This is a list of video games that critics, designers, or scholars have called “art games” or “arthouse games.”

Art games differ from mainstream titles in their goals. Where most games aim at fun or challenge, art games treat the medium as personal expression, social commentary, or pure experiment. Some art games reject standard mechanics, while others use familiar genres in unfamiliar ways, or toward unfamiliar ends.

20th century

Alien Garden (1982, Bernie DeKoven/Jaron Lanier, Atari 8-bit/C64) – Described by its creators as video game art,Pratt, Charles J. The Art History... Of Games? Games As Art May Be A Lost Cause. Gamasutra. 8 February 2010.Thomsen, Michael. The Art Of Gaming. Edge. 8 February 2010. The game ranks among the very earliest examples of the art game.Thomsen, Michael. "Culture Clash: How Video Games Are Crashing the Museum Party". Gamasutra. 22 May 2012. WarpitoutStaff. "Chicago Computer Artist Accelerates to Warp Speed." Softalk. Pg.227-229. February 1983. (1982, Jane Veeder, arcade) – An interactive art project programmed in Zgrass for SIGGRAPH '82.DeFanti, Thomas A. "The Mass Impact of Videogame Technology." Advances in Computers. Vol.23. Pg.137. 1984. The game is housed in an arcade cabinet, and was described by the artist as an "artistic video game". It has been exhibited at the Ontario Science Center.Heiner, Carson W. "Computer Art." Kaledioscope. No.4. Winter 1984. (Reprinted in Rehabilitation Digest. Vol.15, No.1. Pg.19. Spring 1984. LifespanBlakeman, Mary Claire. "The Art Side of Video Games." Video Games. Vol.2, No.4. Pp.27-30. January 1984. (1983, Flyghts of Fancie, Atari 8-bit/C64) – A surrealistic pastiche of five episodes leading the player through events representative of the human experience from childhood to death. LORNAKuehn, Emily. "Review: The World of Art Games ." Columbia College Chicago Profile. 2009. (1983, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Laserdisc) – An interactive movie where players use a remote control to determine the outcome of the eponymous Lorna's life. Moondust (1983, Jaron Lanier, C64) – A video game that is generally considered the first art game, it has been used as an art installation in numerous museums including the 1983 "ARTCade" exhibit at Corcoran Gallery of Art. Deep Contact (1984, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Laserdisc) – An interactive movie about the relationship between intimacy and technology in which players interact with a female character's body parts via a touch screen that changes the story based on the body part that is touched. Deus Ex MachinaHoughton, David. The Top 7... Maddest British old-school games - 1. Deus Ex Machina (1985). GamesRadar. 19 October 2009. (1985, Mel Croucher, ZX Spectrum/C64/MSX) – Based on "The Seven Ages of Man" from the Shakespeare play, As You Like It, this game charts the life of a defect as it evolves within the machine from inception, through growth, and eventually death. Le Louvre: The Palace & Its Paintings (1995, Montparnasse Multimedia, PC) – An exploration game focusing on interactive play through the art collection from the Louvre. Trigger HappyHolmes, Tiffany. Arcade Classics Span Art? Current Trends in the Art Game Genre . Melbourne DAC 2003. 2003. (1998, Thompson and Craighead, PC/web) – A deconstruction of Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?", this retro-styled art game pays homage to Space Invaders. As the text of Foucault's essay filters in from the top, the player "deconstructs" it by shooting the words which in turn are hyperlinked to Yahoo search inquiries on the linked word. LSD: Dream Emulator (1998, Osamu Sato, Asmik Ace Entertainment, PS1) – A surrealist and contemporary art game. The player freely explores psychedelic, dreamlike environments without any objectives. Font Asteroids (1999, Esc to Begin, PC/web) – A wry commentary on information overflow on the internet where users select information itself as the enemy. Presented as an homage to Asteroids, all textual content from a URL of the player's choice is used to take the place of rocks and break apart into prefixes, suffixes, and roots. SODStalker, Phillipa Jane. Gaming In Art: A Case Study Of Two Examples Of The Artistic Appropriation Of Computer Games And The Mapping Of Historical Trajectories Of 'Art Games' Versus Mainstream Computer Games. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. 2005. (1999, Jodi, PC) – An aesthetic art game hinting at private emotion by deconstructing Wolfenstein 3D, turning it into a Kafka-esque series of abstract black, white, and grey images where it is difficult to determine what to shoot. The Intruder (1999, Natalie Bookchin, PC) – Low-art elevated to "high art" in a retro setting. An experimental adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges' 1966 short story "La intrusa", where two brothers fall in love with the same woman and decide to kill her to resolve their conflict. In the game, players must compete for the female in a Pong setting and then act out aggressive behavior in a first-person shooter setting to progress. The piece invites gamers to see how popular games perpetuate masculine ideologies of spatial conquest, combat fantasies, and sexual domination.Andrews, Jim. 2007. "Videogames as Literary Devices." In Videogames and Art, ed. Clarke, Andy; Mitchell, Grethe. Bristol, UK; Chicago: Intellect. Pg.34. Vib-RibbonCarless, Simon. GameSetMicroLinks: Anacondas Vs. Guitar Keith. GameSetWatch. 21 September 2007. (1999, Masaya Matsuura, PS1) – A music game starring a wireframe bunny. Lullaby for a Dead Fly (2000, Mouchette, PC) – A player clicks on flies to kill them. Each click is a life-or-death choice. The musical background is Mouchette's song, "You Clicked on me, you killed me." Pencil WhippedIsrael, Matthew. "Hotlist: Play by the book (video games history)." Artforum International. 1 November 2001. (2000, Lonnie Flickinger, PC) – A first-person shooter where all textures are made to look like pencil drawings on paper, and all sound effects were produced by the artist. Sissyfight (2000, GameLab, PC/web) – An illustration of ruthless social climbing, this multiplayer game allows users to fire off words instead of bullets. Set in a California playground setting, female player characters use teases to drive other players out of the playground.

21st century

2001–2005

a [email protected] (2001, Tiffany Holmes, PC) – Commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Research Institute, the game is a combined maze and Breakout-based commentary on the power and prevalence of high-tech surveillance technology in modern life that uses surveillance images as bricks in a Breakout setting. Go Fish (2001, John Klima, PC) – A first-person shooter in which victory releases a real-life goldfish into a pool of others and a loss releases the fish into a pool with the carnivorous Oscar. The game is intended to highlight and question the banality of the fact that in the game, the player is making what are presented in-universe as conscious decisions to end a life. Painstation (2001, //////////fur////, arcade) – A 2-player Pong-based game where scoring by either player subjects both to electrical shocks, whips, or burning. The game is intended to demonstrate the physical consequences of in-game acts. Rez (2001, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, PS2) – A music game designed to create the effects of synesthesia for the player. The game was inspired by the artistry of Wassily Kandinsky and has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2002 "Game On", the Smithsonian's 2012 "The Art of Video Games", and the 2012 "Game Masters". Invaders! (2002, Douglas Edric Stanley, PC) – A political art game referring to the September 11 attacks. Pac-MondrianJansson, Mathias. Everything I Shoot Is Art. Link Art Center: LINK Editions, Brescia. 2012. (2002, Prize Budget For Boys, PC) – A game that merges Pac-Man with the works of Piet Mondrian. Q4U (2002, Feng Mengbo, PC) – A Quake mod based on Roland Barthes' "Death of the Author" where the player hunts cloned copies of Mengbo himself. The player also holds a plasma gun and a video camera (intended to illustrate that both devices are used "to shoot subjects as quarry"). Tropical America (2002, OnRamp Arts, PC) – A collaborative bilingual art game with black and white woodcut graphics. The game explores the El Mozote massacre. Vagamundo (2002, Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, mobile arcade) – Based on Donkey Kong, this mobile game focuses on the plight of the Mexican immigrant. [domestic]Sharp, John. A Curiously Short History of Game Art. Georgia Institute of Technology. Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Pp.26-32. 29 May - 1 June 2012. (2003, Mary Flanagan, PC) – A simulation of the author's childhood memory of escaping from a burning building. 911 SurvivorNieborg, David B. "FCJ-051 Mods, Nay! Tournaments, Yay! - The Appropriation of Contemporary Game Culture by the U.S. Military". The Fibreculture Journal. Issue 8. 2006. ISSN 1449-1443 (2003, Mike Caloud/Jeff Cole/John Brennon/Aaron Kwon, PC) – A simulation of the suicide of a civilian trapped in the burning World Trade Center towers. Escape From Woomera (2003, Escape from Woomera Collective, PC) – A political art game addressing issues and implications of Australian detention centers, particularly the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre. The game is based on the Half-Life engine. Graf WarCannon, Rebecca. "Meltdown" from Videogames and Art (Clarke, Andy, and Grethe Mitchell, eds.). Bristol: Intellect Books. Pp.40-42. 2007. (2003, Andrew Waer/Joe Callahan/Eric Cho/Sky Frostenson, PC) – A Half-Life mod set in a California subway system where the goal is to spray paint as much of the map as possible without being located by the police, who use lethal force to stop the player. Left to my Own Devices (2003, Geoffrey Thomas, PC) – A personal narrative about loss loosely based on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' five stages of grieving. Samorost (2003, Amanita Design, PC) – A video game that employs organic and wooden materials in its presentation. MudcraftCarless, Simon. Manifesto Successfully Manifests Itself. GameSetWatch. 25 August 2006. (2004, Brian Winn/Jason Tye, PC) – A nonviolent real-time strategy game based on creatures made of mud. Neon (2004, Jeff Minter, Xbox 360) – A music visualization program. Waco Resurrection: C-Level (2004, Eddo Stern, PC) – A 3D game dealing with the Waco Texas Massacre and the Branch Davidian leader David Koresh. In the game players take the role of Koresh as they attempt to defend the compound from government agents and from other, rival Koreshes. Cloudsandbox.siggraph.org/archives/papers/ThatCloudGame.pdf. Siggraph Sandbox proceedings. (2005, USC Game Innovation Lab, USC Interactive Media & Games Division, PC) – Highly acclaimed student art game created as a research project in the USC Game Innovation Lab to explore emotional gameplay. ElectroplanktonPichlmair, Martin. Electroplankton revisited: A Meta-Review. Eludamos Vol.1, Issue 1. 2007. (2005, Toshio Iwai, Nintendo DS) – A free-form music game considered to be the first art game for the Nintendo DS. FaçadeCarless, Simon. GameSetLinks: Get Lamp? Got A Clue!. GameSetWatch. 22 August 2007. (2005, Michael Mateas/Andrew Stern, PC/Mac) – An artificial intelligence-based interactive novel making use of natural language processing. Killer7 (2005, Capcom, GameCube, PlayStation 2) – A surreal horror neo-noir on rails action adventure game with a cell shaded art style. The game's story deals with themes of political extremism and the division of western and eastern cultures. mono (2005, Binary Zoo, PC) – A paint-based multidirectional shooter. Samorost 2Carless, Simon. GameSetLinks: Chopin Vs. Pumpkin - Fight!. GameSetWatch. 12 January 2008. (2005, Amanita Design, PC) – The sequel to Samorost, this adventure game also employs organic backdrops.