One of my favorite examples of this was playing The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure on the Gamecube back in they day. Me and a friend were really into it, but had trouble rounding up extra players. We got his little sister and an unwilling third friend to join. After about 30 minutes the unwilling friend, Marcus, gets bored with the game and starts sabotaging the rest of us. He’d run around smacking us with his sword making us drop rupees or refuse to stand where we needed him. That’s honestly when it became fun for all of us, though.

The other three of us would plan out the room and then we’d figure out how to wrangle Marcus back into place. Someone would hold him so he couldn’t go rogue and hit us while the others got in place to pull some levers before the wrangler would toss Marcus onto a pressure plate or something. He got to continue being a little bastard while we (slowly) made progress through the game. He eventually came around and helped us when it was absolutely necessary, but it was always clear it was just so he could keep being a bastard again. I really enjoy that asymmetrical style of gameplay and wish more things capitalized on it.

Also on the Gamecube of notable mention was Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Always fun when someone would get the personal mission of “take the most damage” and become a suicidal maniac in every encounter, much to everyone else’s detriment. Ah the good old days.

Playing GTA by following all traffic laws. There are even mods for turn signals and realistic traffic flows for GTA 5

I like rimworld, but I play it as a utopian anarchist commune simulator instead of a human leather war crimes simulator as intended

Here’s a fun one

Open up retroarch and apply the following as settings for a game:

• adjustment filter to mirror the screen, I think it’s in an image adjustment folder but can’t check which one at the moment
• swap left and right in the controls (in-game remap, not the menu controls)

Mirror mode! On any game! As long as you don’t care about text, it’s a fun way to add replay value. Great for platformers like Donkey Kong Country 2, Mario, etc.

If you really want a mindfuck, play a top down game like Zelda Link to the Past with the above but ALSO top down inverted too. I do that with the ALTTP randomizer sometimes.

Edit: hang on, I got Yoshi’s Story at launch and I 100% remember the ultimate aim of the game is to actually get all the melons. It’s not an alternative mode really, it’s the actual goal for 100%. At least, it’s how I played it in 1998.

It’s a minor thing, but whenever I get into a pokemon game, I deposit my starter ASAP. I don’t want to rely on the pokemon which is spoon fed to me from start, it feels a lot better to play the game with whatever I’m able to catch along the path.

I won’t call it pacifist mode exactly, but I prefer to play games like Tears of the Kingdom or even GTA by just walking around slowly and taking photos, observing the scenery. GTA San Andreas (the old ps2 version) is weirdly great for this because it has so many hazy colors and jaggy lines.

Finding alternate ways of playing a game, whether by doing a self-imposed challenge, or just playing a game differently than it was intended, are a good way of spicing up games you’ve played hundreds of times.

Or in some cases, playing the game how it’s meant to be played. Like in a lot of RPGs, you’re not really supposed to grind.

I played Final Fantasy VIII without grinding cards, draws, items, or anything until end game content. It was relieving to not have to worry about any of it.

If you haven’t had the joy of perusing it-he.org I highly recommend it for the various “anti-walkthroughs” as the creator of the website has dubbed them. I’m always on the lookout for modern games that are broken in the kinds of ways that allow an anti-walkthrough but it seems quality control has generally improved for most of the gaming industry and it is difficult to achieve such a feat in many games without speed runner like tactics and abilities.

I beat Tears of the Kingdom without doing any main quests at all after getting to the surface, which I didn’t realize going in would mean beating it without the paraglider. It changes everything about how you approach movement and even a lot of the combat when you don’t have that crutch to lean on.

I accidentally created a speedster pacifist in Oblivion, building the crap out of my speed and acrobatics and neglecting the archery and stealth I had planned to specialize in so I just had to rush through dungeons stealing all the treasure and weaving between an ever-growing web of enemy attacks. By far the best Oblivion character I ever made.

I love retroachievements for this sort of thing

If you like unintended ways to play games then check out all of the great OSRS youtubers like Settled who made an account in runescape where he locked himself to one region of the map and didn’t allow himself to use a bank. A lot of fun is had in self imposed challenges around those parts.

I like to play though GunStar Heroes (a terrific Contra style bullet hell) with a self inflicted “melee attacks only” rule.

The fact that it’s possible is one of the cool things about the game.

Relevant TVTropes link, Not the Way It Is Meant to Be Played.

I am generally a video hater but this is very entertaining: a tutorial on beating Skyrim without ever using the left stick. The actual video title is misleading and just claims it’s beating it without ever walking.

That’s pretty much me with most (open world) games.

I always treated games as a different worlds to get immersed in and that’s how I approach them to this day.
I’m also a weirdo who likes to makes games more difficult and realistic/tedious for myself which means stuff like limiting the amount of carried items, not using fast travel, acting like an actual part of the world, turning off the UI if possible and choosing fashion over min maxing.

I don’t think I ever did any kind of “gimmick” challenges. Probably because it kind of contradicts with my usual way of play.
It is however always interesting to read up on them - it amazes me what some people come up with to spice up their playthrough.