The Most Bizarre Religious Video Games Ever

Religious video games revolve around two goals: educate the player about their religion, and inspire them to keep believing. Oftentimes, however, these games accomplish yet a third goal: confuse and baffle the player about what exactly they just sat through. Here are some of the strangest religious games around.

Most of these games are Christian-based, because on the Seventh Day God chilled with a few rounds of Tetris, probably. If you know of bizarre games based on other religions, let us know.

In case you're unaware, a Catechumen was a rookie Christian of sorts who had to undergo rigorous Bible study before being accepted as a true Christian. (This was back in Ancient Roman days, when being a Christian meant almost as quick a death sentence as actual murder.) The Catechumen game casts you as one of these young bucks, but instead of learning about the Bible, you shoot people until Jesus enters their hearts. Yes, seriously.

Catechumen is a first-person shooter, like Doom. Your goal is two-fold: rescue your teacher from demons and heathens, and convert as many heathens as possible. This is done through your holy sword, which fills the Romans with the love of God. They drop to their knees, begin to pray, a light shines around them, and the game shouts "Hallelujah!" Who knew conversion was one rip-off Zelda sword away this whole time?

Even if the game's plot was the greatest, most gripping tale ever, the game itself wouldn't live up to it. As Game Revolution explains, the puzzles are mostly of the "push blocks" variety, everything is either a simple hall or room (even the outdoors), movements are stiff and blocky, and the enemy AI rarely gets more intelligent than "run at you." That such basic, uninteresting gameplay comes packaged with a ridiculous plot that turns religious epiphanies into a glorified game of tag makes it doubly baffling anyone gave Catechumen the go-ahead.

Dance Dance Revolution is great, but every song being secular, oftentimes with questionable lyrics, can be a bit of a buzzkill if your goal is to celebrate the Lord while burning away the pounds. From that desire came Dance Praise, a dance game where you groove to nothing but inspirational Christian music.

Praise and its extensions contain hundreds of contemporary Christian songs, by rock and pop artists like the David Crowder Band, Casting Crowns, Hillsong, Rich Mullins, TobyMac, and Everyday Sunday. Now, if you've ever listened to Christian music, you'll realize it's not always the most banging and pulse-pounding of genres. It's more about raising your hands than raising the roof. So how one manages to sweat enough to lose weight when dancing to a slow ballad like "(Our God Is An) Awesome God" is unclear. Maybe there's a rave remix you can download.

Back in the day, Christian gaming companies like Wisdom Tree would release God-centric games for systems like the NES and SNES. Problem was, Nintendo never authorized these games, likely because they were little more than someone else's game reskinned and retooled to fit a vague Christian theme.

One such game was Super 3-D Noah's Ark, the only unauthorized game ever released in the U.S. for the Super Nintendo, according to EuroGamer. The game is literally Wolfenstein 3D, only instead of shooting Nazis full of holes, Noah slingshots sleep-inducing food at animals on the Ark. It seems that, thanks to cabin fever, the animals are angry and keep trying to attack the poor guy. So you, as Noah, all drug them to sleep so they don't kill you before the flood subsides. There are somehow only 11 animal species on the ark, despite there being quite a bit more today. They're also repeated over and over again, rendering that whole "two of every animal" thing moot.

Adding to the weirdness that is everything about this game, Wisdom Tree recently re-released Noah for $60 (plus $15 more if you want the box). What's more, they're releasing it for the Super Nintendo — not a current-generation system or even a virtual SNES, but rather the '90s machine proper. They also offer Noah on Steam for five bucks. Makes sense ... right? Hmm. Imagine sitting in on those corporate strategy meetings.

The Bible is a series of epic adventures, so it makes sense to turn it into a role-playing game. What's notable about the creatively titled Jesus Christ RPG is how unabashedly strange it all is.

Available free on Steam, JCRPG is a trilogy of adventures revolving around three major Bible stories: Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection. In each one, you command different party members — in Birth, you play Mary and Joseph, battling an army out to kill their infant son, Jesus. You also play the three wise men, fighting evil with screwball summons like Aladdin's genie. Once the parties convene to celebrate the new baby, you naturally receive 10,000 gold pieces, along with frankincense and myrrh. There's no need for a Phoenix Down — Jesus has that whole "back to life" thing covered already.

In Death, you play a fully grown Jesus, alongside Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and Judas (whom the game calls Traitor before he even does anything). The final boss is, naturally, Satan — or more accurately, a robot called the Special Amphibian Tactical Assault N-Droid (S.A.T.A.N.), because obviously.

Then there's Resurrection, where Jesus enters Heaven and can purchase any item for free. Hopefully you didn't waste time grinding for gold beforehand. Later he, the angel Gabriel, and the thief who Jesus forgave on the Cross enter Hell to rescue innocent Old Testament people. At this point you're basically invincible, so if you want an actual challenge, deny this game and seek elsewhere.

On the surface, Islamic Fun seems harmless — among bright colors and cute animals, you play mini games like building a mosque and answering Islamic trivia questions to solve silly puzzles. But some questions are worded in an awfully curious way. Instead of showing pictures of mosques and asking you to identify the Aya Sofia, Islamic Fun asks, "Mustafa Kemal, the hater of Islam, forbade the use of Arabic in Turkey, banned the hijab and closed down the Aya Sofya Mosque in Istanbul. Which is it?" Another question asks, "What was the crime of the Jews of Khayber?" instead of not calling them criminals like most games aimed at preschoolers might. Questions like that, when paired with wacky cartoon kittens, seem less "fun trivia" and more "shiny, happy propaganda."

Then there's the mini game "The Resistance," where for each correct trivia answer, you blow up a Zionist tank. You are now murdering Jews in a supposedly G-rated religious game. And people have noticed: according to an Independent article reposted by (the very right-wing forum) Free Republic, the Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned the game, saying, "This CD is completely inappropriate for children ... the sort of material that when taught to children breeds violence and hatred."

The game creator's response was to post, right on Islamic Fun's website — the one littered with kittens, bunnies, and bears wearing pajamas — that "the media is silent when ... the zionists use their tanks to slaughter our children but when [they] play a shoot-em-up game where they shoot zionist tanks ... we are accused of training terrorists and instilling hatred towards Jews! ... The game educate[s] children not to fall for the zionist lie that zionism, jewishness and Judaism are synonymous but to understand that zionism, a racist ideology, has nothing to do with Judaism." That must make Sleepy Bear sad.