Fictional games are games which were specifically created for works of fiction, or which otherwise originated in fiction.
In his foundational academic work on this topic, Stefano Gualeni defines fictional games as "playful activities and ludic artefacts conceptualized as part of fictional worlds",[3][4] and emphasizes that - as elements of a work of fiction - their purpose is to trigger the imagination of the audience and cannot actually be (or at least were not originally meant to be) played.[3][4]
Many fictional games have, however, been adapted into real games by fans or ludophiles by creating pieces and rules to fit the descriptions given in the source work. For example, unofficial versions of Fizzbin can be found in reality, and Mornington Crescent is widely played in online forums.
Fictional games tend not to be presented in a detailed and formally complete manner by their authors. Within the respective works of fiction, they are typically defined just clearly enough to achieve their intended narrative functions.[3][4]
Gungi - a strategy game in the Hunter × Hunter manga and anime. It is played on a non-checkered gameboard with 81 squares arranged in a 9×9 grid, and has 13 different types of pieces and several stacked constructs.
Icehouse - The Empty City by Andrew Looney; an example of a fictional game that now exists as a real-world one
Liar's Lament – a board game first seen in the Pretty Little Liars episode "Playtime"
Pai Sho - a strategy game first seen in the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Waterbending Scroll" (S1E9); an example of a fictional game that now exists as a real-world one through various fan-made game versions (the 4 major variants are Skud-, Ginseng-, Vagabond- and Adevăr Pai Sho) and an official version by Nickelodeon
Sazou - A game similar to Chess played on Draconia and Gallifrey in Doctor Who.
Survivor - a two-player game in Return to Zork. The game is asymmetric, and the Zork player character must ultimately win two games, one as each of the Survivor players, to complete Return to Zork.
Tadek - a strategy game in the Farscape episode "The Flax" that involves building holographic columns while pushing game pieces around a board; the game can be used for gambling[5]
Caravan - A two player card game used for both gambling and passing time in Fallout: New Vegas.
Cripple Mr. Onion - Discworld; Fan rules have been created, but are not official, and use ordinary playing cards rather than a Discworld "Caroc" deck.[5]
Double Fanucci - a fictional card game mentioned throughout the Zork series of computer adventure games.
Go Johnny Go Go Go Go - is a comedy fictional card game from the television series, The League of Gentlemen from the Series 2 episode, "A Plague on Royston Vasey".
Gwent - A card game in the novel series The Witcher. Later available as a video game.
Lucky Horseshoes - A variant of Blackjack found in Fallout: New Vegas, played with an animatronic cowboy in exchange for in-game rewards.
Pazaak - a two player card game in a 2003 Star Wars game,[9] similar to Blackjack, where players have to be the closest to 20 without going over, in a best of three rounds competition. Players have their own assembled side deck of 10 cards, with both positive and negative values present, from which they pull four random cards at the start of a round. The main table deck has cards with values from 1-10, of which one card gets drawn for each player each turn.
Triple Triad - first appearing in the video game Final Fantasy VIII, it can also be played as a minigame in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and Final Fantasy Portal App. In 1999, after the release of Final Fantasy VIII, toy company, Bandai, produced a real Triple Triad card deck. Since the game was only produced in Japan and not readily available in America and Europe, the cards have become rare collector's items.
Indoor hang gliding - Geoff Maltby in the television series Benidorm claims to be North West champion of it
Lifting - popular extreme sport, similar to surfing, but in the air; practitioners ride "reflection boards" on waves of "Transparence Light Particles"; from anime/manga series Eureka Seven
Taking the Stone - in Farscape, a game played by the youth of an unnamed royal cemetery planet. The game consists of jumping into a deep well, and chanting while falling. To protect a participant from smashing into the bottom of the well and dying, there is a sonic net which is sustained by the participants' voices, and is intended to provide a soft landing.
Combat sports
Anbo-Jitsu - Star Trek: The Next Generation, a one-on-one martial arts combat sport wherein the players are blindfolded and use proximity-detector staves to locate the opponent
Ape Fighting - from Futurama, a fighting sport involving two apes (typically gorillas) engaging in pugilistic combat while adorned with comically-undersized costumes and props
The Hunger Games - from the books and movies of the same name. Each year, adolescents from oppressed districts are forced to fight to the last survivor in an elaborate outdoor arena, itself designed to pose many threats to tributes' lives, for the entertainment of citizens in the wealthy Capitol district.
Kosho - from The Prisoner, Kosho appeared prominently in the episode “It’s Your Funeral”. According to Kosho rules, one opponent must knock the other into a four-by-eight foot tank of water. Trampolines are placed on two sides of the pool and ledges above on three. Upon any successful dunking, the Kosho match is over.
The Running Man - from The Running Man, the titular television show features convicted criminals fighting for their lives (and pardons) in an arena while being hunted down by professional celebrity mercenaries called "stalkers", presented in the same vein as theme-based pro-wrestlers
Arena Stickball - Fictional sport from Alternia, in both Homestuck and Hiveswap wherein two teams of 5 players compete to score points using 16 different balls. The game is played over two 11-hour halves.
Grav-Ball - a future sport played in a zero-G court by two six-man teams, who try to score goals with a five-kilogram steel ball, as depicted in the board game by FASA.
Grifball - A violent rugby-style game where two teams try to bring bombs to their own goal, as seen in Halo 3 (2007).
HyperBlade - an ultraviolent variant of ice hockey played on an ellipsoidal rink with either a puck or a severed head, from the PC game of the same name
Mittens - A game played in Foon featuring nonsensical rules from the improvisational comedy podcast Hello From the Magic Tavern
P.A.S.S. Time - A game revolving around bringing weaponry on the field, with holding the ball making weapons unusable until passed. Features in Team Fortress 2.
Futuresport - from the movie of the same name, a combination of basketball, baseball and hockey that uses hoverboards and rollerblades.
The Game - From Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series of novels; includes almost all known games and competitions; winners of the yearly Tourney get to become Citizens
Hadaul - from Jack Vance's Demon Princes book The Face, a team game involving conspiracies among players, played with double-edged blades almost a foot long.
Hussade - from Jack Vance's Alastor series, especially prominent in Trullion: Alastor 2262, a team sport played on a gridiron of rungs suspended over a water tank; players body-block members of the opposing team into the tank, while trying to reach the sheirl, a woman standing at her team's home platform.
Podracing - violent vehicular racing sport from Star Wars wherein the pilots of "podracers" - massive, twin-engined hover vehicles - participate in a high-tech version of chariot racing
Redline - a car elimination race in the film Redline[11]
Rollerball - from William Harrison's story "Roller Ball Murder", on which the movie Rollerball was loosely based
The Game - unnamed title published by fictional company Game Punch in the TV show I Feel Bad
Global Thermonuclear War and Falken's Maze - a military simulation program mistaken for a computer game and a computer game to be played by an artificial intelligence in WarGames (1983)[14]
Only You Can Save Mankind - a video game appearing in the 1992 Terry Pratchett book of the same name.
Polybius - The subject of an urban legend pertaining to an alleged 1981 arcade game. The game has made appearances in various media.
Roy: A Life Well-Lived - A VR life simulator from the TV series Rick and Morty
Sentries of the Last Cosmos - a VR game in the Batman Beyond episode of the same name. The game and creator are portrayed very similarly to Star Wars and George Lucas.
Space Paranoids - an arcade game created by Kevin Flynn and featured in Tron (1982)
Striking Vipers - a VR fighting game from the Black Mirror episode of the same title.
Wrestle Jam 88 - from the movie The Wrestler (2008)
Quis - a building game from the Saga of the Skolian Empire novels by Catherine Asaro involving the laying down of geometric solid shapes (dice) in various combinations; rules contain encoded knowledge of one of the former empires in the novel series
^Tracy, Larissa (2012), "The Real Price of the Beheading Game in SGGK and Malory", Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination, BRILL, pp. 207–232, ISBN9789004211551
