Players Have a Talent for Breaking the Rules
Game developers spend years deciding how players are supposed to interact with their games, but players don't always get the memo. Once a game reaches millions of people, someone is bound to try something strange, ridiculous, or completely outside the intended experience. From deliberately attacking friendly characters to stacking objects in bizarre ways, these experiments have uncovered glitches, shortcuts, secrets, and strategies that developers never expected to become part of the game.
1. Walking Backward Through Super Mario 64
When players first found out that you can backflip in Super Mario 64, they thought it was pretty cool that Mario could do that. Once they found out he could jump backward many times in a row to go very fast, it opened up new possibilities for the game, and people started using it in speedruns.
Cláudio Luiz Castro on Unsplash
2. Climbing Anything in Breath of the Wild
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has you able to climb pretty much anything. Which, of course, led to people climbing everything in sight. From mountains to buildings to trees and just about any surface you can think of, they tried to climb.
3. Using a Bucket to Fool Skyrim's Guards
As most people know, you can put a bucket on someone's head in Skyrim. This led to people trying to steal things while they had a bucket on their head. Of course, this didn't work too often, but it was still funny to see someone try. It became one of the game's most memorable examples of players using physics and NPC behavior in ways that clearly weren't part of ordinary gameplay.
4. Throwing Chickens Around in Zelda
The chickens in The Legend of Zelda series have never been particularly harmless when attacked repeatedly, and players quickly learned that there were consequences for abusing them. In several games, attacking chickens causes a swarm to retaliate against Link. Players didn't just discover this by accident, either, because deliberately messing with the chickens became part of the fun.
5. Finding MissingNo. in Pokémon
When Pokémon Red and Blue came out, there was a glitch in the game called MissingNo. If you followed certain steps, you could find MissingNo. Once you had it, you could cause glitches, and it would change your items in your bag.
6. Breaking Half-Life 2 With a Physics Object
When you can control objects with physics in Half-Life 2, you will want to test how far you can push the object. Which led to the airboat trick. As you can imagine, players found many other ways to throw physics objects and use them to their advantage.
7. Attacking the Moon in GTA: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas lets players shoot the moon with a sniper rifle and watch it change size. It's an extremely small detail, but players discovered that the developers had included this unusual interaction. Instead of simply accepting the moon as scenery, someone apparently decided that the obvious question was whether it could be shot.
8. Attacking the Merchants in Resident Evil 4
The Merchant in Resident Evil 4 is supposed to be a helpful character who provides weapons, upgrades, and supplies. Naturally, some players tried shooting him anyway. While the game doesn't allow players to freely eliminate every Merchant in the ordinary way, the fact that players immediately considered attacking a supposedly helpful NPC says plenty about how gamers approach interactive worlds.
9. Stealing the Sweetroll in Skyrim
The famous Skyrim guard line about someone stealing a sweetroll became one of the game's most recognizable jokes. Players didn't just hear the line and move on; they began testing the game's crime system by stealing food, getting caught, and generally seeing how far minor offenses could go. The sweetroll became a running joke precisely because players were willing to commit incredibly petty crimes in a world filled with dragons and ancient magic.
10. Using Portals to Redirect Momentum
People can do so many crazy things with the portal tricks in Portal. There are many tricks that people have found to help them get through certain levels faster. By jumping through portals, you can travel to other rooms and get to areas quicker. Once you learn how to do these tricks, you can speedrun through the game.
11. Stacking Objects to Reach Impossible Places
Once you learn that you can pick up objects in games, you will want to stack them. This has been seen in many games, such as Deus Ex. Once you learn that you can pick up objects and move them around, you'll want to build yourself a ladder.
12. Going Completely Off the Road in GTA
You'll never be on the road in GTA. There will be times you can cut through fields, jump over hills, drive down stairs, and go through many other things that aren't roads. If you play GTA, you'll know that you can go through pretty much everything.
13. Paralyzing Enemies With Odd Status Effects
People love to throw status effects at enemies and see what happens. Once you combine status effects with weapons, you can do crazy damage to enemies. This has happened in many games, and developers have no idea what combos players can find.
Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
14. Breaking Fallout With Physics
Fallout is one of those games where you can do anything with physics. From using doors to other objects you can throw at enemies. In a game that already encourages multiple approaches to quests, these experiments can produce solutions that feel more like player inventions than intended strategies.
15. Using the Environment Instead of Fighting
Games will give you weapons and assume you will use them. But people can find other ways to take out enemies. The resulting strategies demonstrate how quickly players can turn a collection of mechanics into something the designers didn't explicitly prescribe.
16. Finding Secret Developer Rooms
There are many secret rooms in games that developers have created. Whether it be to test out areas or just have fun while making the game. Once gamers learn that these secrets exist, they start checking practically every suspicious corner they can find.
17. Testing Whether NPCs React to Everything
Players don't just talk to NPCs when the game tells them to. They'll walk into them, throw objects near them, block doorways, steal things in front of them, and repeatedly perform the same action just to see whether the character reacts. Developers can create extensive dialogue and behavior systems, but players are exceptionally good at finding the weird edge cases those systems weren't built around.
18. Turning Game Mechanics Into Speedrunning Tricks
Glitches that players have found in games have become tricks that they use when speedrunning. Some glitches may seem useless, but people found a way to use them to their advantage. These glitches have now become popular tricks that are used in speedruns.
19. Trying to Reach Places Before They're Supposed To
Players will always try to get to an area before they are supposed to. Whether it be jumping over fences or climbing things to reach that area. There will always be someone trying to reach that location early on in the game.
20. Doing Something Just Because the Game Says Not To
Perhaps the most predictable surprise is that players will test restrictions simply because they're there. If a game says an area is inaccessible, someone will try to enter it, and if an NPC warns players not to touch something, someone will probably touch it. Developers can anticipate plenty of normal behavior, but there's always another player willing to spend an hour attempting something ridiculous.
