The Video Games That Showed Up When I Least Expected Them

A controller gets put down. A disc gets shelved next to dozens of others just like it. But, sometimes, the game lingers. It creeps into your sleep and live on in the backs of your eyelids, demanding ever more from you.

Here’s an example: the one night that the crazy nocturnal zombies from Alan Wake showed up in my head. I was me in my dream, and not the overwrought author that’s starred in two games.

I hadn’t played an Alan Wake game in more than eight months. But a nightmare I had about a month ago threw me into a world straight out of Remedy’s psychological horror thriller. I wasn’t wielding a flashlight and automatic weapons like the writer hero of the two games. I was in trouble, prey for powerful enemies without any special video game abilities.

I don’t know why some games stick around my subconscious more than others. Long after I’ve left them behind, they pop up when I least expect. I’m not talking about the warm fuzzies I get when remembering favorites like Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System, Shadow of the Colossus or Gravity Rush. Rather, these are straight-up ambushes from the chemicals in my brain, sneak attacks that I can’t predict.

Back to that Alan Wake dream. I was on the run, inside my own clumsy body after looking back at the shadow-engulfed people that were chasing me—I can remember in horrifying detail the way that a slimy darkness snaked up their legs and over their bodies. I remember feeling utterly fucking helpless. And somewhere in the churn of my thoughts, I also remember some more conscious part of my brain thinking: “Didn’t I beat this game already? And the other one after it? Why am I in here?!”

The feeling of being in a gameworld—without the power to control an outcome—can be a terrifying one.

Worst was how it ended. The Dark Presence—an evil force that possesses people in the Alan Wake titles—crawling up my feet, locking first my ankles, then my knees into place. I couldn’t “see” what happened next but I could “feel” it. I lost the battle against the Dark Presence. That never happens in video games, which is probably why I woke up so agitated.

This dream made me wonder about how and why certain games worm their way into my head. It makes sense that Alan Wake would stay lodged in the recesses of my brain, since so much of Remedy’s game concerns what happens below conscious thought. But Bastion was more of a surprise. The first few times I fell off the world in Supergiant’s acclaimed action RPG, it reminded me of the acute physical sensation of when I’d fall in my dreams: a sense of increasing momentum paradoxically paired with full-body paralysis. But the Bastion-based dream was worse than just falling. This nightmare was filled with Lunkheads, the frog-like creatures that were my most hated enemy from the game. I suspect the real reason Bastion showed up is because the game’s final choice is the kind of moment where you have to think about who you want to be in both real and fictional worlds. But dreams are never that clear cut, are they? I didn’t have to figure out what I’d do after a cataclysmic tragedy in my Bastion dream; I was only left haunted by giant, disgustingly real versions of some of its antagonists. Lucky me, I guess?

What’s more surprising are the games that haven’t lingered on the edges of my unconscious brain. I loved Papo & Yo and fully expected to have daydreams or sleeping visitations from the PS3 game. But Monster and Quico haven’t shown up after I fall asleep at all. Journey‘s another game, impressionistic as it is, that I figured would be in my dreams. But I haven’t had any kind of adventures in the Wanderers’ robe since I finished thatgamecompany’s masterpiece. Likewise for Silent Hill 3, a game I swore would stay with me forever after scaring the crap out of me years ago, but it never ever showed up in my most meandering thoughts or dreams.

It’s tough to figure out any sort of rhyme or reason as to why some games make appearances in my subconscious and others don’t. The amount of time spent playing a game doesn’t seem to factor into it. Titles that I’ve spent hours and hours with, like the Mass Effect series, never come to bed with me. The muscle memory that’s a physical part of playing games probably isn’t any sort of conduit to the part of my brain that brews up dreams. But the feeling of being in a gameworld—recreated in your mind with all its terror, beauty and familiar cues, yet without a button to press or the power to control an outcome—can be a terrifying one. As much as I love games, I’m glad it doesn’t happen more often.