Compellingly Fugly
questionable taste levels. uncanny and disorienting worlds shooting for... something hard to relate to. headache-inducing soulless corpo-stylization. ill-advised visual re-imaginings. Perverse cgi doll faces and unrelatable eroticism. off-model renderings. textural/perspective incoherence. general profound unpleasantness. "naive" outsider art or games whose ambition exceeds their technical capacity. big ugly empty spaces. little ugly cluttered spaces. turd color palettes and military fetishism that feels like inadvertent institutional critique. failed edgelord transgression. successful edgelord transgression! these are a few of my favorite things!
Note that my personal use of fugly doesn't in any way mean bad or worthless! I LOVE the way many of these games look; they're frequently among the only times we're actually confronted with something memorable or aesthetically new. In my humble onion many of these are legitimately fascinating to look at, they just defy contemporary standards of taste/proficiency
Trying to avoid including too many demake throwback games like the Puppet Combo/Haunted Demo Disc output, or thoughtful indies like Anodyne 2 / Beeswing that wield an intentional sort of visual naivete in a way that feels classically accomplished and pleasant (to me). Suggestions always welcome but "compellingly fugly" is such a dumb made up personal descriptive category that we might disagree. I would love to hear your own fugly compelling faves regardless though <3
Note that my personal use of fugly doesn't in any way mean bad or worthless! I LOVE the way many of these games look; they're frequently among the only times we're actually confronted with something memorable or aesthetically new. In my humble onion many of these are legitimately fascinating to look at, they just defy contemporary standards of taste/proficiency
Trying to avoid including too many demake throwback games like the Puppet Combo/Haunted Demo Disc output, or thoughtful indies like Anodyne 2 / Beeswing that wield an intentional sort of visual naivete in a way that feels classically accomplished and pleasant (to me). Suggestions always welcome but "compellingly fugly" is such a dumb made up personal descriptive category that we might disagree. I would love to hear your own fugly compelling faves regardless though <3
80 Games
tw for uber misogynist gore if you want to look into this one
the user created content, by and large, has a really invigoratingly hideous slipshod quality to it that i just love
11 Comments
I assure you the spelling was 100% intentional and shall forever remain
Suggesting Dead Rising 1 for its use of character closeups like this https://youtu.be/8kULZhj7xfU?t=51
requesting oikospiel which is assets taken from unity and classics of game mishmashed together for an opera
May I suggest PHANTASMAGORIA
crypt worlds might work, although you might consider it too intentional in its ugliness
I feel like Flower Sun Rain's DS port counts for this, although the game characters themselves calling it out is maybe too sellf-aware??? idk
maybe a bit too niche to justify including but when I think of aggressively ugly games I always immediately think of the character models in Xenosaga Episode 1. i actually like the way the rest of the game looks but the juxtaposition of these moe-ass characters in a high-concept self-serious sci-fi world is maddening
Suggesting the two kings (???) of PS1 absurdism: LSD and Germs: Nerawareta Machi.
@Woodaba omg absolutely thanks for reminding me! The Xenosaga 1 character models are really iconic in their semi disturbing dischordant stylization--Star Ocean: The Last Hope is on here for p much the same reason.
Quite a few 90s pc adventure games go for some really unpleasant vibes, out of the top of my head Faust: The Seven Games of the Soul, bad mojo and both The Residents games may fit here. Also arguably pandemonium 2 and maybe pepsiman too.
FrozenRoy
3 years ago