These 20 Video Game Stories Will Make You Cry

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Ignacio Weil

Gaming - August 12th 2025, 19:00 GMT+2

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 — Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025)

A world wrapped in Belle Époque elegance shouldn’t feel this heavy, but here every stroke of beauty hides a ticking clock. Once a year, the mysterious Gommage sweeps across the land, erasing everyone of a specific age. You follow Gustave and his crew, not as heroes in shining armor, but as desperate souls chasing an answer before their own number comes up. Along the way, you’re torn between helping those you meet or staying the course, knowing that every choice costs time you don’t have. The game doesn’t just want you to see tragedy – it wants you to sit in it, to feel the quiet moments when hope is thin and choices cut deep. By the end, you’re left wondering if saving the world is worth the people you lose along the way. And that’s where the real heartbreak lives. | © Kepler Interactive

Until Then (2024)

Life in the Philippines after a mysterious catastrophe doesn’t unfold with explosions – it seeps into you through everyday moments. Mark’s days are filled with group chats, school corridors, sunsets over the city, and small decisions that start to feel enormous. The creeping unease isn’t from monsters or war – it’s from the fragility of memory, the way people fade without fanfare, and how tragedy can slip into life without a clear beginning or end. You’re not given the luxury of clean answers, only flashes of connection that feel achingly real. By the time you realize what’s happening, you’re tangled in a web of loss that feels inevitable and irreversible. This isn’t just a sad game – it’s a portrait of youth, love, and how the world quietly changes while you’re busy living in it. | © Maximum Entertainment

Before Your Eyes (2021)

A game that tracks your blinks sounds like a quirky tech demo – until it uses them to make you cry. Every blink moves time forward, whether you want it to or not, forcing you to skip moments you wish you could hold onto. You’ll blink past childhood games, first love, awkward failures, and moments of quiet triumph – until life’s fragility hits you like a wave. The mechanic is merciless in the best way; you can’t stop time, just like you can’t stop it in real life. And when the story reveals the truth behind your journey, it reframes every skipped moment with unbearable tenderness. It’s not just a game about living – it’s a game about losing, about the inevitability of goodbye, and how precious every second becomes when you can’t get it back. | © Skybound Games

Cropped OMORI — Omori (2020)

At first glance, Omori’s pastel dreamscapes and quirky characters feel like a nostalgic RPG comfort blanket – but that’s a mask. Beneath the whimsy lies a raw exploration of guilt, grief, and the parts of ourselves we’d rather never see again. Sunny’s journey between the cheerful Headspace and the muted, unsettling real world slowly peels back a truth you wish you could unlearn. Each turn-based battle and playful interaction hides a creeping shadow, and when the revelation comes, it shatters everything you thought was safe. It’s not just the events that hurt – it’s the realization that hiding from pain can make it grow sharper, deeper. Omori doesn’t just want to make you cry; it wants you to remember what made you cry long after you’ve turned it off. | © PLAYISM

Spiritfarer (2020)

Few games dare to make death feel warm, but Spiritfarer does it with sunsets, laughter, and bittersweet goodbyes. You play as Stella, a ferrymaster for spirits, building them cozy rooms, cooking their favorite meals, and listening to their stories before escorting them to the afterlife. Every spirit becomes part of your routine – they help you on your boat, tease you, confide in you – until one day, it’s time for them to leave. The final hug before they pass through the Everdoor is quiet, gentle, and crushing. You know it’s coming, but the game makes you love them enough that it still hurts. Managing your boat becomes managing your grief, each empty room a reminder of a life well lived and gone. It’s the rare game that makes farewells feel like both an ending and a gift. | © Thunder Lotus Games

Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)

It’s rare for a game to make you mourn a character you knew from a previous title, but Arthur Morgan earns every tear. At first, he’s just a loyal outlaw, running jobs and riding with the Van der Linde gang. But slowly, the cracks appear – loyalty tested, morality frayed – and then comes the diagnosis that changes everything. Arthur spends his final chapters not chasing money, but trying to leave something good behind, knowing the world will remember him as an outlaw. The game gives you a choice in his last moments, but either way, the ending is a goodbye you can feel in your bones. It’s not just about death – it’s about the weight of a life’s choices and the pain of knowing you can’t undo them. By the time the credits roll, the West feels emptier, and so do you. | © Rockstar Games

Cropped Rakuen — Rakuen (2017)

Rakuen feels like reading a picture book that slowly reveals it was always a tragedy. You guide a hospitalized boy into a whimsical fantasy world with his mother, meeting quirky characters and helping them find peace. Every quest is charming on the surface, but carries the sting of unspoken grief – each character’s struggle mirrors a real-life hardship in the hospital. And when the truth comes out, the boy’s journey isn’t about escape – it’s about saying goodbye. The fantasy world becomes a bridge to acceptance, a place where he can find peace before he can’t return. It’s gentle in its sadness, the kind of bittersweet ending that feels warm and devastating all at once. And it’s the rare game where you’ll cry with a smile on your face. | © Laura Shigihara

What Remains of Edith Finch (2017)

Every family has stories, but the Finches’ are soaked in tragedy and framed in a house that feels like a museum of loss. As Edith, you wander through the home, exploring rooms sealed off like time capsules, each telling the story of a family member’s final moments. The vignettes range from whimsical to horrifying, but they all lead to the same end: death. The brilliance is in how each death reflects the character’s personality, making the inevitability even sadder. And when Edith’s own story is revealed, it ties everything together in a way that makes you see the house as both a home and a mausoleum. The game doesn’t dwell on gore, it dwells on legacy, on the strange beauty of how we’re remembered. It’s haunting without a single jump scare. | © Annapurna Interactive

That Dragon Cancer — That Dragon, Cancer (2016)

This isn’t a metaphorical title – it’s a real-life account of parents watching their young son battle terminal cancer. The game blends simple point-and-click exploration with raw, spoken diary entries from the developers, Ryan and Amy Green. Every scene is a mix of hope and heartbreak, from moments of laughter in hospital rooms to the slow, cruel decline that follows. There’s no victory condition here; the ending is inevitable. What makes it powerful is the love in every moment – the refusal to let death overshadow the life that came before. You don’t just watch Joel’s story – you feel like you’ve been invited into it, to share in both the joy and the grief. By the end, the title isn’t just a metaphor – it’s an emotional truth you can’t shake. | © Numinous Games

Firewatch (2016)

Isolation, mystery, and regret all wrap themselves around a summer in the Wyoming wilderness. You play Henry, a man taking a job as a fire lookout to escape the wreckage of his personal life, finding companionship only through a crackling radio with his supervisor, Delilah. The landscape is breathtaking, but the story keeps pulling you inward, toward the relationships you’ve damaged and the life you left behind. The mystery you investigate – strange occurrences in the forest – fizzles into something more grounded but no less poignant: a reminder that not every thread gets tied up neatly. By the end, you realize Firewatch isn’t about solving a case; it’s about learning to live with unanswered questions and unresolved goodbyes. The forest stays, but you have to leave, carrying everything with you. | © Campo Santo

The Beginners Guide — The Beginner’s Guide (2015)

On the surface, this is a walking simulator with no puzzles and no real “objective.” But it quickly becomes something much heavier – a narrated journey through the works of a supposed game developer named Coda. As you explore Coda’s strange, fragmented worlds, the narrator’s personal investment starts to feel uncomfortable, maybe even exploitative. It’s a game about art, authorship, and how much of ourselves we reveal when we create. By the end, the sadness isn’t tied to a character’s death, but to the slow disintegration of trust and connection between two people. It leaves you with the uneasy feeling that you’ve witnessed something you weren’t meant to see, and that maybe you’ve been complicit in crossing a line. Few games make self-reflection feel this raw. | © Everything Unlimited Ltd.

LISA The Painful — Lisa: The Painful (2014)

In a ruined, post-apocalyptic world where women are extinct, Brad Armstrong’s quest to save a mysterious girl becomes a spiral into moral compromise and loss. The game doesn’t just threaten you with death – it forces you to make choices that cost you pieces of yourself and your companions. Lose a limb to survive a fight, sacrifice a friend for resources, watch your party permanently maimed – it’s never clean, never fair. And when Brad’s past is revealed, the title’s “painful” takes on an even deeper meaning. This isn’t tragedy for spectacle; it’s tragedy as inevitability. By the end, there’s nothing left to win, only more to lose, and Brad’s story closes in a place darker than when it began. It’s harsh, ugly, and unforgettable. | © Dingaling Productions

Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014)

World War I is often overshadowed in games, but Valiant Hearts tells it through the eyes of ordinary people caught in extraordinary horror. You play as multiple characters – friends, lovers, strangers – whose paths cross on the battlefield. The hand-drawn art softens nothing; it contrasts against the grim reality of mustard gas, hunger, and the constant threat of death. The emotional gut punch lands hardest in the final chapter, when one character makes a sacrifice so selfless it’s hard to breathe while you watch it happen. The war ends for some, but not for all, and the losses ripple beyond the trenches. This isn’t a victory march – it’s a heartfelt eulogy in interactive form. | © Ubisoft

Cropped Always Sometimes Monsters — Always Sometimes Monsters (2014)

This is the rare RPG where “winning” is subjective and “happy endings” are almost impossible. You start with the dream of reuniting with a lost love, but the path is paved with moral dilemmas that hit harder than most boss fights. Do you take the high road and risk failure, or compromise your values to get what you want? The game doesn’t punish you with death – it punishes you with the consequences of your own choices. And sometimes, no matter how good your intentions, life just doesn’t give you the ending you hoped for. By the credits, you’re left staring at the screen, wondering if the cost was worth it. That question lingers longer than any cutscene could. | © Vagabond Dog

Cropped The Last of Us — The Last of Us (2013)

A journey across a ruined America should be dangerous, but the real emotional core here isn’t the infected – it’s the bond between Joel and Ellie. Every step of their trek is marked by loss, small victories, and moments of quiet humanity in a world stripped bare. No need to get into the details of why you'll probably cry in the end and spoil an amazing story for you, because just be warned: you'll already be left sobbing after the prologue that sets the stage for a new, infected world where zombies aren't the biggest danger to look out for. | © Naughty Dog

Gone Home (2013)

It’s a stormy night when you return to your family’s house after a long trip abroad, expecting warmth and familiarity. Instead, you find it empty, the rooms eerily still. What begins as a mystery about where everyone’s gone slowly unfolds into something more intimate – your sister Sam’s personal journey. Through handwritten notes, cassette tapes, and mementos tucked away in corners, you discover her struggles with identity, love, and acceptance. The heartbreak comes not from death or danger, but from realizing you weren’t there when she needed you most. The house isn’t a haunted space – it’s a time capsule of missed moments, full of joy and pain you can only witness after the fact. By the time you understand where Sam is and why, it’s not fear that lingers – it’s the bittersweet ache of change. | © The Fullbright Company

Brothers A Tale of Two Sons — Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013)

From the start, this adventure sets itself apart by giving you control over both brothers at the same time – one on each thumbstick. That dual control becomes second nature as you help them navigate puzzles, climb ledges, and survive dangers together on their quest to save their father. The world feels like a living fairy tale, equal parts magical and perilous. But then tragedy strikes – the older brother dies protecting the younger. The absence is immediate, not just in the story but in your hands; half your controls are gone, and the game forces you to finish the journey with one character. That emptiness is physical, emotional, and unforgettable. By the final scene, you’re not just mourning the loss of a character – you’re mourning the connection you built through every step and every puzzle solved together. | © Starbreeze Studios

Thomas Was Alone (2012)

At first glance, it’s nothing more than a minimalist platformer with colorful rectangles as characters. But then the narration begins, giving each shape a voice, a personality, and a set of quirks that make them feel startlingly human. You learn about Thomas, Claire, Chris, and the others as they face challenges together, each with unique abilities that help the group succeed. Over time, bonds form – not through cutscenes or dialogue trees, but through shared obstacles and little moments of sacrifice. Then come the heartbreaks: characters staying behind so others can continue, acts of quiet heroism in a game made of shapes and platforms. The simplicity only makes the emotions stronger, stripping away distractions until all that’s left is connection. By the end, you realize you’ve felt more for a cluster of polygons than you have for some fully animated heroes. | © Bithell Games

Twd lee clementine msn — Telltale's The Walking Dead (2012)

Surviving zombies is one thing; raising a child in the apocalypse is another entirely. As Lee, you’re tasked with protecting Clementine, a young girl whose trust and survival depend entirely on your choices. The journey is full of impossible decisions: who to save, who to leave behind, when to lie, and when to tell the truth. Every choice shapes Clementine’s view of the world, and you feel the weight of it in every conversation. By the final episode, Lee is bitten, his time running out. The last choice is brutal – teach her to defend herself by asking her to kill you before you turn, or let her walk away as you slowly lose yourself. It’s not the walkers that break you – it’s the sight of a child forced to grow up in one soul-crushing moment. That’s the scene that stays burned into your mind long after the credits. | © Telltale Games

To the Moon (2011)

In this quiet, pixelated story, two scientists work to fulfill the dying wish of Johnny, a man who dreams of going to the moon. To do it, they dive into his memories, altering them to make his final moments align with his deepest desire. Along the way, you uncover a tender, complicated love story marked by loss, promises, and a strange recurring symbol – the moon. Every memory brings you closer to the truth of his wish, and when you see it in full, the emotional impact is staggering. It’s not about rockets or space – it’s about connection, regret, and the small, beautiful choices that define a life. The final sequence, paired with its unforgettable soundtrack, delivers a slow-building wave of emotion that hits harder than any explosion or twist ending. It’s the kind of sadness you carry with you, quietly, for years. | © Freebird Games

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Video games aren’t just about high scores and boss fights anymore – they’ve become powerful storytelling machines capable of breaking your heart in ways movies and books can’t quite match. Whether it’s watching a beloved character’s final moments, making a choice you instantly regret, or simply witnessing a quiet, human story unfold, these games hit you right in the emotions.

From indie gems that explore grief and love to blockbuster epics filled with sacrifice and redemption, each of these titles proves that gaming can be as emotionally rich as any Oscar-winning drama. Just be warned: these stories don’t pull their punches. Keep tissues handy, because you might need them before the credits roll.