who crippled said gang the first time.
    • Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald: Defeat extremist ecological teams who hope to better the ecology of the region in convoluted ways.
      • Delta Episode (from Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire): A mysterious stranger searches the land for magical orbs in order to call upon a green serpent and save the world. Wait a minute...
      • Alternatively: A girl nearly causes The End of the World as We Know It in order to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. Then she beats up people and steals their belongings, ruins the plan to save the world, and then is surprised when her new plan doesn't work.
    • Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum: Defeat a terrorist organization and bend the ruler of time/space/antimatter to your will in the process.
      • Alternatively, completing a set of metal pins now requires interdimensional travel.
      • Or, a man tries to end the world because he is sad.
    • Pokémon Black and White: A slightly older young man or woman embarks on a journey through New York City and its surroundings to foil an old man's plan to use his son's ability to talk to animals to take over the world.
      • A socially maladjusted teenager repeatedly harasses you over the course of your quest to become the best in your field. After you beat up (in order) most of his minions, him, and his dad, he finally gets the message and leaves you alone.
      • Or: A group that, legally, is not PETA tries to destroy society.
    • Pokémon Black 2 and White 2: The old man and not-PETA return with a new scheme. The slightly older young man/woman isn't available, so another one has to help.
    • Pokémon X and Y: In France, orange-dressed people want to make the world beautiful. This is bad, and so a young-but-older-looking boy or girl must stop this.
      • Alternatively: a young teenager methodically eliminates an organization that was formed in order to combat worldwide overpopulation and economic scarcity, and is rewarded by being allowed to enter a gargantuan and extravagant castle that houses, at most, five people.
      • The Tale of AZ: Man loses a flower; reacts by killing everyone in France.
      • Or: A fairy convinces a really tall hobo to unleash death and destruction upon the world.
    • Pokémon Sun and Moon: A young boy/girl sets out on a quest through Hawaii to beat up wild animals, gangbangers, and Eldritch Abominations to earn Power Crystals.
      • Alternatively: Outsider interrupts a Kill la Kill reenactment while learning ridiculous dances.
      • Or: Pacifist who keeps smoke in her bag learns that all of life's problems can be solved with violence.
      • Or: Completing a set of metal ores also requires interdimensional travel.
      • Or: An immigrant uses animals and inanimate objects to stop a perfectionist from bringing illegal immigrants to their region.
    • Pokémon Sword and Shield: A young boy/girl tries to win the World Cup of cockfighting in Great Britain. Meanwhile, the local CEO's attempts to fix a looming energy crisis go horribly wrong.
      • Or: A country is set to run out of energy. The local superhero decides to let the people of the future deal with it instead, and it's the protagonist's job to convince everyone else of the same.
    • Pokémon Legends: Arceus: A 15-year old boy/girl gets isekai'd by the world's Top God to a historical era of Hokkaido.
    • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: A younger boy/girl attends school in Spain and can try To Be a Master, beat up giant animals for ingredients, and fight delinquents in no particular order.
      • Or: A country's ecosystem is in peril—and only a younger boy/girl and their sandwich-loving dinosaur/robot that loves pretending to be a motorcycle can set things right. In order to do so, the child must get pieces of metal from 8 specific people, help a young man make the perfect sandwich (which is not for the dinosaur/robot), and beat up people who were already getting bullied at school.
    • Pokémon Box: A game that allows you to save creatures on a card.
    • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Teams: A human gets turned into a monster after a personality test and is roped into rescuing other monsters in randomly generated dungeons. Said human nearly distracts a giant sky dragon from saving the world.
      • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness: A different human in the body of a monster must help stop time from freezing by causing time to freeze. There's a scene where all of your closest companions try to kill you, and it's Played for Laughs. There's also a set of scenes where the villain tries to drive the heroes to suicide. In a kid's game.
      • Two heroes embark on a plan to save the world, only for one of them to be waylaid for weeks on end by the nicest bunch of adventurers you ever met. If the villain hadn't tried to pit them against each other, they would probably have never reforged their partnership. Despite all this, neither of them turn out to be The Chosen One. Also you can miss the entire second half of the story if you don't talk to a trivial NPC who just shows up a few days after the credits roll.
      • To stop time from freezing in the future, you must freeze time in the present.
      • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky: Pay $30 extra just to see the fan-favorite character from the previous game live instead of die.
    • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity: A different human in the body of a monster (no personality tests this time) is roped into saving the world, and has to think with dimensional gates in order to destroy a snowflake. Why? Because a zombie dragon can see into the future.
    • Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon: A different human in the body of a monster meets a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy...
    • Pokémon Ranger: You befriend monsters by drawing circles around them.
      • Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia: You must prevent an oil company from finding a renewable energy source by drawing circles around monsters.
      • Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs: Bad guys go around waking up birds, and Evil Old Folks blow up an island using a giant pinecone. You stop them by drawing circles around monsters.
    • Pokémon Snap: In the same world of exotic animals, a boy takes photographs of them to give to an old man.
      • New Pokémon Snap: In a different region of said world, a child takes photographs of exotic animals to give to a slightly younger man, who is joined by two children and the now-grown-up boy from the previous game. Also, glowing flowers are somehow related to an ancient meteor strike.
    • Pokémon Stadium: A Spin-Off that heavily relies on Old Save Bonus. Its only purpose is to see sprites converted into 3D models. There's no story whatsoever.
      • A minigame compilation with a free battle simulator!
    • Pokémon Colosseum: In a desert wasteland, an older boy takes villains' monsters in order to perform therapy for them.
      • Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness: The same villains turn a seagull purple. Therapy is now done by a computer.
    • Pokémon Trading Card Game: The player takes on the role of a different child in a world where card games are Serious Business.
    • Hey You, Pikachu!: In this same world, a child must befriend a mouse by yelling at it through a cheap microphone.
    • Pokémon Rumble: A rodent that isn't a mouse desires to win a tournament. He fails, so he finds others to do it for him.
      • Pokémon Rumble Blast: Large groups of creatures counteract oxidation by charging at it headfirst.
      • Pokémon Rumble World: The fate of a kingdom rests on breakfast foods and who has the most toys. The player is tempted to spend money at every turn.
    • Pokémon Conquest: Answers the age old question of what Feudal Japan would've been like if it had electric rodents.
    • My Pokémon Ranch: In a game with graphics that resemble the Nintendo 64, you're able to transfer creatures to a farm and play with them. You get more creatures the more you play the game.
    • Pokémon Bank: Transfer your creatures and store them in the cloud.
    • Pokémon HOME: Pay $16 a year so that the guys who made the franchise will store your creatures, 297 of whom you can do nothing with besides stuff them in a box and let them collect dust, even though you probably have the technology to just do it on your own.
    • Pokkén Tournament: Creatures beat each other up in a familiar fighting game format.
    • Pokémon Trozei!: Save creatures from giant vehicles by matching four or more of them via sliding.
      • Pokémon Battle Trozei: Same as above, only you swap them instead of sliding, and there's no plot.
      • Pokémon Shuffle: Same as above, but with Microtransactions.
    • Pokémon GO: Players constantly drain their mobile data as they look for creatures while walking around aimlessly.
      • OR: Use a smartphone to view the world as...exactly how you'd normally see it, except with a lot more bad guys traveling around in hot air balloons.
    • Pokémon Masters: Instead of training teams of exotic creatures, you train teams of people who train exotic creatures.
    • Pokémon Café Mix: Exotic creatures are lured into the food service industry while being paid chicken feed.
    • Pokemon Nuzlocke runs: Like the above, but with more level-grinding and (depending on how into it you get) more emotional tragedy.
      • Nuzlocke Comics: Share the above online, so everyone can join in the emotional tragedy! Yaaaaaaay!
  • Poker Night at the Inventory: An anthropomorphic rabbit, a shirtless luchador, a Russian army man, a nerd, and a faceless mute play Texas Hold 'Em
    • Poker Night 2: A bodyguard, a robot, a zombie hunter, an anthropomorphic dog, and the same faceless mute play Texas and Omaha Hold 'Em while an insane supercomputer watches.
  • pop'n music: Press big colorful buttons to create musical effects.
  • Pong: Two numbers, three lines, and a dot.
  • Pony Island: A game designed by Satan, full of glitches and corrupted areas.
    • Alternatively: Satan wants you to beta-test his video game.
  • Portal: Break the laws of physics repeatedly while being carted around a desolate laboratory by an insane computer.
    • Alternatively: A computer runs some tests.
    • Portal 2: Hundreds of years later, you team up with a potato to stop an idiot.
      • Alt: Solve puzzles by shooting at walls while your former friend struggles with addiction and withdrawal.
    • Keep in mind, this is a first person shooter, but has only one weapon which can't kill anyone.
  • Postal: A guy who resembles a disgruntled Grunge musician responds to being evicted from his home by picking a fight with the law enforcement (and very likely the local populace while at it.)
  • Potion Permit: Cure patients by putting Tetris blocks in their medicine.
  • Power Instinct: A family feud is settled in the fastest possible way.
    • Power Instinct Matrimelee: The family beats the hell out of each other for the right to break age-of-consent laws.
  • Power Pete: As Orson Welles said of his role in Transformers, you "play a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys." In a toystore.
  • Power Stone: An Ace Pilot, a cute kunoichi, a Goku-esque martial artist, a fortune telling Sultry Belly Dancer, a Rōnin samurai, a gambling miner, a Magical Native American, a masked Serial Killer, a gonk pirate, and a Social Darwinist Pro Wrestler all get together to have some fun from within a MacGuffin treasure hunting game.
  • Presentable Liberty: Stand around and wait to receive letters you can't respond to because you're in prison.
  • Prey (2006): Cherokee Guy makes the Doom Guy proud. Now with more Gravity Screw (and sphincters!)
  • Prey (2017): Following a workplace accident, a shapeshifting alien that thinks it's the vice president of a tech company kills dozens of its brethren in the quest to read some email.
  • Primal: A girl searches for her lost boyfriend while a gargoyle tries to convince her to save the world.
  • Primal Rage: Mortal Kombat WITH DINOSAURS AND GORILLAS!
  • Prince of Persia: You are a beggar who is in love with a princess and cannot survive a twenty-foot drop. Except the one that threw you in jail. You must fight through a crumbling, trap-filled palace brimming with guards and fight the evil vizier. In an hour.
    • Or: Penniless beggar finds love, wealth and power by killing a Disney character.
    • Prince of Persia 2: Similar concept as above, only now you have to die to solve some of the puzzles and it takes two hours.
    • Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Much like the earlier games, only now there's no time limit and you're armed with a VCR. Or TiVo/Sky+ to younger tropers.
      • Alternatively, a man who can't decide what sword he likes best and likes ripping up his shirt joins forces with the woman he kidnapped to save the world from a tuberculosis-suffering politician (who has recently changed political parties) after the man breaks a clock. All this is a story told by someone with an incredibly bad memory.
    • Prince of Persia: Warrior Within: Much like the previous game, only now your main character reached puberty.
      • Alternatively, a sleep-deprived man armed with a VCR fights empresses in metal swimsuits.
    • Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones: Like the last two games, but the main character now has multiple-personality disorder.
      • Alternatively, a no-longer-dead politician (who doesn't have tuberculosis and never changed parties) kills an ex-empress who used to wear metal swimsuits to create lots of sand. To set things right, the man from the previous two games joins forces with the princess he had kidnapped, who no longer remembers him. They have conversations in elevators about the man's favorite color and he finds his old VCR.
      • The main character learns that there's no point trying to correct your mistakes.
    • Prince of Persia (2008): An environmentalist and a guy with a Freddy Krueger glove run around trying to save a tree for someone who's been gone for a thousand years.
  • Princess Connect! Re:Dive The hero, after failing to defeat the Final Boss, became amnesiac. He joins a Big Eater Stock Shōnen Hero, a pious elf child and a shady cat mage to defeat it again while dealing with his Unwanted Harem.
  • Princess Debut: You have thirty days to learn to dance from a furry. Bishōnen princes want to screw you, but won't, because the game is rated E. There's a flying hamster.
  • Princess Maker 2: As a reward for saving a kingdom from the armies of Satan, God gives you a ten-year-old girl.
    • You can then have said 10-year-old girl kill the god of war and become the new Satan.
    • Alternatively: Make your underage daughter work at a sleazy bar to pay for her breast enlargement.
  • Princess Waltz A bunch of princesses compete in a royal battle royale where cardgames are Serious Business. The prize is a prince who secretly turns into a princess through a DBZ fusion-move to compete in the tournament as well, because he doesn't want to marry any of the competitors since he prefers men. Besides, he really was a princess all along, anyway.
  • Professor Layton: Barraged by puzzles, two Brits, a professor and his apprentice, solve mysteries. Plot twists ensue.
  • Progear: Child Soldiers have to overthrow an immortal senate with World War II-era planes. While collecting gems.
  • Project Wingman: An unnamed pilot takes the idea of being a Butterfly of Doom a bit too literally. The Big Bad gets angry at the pilot, the pilot's friends, and possibly the pilot's WSO because they existed in front of him; one of the pilot's friends gives him a Big "SHUT UP!", to the cathartic amusement of players everywhere.
  • Protect Me Knight: A ragtag bunch of JRPG misfits tries to protect a happy-go-lucky princess. Retro video game and Japanese pop-culture parodies galore.
  • [PROTOTYPE]: A man in a hoodie has lunch in New York despite the army's best attempts to stop him.
    • [PROTOTYPE 2]: The man in the hoodie welcomes a very upset man into his family. The angry man shows his appreciation by waging war on everyone.
  • Psychic Force: It's X-Men...with Psychic Powers!
  • Psychonauts: A kid runs away from the circus, learns Psychic Powers by collecting random junk to earn merit badges, and must save the world from an angry midget and a mad dentist.
    • Alternatively: Circus Brat runs away from home in hopes of becoming a pre-teen superspy. As he works his way towards an insane asylum, he is eaten by a fish, causes a guy to awaken his love for dairy, and sneezes out his brain in the end. His dad is not balding and doesn't hate him. Meanwhile, a Brazilian mourns, people go off their meds, and a short guy dresses like a tokusatsu hero.
    • Alternatively: A boy goes to summer camp to learn how to be a government-funded therapist.
    • Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin: Circus Brat and some of his friends go for an impromptu swim and have a really bad trip. Then he takes a bath with a dentist.
    • Psychonauts 2: Grandma did some war crimes and then forgot about them. A guy with a big hat wants to make her remember her war crimes. Meanwhile, the Circus Brat gives his superior a gambling addiction, causes a guy to have panic attacks and learns his childhood hero made some mistakes in his youth and gets really mad about it.
  • Psycho Waluigi: A Dastardly Whiplash type character takes a nasty fall from a hot air balloon and develops psychic powers from the knock on his head. He then uses these powers to go on a spree of conquest across the new land he crashed onto, doing battle with the militaristic government and literally overthrowing puppet rulers along the way.
  • Pulse: A blind girl must find her brother, who is lost in a cave system.
  • Punch-Out!!: Scrawny kid works his way to the top of the boxing circuit. Many of his opponents are blatant cheaters.
    • Alternatively: A New Yorker beats up racial stereotypes.
    • Punch-Out!! Wii - Title Defense Mode: Scrawny kid defends his title from his previous opponents, who are now even worse and even more blatant cheaters, even the ones who weren't.
    • Super Punch Out: Scrawny kid with no name works his way to the top of the boxing circuit. Many of his opponents are blatant cheaters, some aren't even boxers.
  • Pursuit Force: You fight crime by hijacking vehicles while someone else is driving them.
  • Pushmo: A little guy removes children from voxel statues by meticulously pulling them apart.note 
  • Push-Over: An anthropomorphic dog trips while dancing and simultaneously drops ten bags of potato chips from his pocket down an anthole. A friendly ant goes to look for them but instead gets distracted playing with his toy dominoes. His journey takes him to many places including Ancient Greece, Japan, a medieval dungeon, a tower of tinker-toys, and outer space.
  • Puyo Puyo: Stacking and killing cute little blobs is a sport.
    • Or: A girl discovers a spell powered by the genocide of multicolored blobs. She uses this power to beat Satan, who wants to marry her.
    • Puyo Puyo 2: Satan sets up a tower to woo little girl and get his pet back.
    • Puyo Puyo Sun: Satan causes global warming to tan his skin, all because of a magazine he read. The girl finds it too hot and goes out to stop him.
    • Puyo Puyo Fever/Puyo Pop Fever: A different little girl attends an academy, and competes in a competition to find her teacher's flying cane.
    • Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary: A bunch of anime boys, girls, and creatures compete in a tournament based around destroying cute, harmless blobs. The winner gets to make a wish.
    • Puyo Puyo 7: Another different little girl, taught by the first girl, has to stop Weird Weather flooding the school she attends.
    • Puyo Puyo Tetris: All of the girls (but mainly the third one) investigate more Weird Weather making multicolored blocks fall from the sky.
    • Puyo Puyo Tetris 2: A Psychopathic Manchild merges two dimensions together so he can separate them back. All of the girls, plus a boy about their age, team up to give him psychiatric counseling.
    • Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine: A mad doctor kidnaps a race of multicolored blobs to turn into robots. You have to stop him. Totally not related to the above entries.
    • Kirby's Avalanche: A pink puffball makes the genocide of multicolored blobs a sport. The puffball is also uncharacteristically more of a jerk.
  • Puzzle Quest: Warriors fight for the fate of the world with Match-Three Puzzle battles.
  • Pyre: You and your fellow travelers are stuck in a hellish realm, and the only way out is to play sacred 3-on-3 hoops.
  • Q*bert: Jump on blocks in order to change their color while avoiding anything red or purple (lest you drop the Simlish equivalent of the F-bomb).
  • Qix: Draw lots of quadrilaterals while sparkly things chase you around. Avoid the color-changing lines.
  • QP Shooting: Touhou Project, but with a pudding-obsessed dog girl and lots of widgety-ness.
  • Quake: A single Space Marine must traverse numerous monotonously decorated Gothic buildings in order to reach a boss who doesn't move or attack at all.
    • Quake II: A single soldier fights a bunch of guys who all have prosthetic limbs.
    • Quake III: Arena: A bunch of people kill each other over and over again.
    • Quake IV: A bunch of soldiers invade the home of the aforementioned prosthetic limb users.
    • Enemy Territory: Quake Wars: A bunch of soldiers and a bunch of prosthetic limb users wage war in the soldiers' home planet.
  • Quantum Conundrum: Travel through your uncle's mad house, through dimensions in order to get him out of a giant pocket.
  • The Queen of Heart '99: The result of dipping To Heart into massive (fan-made) Character Derailment.
  • Quest for Glory: A guy wants to be a hero.
  • QWOP: An aspiring athlete for an underdog nation runs 100 meters.
  • R-Type: Humanity fights off artificial Eldritch Abominations using ships equipped with Organic Technology made from said abominations. You'll spend most of your time with the abominations dying.
  • Rabi-Ribi: A bunny girl has to track down another bunny girl while being chased by yet another bunny girl.
    • Alternatively: Woman uses telepathy ineffectively.
    • Alternatively: A whole bunch of good people fight each other over pure misunderstandings.
  • Radiant Historia: Save Scumming: The Game.
  • Radiant Silvergun: Ancient artifact is killing everyone, wander around the timeline to find out why.
    • Alternately: You have seven weapons. They level up separately. Winning means using these seven weapons well. Playing for score means using these seven weapons frequently and evenly to destroy only a third of the enemy forces.
  • Radiata Stories: You and everyone you've ever met including your bumbling mentor and quiet girlfriend wage war against whoever's side you don't take.
  • Raft: In a flooded post-apocalyptic world, a young adult builds a boat/farm and struggles with their bad habit of just missing all the other human survivors.
  • Rally Trophy: You struggle with the steering wheel of your old 60s car. You start your racing career in the middle of nowhere in northwest Russia. Your co-driver is a bossy Jerkass and panics when seeing cows.
  • Rama: Arthur C. Clarke teaches an astronaut octal and hexadecimal math.
  • Rampage: You punch buildings until either they collapse or you fall and turn into a naked person.
  • Raptor: Call of the Shadows: An extremely durable plane shoots down enemies.
  • Rainbow Six: Have a plan to kill everyone you and your friends meet. Be prepared to lose those friends if your plan doesn't go off without a hitch.
    • Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield: An old man gives Neo-Nazis some money to go get themselves killed.
    • Rainbow Six: Vegas: A Texan and the two dumbest special forces operators ever shoot up Las Vegas.
    • Rainbow Six: Vegas 2: A featureless training instructor and the aforementioned dumbest SF operators ever shoot up Las Vegas the day before the Texan arrives. The plot is revealed to be orchestrated by the most incompetent special forces operator ever.
    • Rainbow Six Siege: There is a new wave of global organized terrorism, and to counter them, worldwide special forces are organized... to kill each other instead. Although sometimes fight terrorists.
  • Rakenzarn Tales: Kingdom Hearts meets Super Smash Bros. meets Super Robot Wars mixed with a few OCs. What we get is an insanely, huge crossover.
  • Rakenzarn Frontier Story: The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: The RPG.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Vaguely catlike repairman acquires factory-rejected robot and saves the galaxy from people who are just trying to make a new home for themselves.
    • Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot travel to another galaxy and save it from an adorable fuzzy monster.
    • Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot return to the first galaxy and save it from a mad scientist and his sarcastic butler. But they need the help of one of their old enemies to do so.
    • Ratchet: Deadlocked: Vaguely catlike repairman must win a game show or die trying.
    • Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot get interviewed by a young girl working on her school project and end up finding tiny aliens.
    • Secret Agent Clank: Vaguely catlike repairman gets sent to prison, while factory-rejected robot tries on various costumes, sends the repairman cakes, and plays poker for an empty crate. Meanwhile, stupid green-wearing superhero tells a bunch of far-fetched tales, and tiny robots help defeat cheating robots.
    • Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot save a different galaxy from a pipsqueak emperor and his army of goldfish. They also find the ultimate weapon of a lost civilization: a hat.
    • Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty: Vaguely catlike repairman faces two pirates with the intent of finding where his factory-rejected robot friend is working.
    • Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time: Vaguely catlike repairman finds out he isn't the only one. In the meantime, factory-rejected robot is now employed in the exact center of the universe, give or take fifty feet.
    • Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One: Vaguely catlike repairman, his factory-rejected robot friend, stupid green-wearing president, and mad scientist work together to stop a man in search of his lost pet.
    • Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault: Vaguely catlike repairman, factory-rejected robot friend, and stupid green-wearing former president have to defend a sector of the galaxy from an evil nerd. It's more intended for multiplayer.
    • Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus: Vaguely catlike repairman and factory-rejected robot friend go on a gravity-lacking adventure to stop a witch and her brother from summoning spooky scary space ghosts and a mechanical eye.
    • Ratchet & Clank (2016): Stupid green-wearing superhero retells story of vaguely catlike repairman acquiring factory-rejected robot and saving the galaxy from people who are just trying to make a new home for themselves.
    • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: Vaguely catlike repairman and mad scientist accidentally break reality and are transported into an alternate dimension where the mad scientist always wins; to resolve this, they have to interact with their (more imposing but equally sassy) dimensional counterparts in an emotionally healthy and thoughtful manner.
  • RayForce: Humanity destroys the Earth after a supercomputer goes insane when connected to a clone.
    • RayStorm: Defend the Earth from a space colony mutiny. No mention of the supercomputer anywhere.
    • RayCrisis: Humanity tries to hack aformentioned supercomputer to destroy it from the inside. It doesn't work.
  • Rayman series: Limbless man fights evil despite disability.
    • Rayman (1995 game): Limbless man must rescue dozens of his fangirls before he can confront the villain, who lives in a fortress made of candy and cake. There, he defeats the reassembled body parts of all the game's bosses, then lets the villain go free.
    • Rayman 2: The Great Escape: Limbless man must eat a lot of yellow flies on a quest to awaken an omnipotent voodoo doll.
    • Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc: Limbless man has trouble getting his shoes to stay on. He saves the world by making a googly face at a wise-cracking black fly.
    • Rayman Raving Rabbids: Limbless man is forced to play bizarre sports with screaming bunnies.
    • Rayman Raving Rabbids 2: Shrieking rabbits divert the attention away from limbless man and play more bizarre games. Everyone rages at the attention-diverting.
    • Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party: Noisy lapines get stuck in the limbless man's television set and annoy him by playing yet more bizarre games.
    • Rabbids Go Home: Cacophonous lagomorphs decide to finally go home. Except that they've forgotten where home is, and decide it's the moon, and build a tower consisting of random junk on the streets and clothing stolen directly off people in order to get there. The limbless man is now apparently absent, considering the rabbits are doing his job for him.
    • Rayman Origins: Limbless man, blue frog, and big-nosed fancily-dressed blue people have a nap that drives a grandma to send the legions of Hell upon them. They all set out to rescue the fangirls, some fairies, and beat up a few giant animals (and a plant).
    • Rayman Legends: One long nap later, the limbless man, blue frog, and big-nosed fancily-dressed blue people go on adventures inside a bunch of paintings, rescuing big-nosed fancily-dressed people and warrior princesses from whatever is in the paintings.
  • Razing Storm: Two commandos and their squad kill an evil dictator. And lots of Humongous Mecha.
  • The Reap: Aliens invade earth and destroy its defences. You play as one of them.
  • Receiver: Gun Porn: The Game...except you only get three dinky pistols and are up against Killer Robots.
  • Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale: In a world full of adventurers, you play as the shopkeeper.
    • Alternatively: Learn to love capitalism and hate little girls buying groceries.
  • Red Dead Redemption: Grand Theft Auto...IN THE WILD WEST!
  • Red Dead Redemption II: Broken Home Simulator 2018
    • Or: A cowboy gets sick and dies.
  • Red Faction: A man in mars voices a complaint against his employer by blowing up walls.
  • Resident Evil: Biopharmaceutical company creates zombie apocalypses by the dozen. Everyone has to deal with the fallout.
    • Resident Evil: Cops break into a house and kill everyone inside.
      • Jill's story: A policewoman who is the Master of Unlocking and an awesome man work together to find out what happened to their captain who wears Sunglasses at Night and their partner, a policeman before he gets his gorilla arms mods.
      • Chris' Story: A policeman, before he gets roid up, finds a rookie police officer while finding out what happened to his captain who wears Sunglasses at Night and his kinda, sorta Love Interest, the policewoman who unlocks things.
    • Resident Evil 2: A policeman arrives in a town and starts shooting its residents. Meanwhile, an evil corporation conspires to invent skin cream.
      • Or, a policeman who arrives late on his first day on the job after being ditched by his girlfriend got a hell of a welcoming party and falls in love with a scheming, sultry, morally ambigous woman. Meanwhile, a young woman, who found out her brother has left the city for some "forced" vacation, has to protect a little girl from an evil chief of police and an incestuous cancer monster.
      • Resident Evil 2 (Remake): As above but with more angst and gore.
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis: A gal in a miniskirt spends the entire game running away from a tentacle monster.
      • Or: Something big, angry and nasty is coming after you because FUCK YOU!
    • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica: A girl protects a boy only slightly younger than she is because her older brother isn't around to protect her until the very end.
    • Resident Evil 4: The President's daughter has been kidnapped by Spaniards! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President's daughter?
      • Or: An American goes to Spain to rescue the president's daughter and meets a man who is eventually killed by a cult leader and his demon penis.
      • Or: The policeman from the second game arrives in a village in Europe and starts shooting its residents. Meanwhile, Napoleon is digging for ancient parasites under his house.
      • Or: Big Bad explains plan to protagonist and spends several days trying to kill him, when unlocking all the doors and taking a nap would have assured him world domination.
      • Or: American guns down hundreds of Spaniards because he doesn't want to be like them.
      • Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways: A woman uses a Grappling-Hook Pistol to help out the above American behind the scenes while working for the villain behind the first three games, but in reality is a chessmaster who is doing it all for own nefarious schemes.
      • Resident Evil 4 (Remake): As above but the President's daughter is a good character now. And the awesome Spaniard gets a more dignified death then getting dicked by a monster.
    • Resident Evil 5: A very stylish and clever villain who speaks in a huge, bombastic tone plots to control the world while wearing Sunglasses at Night. He is stopped by a heavily-muscled international police officer and his small, slender female partner.
      • Alternatively, the first recipient of a gorilla-human arm transplant punches his way through Africa with the support of a local in order to stop Neo from controlling worms. In the end, he fistfights a boulder in a volcano.
    • Resident Evil: Outbreak: A group of people completely unrelated to all of the above have to put up with the aftermath.
    • Resident Evil 6: The ex-policeman, his partner with a Dark and Troubled Past, heavily muscled international police officer, his military partner, son of the stylish bombastic villain, daughter of the cancer monster and chessmaster woman walk into a city.
    • Resident Evil 0: Rookie police officer from the first game and death row prisoner escaped from a train and then, from a training facility while bombastic villain and future cancer monster watches. Also, the Big Bad is a Final Fantasy villain reject.
    • Resident Evil: Revelations: Gal in a miniskirt who is also policewoman from the first game is stranded on a ship alongside evil goo monsters. Her partner, the heavily muscled international police officer tries to find her.
    • Resident Evil: Revelations 2: Sister of the heavily muscled international police officer and daughter of everyone's favorite man from the first game are stranded on an island to be experimented about the effect of fear. The awesome man goes to their search and works with a mysterious girl. The Big Bad is the sister of the stylish bombastic villain.
    • Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D: The gorilla-man, the miniskirt gal, the rookie police officer, the gorilla-man's younger sister, a corporate samurai, the ex-policeman's old comrade turned enemy, the awesome man, and the stylish villian decide "screw plot, let's just go shoot zombies".
    • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard: Man meets his wife's family for dinner and ends up getting picked on by her parents and bossed around by her siblings while spending most of the night getting rid of a mold problem for them, watching their home videos, and repeatedly mistaking his own new daughter for his grandmother-in-law.
      • Not a Hero DLC: Gorilla man has to find the remaining family member and rescue his men. He succeeds in the former, not so much in the latter.
      • End of Zoe DLC: Last surviving family member is dying from her mold infection and has to be rescued by her previously unmentionned uncle who has to deal with her father who has become Swamp Thing.
    • Resident Evil Village: The same man heads on down to Romania, and meets some asshole nobles and a lady who really likes crows. He then has to gather a baby's body parts to stop the lady who likes crows from trying to save her child.
      • Alternatively, Average man has to go in Romania to find out why his friend, the Gorilla man, shot his wife.
      • Shadows of Rose DLC: The baby, now grown up, learns to embrace her toxic mold infestation.
  • Resistance: Fall of Man: You must stop a bunch of aliens that are digging up funny looking towers and trying to destroy humanity for some reason.
    • Resistance 2: A soldier infected by The Virus refuses treatment in favor of blowing up more funny looking towers. This does nothing to help humanity's situation.
  • Retro City Rampage: Relive The '80s by playing Grand Theft Auto through an NES filter.
  • Retro Game Challenge: Game show host has become a disembodied evil head and sends you back in time to play Nintendo, so his 10-year old self can help you defeat himself.
  • Return of the Obra Dinn: You wander around an abandoned ship under the full moon and constantly check your pocket-watch.
  • Revengers of Vengeance: Record of Lodoss War-expies fight each other and a great evil.
  • Revolution X: Rescue Aerosmith from an evil government by shooting CDs at its troops.
  • Rez: You have to fix an AI that's not working well by shooting stuff to techno music.
    • Alternatively, an AI gets depressed, and you shoot stuff to make it feel better.
  • Rhythm Heaven: Depending on the console, tap a couple buttons in time with unexplainable things or tap and flick your stylus in time with unexplainable things.
  • Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure: Red-headed Gentleman Thief dances his way around Paris while facing off against the minions of zombie Napoleon.
  • Rift: Six large reptilian things decide to cause trouble. Either Mad Scientists or the gods themselves are to blame.
  • Rift Wizard: Amnesiac wizard wakes up past the end of the universe, decides to jog his memory, kill another wizard and go back to sleep.
  • Rimworld: Robinson Crusoe, but IN SPACE! and with way more warcrimes.
  • Ring Fit Adventure: A person with flaming hair must stop a dragon via exercising. Their only ally is a ring that spouts Accidental Innuendos and makes Navi seem tolerable.
  • Ring of Red: What if the Korean War was fought with Humongous Mecha?
  • Rise And Destroy: You are a giant monster that must rampage through the city.
  • Rise of the Triad: Five special forces agents must stop a cult whose ranks include the former head of a movie studio. Among your weapons are a magical baseball bat and the ability to turn into a dog.
  • Risk of Rain: Cast Away IN SPACE! with way more violence, way more random shipping crates and an angry zookeeper that won't let you leave.
    • Risk of Rain 2: Investigators/looters return to the crash site and find more violence, even more random shipping crates and an even angrier zookeeper's brother that won't let them leave.
  • Ristar: A star defeats invading aliens by grabbing them.
  • Rival Schools: United By Fate: A young man's plans to fulfill his dead father's last wish is ruined by his twin brother and his classmates.
    • Project Justice: Another young man's plans to make new friends with the same students goes horribly awry.
  • River City Ransom: Two high school delinquents beat up an entire city worth of gangsters for the sake of one guy's girlfriend.
    • Or: Beat up people to hear them barf.
    • Or: Steal oodles and oodles of lunch money For Great Justice.
  • Riviera: The Promised Land: A fallen angel and his harem attempt to stop his old companions from bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
    • Yggdra Union: Princess with a big sword and a deck of cards has to reclaim her kingdom from an empire with larger numbers (and, obviously, more cards).
      • Yggdra Unison: Empire captures fortress; very cutesy world war between twelve countries, each armed with a deck of cards, ensues.
      • Blaze Union: Demonic Christ figure gathers many allies and a large deck of cards in order to save the Empire.
      • Gloria Union: Wannabe pirate and a robot who fell from the sky look for treasure, armed with a deck of cards. Also, political intrigue!
    • Knights in the Nightmare: Ghost calls on the spirits of the dead to protect him from monsters, even though it can't be killed.
    • Gungnir: Boy with the ability to summon (but not control) powerful demons VS mundane racism.
  • Roblox: A platform for fledgeling game designers to flex their creative muscles and get their creations out into the world.
  • Robot Alchemic Drive: Super robots save the world while you stand around and watch. And try to avoid collateral damage from their battles.
  • Robot Unicorn Attack: Horse collects fairies and makes friends with dolphins on a journey amongst the stars. Men love it.
  • RoboWarrior: Saving the world from an alien-engineered ecological disaster by blowing up trees on your way.
  • Rock Band: Tapping buttons on what looks like a plastic toy guitar/bass, hitting plastic drums, making an arrow follow a line with your voice. Making an ass of yourself in the process, of course, but at least you can do it with more friends.
    • Rock Band Unplugged: Tapping buttons while potentially making an ass of yourself in the process. Unfortunately, you can't do it with friends.
    • Rock Band Blitz: Twiddle your index fingers to rock stardom while shooting for a high score and potentially making an ass of yourself. Again, you can't do it with friends.
  • Rock of Ages: Various historical and mythological figures decide the best way to solve their disputes is to throw rocks at each other's houses.
  • Rocket Knight Adventures: Rescue a princess from pig men with a sword that undresses its victims.
  • Rockys Boots: A prismatic electrical generator builds machines to kick certain specified geometrics so that a non-camouflaged raccoon can appear to do a short dance.
  • Roco Kingdom: People living in a fantasy world fight each other with pets that have all sorts of Elemental Powers and can undergo transformations into stronger versions of themselves. No, this isn't the one you're most likely thinking of.
  • Rogue Legacy: A family attempts to venture into an ever-changing castle to rescue the king. When you die, your kids go into the castle in your stead.
  • Romancing Saga 3: A villager, his childhood friend and her sister, a merchant, a prince and his sister, the prince's bodyguard and a mercenary are travelling the world while probably working together to destroy four elemental demons in any order possible.
  • Rom Check Fail: What happens when the ship from Space Invaders faces Goombas or Pac-Man faces asteroids, all because the computer is glitching?
  • RosenkreuzStilette: A witch from the military fights against her eight friends to stop a rebellion from devastating her country. Said witch fights suspiciously like a certain automaton who would live centuries after her time.
    • Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel: The military witch gets kidnapped by five evil witches, and her best friend fights the other seven friends (and a newcomer) before going off to rescue her.
  • Roundabout: A silent chauffeur ferries passengers in the world's only perpetually spinning limousine.
  • RPG Shooter: Starwish: A Space Pirate makes friends with genies.
  • RType: Improper disposal of Organic Technology causes much grief.
  • RuneScape: After being taught very basic skills on an island your goal is to do everything.
  • Rygar: An ambiguously Greek man hits the local fauna with an oversized yo-yo. He enjoys watching sunsets.

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