Benign Trials, Vexing Violations: Reading Humour in Puzzle Games

Benign violation theory (BVT) claims that humour arises when a situation is interpreted as both benign and as a violation at the same time. The theory has been employed primarily in social psychology and not as a method for textual analysis. This chapter argues that BVT is valuable in the textual analysis of games as it specifies the playful conflicts that are unique to machine-mediated forms of humour, and the ways in which humour is central to deriving communicative meaning from puzzle-based games. The chapter introduces BVT, discusses its relevance to puzzles in games, and analyses Limbo and Braid, two games that, while not explicitly marketed as comedy games, can be read as a series of benign violations that produce dark comedy.