12/31/25

the best of minecraft args

as a fan of horror, i have seen my fair share of args and unfiction, from those such as cicada 3301 or the wilamette valley dream survey, to the more dubious like "the shoeman".

these however, are a different type of story. there has been a prevelence of minecraft args for some time, but a more recent trend is unfiction made to appear as an arg. i have been particularly interested in these, as they allow for a different type of storytelling, even using topics that would otherwise be unsafe or harmful to use when not established to be fictional.

a popular example of this is the recent "searching for a world that doesn't exist", which, while being high-quality, is not as enthralling as those on this list. to begin with, "doesn't exist" seems to be a sort of generic keyword for this genre, with many of the ones using it being less creative. and while a retelling of "the king in yellow" is interesting, it is a story so distanced from reality, being solely within the game.

the other stories here are a blending of the real and virtual worlds, breaking the barriers of safety that you would normally have, and that is what makes them so terrifying.

"calling into the void"

i've never been a fan of saving the best for last, so, here is the perfect example of this genre.

this video tells the story of someone who stumbled on an old minecraft channel that seems to only livestream. once a day, for thirty minutes, a livestream goes up.
that is where the normalcy ends, as the story spirals into a tale of a kidnapped child, and their hidden calls for help.

con is one of the saddest protagonists i have seen in a while, especially in the moments where you are able to see how long they had been waiting for someone to find their signals, weeks of livestreams just repeating the beginning hints, hoping someone would find them and dig deeper.

and if it was all not enough, the story culminates in a truly heartbreaking ending, a masterfully done horror, and a tragedy as well. the sequel builds on the plot quite well, closing up all of the loose threads and tying the first documentary into the story, not treating it as an outside storytelling medium. i highly recommend watching this, if not any others, it is almost reminiscent of "penpals", and just like that story, it makes full use of the genre and medium.

"i know what you did last summer"

this next video, by the same creator, tells almost the opposite story, in a way. it follows a man named liam, dared to play a mysterious horror map off of a forum. it's been brought to the attention of the creator by a concerned friend named steve, the same one who had originally dared him.

the videos provided show several "anomalies", all of which seem to violate the barrier between the game and his life, doing things that shouldn't be possible, knowing private things, all of it to tell liam- it was his fault.

the story does a great job of keeping you on the edge of your seat, with an intelligent and realistic protagonist to boot (although one who is far too nosy for his own good), and it closes out with some mysteries that linger in your mind, as well as details that even the "investigator" seems to miss, ones left for the viewer to investigate themselves.

"lunacy"

the term lunacy comes from an old wive's tale, how spending the night under a full moon would drive you to madness. this story shows lunacy, an obsession with the moon that drives the protagonist to their breaking point.

this story presents three seperate points of view, the protagonist looking into a series of urban legends revolving around the moon, their friend talking with them about it, and the investigator. a lunatic, a skeptic, and the neutral party.

as the story pulls you through the decension, in a strikingly accurate depiction of psychosis alongside the evidence that sent them into that state, leaving you pulled between doubt and belief. it all comes together as an entralling video, even with its length.

there are a lot more stories like this out there, and i am still mid-binge myself as horror is somewhat of a grounding force for me, though i do think these are the best ones of all that i have seen, they each use the established genre to its greatest.

the biggest takeaway though, is that just because a topic is oversaturated, there are still diamonds in the rough. or, more than that, these stories only emerge because of the medium being so established.