10 Thought-Provoking Video Games That Haunted You For Days

10. Alan Wake

Turning boring, everyday jobs into exciting games is pretty commonplace in games; a great example is the Phoenix Wright series and how it turns the normally paperwork-heavy practice of law into the most exciting job in the whole world. Surely making a game about a writer is a step too far though? Still, Remedy Entertainment persevered and took over five years to create Alan Wake; thankfully, the game justifies that extraordinarily long period of development time. Alan Wake's premise isn't wholly original (thanks to the brilliant work of Stephen King) but it works really, really well as a video game. Alan is a writer whose work starts to come to life when he travels with his wife to Bright Falls for a vacation. Everything goes a bit pear-shaped here: Alan's wife disappears; everybody in the town seems to be possessed by some force; and the only clue Alan has is a manuscript for a book apparently written by him; so much for a relaxing holiday. Alan Wake cleverly blurs the worlds of reality and fiction, just in the manner a Stephen King novel would. Who can he trust? What's real and not real? It's all so confusing and the ending (and subsequent added chapters) are wide open for debate. It's a game with the impact of a movie and, just like a certain best-selling author, it'll haunt your mind and leave you wanting and demanding more.