Ever wondered what parenting is really like? These games don’t sugarcoat it. You’ll be juggling demon babies and managing a household that’s one tantrum away from collapse. These parenting sims are chaos incarnate.
Some are meant to be wholesome. Others? Not so much. But all of them will make you think twice about having kids, or at least, they’ll make you grateful for the pause button. If you thought changing a diaper was bad, wait until you’ve seen what these digital nightmares throw at you.
9Who’s Your Daddy
In Who’s Your Daddy?, one player plays as a clueless dad while the other is a baby hell-bent on self-destruction. It’s a bit like Goat Simulator, but with a bunch of parental anxiety mixed in. The baby can crawl into ovens, guzzle bleach, and do everything you fear toddlers will do the second you look away.
It’s meant to befunny, but it’s also an unintentional horror sim for anyone with children (or those remotely considering becoming parents). After one round, you’ll never leave a drawer unlocked again.
8My Child Lebensborn
In My Child Lebensborn, you adopt a child born to a Nazi soldier and attempt to raise them in post-WWII Norway, where nearly everyone around you hates them. There aren’t any jump scares and no over-the-top mechanics. It’s just full of heartbreaking questions and a reminder that kids soak up everything around them.
The game’s strength is in itsemotional realism, but that realism stings. Every choice you make shapes this child’s personality and future. It’s powerful, but don’t expect it to be fun. If anything, it’ll make you wonder how any real parent does this day after day.
7Parenting Simulator
Don’t let the simple visuals fool you. Parenting Simulator is a text-based anxiety spiral. You’ll guide your kid from birth to college, making endless decisions: breastfeed or bottle? Praise their art or be “honest”? The catch? Every choice affects your child’s self-esteem and habits.
It’s like the Oregon Trail, but instead of dying from dysentery, your kid ends up with commitment issues. I went in thinking I’d raise a genius. I got a moody teen who hates me by age 14.
With toddlers enabled, The Sims 4 turns into areal parenting simulator. you may add a toddler to your Sims household and then slowly watch their curated digital life collapse. These tiny agents of chaos will take your sim hourly (if they go to sleep at all) and cry because you dared serve them peas instead of carrots.
They don’t just drain your Sims' needs. They’ll drain yours. If you ever needed confirmation that parenting is hard, the Sims 4 toddlers are more than happy to show you.
In Tomodachi Life, you create little Mii characters, watch them fall in love, and eventually (if you let them) have a child. That’s when things start to get complicated. The kid grows up fast, speaks in unsettling robot voices, and develops bizarre hobbies like yelling at walls or wearing traffic cones as hats.
The game gives you a choice: let them move out or send them into “the world” via a hot air balloon. No, seriously. It’s one of the few games where sending your child off into nothingness is a possible parenting option.
4Think of the Children
In this frantic co-op chaos sim, you play as a parent trying to wrangle your hyperactive kids in deadly environments. There are beaches full of jellyfish, a zoo with lion enclosures, and birthday parties with lit fireworks. The kids will try to kill themselves if you so much as blink.
You’re constantly torn between saving one child from drowning and stopping another from eating a battery. It’s stressful and absurd. If you were afraid of parenting before, Think of the Children will make you triple-check every baby gate in your house.
With the Biotech expansion, RimWorld lets your colonists have children, which sounds wholesome until you try it. Babies need constant care, and childbirth is rough. Toddlers wander into gunfire, and teens have emotional breakdowns because you didn’t teach them enough crafting.
Meanwhile, raiders are attacking, your best doctor is in a coma, and someone just gave birth during a mechanoid siege. I once lost a child to a wild guinea pig. Not a joke. This isnota game for the faint of heart, and you will probably lose a couple!
Night in the Woods is a great representation of how parenting never really ends. Mae, the main character, returns home after dropping out of college. Her parents are supportive, but also clearly running on fumes. You don’t control them, but you feel their quiet exhaustion.
Eventually, Mae starts to spiral into emotional breakdowns and fights with friends (with a bit of existential horror built in). It doesn’t take long to realze that parenting doesn’t stop when your child turns 18. Sometimes, it just becomes harder!
1The Baby In Yellow
You’re a babysitter, and the baby is all wrong. It levitates, teleports, and stares into your soul. Over time, the horror shifts from cheap jumpscares to genuine dread. It isn’t just demonic possession, but it taps into very real fears. For instance, what happens if your baby just never stops crying?
It’s a short game and a bit spooky, but beneath the horror tropes is a familiar parenting anxiety turned up to eleven. Babies are scary. Demon babies? Even worse (but also somehow relatable).
