SPOOKY SEASON SUBJECT: Horror Games

SwampCreature

Truthfully, it doesn’t need to be Spooky Season for me to talk ad nauseum about horror games. I’m so in love with the Silent Hill series (Silent Hill 2 in particular - iykyk), the Fatal Frame series, and Parasite Eve. It seems for a while in the late 90s/early 00s there were a lot of very eerie games coming out of Japan, enough that I can’t even remember the names of all the ones I played. I remember a really scary one where you played as a girl with a dog companion, trying to escape a mansion full of people hellbent on killing you, and I believe you had no weapon - you had to hide and/or run, which is scary enough on its own BUT there was a very interesting mechanic where you could be overcome with fear and lose control of the character. There are a lot of super unique mechanics in horror games that you really don’t get in other genres! What are your favorite horror games? Have you played any horror games with interesting gameplay? What’s the scariest game you’ve played? Tell me about it in the comments!

Mariano

@SwampCreature Two of my favorite scary games have to be:

Until Dawn: maybe gameplay-wise it doesn't hold a candle to classic series like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Amnesia, etc, but the slasher movie pastiche really resonated with me. Amazing graphics for the time, recognizable actors in Hayden Panettiere, Rami Malek and Peter Stormare, and decision-making that decides who makes it out alive, were all a perfect combination for it to remain the first answer I thought of, almost a decade later.
Alien Isolation: I guess the mid-2010s were the apogee of horror games, because less than a year before Until Dawn, this game came out. Probably my favorite horror game when it comes to both mechanics and immersion, definitely the scariest for me; and the Xenomorph AI(s) are really an outstanding combination of creativity and tech ingenuity, which I really appreciate.

Honorable mention to the Five Nights at Freddy's series. I haven't played them and I'm not the biggest fan of the gameplay, but they really didn't need to go as hard with the lore, but it's made for outstanding content where people are trying to figure out what's happening behind the scenes.

Alexander Salkin

@SwampCreature The one with the dog... that's part of the Clocktower series, I think? Unless you're referring to Rule of Rose.

SIlent Hill 2 is legendary and for good reason. I got my start with that series with that one. It holds a dread ambiance like nothing else.

If you like Fatal Frame, have you tried the DreadOut series? They're somewhat similar as I understand. I like DreadOut, but it's not balanced as well as it could be with some of the bosses.

The most recent horror type game I've played is Withering Rooms. It's a survival title in a haunted mansion and while it has some Clock Tower elements, it's more of a focus on being a rogue-like style these days. It's not intensely scary or anything, but there's some good monster designs.

Honestly, I can't think of any pure horror titles that have clicked for me in a while. I couldn't get into Amnesia and while FNAF is good for jump scares and dread, I never liked the controls, so I would just watch YT'ers play it.

Come to think of it, the last really scary thing I played was the Silent Hill mod for Fallout 4. Coupled with a few other mods for fog and such, that was a genuinely nerve-wracking experience. Just trying to survive nights and having a real reason to be hyper-cautious in houses and streets (compared to the base game) truly brought out a terrifying style of gameplay.