Top 20+ Video Games That Will Make You Cry

More Than Just Game Over

Not every quest is about winning. Some games pull you in with their quiet pain, their complex characters, or that one choice you’ll never forgive yourself for making. This list introduces you to stories designed to linger. They don’t feel like games at all—they're more like chapters from a life you somehow lived. No spoilers here, just a peek into what makes each one unforgettable.

1. The Last Of Us

You think you’re just surviving. Then, Joel and Ellie happen. Their relationship grows like moss through rubble—quiet, persistent, unforgettable. The game’s world is brutal, and every decayed hallway whispers past regrets. You’ll clutch your controller tighter with each choice, unsure if you’re protecting or pretending.

2. To The Moon

You’re sent to rewrite a dying man’s memories, and his wish is to go to the moon. The gameplay’s simple, but emotionally devastating. Its piano-led score swells just as tears do. With every memory you alter, the question shifts: Are you granting peace or erasing truth?

3. That Dragon, Cancer

Hope feels fragile here—raw, like glass on skin. A real family’s fight against terminal illness becomes your journey, complete with disorienting mechanics mirroring grief. Here, you’ll hear their real voices, see their fear, and maybe, by the end, feel a strange kind of faith bloom.

4. Life Is Strange

Regret doesn’t rewind. But Max’s time-traveling powers try. You’ll make choices—big ones, even painful ones. This story pulls you through teenage trauma, mental health crises, and shattered friendships, all bathed in lo-fi melancholy. Sometimes, the hardest moment isn’t stopping a storm. It’s knowing you caused it.

5. Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons

In this game, you simultaneously control both siblings. No dialogue or guide, just puzzles and heartbreak. That control scheme is not a gimmick because it delivers the emotional gut punch at the end with no warning. When loss hits, your own hands will feel the absence before your brain catches up.

6. Red Dead Redemption 2

This is a cowboy opera where honor dies slowly. You become Arthur Morgan, not a hero, but a haunted man. As nature shifts to decay and loyalty frays, every quiet moment—campfire talks, misty mornings—becomes weightier. The final ride? That’s where dust and sorrow settle into your soul.

7. Spiritfarer

Death sails softly here. You ferry spirits to their afterlife, but only after feeding them and listening to them. Each goodbye is personal and real. Additionally, the animation is warm, and the music is healing. Yet beneath every task lies a single truth: endings, even handled gently, still break your heart.

8. Gris

This one bleeds emotion through color and motion alone. Each new ability symbolizes the five stages of grief. You won’t read a line of dialogue, but you’ll feel every stage, from denial to acceptance, through animation, music, and shifting environments. It’s a painting that hurts, then, helps you breathe slowly.

9. What Remains Of Edith Finch

In this game, you think you’re exploring a house. But really, you’re wandering a family’s graveyard of memories. Each room tells a life and a death. Mechanics shift for every tale: kite flying, fish-gutting. Some stories are tragic. Others absurd. But they all remind you that storytelling is survival.

10. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Put on headphones because the voices in binaural tones don’t stop. Senua battles Norse monsters outside—but inside, it’s psychosis rendered in haunting sound and light. Her trauma isn’t portrayed but personified. Every puzzle is a fragment of a mind at war, and a warrior refusing to break.

11. Before Your Eyes

Blink—and the story moves forward. Literally. You relive a life in snapshots, unable to pause. The mechanic forces emotion such that you’ll miss moments because your eyes won’t stay dry. When the final twist arrives, the blinking doesn’t feel like input; it feels like memory’s betrayal.

12. Shadow Of The Colossus

Silence says everything. There’s no crowd. Just you (Wander), your horse (Agro), and the towering colossi. Each battle feels majestic until you realize what it costs. You’re not a hero, but a question mark. And every felled giant leaves a hole the size of your moral compass.

13. Night In The Woods

Mae drops out of college, haunted by something she won’t name. Her hometown’s dying, her friends are adrift, and her nights spiral into surreal dread. Dialogue crackles with humor and honesty. Underneath it? A creeping truth that you can’t go home again, at least not the way you remember.

14. Final Fantasy X

A pilgrimage through paradise, shadowed by sacrifice. Yuna walks toward death, and Tidus walks through a dream. You’ll get caught in the love story, but stay for the slow reveal of doomed hope. By the end, even the victory fanfare feels like a funeral hymn.

15. Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Don’t be fooled by its comic visuals. This is WWI, from four intertwined souls and a loyal dog. Letters, puzzles, and heartbreak guide you through mud-soaked trenches. There’s no glory here, but a whole lot of humanity flickering in the darkest places. When the final scene plays, silence feels sacred.

16. The Walking Dead (Telltale)

Choices cut deep here. Lee finds Clementine, and your decisions shape her survival. Every episode twists the knife; no win is clean, no life guaranteed. By the end, the only question that matters isn’t what you did, but who she became because of you.

17. Journey

There are no names, no words here, just sand, robes, and wind. Yet somehow, another player joins you with no voice chat—just movement. You climb together, fall together. Then one vanishes. This game is spiritual and simple, teaching you that connection doesn’t need explanation to be real.

18. Heavy Rain

A father races against time to save his son. While playing, as the dad, you’ll make impossible choices like cutting off fingers and betraying others. But the thing about death is that it’s permanent. Every path you walk is weighed with guilt. As multiple narratives converge, redemption slips through your fingers like rain.

19. Omori

Don’t trust the pastel palette. This RPG unpacks childhood trauma through twisted dreams and turn-based battles tied to emotions. One laughs, then flinches. Memories return, and so does guilt. The narrative’s branches don’t all lead to closure. Some lead to things you can’t unsee.

20. Firewatch

You talk through a walkie-talkie, but never meet the voice on the other end. Set in Wyoming’s lonely wilderness, your job is simple: watch for fires. But the real blaze comes from within—grief, isolation. You’ll ask: was any of it real, or just needed?