“The Sims” for edgelords.

Author’s note: I strongly recommend that you support independent developers and check out games like this one for yourself.

I recently stumbled upon CUCKOLD SIMULATOR: Life as a Beta Male Cuck on the PC gaming platform Steam. The game, which was released in May, is still in early access; at the time of purchase it had a price tag of $2.99, along with an extra $.99 “Covid-19 Mask” DLC. I went ahead and bought both and started playing. For that price, I really had nothing to lose.

The game was almost exactly as I imagined, which is to say that it’s a 4chan user’s (specifically a /r9k/ dweller) vision of reality in a video game. Without going into the entire history of memes, the imageboard named /r9k/, short for “Robot 9000,” is a place where users can post about any topic—with the caveat that their content must be original due to a software bot that rejects text and images that have been posted before. After its creation, the board quickly became a place where men complained about not having a girlfriend. These men embraced the “incel” (involuntary celibate) meme and started mocking “normies'' (average people with jobs and girlfriends) as a way to vent their frustrations. 

“Cuckold Simulator” is a more sophisticated mockery of those “normie cucks.” Internet culture would describe this game as a shitpost—a deliberately provocative or off-topic comment posted on social media—that you can play. “Cuckold Simulator” is a text-based adventure with no voice acting, meaning that you read the dialog on the screen, click your mouse, and wander around using the WASD keys to the next location in the story.

In the game, you control “Cuckold”, a tall, skinny man devoid of a chin who wears thick glasses and a grey fedora. The developer “Team Sneed” didn’t give him a real name, and your wife is correspondingly called “Wife.” However, they did name your wife’s boyfriend “Tyrone DeQuarius Floyd,” and his two sons who live in your house “DeShawn” (a pre-teen) and “Tyrone Jr.” (crawling baby). This is an introduction to the racist undertones that the game features: Chinese people in the game also have stereotypical names and dialog, and your boss at GloboCorp has a menorah and pile of money on his desk.

As you begin the game, you start in the driveway next to your car with the California license plate “CUCKOLD” and a Biden-Harris bumper sticker. Music plays in the background that closely resembles the Candy Crush theme song. Besides standard furnishings, your house has only “Soyboy”-branded Soylent drinks stocked in the cupboards and fridge. A diploma from UC Berkeley for a Masters degree in Gender Studies hangs above your computer. 

In the master bedroom, you find your wife in bed with her boyfriend, Tyrone. Cuckold asks them “Wait, what are you doing, how could you do this?!” dramatically followed by “You know how much I love watching!!!” Tyrone then follows with “Ayo we gon have some problems if you don’t leave right now,” and proceeds to rob you of the $9250 you started the game with minutes prior.

You head downstairs to greet DeShawn, your “son,” from the school bus. DeShawn’s first line of dialog is “Bruh f*ck school I just wanna play Fortnite and be a rapper like my Daddy.” After following him inside the house, he demands “Ey b*tch, turn on the TV for me because I forgot to, I want to watch my favorite streamers.” Turning on the TV boots up Amouranth’s (the most-watched woman on Twitch with 4 million followers) real Twitch page. She was performing “Ear Licking ASMR'' which made my skin crawl. When you ask DeShawn about why he is watching Amouranth, he replies with “Wuh? She got some fat t*ts man. You gay or summin?”

In one room of the house, Cuckold has a collection of toys that closely resemble Funko Pops, small plastic figures from TV shows, movies, and video games. DeShawn “loses” your Funko Pops and you can recover them as you explore the town. Currently, you can visit GloboCorp’s offices, a nightclub, Chinatown, and the police station. You can also scroll through Reddit on your in-game computer at your house; this is a really cool feature that loads the real, live version of Reddit and allows you to browse any website in-game. You can watch YouTube or even visit Countere.com! (Not that a REAL cuckold would ever visit our magazine…)

Day 2 starts with DeShawn “floss dancing” (a dance made popular by Fortnite) on top of your car. Cuckold heads to work at GloboCorp with a bunch of motionless coworkers sporting the gray NPC meme skin and face. The boss’s door features a sign that says “wagies keep out,” which is another slang term from 4chan referring to wage-based workers. Cuckold is more than happy to appease his corporate overlords by taking pay cuts because he knows how important it is for him to keep GloboCorp happy! 

Globocorp has installed a large cage surrounding Cuckold’s desk which they call the “Wage Cage 9000.” They tell Cuckold that they removed his family poster, Funko Pops, and soy beverages because they reduced his productivity by about 9%. Cuckold says the improvements are incredible and he wishes he would have gotten rid of his personal items earlier. He proceeds to lock himself inside of his “Wage Cage 9000” for a long day of hard work. At night, Cuckold departs GloboCorp with an extra $95 in his pocket.

As you progress through the story, you’ll eventually visit the nightclub which has a pretty girl who won’t talk to you unless you have drugs or money. The bartender then tells you that you can find drugs in Chinatown. Once there, you are pulled aside by an overly stereotypical Chinese-American woman named “Lingling” wearing a red qipao. With broken English, Lingling tells you that they use a different currency in Chinatown: “We no want your American funny money. They keep print more and more. Soon be Zimbabwe dollars. Chinese Yuan very stable. Very valuable,” which was an extremely profound take as America has spent more money on the various coronavirus relief bills than they did for World War I and World War II combined. The Federal Reserve is continuously printing more and more bills which could create hyperinflation if not handled properly. But I have full trust in our government, they have never made any mistakes and it’s best to trust everything they say!

Chinatown acts as a hub area for future storylines. There are a few buildings unavailable to enter such as an adult store and an Indian food restaurant. You can enter GameStart (GameStop) to buy a “Wintendo Snitch” with the Yuan currency, and the game surprisingly offers two playable minigames. The first is Cuck Souls, a parody of the popular Dark Souls series, which has Cuckold shooting down a flying boss. The second is Anime Girl Genocide, a first-person shooter where you have to “seek and destroy” anime girls hiding in a school using a handgun.

After a few nights of going to work and exploring, Cuckold is woken up at 2 am by police lights. Cops have surrounded the house with an arrest warrant for Tyrone. Tyrone, of course, sends you to find his “blicky” (gun) because “he can’t go back to prison.” Cuckold tries to talk to the “pigs” (cops) and tells them he’s going to write an angry Tweet about them. This doesn’t work. 

Tyrone’s bail is set at $775,000, which would take about 22 years to earn in the Wage Cage 9000.  At the police stations, the cop explains this is a consequence of budget cuts due to inner city riots. Unable to bail Tyone out, Cuckold goes to his wife for forgiveness. She tells Cuckold to move on because she “was only with Tyrone for his BBC.” She then asks Cuckold to find her a new suitor, at which point the content ends and we’re left waiting for the next update to Cuckold Simulator. 

 COVID-19 Mask DLC

The $.99 COVID-19 Mask DLC (downloadable content) is exactly that—it gives you the ability to press the “T” key to don a cloth mask. A letter also arrives in your mailbox from the developer urging you to wear the mask always so we can “get back to normal™...you don’t want to get sick do you?” and also recommends to remove the “T” key so you don’t take off the mask. In order to remain faithful to Cuckold’s character and to make GloboCorp happy, I ensured he never took the mask off, not even in the privacy of his own home.

Review

Story: 3/10 - There was a story, but it was short. The game is about an hour-and-a-half long before the content runs out in its current version. There were five locations, including your house & neighborhood, GloboCorp, a nightclub, Chinatown, and the police station. There is no branching story structure—you are railroaded directly into the next part of the game as long as you’re talking to the right people and performing the correct actions.  

Gameplay: 4/10 - The main button is E to interact...and there isn’t much to interact with. The Wintendo Snitch and its two available minigames (Cuck Souls and Anime Girl Genocide) are by themselves worth the $1.99 that I paid, but they only lasted about 5 minutes each. If not for the Wintendo Snitch and the internet browsing feature, I probably would have rated the game a 2.

Edginess: 5/10 - It was okay, pretty predictable overall in regards to the stereotypical beta-male cuck culture and racist undertones, your classic shitpost. It had some really funny one-liners.

Value: 10/10 CUCKOLD SIMULATOR is definitely worth the current $3 price. Games of similar pricing (especially on Steam) are often hardly games at all. It was comedic, had a real story, and included minigames. It seems like the game has been developed by one guy who is likely working on it in his free time. If you compare indie-developed CUCKOLD SIMULATOR against other ones such as Stardew Valley, Firewatch, Hotline Miami, the Stanley Parable, Papers Please, or Enter the Gungeon, you will be severely disappointed—the game is lacking in almost every aspect—but it was certainly worth the money I spent on it and I do recommend you try it for yourself.

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