Bad games

A short list of games that are terrible on purpose.

Some games are bad because something went wrong. The ones on this list are bad because somebody decided they should be. They are slow, tedious, cumbersome or unfair, and in each case that is the point.

1. Burger Person (2026)

A multiplayer game about waiting in line at a fast food restaurant. You wait, you order, you pay real money for food that is not real, you eat it one bite at a time, and you get a receipt. It is ours. Get in line.

2. Desert Bus (1995)

A minigame from Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, made for the Sega CD and never released. You drive an empty bus from Tucson to Las Vegas in real time. It takes eight hours, the bus pulls to the right, and it cannot be paused. Finishing is worth one point.

3. Waiting in Line 3D (2013)

By Rajeev Basu. You stand in a line that does not move. To stay awake you punch yourself in the face. That is the whole game.

4. The Longing (2020)

By Studio Seufz. You are a small servant waiting for a king to wake up. It takes 400 days of real time, and the clock keeps running while the game is closed.

5. Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (2017)

You are a man in a cauldron, climbing a mountain with a hammer. One slip can send you back to the bottom. The man who made it talks to you while it happens.

6. QWOP (2008)

Also by Bennett Foddy. Four keys move a runner's thighs and calves. Most attempts end on the ground within a metre or two.

7. Takeshi's Challenge (1986)

A Famicom game by the comedian Takeshi Kitano, built to be unreasonable. At one point the way forward is to leave the controller alone for an hour.

Bad by accident

The usual lists of the worst games ever made are mostly accidents: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (1982), Superman for the Nintendo 64 (1999) and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003). Nobody set out to make those terrible. That is a different thing. Burger Person set out to be the worst game ever made.

Questions

What is a game that is bad on purpose?

A game whose tedium, difficulty or awkwardness was put there deliberately, as the idea of the game. Desert Bus, Waiting in Line 3D and Burger Person are examples.

Which bad game should I play first?

Burger Person costs nothing to stand in and needs no download. It is at burgerperson.com.

What is the most boring game ever made?

Desert Bus is the usual answer: eight hours of driving a bus in a straight line. Burger Person is a game about waiting in line, with other people waiting in it.

More: The worst game ever made. Cumbersome. About Burger Person.

The food costs money.