It’s that time of year again. The time of year where buffoonery runs rampant, and the gaming companies really get a kick out of pulling a few harmless pranks on their players. Here are our favorite gaming April Fools jokes from this year.
Valheim
The survival sandbox game based on Norse mythology’s April Fools joke galloped on social media today.
Captioned as “here’s something we’ve been working on”, the game’s account tweeted a video where the player… is a deer. The video features the deer player exploring the terrain and sailing through the high seas.
The developers jokingly named the faux update “Rise of the Deerking”.
Phasmophobia
Speaking of faux update-based jokes, the indie ghost-hunting game Phasmophobia jokingly released in-depth patch notes as their April Fools prank.
Some of the fake changes include increasing the Revenant’s speed to maximum (that sounds terrifying), adding a huggable teddy bear for comfort and allowing the players to perform an exorcism to “delete” the ghost permanently from the game.
“We hope you enjoyed these patch notes, and they didn’t fool you too much,” the patch notes added at the end.
Overwatch
The game-of-the-year award-winning FPS game Overwatch came out with not only one, but two April Fools jokes this year.
Players make recognize the characters adorned with googly eyes as that prank has been a yearly tradition. Even the payload and Hanzo’s dragon ultimate come adorned with the goofy stick-ons.
Additionally, Reinhardt mains may want to try typing in chat during their matches. Their messages will be sent in all-caps with a few of Reinhardt’s iconic voice lines sprinkled throughout.
Pokémon Go
Perhaps a more useful prank comes from Pokémon Go this year. Throughout the day, the Pokémon Ditto will spawn in abundance. This makes the chance to catch one especially exciting for players who haven’t gotten theirs yet.
Dittos don’t spawn as themselves, so players will have to try their luck catching other Pokémon in hopes that it’s a Ditto in disguise.
Rainbow Six Siege
For players that think a single ACOG scope isn’t enough, Rainbow Six Siege introduces the 8-COG scope.
The game tweeted a photo of a truly ridiculous, yet beautiful sight of a huge scope on top of one of the game’s guns.
As a response to a player’s reaction, the game’s company also jokingly revealed the scope on top of a claymore and the operator Sledge’s sledgehammer.
“Every operator… every weapon, you say?” they tweeted alongside the photos.
A journalism graduate from the University of North Texas, Allyson loves writing about games almost as much as she loves playing them.
