Happy Wheels

Happy Wheels has been one of the most-referenced Flash games ever since its 2010 release, mainly thanks to the combination of ragdoll physics and utterly merciless black humor. Studio Fancy Force offered players a choice of characters on wheelchairs and other vehicles trying to make it through a dangerous obstacle course without losing a limb, their head, or their life. The controls are deliberately clumsy, and the physics reacts to every impact with exaggerated brutality, so that even a trivial fall can end in a graphically gruesome yet comically over-the-top scene.

A key element of the game was its built-in level editor, which let players create their own deadly courses and share them with the community. This openness turned Happy Wheels into one of the pillars of early YouTube culture - protagonists mourning their own amputated legs in a dad's wheelchair for the disabled became a recurring internet meme, and the game regularly featured in commentated let's-play videos, which were just gaining popularity at the time. The humor rests on the contrast between family-friendly-looking graphics and the extremely bloody consequences of accidents.

Unlike many other Flash titles, Happy Wheels stayed available longer, because the developers gradually offered an HTML5 version, and the game can still be found on some gaming portals today, even though the original Flash version no longer works without emulation.

Why play it: For fans of absurd black humor and physics-based disaster simulators, ideally aware that this is a deliberately cruel grotesque, not a realistic game.