GrayStillPlays

"I make bad choices in games and cause pixel people to become sad."

GrayStillPlays is a YouTube-based Let's Player who has since starting his channel branched out into videos of not just playing games, but actively trying to break them -- by pursuing bizarre and strange goals and strategies, or by hacking a game's XML data, or using over-the-top mods, or all of the above at once -- with the intent of producing unexpected but hilarious and entertaining results. He also enjoys diving into early-access games and indie simulation games of dubious quality and enjoying their inevitable malfunctions.

As of early 2021 he is best known for running destruction-test scenarios (and the cast of characters he subjects to them) in The Sims 4. He is also known for accepting viewer challenges in games like Grand Theft Auto V, Happy Wheels and Guts and Glory which allow users to design boards or courses and share them with other players. Gray's persistence and ability to beat even scenarios designed to be unwinnable endears him an audience of literally millions.

In late 2020, he also began exploring smartphone games he found to be particularly bizarre, stupid, or both.

His YouTube channel can be found here. He also has a Twitter account and a Discord.


 * BeamNG.Drive
 * Beware of Trains
 * Car Mechanic simulator 2018
 * Cities: Skylines
 * City Smash
 * Deadliest Catch Simulator
 * Ecosystem
 * Farming Simulator 19
 * Fun with Ragdolls: The Game
 * Grand Theft Auto V
 * The Guild 3
 * Guts and Glory
 * Gym Simulator
 * Happy Wheels
 * Metro Sim Hustle
 * Minecraft
 * My Summer Car
 * Planet Coaster
 * Power and Revolution 2019
 * RollerCoaster Tycoon 3
 * Room Smash
 * Sailaway
 * Short Life 2
 * Short Ride
 * The Sims 4
 * Skate 3
 * Solar Smash
 * Stickman Fall Legends
 * Tidal Tribe
 * Trailer Park Mechanic
 * Universe Sandbox 2
 * Wildlife Park 3


 * Angrish: Is given to inarticulate verbalizations when dealing with a particularly frustrating part of a game or board.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: Never fails to Lampshade what he calls "Google Translate dialogue" in the games he plays.
 * Catch Phrases:
 * "All right, we're checking out the only game where (outrageous thing here), 'Game Name'."
 * "Rookie numbers!"
 * "More X, dammit!"
 * "More zeroes!"
 * "Not today, Satan!"
 * "I.... caaaaan doooooo thiiiiis..."
 * "Oh, penis."
 * "This board lacks fairness!"
 * "It's entirely likely this board is.... impossible."
 * "Okay, here's the plan..."
 * "Screw you, game!"
 * "...a full liquor bar!"
 * "We don't need X where we're going!"
 * "And we have a checkpoint!"
 * "'Til next time, stay foxy and much love."
 * Cats Are Snarkers: The dialogue he provides for Spleens the Cat in his Sims videos frequently paints her this way.
 * Chirping Crickets: He sometimes underlines his less successful efforts at humor with a "chirping crickets" sound effect.
 * Cool Cat: His alternate characterization for Spleens.
 * Creepy Child: Never fails to quietly freak out over them when he encounters one in a badly-made simulation game.  And then there was the alleged "babysitting simulator" where the child was actually.
 * Enforced Plug: Played with.  Gray occasionally is required to present a product from whose manufacturer he's accepted sponsorship; he almost always does so by trying to destroy the product with various garden tools and melee weapons.
 * Evil Laugh: Has a really resonant one that has been heard frequently in his Spring 2021 Minecraft videos.
 * Florida: Where he lives, and the inspiration for "Florida Man", a recurring character whom he uses in multiple games, most notably The Sims.  It is also one of his most frequent targets for death from space, and where he locates most of his Cities: Skylines scenarios.
 * Fruit Cart: Apparently considers it an imperative to deliberately run into any fruit stand he encounters on a Grand Theft Auto V challenge course, if it's at all possible.
 * Game-Breaking Bugs and Good Bad Bugs: If they do something funny, he will find them.  For instance, Trailer Park Mechanic.
 * Incendiary Exponent: His Minecraft videos from Spring 2021 feature Reginald the Duck, who is invulnerable and given to bathing in lava, after which he wanders around at the base of a column of flame.
 * A Minecraft video from May 2021 features modded, minionized wolves which are not only immune to fire, but reproduce when exposed to it.
 * Joisey: Former resident of New Jersey, and still prone to Jersey jokes.
 * Let's Play: Before he transitioned into twisting and breaking games, GrayStillPlays made more conventional Let's Play content, often spending several hours over multiple videos exploring various wide-open sandbox, survival and simulation games.  He still turns out the occasional straight "let's play" video, but they are by far outnumbered by his custom courses, "let's break the game" and "torment my sims" videos.
 * The Merch: Has an online store where one can buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and other gear. He has also worked with Makeship.com to create limited runs of custom plushies -- as of this writing, Florida Man and Spleens the Cat from his Sims videos.
 * Nice Hat: Reginald the Duck who has begun accompanying him in his Minecraft videos as of Spring 2021.  He wears a small top hat.
 * Non-Human Sidekick: Reginald the Duck from his 2021 Minecraft videos, who wears a tophat and is nigh invulnerable, and addresses Gray as "Dad" when Gray provides dialogue for him.
 * Old Shame: He apparently regards some of his earliest videos -- like his extended multi-episode (semi-)serious playthrough of the game My Summer Car -- as embarrassing or crude in comparison to his current style of video.
 * Only in Florida: He constantly lampshades this trope, while selecting Florida as the location for endless simulation games like Cities: Skylines or as the target of cosmic bombardment in games like Solar Smash
 * The Power of X Compels You!: In his May 31, 2021 video in which he attacks a parkour course in Grand Theft Auto V with a pink clone of the Mach 5, he activates the jump jets while intoning, "The power of rockets compels you!"
 * Sound Effect Bleep: Has an assortment of ... idiosyncratic ... sound effects which he uses to bleep out his occasional curse. Among them is a male Japanese voice shouting "Nani?", porpoise chatter and squeaks, and the famous "dunk-dunk" sound effect from Law & Order.
 * Standard Snippets: In addition to the sound effects he uses, you will also hear bits of appropriate (public-domain) music like "Ride of the Valkyries".
 * Stock Sound Effects : Gray has a small library of sound effects and musical stings he uses to emphasize key moments in his videos -- or censor his language.
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial: During his 2021 Minecraft videos, his frequent start-of-video claim that a nearby village was "completely legitimately" placed or spawned.
 * Talking to Himself: For many games, such as The Sims and Minecraft, Gray will frequently provide dialogue for various (non-speaking) characters.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: If he can find a way to dial up the power of a weapon or tool, he will, laughing all the way.  For instance, see his series of videos for Farming Simulator 19 where he modifies various tractors and attachments to travel at the speed of sound or plow the entire game map in one pass.
 * Unusual Euphemism: Frequently blurts "oh, penis" when something goes wrong.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: The driving force behind his infamous Sims 4 videos, where he repeatedly subjects a common cast of characters to some nightmare scenario, just to see who will or won't survive -- or how quickly they all die.
 * To a lesser degree his delight in the virtual deaths he causes in games like Solar Smash.
 * Or any game that allows him to crash trains.
 * The Voice: Gray himself on almost all of his videos. Averted in his playthroughs of various Virtual Reality games, where we do occasionally get to see him superimposed on the game at its end.  He has also made the occasional vlog-like videos, in which he appears on-camera to reassure viewers that he and his family are okay in the wake of various natural disasters to hit Florida.