Browser or HTML sex games are a subcategory of casual games that are played online and typically not downloaded by the player, and I use the fuzzier term ‘sex games’ here, as opposed to the adjective ‘pornographic’, because not all of these rudimentary browser games feature the hallmarks typically associated with pornography, such as graphic penetration, and because their graphic quality is often so poor or their symbolism so abstract that they cannot truly qualify as graphic representations of sex, even if, broadly speaking, they fall within the greater scope of pornographic games. In short, I view most sex games as belonging, generally speaking, to the genre of casual games (here, I am thinking of the many erotic dating simulators and short interactive sex games that flood leading indie platforms such as Steam and itch.io). Thus, I am here limiting myself to format as a primary mode of categorisation. Since games and pornography scholars are just beginning to pay extensive attention to pornographic video games, there is as yet no agreed-upon lexicon in place for referring to such objects. It was made with the support of donations from so-called patrons received through the platform (independent creators of pornographic browser games often rely on crowdfunding). Uddertale can be accessed here: (accessed July 4, 2020). Ultimately, this double case study allows me to highlight an especially troubling aspect of humour in general: its ability to maintain contradictory ethical positions in suspension, with no resolution in sight. Through this analysis, I ask how gamic parodic humour comes to differ from other forms of video game humour, or parodic humour at large, when it becomes part of the greater intermedial agenda of translating, adapting, or transforming an existing game into a playable pornographic object. Secondly, I focus on the palimpsestic web that connects the two games to the 1999 film American Pie. In this chapter, I pay attention, firstly, to the parodic and pastiche aspects of Uddertale’s relationship to Undertale. As its title suggests, Uddertale, is a spoof of the indie hit Undertale (Fox 2015), an adventure role-playing game which received numerous accolades for its originality and humour. This contribution focuses on the game Uddertale (2016), developed by the artist Doxy for The Poundry, a young distributor of online sex games.

Undertale browser game