Summary
There’s a certain kind of magic that happens when a game hits just the right nerve on YouTube. It’s not about marketing budgets or splashy trailers — it’s the unexpected moments, the wild glitches, the infuriating challenges, and the contagious reactions from creators that make a title explode. YouTube has the power to transformobscure indie experimentsinto household names and to keep seemingly forgotten titles alive in the collective memory of millions.
These seven games didn’t just trend — they became cultural landmarks thanks to viral videos, relentless memes, and the unmistakable sound of a YouTuber’s scream echoing through your headphones at 2 A.M.
Slender: The Eight Pageswas barely more than a flashlight, a forest, and eight scattered pages. Yet somehow, that simplicity was the perfect recipe for YouTube chaos.
The game drops players into a pitch-black forest with one goal: collect eight pages without getting caught by Slenderman. There’s no combat, no story cutscenes; not even music. Just escalating tension and static crackles as Slenderman creeps closer with every page collected. It’s a masterclass in psychological horror, even if theentire experience can be finished in under 15 minutes.
What made it blow up wasn’t just its eerie minimalism — it was how it translated on camera. YouTubers like PewDiePie and Markiplier turned their panicked runs through the woods into scream-filled comedy gold. Their exaggerated reactions were perfect clickbait, but they also captured the genuine unease thatSlenderdelivered with shocking efficiency. Viewers weren’t just watching a game; they were watching someone slowly lose their grip as a blank-faced entity popped up behind a tree.
The game became a rite of passage for horror YouTubers. Even players who didn’t consider themselves fans of the genre tried it out just to say they survived it — or didn’t. It spawned memes, fan art, reaction compilations, and eventually, full-length games likeSlender: The Arrival, which tried to capitalize on the original’s success with a bit more polish and narrative.
But, it’s the originalEight Pagesthat holds a special place in internet history. No dialogue, no budget, just pure fear — and a YouTube legacy carved in digital screams.
There are difficult games, and then there’sGetting Over It With Bennett Foddy— a philosophical exercise in suffering disguised as a physics-based climbing game. Released in 2017 by the same mind behindQWOP, this game dropped players into a metal cauldron, handed them a hammer, and asked them to scale an absurd mountain made of household junk and abstract nonsense.No checkpoints. No mercy.
What gaveGetting Over Itits YouTube-fueled immortality wasn’t just the gameplay. It was the commentary. Specifically, Bennett Foddy’s own voice, calmly offering stoic quotes and existential musings every time players lost 30 minutes of progress with a single bad swing. “To live is to suffer,” he’d say, as the player character plummeted down from a grill to the very bottom of the map. Again.
It’s that blend of absurd frustration and introspective monologue that made this game perfect for YouTube. Viewers weren’t just tuning in to watch someone try to finish it — they were watching them unravel. Rage compilations, failed attempts, and broken mice became a subgenre of content in themselves. Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, and other big names took the plunge, documenting every grueling minute. And when someone finallydidbeat it? Those videos became digital trophies.
The game also hides a meta surprise: players who reach the end are asked not to spoil what happens next and are only allowed into the “secret chat” if they recorded their gameplay. That exclusivity gave birth to a kind of cult status among YouTubers who wanted to join the elite ranks of those who made it to the top.
Nobody asked for a goat-based sandbox destruction game in 2014, but Coffee Stain Studios made one anyway — and accidentally birthed one of the most meme-fueled internet sensations in gaming history.Goat Simulatorwas originally a joke prototype, thrown together in a game jam, but when early footage hit YouTube, viewers couldn’t get enough of its absurd physics, busted animations, and the promise that yes, youcanheadbutt a gas station until it explodes.
What turned it from a throwaway gag into viral gold was the sheer unpredictability of it all. One second, the goat is licking a passing pedestrian and dragging them down a highway. The next, it’s jetpacking through the sky after launching off a trampoline. YouTubers like PewDiePie, DanTDM, and Jacksepticeye latched on instantly, milking every glitch and exaggerated ragdoll movement for all they were worth.
Andunlike traditional simulation games,Goat Simulatorwore its chaos proudly. The devs openly stated they weren’t going to fix most of the bugs, because they made everything funnier. It was a playground for destruction, parodying open-world tropes and sneaking in ridiculous features like slow-motion tongue grappling and goat cults hidden in basements. One moment, players were flipping off a crane, then next, they were summoning Satan with a goat pentagram.
Its success didn’t just live on YouTube —it thrivedbecause of it. Viewers didn’t come for a story or even coherent gameplay. They came to watch creators discover ridiculous secrets, mod the game into oblivion, or just break the physics engine in increasingly stupid ways. It was a content machine that practically wrote its own punchlines.
Eventually, the game even evolved into full-blown parodies of other genres.GoatZmocked zombie survival games.Goat MMO Simulatorpretended to be a fantasy epic. AndGoat Simulator 3(yes, they skipped 2 on purpose) brought the chaos into the modern day with even more features, more glitches, and more screaming goats.
There was a moment in 2020 when the internet collectively lost its mind over 60 wobbly bean-people sprinting through colorful obstacle courses, flinging themselves into slime and chaos, all for a single crown.Fall Guysdropped during a time when the world desperately needed something lighthearted, and thanks to YouTube, it exploded into a cultural phenomenon overnight.
At launch, Mediatonic’s take on the battle royale genre felt likeTakeshi’s Castleby way of a fever dream. Players scrambled through rounds like “Slime Climb” and “Tip Toe,” not just battling the course but each other’s lack of coordination. Physics were floaty, the stakes were high, and rage-quitting was a national pastime. But it was the YouTube content that catapulted it from a charming oddity to a global sensation.
Channels like Sidemen, MrBeast, Markiplier, and many others turnedFall Guysinto must-watch entertainment. Half the appeal wasn’t even the competition, but the absolute chaos that unfolded in every match. Watching someone get bodied by a giant spinning hammer at the last second of “Hex-A-Gone” never stopped being funny. And, thanks to the randomized obstacle patterns and ever-increasing difficulty, no two videos ever looked the same.
The devs leaned into the virality, too. Theyadded ridiculous skins— like Sonic, Godzilla, and even Doomguy — and ran frequent collaborations that turned the game into a living meme machine. There were full-on charity bidding wars to get custom skins into the game, with YouTubers and streamers throwing down massive donations just to see their brand represented.
Even when the hype dipped,Fall Guysmanaged to bounce back. Going free-to-play in 2022, launching on more platforms, and expanding its modes turned it into something more than just a one-hit wonder. And through it all, the YouTube community kept it relevant, churning out everything from skilled speedrun strategies to hilarious fails that reminded everyone this game was part party game, part slapstick comedy.
There was a strange period in 2020 whenaccusing friends of murderbecame a form of bonding.Among Usturned that weird little premise into one of the most viral gaming moments in recent history, and it owes a massive chunk of that fame to YouTube. Originally released in 2018 to almost zero fanfare, InnerSloth’s low-budget social deduction game sat in obscurity until streamers and YouTubers yanked it out of the void and gave it a second life that no one, least of all the developers, could’ve predicted.
It started as a quiet buzz. Then suddenly, the biggest names in content creation — Valkyrae, Disguised Toast, Jacksepticeye, Corpse Husband, Pokimane, and even political figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — were all screaming at each other over who was “sus.” That simple word turned into a cultural monolith, with YouTube flooded by highlight reels, perfectly edited accusations, and clips of betrayal so brutal they belonged in a soap opera.
The format was lightning in a bottle: ten players trapped on a spaceship (or later, a fancy airship or a suspicious research base), with two secretly playing as impostors tasked with killing everyone else. Meetings were held when a body was found, and that’s when the real gameplay began. Not tasks, not venting, not sabotages — but lying.
And YouTube thrived on it. Videos weren’t just gameplay — they were performances. One player might feign innocence so convincingly it hurt to watch them get away with it. Another might go down in flames while pulling off a last-second emergency button press to out a traitor. The stakes were low, but the drama was absurdly high. Every round was a new narrative, and fans tuned in just as much for the chaos as they did for the personalities behind the screams.
What madeAmong Uswork so well on YouTube wasn’t just the game itself, but how perfectly it fit the video format. Tight rounds, funny outcomes, moments of sheer absurdity — it was made for montages, thumbnails with glowing red arrows, and those infamous “he was the impostor” slow zoom edits.
It’s easy to forget there was a time whenMinecraftwasn’t a global phenomenon. Before it became the best-selling game of all time, before Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion, it was just a blocky little sandbox that showed up on indie forums and gave players a pickaxe and an overwhelming amount of freedom. But, if there was one thing that turned it from a cult hit into a cultural landmark, it was YouTube.
In the early 2010s, creators like CaptainSparklez, AntVenom, BajanCanadian, and The Yogscast turnedMinecraftinto an entire ecosystem. There were Let’s Plays, adventure maps, parkour challenges, and, of course, an endless wave of Hunger Games matches that played out like kid-friendly Battle Royales before that genre even blew up. And then there were the music videos —Fallen Kingdomstill lives rent-free in millions of minds, with its tragic tale of a blocky king and his downfall.
But,Minecraft’s relationship with YouTube wasn’t just about videos — it was symbiotic. YouTube gaveMinecraftvisibility, andMinecraftgave YouTubers content that could be shaped infinitely. Redstone tutorials taught players how to build everything from simple doors to functional calculators. Massive builds showed off digital replicas of Hogwarts or the USS Enterprise, each block placed manually over dozens of hours. And machinimas, like the earlyShadow of Israphelseries, blurred the line between gameplay and storytelling in ways nobody expected from a game that looked like Lego meets survival mode.
The influence only grew. PewDiePie’s return toMinecraftin 2019 brought it surging back into the mainstream, especially after a period where the community had started to think the game was finally slowing down. His revival arc introduced the masses to new in-game pets like Sven and Joergen, while Dream’s rise soon after would reshape competitiveMinecraftcontent with speedruns and the wildly popular Manhunt series.
Back in 2014, nobody could have predicted that a low-budget horror game made mostly by one guy would spawn a sprawling franchise, a flood of lore theories, a massive fanbase, and eventually, a Hollywood movie. But,Five Nights at Freddy’sdidn’t just become popular — it exploded — and YouTube was absolutely the fuse.
Scott Cawthon’s surprise hit put players in the shoes of a hapless night guard stuck inside Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, trying to survive against haunted animatronics with a thirst for blood. The gameplay was deceptively simple: monitor security cameras, manage power, shut the doors when needed, and pray that Bonnie wasn’t already breathing down your neck. It was claustrophobic, tense, andfull of jumpscaresthat hit like a freight train. But, what madeFNAFgo nuclear was how perfectly it played to reaction-based content.
When YouTubers like Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, and CoryxKenshin got their hands onFNAF, the game’s success became a runaway train. Markiplier especially helped propel it into orbit with his playthroughs, dubbing himself “King of FNAF” and pulling millions of views with each panicked scream. His series didn’t just document gameplay — it built a relationship between audience and creator, turning every new animatronic and game installment into a full-blown community event.
But, behind the terrifying Chuck E. Cheese vibes and mechanical jumpscares was something else: lore. Deep, confusing, and deeply addictive lore. From hidden minigames to cryptic phone calls,FNAFencouraged players to dig, theorize, and obsess. That opened the door for channels like Game Theory, which essentially built an entire video empire on unraveling Scott’s twisted timeline. Even when the games themselves weren’t releasing, new theories kept the flame alive.
