The Theatre of Cruelty is a form of theatre performance developed by French playwright Antonin Artaud. It emphasises a very raw and visceral approach to performance that seeks to shock the viewer out of a feeling of complacency and comfort. This is a list of video games that I feel take a similar approach to making the player connect with their stories through the use of the grotesque brutality and harshness enacted upon the player in various ways. This list doesn’t strictly adhere to the Artaudian concept of “The Theatre of Cruelty” but I try to add games that I feel would somewhat loosely fit.

tl;dr a list of the dark, miserable, surreal, cruel, unforgiving, nihilistic, evil, brutal, disturbing, and discomforting.