Oh yeah Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth. That game is great.
Now Iām sitting here wondering what a āhorror gameā is. I love SOMA, but itās not really scary per se.
I canāt shut up about Receiver 2 these days, but: it has all the elements of a survival horror game (isolation, resource scarcity, complicated/limited controls to disempower the player, jump scares) without really feeling like one, because itās antiseptic and mechanical instead of gross and biological.
PT is probably my favorite unambiguous horror game, butā¦ good luck finding a way to play it.
Yeah when I think of āfavourite horror gamesā the only things that really come to mind are Fatal Frame 2 & 3 (or āProject Zeroā as they are called here). I loved the third one because it was the first real survival horror Iād played, and it really nailed the creepy atmosphere IMO (I bought it along with the Silent Hill collection for PS2 and mostly neglected that until I finished FF3)
I only played the Wii remake of Fatal Frame 2, Iām not sure if itās considered an improvement or downgrade on the original, but I could see why it was regarded as the best in the series (3 has a fair amount of reused content from the first two games, so was a bit disappointing going back to it after).
I wonder how faithful to the original PT is this one:
It made a lot of buzz one year ago, and is still easy to find.
Itās hard to find footage of this without some YouTubeR screeching all over it so I couldnāt really check the audio (which is an important part) but Iāve skipped through some videos and it does look very close. I say play it! The original is quite scary
Lisa (the painful RPG) and Getting Over It are another two recent examples of games that got me with a jumpscare. Lisa is closer to horror (lots of body horror) but I think the jumpscares were effective because you donāt really expect it in their respective genres and they use them relatively sparingly.
Another non-horror game with unsettling vibes was the forest temple in Ocarina of Time.
I canāt seem to name my favourite horror game even when I deliberately try. I can think of lots of great āmomentsā of horror but I find that horror games have a difficult time being pure horror from start to finish.
Has anybody tried Knock-Knock (by Ice-pick lodge)?
Rockpapershotgun speaks very highly of it, and it has indeed atmosphere, although I found it a bit boring and uninteresting mechanic-wise.
Heh! I wonder, would you have enjoyed the game had you not been aware of its authorās attitude?
Imscared is cheesy but it also saves text files to your desktop and opens browser windows behind the game so you see weird pictures when the game force closes itself and it changes significantly every time you open the game so, Iām a big fan.
Mondo Medicals scared me as a kid but I think now it would annoy me.
resident evil 1 remake and siren both do extraordinary things with form, structure and world design in opposing ways with a shared focus on routing and execution. theyāre kind of the ideal polarities of what survival horror can do as a genre. theyāre also both deeply, deeply gorgeous. by contrast, silent hill 3 and kuon are both mood pieces. they donāt innovate much mechanically or structurally (though kuon does some neat things in that regard), but theyāre pitch perfect works of atmosphere and tone.
Clock Tower SNES leaves me terrified like no other game can. I think itās a combination of
- no way to fight back, death in one hit
- great suspense thanks to few actual antagonist appearances. Game is 99% unnerving exploration 1% running for your life
- the game being on a 2D plane means that there are a lot of times when you could end up in a dead end with the killer on the other side and nothing to do but accept horrible death. Or at least it feels this way
- effective use of music / lack of music / footstep noises
- the close up on Jennifer Connelyās face / eye
- clunky controls
Horror games are in that weird place where the smoother the experience is to the player, the less effective horror gets
The old horror adventure game Sanitarium really blew my mind wide open when I was in middle school. I havenāt gone back and played it in at least a decade so I canāt say how well it holds up, but at the time I loved the anthology feel of it. Every chapter takes place in a completely different horror world, and they get increasingly weird and blended as the game goes on. Shout out to the goth village of mutant abandoned children and the sci-fi comic book zerg colony of hive mind unicorn Goros.
I remember seeing a preview for the first one back when it was announced and thinking it looked amazing. I love The Ring, and I get a kick out of its imitators. This is the first time Iāve seen this game come up since then! I had no idea it was translated. Can you elaborate a bit more on what itās like? I might just throw it onto my old DS flash cart.
the 8bit parts of Nameless Game are cool, not so much the rest.
Anyone know of any horror RPGs? Like, specifically with FF or DQ inspired battle systems? I only know of one off the top of my head, itās an OHRRPGCE thing called Bloodlust:
https://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewgame.php?t=202
It has the distinction of being the only game Iāve played where leveling up means your stats decrease. Itās pretty wild. Very Silent Hill through the lens of teen angst.
Sweet Home and LaPlaceās Demon.
Shadow Hearts (1, anyway) is a horror RPG, for the most part. Koudelka, as well.
parasite eve and despiria too
lucah born of a dream is a pretty good game about nightmares it seems like a horror gameā¦ i think
ITS HARD CUZ NONE OF THIS SHIT IS SCARY
like i think the first shadow hearts is supposed to be scary its full of grotesque monsters and red floors and FOG, but its played up for laughs and everything is so ridiculous
also games that rely on jump scares shouldnāt count. jump scare is lizard brain bullshit it doesnt actually make me feel horror it makes me feel annoyed
Iāve thought about playing it again and havenāt for this reason. āThe way to kill a cancer is to shoot itā remains one of my favorite vidconisms, though.
Eldritch is like a double fakeout horror game, where the āLovecraftianā theme is agressively silly but then the fundamental weirdness of the game itself turns you into a paranoid investigator flailing against an inexplicable threat.
Joke (but actually real) answer: A Boy and His Blob
Thereās also this adventure game called Donāt Go Alone thatās pretty similar to LaPlaceās Demon.
The player can choose their party from a variety of 16 paranormal characters available. With their party theyāll investigate a haunted house on a hill. The house is huge and players will encounter over 100 spooky opponents and solve various puzzles in order to find out the mysteries of the haunted house.