Issue 4.5: The Game & Word Halloween Codex
Issue 4.5: The Game & Word Halloween Codex
Spooky, Scary Video Games for Players of All Kinds!
Game & Word Special: Halloween 2022
Publisher: Jay Rooney
Author, Graphics, Research: Jay Rooney
Logo: Jarnest Media
Founding Members:
Le_Takas, from Luzern, Switzerland (Member since April 14, 2022)
Ela F., from San Diego, CA (Member since April 24, 2022)
Alexi F., from Chicago, IL (Member since May 13, 2022)
Elvira O., from Mexico City, Mexico (Member since May 18, 2022)
Special Thanks:
YOU, for reading this issue.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Important Points!
The Game & Word Halloween Codex
Footnotes
Introduction:
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!
Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: The Game & Word Halloween Codex is finally here! This massive gaming horror compilation is jam-packed with recommendations for some of the best horror experiences in video games, to help you pick the perfect game to play while under the covers on Halloween night.
I made sure to include games spanning as many genres (both game genres and horror genres) as possible, of all difficulty levels, and of varying intensities. Whether you hate being scared, or want to push your heart rate to its absolute limit, you’ll find something for you (or your horror-loving special someone) in here.
IMPORTANT: Please Read First
Now, before we get into it, I do want to make a few things clear:
I did not include games that I covered as part of the past two weeks’ Halloween Special Issues. You can read more about those here and here.
I also, with a few (very intentional) exceptions, didn’t include games that look horror-ish, but aren’t actually horror games. For example: yes, Bayonetta is filled to the brim with witches, demons, and occult themes. But it’s a badass, fun action game, not a frightening, disturbing horror game. Therefore, it’s not on this list.
I also wanted to limit obvious examples like Resident Evil, et al as much as possible, and instead devote more space to lesser-known, indie, and cult classic titles that might have flown under your radar. So you’ll see a lot more of those than the big names.
Last, but not least—have a Frightful and Happy Halloween! Have fun, be safe, and remember: if you find yourself conducting an ill-advised Ouija seance at the creepy old house on the hill, never—please, for the love of all that is good and holy—NEVER “let them in.”
(Also, if you give trick-or-treaters granola instead of candy, may you and your descendants be forever cursed to always wave back at someone who isn’t actually waving at you.)
Thanks for reading! Woooooooo!!!
~Jay
Previous Issues
NOTE: Game & Word is a reader-supported publication. The two most recent issues are available to all, free of charge, until new issues are published (podcasts and videos will always remain free).
Older issues are archived and only accessible to paid subscribers. To access articles from the Game & Word archive, support my work, and keep this newsletter free and available to all, upgrade your subscription today:
Volume 1 (The Name of the Game): Issue 1 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Issue 4
Volume 2 (Yo Ho Ho, It’s a Gamer’s Life for Me): Issue 1 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Bonus 1 ● Issue 4 ● Issue 5 ● Issue 6 ● Issue 7 ● Bonus 2 ● Issue 8 ● Bonus 3
Volume 3 (Game Over Matter): Intro ● Issue 1 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Podcast 1 ● Issue 4 ● Video Podcast 1 ● Bonus 1 ● Issue 5 ● Podcast 2 ● Issue 6 ● Issue 7 ● Issue 8 ● Issue 9 ● Podcast 3 ● Bonus 2
Volume 4 (Tempus Ludos): Intro ● Issue 1 ● Video Podcast 1 ● Video Podcast 2 ● Issue 2 ● Issue 3 ● Issue 4
Or, you could help offset my caffeine costs by chipping in for the price of a cup of joe:
Special: The Game & Word Halloween Codex
LAST UPDATED: OCTOBER 2022
👾🤔🤷 CONFUSED? ➡ NEW GAMING GLOSSARY! 📚💬🧑🎓
Confused by any of the gaming jargon, slang, lingo, or other “insider terminology” on this newsletter? Just click on the term and it’ll take you to its entry on Game & Word’s comprehensive and user-friendly Glossary of Gaming Terms!
⚠️⚠️⚠️ CONTENT WARNING ⚠️⚠️⚠️
This article contains discussions of horror and everything that comes with it. If you’re easily frightened, disturbed, or upset, please proceed with caution. There will be no section-specific labels, as that’d take up at least as much space as the codex itself. Reader discretion advised.
⚖️⚖️⚖️ ETHICS DISCLOSURE ⚖️⚖️⚖️
This article contains affiliate links. If you click on any such link and purchase the linked product, Game & Word gets a small cut of the sale. This helps keep the newsletter sustainable without needing to put up paywalls or ads.
A review copy of one of the games featured in this article, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, was provided to Game & Word by the publisher. This did not factor whatsoever in my decision to include the game in my coverage, nor did it influence my evaluation of the game.
Review Key
Developer: The game’s developer (you know, the person or studio that created the game)
Publisher: The game’s publisher (you know, the company that tested, marketed, and launched the game)
Platform: The gaming devices this game is compatible with.
Examples: PC, Xbox
Game Genre: The type of gameplay you can expect in the game
Examples: Platformer, FPS, Metroidvania
Horror Genre: The flavor of spooky you can expect in the game
Examples: Survival Horror, Cosmic Horror, Psychological Horror
Age Rating: Based on the ESRB’s content rating categories, used primarily in the Americas; rating systems in your region may differ. Display convention is: Rating (Age); Content Advisories | Online/Multiplayer Advisories
Example: “M’ for Mature (+17); Violence, Blood | In-Game Purchases
Difficulty: The degree of gaming proficiency required to progress in, complete, or enjoy the game.
Scale: 😌 🙂 🤔 🤨 😮💨 😠 😤 😡 🤬 🤯
Spook-o-Meter™️: Game & Word’s patented1 horror quantification matrix! Now, instead of useless snap evaluations like “spooky” and “not spooky,” or equally useless numerical scales, we break down the different horror elements that people tend to either seek out or avoid, and guage their intensity with easily understood, emoji-based ratings:
Total: 1 to 5 scaredy-cats 🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱 • 🙄 • 😲 • 😱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😴 • 😵💫 • 😵 • ☠️
Blood/Gore: 😇 • 🩸 • 🩸🩸 • 🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 😋 • 🫢 • 🤢 • 🤮
Themes:
Ghosts/Spirits: 👻 • Slasher: 🔪 • Demons: 👹 • Aliens/UFOs: 👽 • Clowns: 🤡 • Zombies: 🧟 • Vampires: 🧛🏻♂️ • Dark Fantasy: 🧌 • Crime: 🕵️ • Witches: 🧙♀️ • Creepy Crawlies: 🕷 • Cryptids: 🐾 • Psychedelic: 🧿 • Occult: 🔮 • Cosmic Horror/Cthulhu: 🐙 • Gothic Horror: 🏰 • Religious Horror: ⛪️ • Folk Horror: 🧚 • Haunted House: 🏚 School Setting: 👨🏫 • Hospital Setting: 🏥 • Paranoia: 👀 • Psychological Horror: 🧠 • Sci-Fi Horror: 🤖 • Vintage Horror: 🪦 • Skeletons: 💀 • Squick: 💩 • Insanity: 🤪 • Pandemic: 🦠 • Body Horror: 🫠 • Suspense: 🫣 • Alternate Realities:🪞 • Space Horror: 👨🚀 • Survival Horror: 🪓 • Apocalyptic: 💥 • Blood/Gore: 🩸 • Disturbing/Unsettling: 🚫 • Ambiguous:❓ • Surreal: 🌀 • Campy: 😂 • Jump Scares: 🗯 • Uncanny: 😬 • Chase Sequences: 🏃
Purchase Links: So you can, you know, buy the game.
Kinda-Spooky, Kinda-Scary Video Games [Family-Friendly Horror]
Believe it not, not everyone wants to be scared on Halloween! Even the most jaded, steel-stomached, fell-asleep-through-Hostel-and-laughed-throughout-Amnesia horror fan probably doesn’t their kid sitting through The Walking Dead. And kids aside, even if Casper gives you nightmares, that shouldn’t lock you out of the festive cheer that is Halloween—a gift from God herself that should be freely available to anyone who wants to partake.
Fortunately, the magic of time (along with the magic of morality gatekeepers’ censorial content police) has taken a lot of Halloween and horror mainstays and drained enough of their frightful charge to make them palatable to even toddlers, grannies, and Cowardly Lions everywhere.
For instance: did you know that fairy tales—you know, the ones we read to four year-olds as bedtime stories—used to be grotesque, macabre, and borderline sadistic yarns meant to literally scare people (and especially children) into staying in line? The Brothers Grimm—who first compiled and codified the amalgamation of fables of European oral folklore we now call “fairy tales”—certainly live up to their name.
Hell, even fairies themselves—the thumb-sized, winged, glitter-farting pixies loved by little girls everywhere—used to be genuinely frightening, incomprehensible, and borderline evil (or amoral at best) shadow creatures that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Lovecraft story. Go up to an English moor, Scottish crag, or Irish bog on a foggy night, and suddenly the locals’ hushed admonitions not to anger “the fair folk” don’t sound quite as silly as you thought.
Ghosts are another example. Sure, the malicious, baffling specters from movies like Poltergeist and Paranormal Activity are still more than capable of sending shivers down your spine—especially if you suspect one’s sitting in your room, right next to you. But like horror itself, ghosts reflect the fears of the time. Poke two eyeholes on a white bedsheet, drape it over you, and run around going “I am the ghost of Frank, wooooooooooooh…”, and you’ll pop the monocle off a Victorian gentleman’s frightened face… but will more likely get pelted with rotten eggs by 21st Century trick-or-treaters.
The result? Tons of tropes, archetypes, themes, and imagery to play around with if you want to evoke the spirit of Halloween, without looking like you’re evoking Halloween spirits.
This is what I mean when I say “Family-Friendly Horror.” Some people call it “Disney Horror,” but whether they mean that as praise or scorn, I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. Sure, Disney played a big part in cementing bedsheet ghosts, fairies, and the like as harmless, kid-friendly haunts. But the so-called “Disneyfication” of horror tropes is simply a natural process of horror’s evolution, which was happening long before (and conitnues to happen independently of) the Walt Disney Company’s cultural hegemony. Besides, when’s the last time you’ve seen a Disney movie? They get pretty damn dark, you know.
In any case, that’s Family-Friendly Horror, in a nutshell. But what about video games? Unsurprisingly, the medium offers plenty of fun haunts that anyone can partake in and still fall sleep with the lights off. Here are some of my favorites.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 (2019)
At A Glance
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Game Genres: 3D, Third-Person, Action-Adventure
Horror Genre: Family-Friendly Horror
Age Rating: “E” for Everyone (All Ages); Comic Mischief, Mild Cartoon Violence | In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
Difficulty: 🙂
Spook-o-Meter™️: 😸
Jump Scares: 🥱🥱🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😴
Blood/Gore: 😇
Squick: 😋
Themes: 👻 • 🕷 • 🐾 • 🧿 • 🔮 • 🪦 • 🫣 •🪞 • 🌀 • 😂 • 🗯
In-Depth
When it comes to spooky Halloween-ey imagery and themes that won’t give you or your kids nightmares, this game stands above all others. Luigi’s Mansion 3 combines campy, “vaguely-spooky-but-not-in-a-threatening-way” Halloweenish themes with the impeccable production values and wholesomely fun gameplay that everyone expects from a Mario game. Besides, Luigi—everyone’s favorite timid and overshadowed sibling—is the player character. What more could you want?
Our cowardly hero’s adventure starts when he—along with Mario, Princess Peach, and two Toads—receive a mysterious invitation to stay at a luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere. When night falls, the once grand (but fairly pedestrian) lodging turns into a topsy-turvy house of haunted hospitality (an “Air BOO-and-B,” perhaps?), staffed entirely by ghosts—yes, including the iconic “Boos”—who then proceed to trap our band of heroes inside haunted paintings. Except for Luigi, who barely evades capture, leaving it up to him, his trusty ghost vacuum, and his loyal ghost dog Polterpup to set things right.
As the player, you’ll guide Luigi, floor by floor, towards the top of the hotel—all while vacuuming ghosts, solving puzzles, and finding treasure along the way. Each floor is “themed” differently—from standard hospitality mainstays like restaurants and nightclubs to more fantastical settings like an Egyptian pyramid and even a pirate ship (complete with a physics-bending, artificial indoor ocean!).
And if your kids constantly fight over the Switch, this game’s got you covered. Two players can work together to clear out the ghosts (one as Luigi, the other as a flubber-like doppelganger named Gooigi), or compete against each other (locally or online) in specially-designed multiplayer stages.
Truly, fun for the whole family!
Purchase Links:
Nintendo Switch [Physical] | Nintendo Switch [Digital]
Pumpkin Jack (2020)
At A Glance
Developer: Nicolas Meyssonnier
Publisher: Headup Games
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: 3D Platformer
Horror Genre: Family-Friendly Horror, Classic Horror
Age Rating: “T” for Teen (+13); Fantasy Violence, Language
Difficulty: 😮💨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😴
Blood/Gore: 😇
Squick: 😋
Themes: 👻 • 👹 • 🧌 • 🧙♀️ • 🕷 • 🐾 • 🔮 • 💀 • 🏰 • 🪦 • 😂
In-Depth
Pumpkin Jack’s a very straightforward game, which serves to its advantage and detriment, in equal measure. Mechanically, it’s a 3D platformer in the same vein as the Nintendo 64 era’s “collectathons,” except much more linear and without much to actually “collect”—though the finicky camera controls feel right at home.
So, too, do the game’s graphics—their minimalistic designs could’ve been plucked straight from the 3D Platformer Golden Age of Yore (1996–c.2009 CE), save for the more “modern” low-poly textures. Narratively, you’re not exactly treading new ground, either—you play as the headless horseman from Sleepy Hollow (real name: “Jack”), whom the devil has summoned back from retirement to rough up some monsters that have gotten too big for their britches (Jack is clearly annoyed at this disruption to his idyllic retirement, and mostly just wants to get it over with).
As such, there’s a familiarity to Pumpkin Jack that’ll appeal to gamers who long for the days when 3D Platformers were the genre-du-jour, as well as to those who simply wanted to indulge in all the campy Halloween cliches without having to think too much about the gameplay (I include myself in that latter group).
But the tradeoff is exactly that… its familiarity. Don’t expect a genre paradigm shift like Resident Evil, a soul-killer like LISA, or a deconstruction like Until Dawn. It’s a perfectly serviceable title in a proven (if increasingly dated) game genre, with familiar characters and simple gameplay that never really tests or pushes your comfort zone (save for a couple of infuriatingly difficult kart racing sequences that feel narratively and mechanically out of place).
In short, Pumpkin Jack is the pumpkin spice of video games. It’s seasonal, Halloweeney comfort food. Sure, it’s a little basic—but come on, what would life be without its simple pleasures?
Purchase Links
Steam | Nintendo Switch [Digital]
Little Nightmares II (2021)
At A Glance
Developer: Tarsier Studios
Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: Puzzle-Platformer, Adventure
Horror Genre: Classic Horror, Suspense
Age Rating: “T” for Teen (+13); Blood, Violence
Difficulty: 😮💨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀
Jump Scares: 😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵💫
Blood/Gore: 🩸
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 🔪 🧟 🕷 🐾 👨🏫 🏥 👀 🪦 🫣 🪞 🪓 ❓ 🌀 🗯 😬 🏃
In-Depth
Moving slightly up the scary-but-not-really rankings, Little Nightmares II serves up just enough ugly monsters, eerie environments, tense stealth/chase sequences, and well-placed jump scares to get in the Halloween mood without actually giving your little ones nightmares (see… see what I did there? Heh heh… Get it…? ……GET IT?!?!).
The game follows two lost children as they make their way through a dark, scary world to try and learn the truth about who they are, ideally without any of its scary (if somewhat tropey) inhabitants spotting and hunting them down. It calls to mind LIMBO and INSIDE, two other classic indie titles about silent children outwitting their way through inordinately hostile worlds that seem to personally have it out for them.
Unlike those two games, Little Nightmares II is much more accessible—both in terms of its more forgiving gameplay and its not nearly as gruesome death sequences. At the same time, it’s difficulty floor and amount of on-screen violence are both higher than you’d ever expect from, say, a Luigi’s Mansion title.
This makes Little Nightmares II a good compromise for those who enjoy occasional thrill scares but squirm at the thought of playing a full-fledged, Resident Evil-esque survival horror title (or, alternately, edgy older kids and teens who’ve just entered their “too cool for Mario” phase, but whose parents are savvy and/or attentive enough to not buy them bloody, “M”-rated horror games).
Oh, and in case you’re wondering: yes, there is a Little Nightmares 1, and yes, it’s readily available for all the same platforms as its sequel. The only reason I’m spotlighting the sequel is because its, quite frankly, a much better game. The two games’ stories are connected, but self-contained (and simple) enough that you can easily follow along without having played the original.
Purchase Links
Steam [Demo Available!] | Xbox One [Physical + Digital] / PlayStation 4 / Nintendo Switch [Physical + Digital]
Costume Quest 1 + 2 (2010–2014)
At A Glance
Developer: Double Fine Productions
Publisher: Majesco Entertainment Company [First Game], Midnight City [Sequel]
Platforms: PC, Xbox
Game Genre: RPG
Horror Genre: Horror Parody
Age Rating: “E10” for Everyone +10 (Ages 10 and Up); Fantasy Violence, Tobacco Reference
Difficulty: 🙂
Spook-o-Meter™️: 😸
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😴
Blood/Gore: 😇
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 😂🪦🪞
In-Depth
And now, for something completely different. This is the only entry in the entire codex that isn’t actually horror. Costume Quest and its sequel are resolute comedies, both in theme and in tone. But they’re also Halloween stories, and this is technically a Halloween codex. Besides, it’s been long-established that horror and comedy are as delightful a pairing as Cabernet and Ribeye, burgers and fries, or peanut butter and lettuce.
Or think of movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas—which is actually quite apropos here, as Costume Quest developer Double Fine Studios was founded by Tim Schafer, whose distinctively odd-yet-endearing art style and flair for whimsical storytelling are eerily reminiscent of Tim Burton’s (maybe it’s a “Tim” thing?).
And Costume Quest, the first of which was co-written by Schafer, has the funny story (a group of costumed trick-or-treaters have to stop a deranged dentist from ruining Halloween), colorful visuals, and witty writing that have become Double Fine’s hallmarks. Integrating each kid’s costume into the battle system (eg, a superhero costume grants you super strength) was also a clever touch—which another game starring kids dressed as superheroes, South Park: The Fractured But Whole (2017), would also replicate.
So, if your taste in seasonal fare is less Nightmare on Elm Street and more Scary Movie, less It’s a Wonderful Life and more Gremlins, or less The Call of Cthulhu and more Cthulhu Saves the World, then both Costume Quest games will scratch the festive itch while tickling your funny bone on this spoooookiest of nights.
Purchase Links
Survival of the Spookiest [Survival Horror Games]
We’ve gone over Survival Horror at great length over the past two weeks, so I won’t rehash it here. But considering it’s become such a popular and enduring mainstay that it’s practically become the definitive horror gaming genre, it warrants a quick recap.
Survival Horror, as the name implies, places the player character in situations that make death—usually of the grisly, painful variety—all but guaranteed unless she somehow escapes. The challenge comes from surviving long enough to do so.
Like many video games, Survival Horror titles are packed with all sorts of frightening, powerful monstrosities that would love nothing more than to make monster mash or a vampire colada out of the player. Unlike most video games, the player character has little to no means of fighting back, or even just defending herself from these monsters. The tension and fear, then, comes from the player evading or eluding these monsters while solving puzzles, rescuing partners, and generally just trying to get the hell out of the creepy old mansion/castle/hospital/space station/whatever she’s trapped in.
As mentioned, Alone in the Dark (1992) birthed the genre and Resident Evil (1996) codified the genre, and most of the conventions they established remain Survival Horror mainstays to this day. Things like zombies, manor houses, and more jump scares than the McKamey Manor. However, the genre has enjoyed as much staying power as it has because of its willingness to innovate—subverting, bending, and even breaking longstanding conventions to create fresh spins on the experience.
Here are but a few such examples.
Lamentum (2021)
At A Glance
Developer: Obscure Tales
Publisher: Neon Doctrine
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation
Game Genre: 2D/Isometric Action-Adventure
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Gothic Horror, Psychological Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature (Ages +17); Blood and Gore, Violence
Difficulty: 😤*
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🤢🤢
Themes: 👹 🧟 🧌 🕷 🐾 🔮 🐙 🏰 👀 🧠 🪦 💩 🤪 🫠 🫣 🪞 🪓 🩸 🚫❓🌀 🗯 😬
In-Depth
Ok, look—I know. Yes, I said I wouldn’t cover any of the games I already mentioned over the past two weeks. Yes, I sang this game’s praises to the infernal depths but a few days ago. But no other game on the market can hold a flickering lantern to how seamlessly Lamentum marries old- and new-school survival horror, breathing more life into a stagnating genre than all the remakes, reboots, and sequels in the world could ever hope to.
I mean, the appeal is practically self-explanatory: Resident Evil as a 2D Zelda game, with a generous dollop of Lovecraft on top. If you still need an explanation: Lamentum instills the fear of being hopelessly outmatched and constantly hounded by flesh-eating monsters (which made survival horror so popular to begin with), while melding it with entirely unexpected game design that’s highly satisfying to play in its own right, and—gasp—using monsters other than zombies, for a change!
But I won’t harp on it any more here. Feel free to check out last week’s issue for more deets.
Purchase Links
Steam [Demo Available] | Nintendo Switch | Xbox One | PlayStation 4
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010)
At A Glance
Developer: Frictional Games
Publisher: Frictional Games
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: First-Person Action-Adventure
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Psychological Horror, Cosmic Horror, Gothic Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature (Ages +17); Blood and Gore, Nudity, Strong Language, Violence
Difficulty: 🤯
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😱😱😱😱😱
Disturbing/Unsettling: ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🤢🤢🤢🤢
Themes: 👹 🧌 🐾 🧿 🔮 🐙 🏰 👀 🧠 💩 🤪 🫠 🫣 🪓 🩸 🚫 🌀 🗯 😬 🏃
In-Depth
Despite its relatively recent pedigree, the Amnesia trilogy—particularly its first entry, 2012’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent—is one of survival horror’s most revered titles, rivaled only by genre codifiers Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It’s also regularly cited as one of, if not the scariest games ever made.
And with good reason! Amnesia makes full use of every survival horror trick in the codebook to make the player feel alone, distraught, and utterly helpless against the grotesque monstrosities swarming the accursed castle he finds himself in. Monstrosities the player cannot defend himself against—there are no weapons to find, and so he’s forced to cower in the shadows and pray the abominations don’t sniff him out.
Oh, you didn’t think it’d be that simple, did you? Well, lest the reasonable, level-headed player adopt the totally rational strategy of finding the darkest corner in the room and spending the entire game curled up in the fetal position, the developers threw in a decidedly sadistic curveball…
…the protagonist is afraid of the dark. Like, deathly afraid of the dark. As in, dark-phobic. So you don’t want to hide in the shadows for too long, lest our troubled hero’s troubled mind puts him through worse torment than any monster could. Thanks to some mind-bendingly unsettling sanity mechanics, Nietzche’s quote about “the abyss staring back” takes on a whole new, much more literal meaning in this twisted world. Pity the many unfortunate players who faced the impossible choice between risking more jump scares out in the open, or staying hidden and hoping the next hallucination didn’t show up in their nightmares for weeks.
And that’s just the game mechanics. I haven’t even dived into the oppressive atmosphere, (literally) viscerally disgusting monster design, or intentionally disorienting storytelling. Because, frankly, I don’t want to.
My point is, this game is NOT for the faint of heart. I mean that literally, by the way—I even wonder if I should add a disclaimer here, so that I don’t inadvertedly recommend this game to a player who later gets a heart attack from playing it. I haven’t heard of anything like that actually happening… but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me. It’s that scary.
Play at your own risk.
Purchase Links
Steam | Nintendo Switch [Bundle] | Xbox [Bundle; Available on Game Pass] | PlayStation [Bundle]
Dead by Daylight (2016)
At A Glance
Developer: Behaviour Interactive
Publisher: Behaviour Interactive
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: FPS, Multiplayer
Horror Genre: Survival Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature; Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language | In-Game Purchases
Difficulty: 🤷♂️ *[ED NOTE: It’s a multiplayer game. It’s difficulty is a function of “Your Skill vs. Your Opponent’s Skill”]
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀😹
Jump Scares: 😱😱😱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵💫😵💫
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🫢🫢
Themes: 🔪 👀 🪦 💩 🫣 🪓 🩸 😂 🗯 😬 🏃
In-Depth
Are you the type of person who shouts at the screen when characters in horror movies are about to do something either unbelievably stupid, or something that genre convention dictates will result in their grisly death? Do you scoff at slasher movies, confident that there’s no way you’d die in that situation, because you’re just too damn smart for monsters or serial killers to get the best of you?
Or are you the type to provide the same armchair advice to the villains? Do you get frustrated when Dave the Denver Disemboweler walks right past the heroes when it’s so obvious they’re hiding under that table? Do you listen to true crime podcasts just so you can poke holes in the killers’ plan, shaking your head at how dumb he was to get caught, which clearly would never happen if you were to commit such a crime? (Also, please stay far away from me).
Ok then, genius—put your genre-saviness to the test in Dead by Daylight, one of the most inventive takes on Slasher and Survival Horror to come out of the 2010s, and pretty much the best Halloween party game.
It’s a multiplayer game, where you’re matched up into groups of four players—one plays the killer, tasked with sniffing out the other three players and going all Machete Mike on them before they get away. The other three players, as it follows, play the survivors who must find a way out of the level before the killer dismembers everyone.
As you can imagine, all sorts of hilarious (and bloody) hijinx ensue. As is standard in Survival Horror, the Survivors are at too much of a power disadvantage to fight back, so their only option is to try to escape the killer. But the killer is not only much stronger and carries sharper blades, he moves quicker and has some sort of superpower-ey super-sensory abilities for easily sniffing out his prey.
It’s a lot of fun, and a great party game. But it’s still a horror game at its core—so don’t ecpect it to skimp on the grisly, giblety, and gorey remains of unlucky Survivors’ encoutners with the Killer. Oh, and the Killer himself has some… inventively horrifying execution methods at his disposal. So, be advised.
Purchase Links
Steam | Nintendo Switch [Physical/Digital] | PlayStation 4 [Physical/Digital] | Xbox One [Physical/Digital] | Xbox Series X|S [Digital; Included on Game Pass!]
The Voices in My Save File [Psychological Horror Games]
Another genre we’ve gone over at length over the past couple of weeks, Psychological Horror is another huge gaming horror genre, surpassed only by Survival Horror in reach and variety (and even that’s up for debate).
Again, just to quickly recap:
Unlike Survival Horror games, where the player’s fear comes from the acute and deadly physical threats to the character’s safety and even life, Psychological Horror chooses instead to dial up the mental, emotional, and sometimes spiritual threats to the character’s sanity. Not that the latter’s any less scary (indeed, many consider the mental stuff scarier), and nor are the two mutually exclusive by any means. Especially when you consider that psychological horror games love to blur the line between fantasy and reality.
As such, as a general (but by no means universal) rule, Psychological Horror games tend to eschew jump scares (one of Survival Horror’s favorite scare tactics) and rarely put characters in actual, physical danger. Indeed, many don’t even have combat at all, and some don’t even have chase or stealth sequences where you’ll clearly get brutally mauled by the manifestation of your anxiety if you mess up.
Instead, Psychological Horror games tend to focus on creating a forebody, uncanny, and unsettling atmosphere, along with heavy (and taboo) themes surrounding the ailments of the mind. Past trauma, present neuroses, and future fears haunt Psychological Horror protagonists, often manifesting as vivid, horrifying, and occasionally dangerous flashbacks, hallucinations, and nightmares. Expect to descend into complete insanity at some point. You’re also highly likely to descend deeply into disturbing internal mindscapes, whether the protagonist’s, or another character’s.
A good rule of thumb: if a game makes you question whether what you just witnessed was real, or all in your head (this includes everything up to and including the entire game itself), there’s a high chance you’re playing a Psychological Horror title.
Sally Face (2016–2021)
At A Glance
Developer: Portable Moose
Publisher: Portable Moose
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox
Game Genre: Episodic Point-and-Click Adventure, Puzzle
Horror Genre: Psychological Horror, Cosmic Horror, Surreal Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature (Ages +17); Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language
Difficulty: 😮💨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😲😲😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🤮🤮🤮🤮
Themes: 👻 🔪 👹 👽 🕵️ 🧿 🔮 🐙 ⛪️ 🏚 👨🏫 🏥 🧠 💩 🤪 🫠 🫣 🪞 🩸 🚫❓ 🌀 🗯 😬
In-Depth
This is… geez, where do I even start with this game?
If I had to pick a game (besides Silent Hill) that was most representative of Psychological Horror, it’d be Sally Face. Which is funny, because the developer has repeatedly and emphatically denied that this is a horror game. It’s also unfortunate, as almost nobody seems to have heard of it—it hasn’t been reviewed enough to earn a score on Metacritic, and it’s conspiciously absent from almost every “14340 BEST/SCARIEST HORROR GAMES EVER” clickbait listicle that game media outlets love to put out this time of the year.2
Well, not from this list. For I have come to correct an injustice that’s been allowed to stand for far longer than a truly fair and just world would countenance. I am here to tell the horror gamers of the world to play Sally Face.
It’s hard to get into why this game is so worthwhile without getting into major spoiler territory. Hell, it’s hard to get into why, period. It is a weird game, and it’s not afraid to flaunt it. It is a dark and twisted game that clearly came from a dark and twisted mind, which becomes even more unsettling when you look up the developer and realize he’s a pretty chill guy.
Forget “scary,” “disturbing,” “nauseating,” or even fancier words like “distressing,” “oppressive,” and “vomitous.” We, as a species, do not speak any language on Earth that’s evolved enough to give us a vocabulary that’d do the mindf$%k that is Sally Face anything close to justice. I’ll give it a shot, but know that try as I might, I can’t help but undersell how disquieting this game is. You really do have to experience it for yourself.
In Sally Face, you play as Sal, a.k.a. “Sally Face,” a nickname he earned from the prosthetic mask he wears because of a past incident that disfigured his face. Sal moves to a new apartment complex, populated by other weirdos who are just as troubled as he is, with whom he forms a strong kinship. As kids are wont to do, they decide to investigate a series of strange murders and disappearances linked to their apartment building, for the lulz.
And then… well, TL;DR: things get very weird, very fast, and the weirdness does not let up as you progress through Sally Face’s five episodic chapters. Expect nightmarish visions and complete sanity slippage, characters subjected to practically every type of heavy trauma imaginable, characters reacting to said trauma in practically every way imaginable (up to and including suicide), body horror and obscene chimerish amalgamations galore, violence and gore so explicitly detailed it’s actually kind of impressive, relentlessly bleak and existentially terrifying backstory, and one of gaming’s grimmest endings ever.
Oh, and the stylisticly animated art style does nothing to blunt all the horror I just listed. If anything, it makes it even more disquieting.
And yet, Sally Face is also a game with a lot of heart. Despite its darkness, it is a story about finding beauty, friendship, and courage in even the bleakest of circumstances. It’s about loyalty, and about finding your people. It tells the player that no matter how much of a loner, weirdo, or outcase you may be, you’re never truly alone, and your people are out there somewhere. No matter how troubled you are, and no matter how dark are the places your mind goes, you’re not the only one (hell, the developer is a case-in-point). And no matter how raw of a deal you’ve gotten from fate, sometimes, you just gotta… always look on the bright side of life, ya know?
Purchase Links
Layers of Fear (2016)
At A Glance
Developer: Bloober Team SA
Publisher: Bloober Team SA
Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: Environmental Narrative Adventure (aka “Walking Simulator”)
Horror Genre: Psychological Horror, Psychedelic Horror, Surreal Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature; Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violent References
Difficulty: 🤔
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😱😱😱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 🔪 🕵️ 🐾 🧿 🏚 👀 🧠 🤪 🫠 🫣 🚫 ❓ 🌀 🗯 😬 🏃
In-Depth
Bet you never expected to see a Walking Simulator on this list, did you? You know, the so-called “genre” of fake “games” for filthy casuals where you don’t fight anyone or destroy anything, and can’t even lose! You can’t make a horror game out of that! Right?
Well… not unless you actually rub two cells in that Big Gamer Galaxy Brain™️ together and recognize that the much-maligned, so-called “Walking Simulator” genre’s biggest strengths is its masterful use of a game’s setting and environment to accomplish its narrative, thematic, and (yes, even) gameplay objectives.
Once you arrive at this thought, hold it in your mind (You can do it! I know you can!), and then remember that Psychological Horror games scare players by crafting unsettling, oppressive, and menacing environments… well, then your question is no longer “how can a horror Walking Simulator exist?”, but rather, “how come more of them don’t exist?”
In Layers of Fear, you assume the point of view of a reclusive artist struggling to finish his masterpiece during his final moments of lucidity, before his emotional demons—born of trauma and nourished by guilt and regret—finally devour his world and plummet his soul into the abyss of insanity, once and for all.
As you periodically emerge from your safe room art studio, say to locate some painting supplies, the world around you shifts, morphs, undulates, and glitches out in surprising and unsettling ways. Quite clearly a metaphor for the artist’s heavily-deteriorated-and-still-getting-worse mental state, exploring the house becomes a tour-de-force for a mind that’s quickly coming off at the seams.
If you’ve ever lived with mentall illness, lived with someone with mental illness, or even just thought about the concept of implications of mental illness for a few seconds, you easily see how this is much scarier than a bunch of zombies.
So next time someone tells you “Walking Simulators” can’t be scary, tell them to play Layers of Fear (while you’re at it, tell them to stop using the term “Walking Simulator”) and see if they’ll ever be able to pick up a paintbrush again.
Purchase Links
Yomawari: The Long Night Collection (2018)
At A Glance
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software, Inc.
Publisher: NIS America
Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: 2D/Isometric Action-Adventure, Puzzle
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Psychological Horror, J-Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature (+17); Blood and Gore, Violence
Difficulty: 🤨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😲😲😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 👻 👹 🧌 🐾 🔮 🏚 👀 🧠 🤪 🫣 🪞 🪓 🩸 🚫 🌀 🗯 😬 🏃
In-Depth
It simply wouldn’t be a Psychological Horror gaming directory without at least one Japanese entry! As mentioned last week, East Asia has built a reputation for unleashing some remarkably twisted Psychological Horror. And amongst these countries, Japan has long claimed the top spot by blending cute, creepy, and just straight bizarre in that characteristically disquieting and delightful way that only the Japanese can pull off.
On first glance, the two Yomawari games in this collection appear cute, cuddly, and harmless, as if Little Nightmares were made by Sanrio. But don’t be fooled—Hello Kitty, this is not, and buying this for your granddaughter would be a terrible idea.
In both Yomawari games, you play a cute little girl who has set out on the dark and empty city streets in search of someone dear to her. So far, so cute. But it doesn’t take long at all for the facade to fall off. As soon as the first horribly disfigured spirit makes a beeline in your direction, you immediately understand why the game’s eStore page was age-restricted. For just as cute as Yomawari’s protagonists and settings are, just as ghastly are its monsters.
Furthermore, Yomawari takes a page out of second-wave Survival Horror titles (like Amnesia) in that there’s no way to fight back against these astral abominations. Fitting, as once these unholy apparitions borrow themselves in your mind, you’ll never be rid of their repulsive visages either.
Kawaii!
Purchase Links
BONUS: The third Yomawari title, Yomawari: Lost in the Dark, just released today (10/28/22) and is available on PC, PS4, and Switch:
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2019)
At A Glance
Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Ninja Theory
Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: Third-Person Action-Adventure
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Psychological Horror, Folk Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature; Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Intense Violence
Difficulty: 😮💨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: ☠️☠️
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🫢🫢
Themes: 👻 👹 🧌 🐾 🧿 ⛪️ 🧚 👀 🧠 💀 🤪 🫠 🫣 🪞🪓 🩸 🚫❓ 🌀 😬
In-Depth
I dove into this game back in Volume 3, but if you need a refresher, Hellblade follows a Pict warrior suffering from psychosis as she journeys into the Norse underworld to bargain the soul of her slain husband.
Unlike most depictions of mental illness (not just in games, but media in general), Hellblade’s developers took great lengths to accurately depict the effects of psychosis without stigmatizing those who live with it. As such, they extensively consulted with psychiatric experts and patients living with psychotic disorders (like schizophrenia).
Psychosis is the clinical term for when a mind breaks from reality, and all of that is reflected in the gameplay. Everything from visual distortions and disembodied whispers to full-blown, nightmarish hallucinations pops in and out of the game to help, hinder, or just confuse and frighten you. By the time you reach, the end, you realize:
That brute wearing a reindeer skull may not have been “real” (or was it?), but that doesn’t make him any less scary.
Purchase Links
Steam | Nintendo Switch | PlayStation 4 [Physical/Digital] | Xbox One [Physical/Digital - Available on Game Pass!]
God, Save Us From These Loot Boxes [Gothic/Religious/Occult Horror]
Much like the amalgamated abominations conjured up by a Psychological Horror game’s protagonist, I am about to blend a bunch of different horror genres to create one big, obscene (but taxonomically useful) chimera genre: we’re about to cover Gothic Horror, Religious Horror, and Occult Horror all at the same time.
Mostly because there’s so much overlap between the three, and the nuances so subtle, that I decided that sorting these games into their “proper” buckets wasn’t worth the headache.
So what do these horror genres entail, anyway?
Gothic Horror is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) of horror genres. The word “Gothic” comes from the Goths. No, not the kind that dress in all-black and decorate their rooms with tacky Satanic tschotchkes—but rather, the tribes of Germanic barbarians from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.
The term Gothic Horror, however, specifically comes from the Gothic Architecture where these stories were usually set—castles, abbeys, cathedrals, and the like. The term is a bit of a misnomer—it was originally a perjorative for medieval European architecture, seen by post-Rennaisance authors as “barbarian” (thus, “Gothic”) compared to the Classical (Greco-Roman) architecture that preceded it. So even though the Goths had ceased to be a thing for centuries before “Gothic” architecture was in vogue, the term stuck.
Anyway.
When someone says “horror,” chances are they’re thinking of this specific type of horror. Castles, vampires, goblins, werewolves, witches, fairies (and not the Disney variety), haunted forests, will-o-wisps… the imagery is practically archetypal at this point.
That said, Gothic Horror isn’t just set in medieval Europe. Plenty are set in the Victorian era, and come with their own subset of tropes and images. Blue-blooded families of wealthy degenerates who may or may not be withering under an ancestral curse, seances, syphillis-induced madness, cursed orphans, assertive wives casually locked up in sordid and inhuman sanitoriums, their vengeful spirits coming back to haunt their husbands, werewolves, ghouls (undead or not) stalking the gaslit alleys of industralizing cities, occulty dabblings gone wrong, vampires, haunted manors… you get it.
This is the domain of Dracula and Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, Poe and Lovecraft.
Religious Horror is horror with a strong religious component. These stories usually involve demonic possession, infernal spirits intruding in the world of the living, religious apocalypses, Satanic cults, voodoo curses, or sinister clergymen.
Think The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, or the IRL “Satanic Panic” of 1980s America.
Occult Horror is horror with occult themes: witchcraft, sinister secret societies, forbidden arcane knowledge, inverted pentacles, world domination conspiracies by shadowy cabals of freemasons/illuminati, and so forth. There’s so much overlap between this, Religious Horror, and Gothic Horror—and the occult, by its very nature, makes it a popular addition to works of every horror genre—that’s barely worth mentioning as its own subgenre.
Anyway, you see why I combined the bunch. Now, for the games:
The Count Lucanor
At A Glance
Developer: Baroque Decay
Publisher: Merge Games
Platforms: PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation
Game Genre: 2D/Top-Down Adventure, Metroidvania
Horror Genre: Gothic Horror, Classic Horror, Exploration Horror
Age Rating: “T” for Teen (+13); Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Mild Language, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence
Difficulty: 🤨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵💫😵💫😵💫
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🫢🫢
Themes: 👹 🧟 🧛🏻♂️ 🧌 🐾 🔮 🏰 ⛪️ 🧚 🏚 👀 🪦 🫠 🫣 🪞 🪓 🩸 🌀 😬 🏃
In-Depth
The Count Lucanor, aptly-named developer Baroque Decay’s debut title, is Gothic Horror played as straight as one possibly can. Set in a superstitious Medieval European backwater, the game follows our protagonist, Hans (really?), a young boy who runs away from his impoverished village to search for treasure in the woods.
His Mutti must not have told him enough fairy tales at bedtime, otherwise he’d know that these stories don’t usually end well for kids who wander off into the woods alone, especially at night.
After getting sidetracked to guzzle wine with a goatkeeper, Hans passes out, waking up after night has fallen. Something wicked must have fallen along with the night, as the river has turned to blood, the goatkeeper’s been decapitated (though this strangely doesn’t seem to bother him much), and his flock—now standing and walking on hind legs, eyes glowing red, and sporting diabolical grins—start closing in on Hans next.
So Hans, lured in part by a mysterious blue kobold, is forced to shelter in the creepy castle on top of the hill, where the titular Count Lucanor is rumored to have stashed a bunch of treasure.
But in this castle, nothing is as it seems. Gruesome traps, bloodthirsty demons, diabolical puzzles, ancient curses, and tormented souls await in the castle’s dark halls. Will Hans find the treasure, cleanse the keep, and save the land from the encroaching darkness? Or will he not even make it through the night, having been eviscerated by a tentacled souleater, or—even worse—gobbled up by a demon goat?
That’s for you to decide!
Purchase Links
Blasphemous (2019)
At A Glance
Developer: The Game Kitchen
Publisher: Team17
Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: 2D Platformer, Metroidvania, RPG
Horror Genre: Gothic Horror, Religious Horror, Body Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature; Blood and Gore, Violence, Nudity
Difficulty: 😤
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 🙄
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🤮🤮🤮🤮
Themes: 👻 🔪 👹 🧟 🧛🏻♂️ 🧌 🧙♀️ 🐾 🔮 🏰 ⛪️ 🧚 🪦 💀 💩 🫠 💥 🩸 🚫 😬
In-Depth
Blasphemous certainly lives up to its name. If you’re religious, bewarned; while set in a fictional universe with a cosmology and theological landscape entirely separate from our own, Blasphemous nevertheless makes such liberal use of religious imagery and themes (especially those of the Catholic/Christian variety) that—when combined with its equally liberal use of gore, morbid imagery, and literal fountains of blood—it’s bound to offend you.
But then again, maybe that’s the point. I mean, it is called Blasphemous for a reason.
Anyway, in Blasphemous, you play as a nameless, faceless pilgrim, seemingly on a divine mission to cleanse the game’s desolate, macabre hellscape of a world from an encroaching corruption, and in doing so, save his own soul from damnation. He does so by cleaving monsters with his comically heavy sword, invoking divine wrath on demons, and filling his conical helmet (that doubles as a mask) with the blood of his slain enemies, which he then puts back on his head (this somehow makes him stronger).
Blasphemous, like many indie titles of the 2010s, uses a pixelated art style, harkening back to the 16-bit era of the 1990s. It’s morbidly beautiful, though it does blunt the visceral impact of wading through literal mountains of corpses somewhat. On the other hand, this likely means it can get away with depicting said mountains of corpses to begin with. If this were a hyper-realistic, 4K ultra-HD AAA production, it would’ve been buried under countless, interminable Congressional inquiries and banned in 34 countries. Which would’ve really brought back the halcyon days of the ‘90s. But I digress.
Horror wise, this is a game almost completely devoid of the jump scares and other in-your-face, explicitly frightening fare you usually find in horror games. It also doesn’t create an atmosphere of fear, like a Psychological Horror game would. Instead, Blasphemous trafficks in the horror aesthetic.
Its Gothic/Medieval European setting and 2D platforming are an obvious homage to the classic vampire-hunter franchise Castlevania, which Blasphemous draws heavy inspiration from (it is a Metroidvania, after all). Castlevania is classic Gothic Horror Gaming that would’ve made this list if it weren’t already such an iconic and ubiquitous IP.
Add in the religious imagery, and revel in the dissonance resulting from Blasphemous’’ deployment of symbols and images widely revered as holy in decidedly unholy contexts, and you’ve got living, breathing proof that great horror doesn’t always have to be scary.
Purchase Links
Steam | Nintendo Switch [Physical/Digital] | Playstation 4 [Physical/Digital] | Xbox One [Physical/Digital]
Goetia (2018)
At A Glance
Developer: Forever Entertainment
Publisher: Forever Entertainment / Square Enix
Platforms: PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: Puzzle
Horror Genre: Gothic Horror, Occult Horror
Age Rating: “T” for Teen (+13); Partial Nudity, Violent References
Difficulty: 🙂
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵💫
Blood/Gore: 😇
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 👻 👹 🧌 🧙♀️ 🔮 🏰 ⛪️ 🧚 🏚 👀 🪦 🪞 💥 ❓ 😬
In-Depth
For a game that looks so eerie from the outside, Goetia is somewhat of an anomaly for a horror game. The name, Goetia, is a reference to the Ars Goetia, a medieval grimoire of unknown provenance (and one part of the five-part collection of grimoires known as The Lesser Key of Solomon) that focuses on the evocation of demons. Fittingly, the game involves the protagonist investigating the mysterious disappearance of a family whose father was rumored to be almost single-mindedly obsessed with studying these demonic entities, So far, so spooky, right?
Except you never witness what happened. The story starts after everyone—including the protagonist—is either dead or otherwise gone. Yes, you play as a ghost. So not only can you do things like pass through walls, it also means nobody or nothing can kill you…
…If there were anybody around to kill you, that is. The family’s manor, as well as its surroundings (including an entire village), is entirely devoid of life. This lends it a certain eeriness, sure. But it’s not scary in the same way a zombie pounding down your door in Resident Evil is.
But surely, the Goetic demons the family’s been messing with must be scary, right? Well, not really. First of all, you only actually see them a handful of times. Second, they don’t look like “demons” (as commonly imagined, anyway) at all—more like giant duck heads (I’m not kidding). They also never threaten or act maliciously towards the player—if anything, they show the protagonist a politeness and courtesy that borders on deference.
Really, the only people who’d find Goetia legitimately scary are the type of people who believe rock music contains subliminal messages, self-flagellate themselves while burning Harry Potter books, oppose women’s reproductive rights, and think saying the word “demon” will condemn them to hell.
But what about the rest of us? I mean, even if you’re an avowed atheist, you don’t usually pick up a game ostensibly about demons without expecting to be at least a bit spooked. So why play this one? Why did I include it here?
In short: Goetia is atmospheric perfection.
The game may not be “scary,” but the empty mansion, abandoned village, desolate stone caverns, and dark forest are so eerie in their stillness that they tread into the uncanny. Regardless of context, there’s always something creepy about an abandoned place, and Goetia plays on this to great effect.
The mystery that drives the game forward is also creepy in its own right. As you explore more and more of your abandoned surroundings, you’ll dig deeper into the family’s history, investigate their arcane experiments, and gradually uncover what eventually befell them. … Wait, what? Hell no, I won’t spoil it for you! You’ll just have to play the game and find out for yourself 😈
Finally, although the Goetic demons chose the most decidedly non-demonic forms to take, have impeccable table manners, and can actually be quite helpful to you… you’re never entirely sure if you should really trust them. I mean, nobody wants to end up like Faust, after all.
So, in a nutshell: no, Goetia is not a “scary” game. But it’s atmospherically eerie in a way suitable for Halloween. After all, Halloween’s supposed to be the day when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest—so at least thematically, that alone should cover the game.
As a bonus, the game’s demons, as well as their lore, sigils, and powers/domains, are all actually based on their descriptions in the Ars Goetia. Yes, even the duck heads (contrary to popular belief, demons don’t always look like… you know, demons—they can assume many forms, be they monstrous, human, animalistic, or some combination thereof).
So, at the very least, you’ll get a little history lesson in Goetic demonology. Which can lead to bigger and scarier things if you decide to go down that rabbit hole!
Purchase Links
The Glitch of Cthulhu: Cosmic Horror
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
~H.P. Lovecraft
Hordes of ravenous undead metaphors or agonizing descents into insanity not quite tickling your scary bone any more? Well, then forget the artillery—it’s time to bust out the nukes.
How about tales of huge, all-powerful, unknowable beings older than time itself, utterly indifferent (at best) to human plight, capable of swatting our entire species away as casually as we would swat a mosquito, and so unfathomably horrible that even catching a glimpse of one will shatter your soul and your sanity as your mind tries in vain to make sense of their utter impossibility?
That’s more like it!
Cosmic Horror, also called Lovecraftian Horror, is a subgenre of horror based on the works of (and those influenced by) American author Howard Phillips (“H.P.”) Lovecraft. He created the genre during the 1920s and 30s, with his pulpy, often purple, undeniably mediocre, yet ineffably horrifying stories about unknown, incomprehensible, and highly sinister forces that dwell deep in the cosmic void between the stars, which could swallow up the Earth as easily and casually as we would a grape... if they even cared to, that is. Human attempts to discover or understand these beings always end in death, insanity, or both.
If you’ve ever seen or heard the word “Cthulhu” and wondered where it came from, well, now you know. This is also my personal favorite type of horror, by far.
Lovecraftian horror adheres to the following conventions:
Frightening, sinister entities (the technical descriptor for these monsters is “eldritch”) that long predate humanity, the earth, or even the universe itself, and are utterly incomprehensible to humans in every way. Their motives, their morality, the scale of their power, their appearance, and even their very existence are completely alien to human experience.
Just as importantly: these eldritch beings are so powerful they could easily squash all of humanity in one fell swoop, like a bug, without giving it a second thought. You cannot win against one of these things—if a story features the protagonist defeating an eldritch abomination (even if only temporarily), then it is NOT a Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror story.
Even worse: these beings are so incomprehensible that the mind short-circuits just trying to comprehend their existence. Simply catching a quick peek at these things is enough to condemn a person to life (if you could call it that) in one of Arkham Sanatarium’s padded cells. Even the nearby presence of these things does strange things to people’s minds, and can even traumatize them for life.
As a result, these stories almost always have bleak and disturbing downer endings. The ones where the protagonist simply dies are positively chipper, compared to the slow and arduous descent into madness awaiting those that survive their encounters with the unknowable.
A huge recurring theme in Lovecraft’s works is the idea that “there are some stones best left unturned.” If you’re the type with an insatiable curiosity and need for knowledge, don’t push your luck and venture too far from the oasis of civilization—or you’ll get much more than you'd ever bargained for.
Other staples of Lovecraftian Horror include:
Sinister, shadowy cults that worship the eldritch beings as their “Elder Gods” and actively work to bring about their awakenings, usually with the aid of abominable grimoires filled with curses and incantations to the Elder Gods (most famously, the Necronomicon—which has become such a staple of the genre that some even believe it’s a real book!).
Highly troubled and disturbed protagonists that suffer from vivid and steadily intensifying nightmares that increasingly feel less like dreams, and more like ominous premonitions of doom.
Setting the story in a remote corner of rural Massachussetts, Rhode Island, or greater New England (affectionately called “Lovecraft Country” by those in the know). Bonus points if the protagonist travels from the city of Arkham to one of these cursed backwaters.
Protagonists who narrate the story in the form of a letter.
Very little description (if any at all) of the eldritch monstrosities the unlucky protagonist runs into, which serves two purposes:
1) These things are literally incomprehensible, so it follows that they’re also indescribable;
2) It lets the reader’s imagination fill in the blanks. By this point, the reader’s been worked up for the fateful encounter, is on the edge of her seat, scared witless, and bracing for the worst—so her imagination is primed to imagine something far scarier than anything Lovecraft or any other creator could possibly do justice to.
Lovecraftian Horror was (and remains) hugely influential in the horror and (to a slightly lesser extent) fantasy genres. Heavyweight creators like Stephen King and George R.R. Martin cite him as a primary influence. For decades now since Lovecraft’s death, countless authors have added to, expanded, and fleshed out the bleak universe he created. As a result, “The Cthulhu Mythos” has given creators one of the richest and most deeply textured settings for their stories—books, movies, video games, and even tabletop games.
There are many examples, but unfortunately, their quality varies wildly. Plenty (though not all) novels, podcasts, and tabletop games set in the Mythos are pretty good, and some are even excellent! Unfortunately, you can’t say the same for movies, TV, and video games.
Most Lovecraftian movies, TV shows, and video games are—with few exceptions—mediocre at best. This type of horror is insanely hard to portray visually. How do you even describe something that’s literally indescribable, much less portray it visually? And on top of all that, actually make it scary?
As a result, good Lovecraftian games are few and far between. But the good ones are really good. Here are some of the more iconic Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror games, for better and for worse:
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002)
At A Glance
Developer: Silicon Knights
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo GameCube
Game Genre: Third-Person, Action-Adventure
Horror Genre: Cosmic Horror, Psychological Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature (+17); Blood and Gore, Violence
Difficulty: 😮💨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😱😱
Disturbing/Unsettling: ☠️☠️☠️☠️
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸
Squick: 🤢🤢
Themes: 👹 🧟 🕵️ 🐾 🧿 🔮 🐙 🏰 ⛪️ 🧚 🏚 🏥 👀 🧠 🤪 🫠 🫣 🪞 🪓 🩸 🚫 🌀 🗯 😬 🏃
In-Depth
Nintendo’s fourth-generation game console, the GameCube, is widely remembered as a commercial failure. Which is a shame, as the GameCube era saw Nintendo taking its boldest and most successful creative risks ever (until, arguably, the Nintendo Switch era), resulting in some of gaming’s most unique and memorable experiences.
One such risk was Nintendo—an avowed family-friendly publisher, notorious for being perenially averse to more “mature” fare—publishing a bonafide horror game. And not just any horror game, but a Lovecraftian horror game… you know, the hardest type of horror story to pull off in a visual medium. Said game was Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.
Now, to whether the risk paid off? That depends on how you define “success.” If you measure success by volume of sales, then Eternal Darkness sold reasonably well… for a GameCube game. But in terms of absolute numbers, this means that since the GameCube itself didn’t sell well, Eternal Darkness didn’t sell well. So, was it a commercial success? No. No, it wasn’t.
But what it a critical success, or a creative success? On both these fronts, the answer is a definitive, resounding, “YES.”
Eternal Darkness did the impossible. It was a fun game to play on its own merits, it was a Nintendo-published horror game that was actually scary, and it faithfully captured the fear and madness that permeate Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos without blunting or trivializing what makes these stories so frightening and maddening to begin with.
It set the bar for Cosmic Horror in video games—one which no game has since been able to clear (though there’ve been some noble attempts).
In Eternal Darkness, you take control of several characters thoughout different historical periods, all linked by the same eldritch line that stretches back to the beginning of time and forward through the infinite cosmic void that will one day devour us all. Something sinister stirs beneath the ground, and it’s up to you to stop it… provided you don’t go insane from the revelation.
Maybe some books3 are best left unopened.
Eternal Darkness succeeded where so many Cosmic Horror games fail because it understood that conveying the fear that Lovecraftian Horror instills is far more important than conveying its visual tropes and aesthetics. It knew that it was impossible to depict something so indescribable as to drive people mad trying, and so wasn’t even worth trying. So instead, it sought to make the player feel like she was going mad along with the protagonist.
Enter the Sanity Meter, perhaps Eternal Darkness’ greatest legacy, and a mechanic so effective it became all but required in Cosmic Horror Games going forward.
In Eternal Darkness, the player character has a health meter and a sanity meter. The health meter depletes as the character sustains damage, is replenished with health items, and the character dies if it completely runs out—standard operating procedure for most games like this.
The sanity meter, on the other hand, depletes when the character’s stressed, panicked, or has just seen something she can’t comprehend—an eldritch monster, perhaps, or maybe some profane geometry. As the character’s sanity runs low, strange stuff starts happening.
The room distorts, perspectives shift, arcane patterns materialize on walls, the floor undulates, the character becomes uncontrollable, monsters materialize that aren’t really there, the interface flips, the game appears to glitch out, and—in one infamously diabolical example—the game appears to delete your save file and crash… before loading right back up where you were. As if nothing had happened.
As if it were all in your head. As if… you really had gone off your rocker.
That, my friends, is as Lovecraftian as you can get in this medium.
Purchase Links
Ha! Good luck, buddy.
Salt & Sanctuary (2016)
At A Glance
Developer: Ska Studios
Publisher: Ska Studios
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation
Game Genre: Metroidvania, Souls-like, Action RPG
Horror Genre: Cosmic Horror, Psychological Horror, Religious Horror, Gothic Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature (+17); Blood and Gore, Violence | Users Interact
Difficulty: 🤯
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵☠️☠️
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 👻 👹 🧌 🐾 🐙 🏰 ⛪️ 🧚 👀 🧠 💀 🫠🪞 🩸 🚫 🌀 😂 😬
In-Depth
I debated myself quite a bit as to whether to include this title, and where. No, not because it’s a bad game—it’s really quite good! But rather, because I wasn’t quite sure where to place its particular brand of horror. Sure, very few (if any) of the games in this Codex exclusively fall under one single horror genre/subgenre, and a good case can be made for any game’s inclusion in this category over the other, or whatever. But Salt & Sanctuary presents a unique conundrum, in that it draws heavily from key Cosmic Horror conventions… but also subverts them to the point that trying to suss out if the game still truly counts as Cosmic Horror is a maddening exercise in futility.
Which I suppose might be the most Cosmic Horror thing ever. So yeah, this game goes here.
Gamers attracted to Salt & Sanctuary’s gorgeous, delightfully creepy, desaturated art style and clear Lovecraft homages should be warned: this is a Soulslike game.
To all the non-gamers thinking “…a what-like, now?!”, allow me to elaborate: “Souls-like” is a gameplay genre (or modifier, depending on who you ask) modeled on FromSoft’s hit Souls action RPG series. Starting with Demon’s Souls (2009) and really hitting their stride with Dark Souls (2011), Dark Souls II (2014), and Bloodborne (2015), then continuing to this day with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019) and Elden Ring (2022), the Souls games are renowned amongst gamers for their rich and multitextured lore, masterful worldbuilding, dark and oppressive atmospheres, and… ridiculously punishing difficulty.
Like, truly. truly, hard. To the point it’s become a tired meme, and every new extremely hard game to come out in another genre is referred to as the “Dark Souls of ____” (“Dark Souls of platformers,” “Dark Souls of fighting games, “Dark Souls of life simulators,” etc.) Now, this doesn’t make them bad games, by any means. But not every gamer seeks punishing difficulty in their games. Sure, challenge is essential to any game, otherwise there’s no sense of achievement in playing through it. And the more the challenge, the more satisfying overcoming it feels.
But different players have different tolerances to challenge, just as they do for horror.
So, just be aware. This is very much a Souls-like game. As such, it is brutally difficult. Which might be what you’re looking for, awesome! Just know what you’re getting into beforehand.
But what about the horror, then?
Ah, yes. Salt & Sanctuary (I’m going to call it “S&S” from now on, because I’m tired of typing it out) also takes a few cues from the Souls series here, in that it’s set in a desolate, bleak, decaying, merciless world, where the meek wither, the wicked prosper, and life in general is nasty, brutish, and short.
Where S&S differs, is that whereas most Souls titles take place in a high fantasy/Gothic Horror/vaguely-Medieval setting, S&S looks towards the sea. Not surprising, given that half of the game’s name is “salt,” the game’s setting is blanketed in salt, enemies crumble into salt when defeated, salt serves as the currency for both trade and character progression… and of course, seawater is salty, remember? So far, so good.
This is where the Lovecraftian influence comes in. If you’ve read Lovecraft, you know that nautical motifs permeate his stories (undoubtedly a side-effect of a life lived in coastal New England). Hushed whispers in the taverns of crumbling fishing villages of unknowable “terrors of the deep.” Isolated, forgotten towns populated by abominable fish-human hybrids. An Elder Deity with a beard of octopus tentacles. Lovecraft may have stared deep into the cosmic void in search of his eldritch gods, but he actually found them in the continental shelf off of Massachussetts.
And sure enough, S&S heavily leans into this imagery. A protagonist marooned on a remote island following a nasty shipwreck. Said island having an eldritch quality to it (locations seem to phase in and out of existence, shuffle around, and generally exist where doing so should be impossible), strange and sinister locals worshipping strange and sinister gods, and of course, the Kraeken—powerful deities of the sea who are insanely hard to beat (even by Souls standards), one of whom even looks just like Cthulhu.
Now, I mentioned how S&S subverts these Lovecraftian tropes. Unfortunately, I can’t go into much further detail without spoiling the entire ending, which—if you have any intention of playing this game, you really should suck it up and stick it out to the end, because it really does tie everything together beautifully.
However, if you saw the word “Souls” and instantly thought “NOPE, not playing this,” you can read a more detailed analysis here.
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Throwback: MORE Lovecraftian Games!
Last year, I reviewed 11 Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror video games, primarily on Switch (though some are available on other platforms).
You can read an archive of them by clicking this here button:
The Wicker Game: Folk Horror Games
“Something long forgotten stirs within this bleak place. Something dark, something monstrous longs for attention.”
~William Bateman, “The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow”
This is an interesting one. “Folk horror” had a brief golden age when the subgenre took British horror cinema by storm with films like The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1975) before fading into obscurity, seemingly as quickly as it jump-scared itself into existence. They’ve been enjoying a renaissance of sorts, starting in the 2010s, thanks to movies like The Witch (2015) and Midsommar (2019), as well as games like The Last Door (2013-2016) and The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow (2022).
Folk horror works (including games) are easily identified by the following genre hallmarks:
The protagonist is a modernized city slicker that, for whatever reason, finds himself visiting an isolated, remote village that modernity appears to have left behind.
The townspeople are slightly off-putting. Sometimes, they’re highly mistrustful of outsiders, while other times they seem a bit too enthusiastic to welcome visitors. Either way, they’re clearly hiding something. Something bad. Oh, and adding to the eeriness…
The townspeople not only live an old way of life—they also worship the old gods. Our protagonist will conveniently arrive at the village just in time to observe or partake in a pagan festival. At its mildest, the protagonist will find the grotesque masks and chilling chants strange and offputting. At worst, he’ll be privy to shocking or violent acts of devotion, up to and including human sacrifice.
Once the protagonist figures out (or at least gets a very strong hunch) that something sinister is afoot, he becomes stranded in the village, whether because the villagers have conspired to cut off communication (phone) lines and rendering inaccessible or inoperable any form of transport out of town, or because he’s so singularly focused on the task that brought him to town that he won’t leave until it’s done. Often, the gods will throw a lending hand after the villagers conduct some dark ritual to mess with our hero’s mind.
Once the truth is revealed, the protagonist will either be sacrificed to the villagers’ gods, or so thoroughly brainwashed and exhausted from the ordeal that he gives up and stays to join the cult.
It’s a very specific and niche subgenre. But its resurgence reflects society’s ongoing fears about old ways of life being trampled by the steady march of modernity. Also plays on city dwellers’ fears of more rural areas, a kind of British/Scandinavian take on America’s “Hillbilly Horror” subgenre, but with more deer skeletons and sex magic.
Like with film and literature, this is still a nascent and very niche genre. As such, examples are scarce. That said, a couple of great folk horror games are:
The Last Door (2013-2016)
At A Glance
Developer: The Game Kitchen
Publisher: Plug In Digital
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox
Game Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure, Puzzle
Horror Genre: Psychological Horror, Cosmic Horror
Age Rating: “T” for Teen; Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs, Violent References
Difficulty: 🤔
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 😲
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵💫😵💫😵💫
Blood/Gore: 🩸
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 🕵️ 🐾 🔮 🐙 🧚 🏚 👨🏫 🏥 🧠 🤪 🫣 🪞 🚫 ❓ 🌀 😬
In-Depth
The Last Door is an episodic, retro-styled, point-and-click adventure game that blends a few different horror genres, namely Psychological, Cosmic, and Surreal Horror. But as you near its finale—which is more terrifying than its highly pixelated graphics have any right to be—it veers more and more into Folk Horror.
Although Folk Horror isn’t geographically restricted, per se, the genre originated in England, and this origin point does create a sort of indelible association with it. Kind of like how Lovecraftian horror is so closely associated with coastal Massachusetts. And some of Folk Horror’s central themes—namely, that of the clash of tradition vs. modernity—lend themselves particularly well to stories set in the Victorian Era.
When thought of this way, then it’s no wonder that The Last Door—set squarely in the Victorian England of Charles Dickens and his contemporaries, and featuring a learned gentleman of science brushing up against forces beyond the comprehension of science—eventually ends up in a remote Scottish island, where the locals follow weird traditions like wearing frightful animal masks, burying mirrors, and burning wicker figurines.
Ah… you already figured it out, didn’t you? Yes, The Last Door’s penultimate episode is an almost shot-for-shot recreation of The Wicker Man, one of Folk Horror’s seminal works. Don’t worry, that wasn’t much of a spoiler, even if you’ve already seen the movie. Play the sequence for yourself—I promise you, it’s even more unsettling than you can ever anticipate.
…Oh, and if you think there’s no way that such heavily pixelated graphics could ever scare you, then I tell you what, tough guy: I’ll bet you $100 that you can’t play through the whole game without getting startled or unsettled at least once. Click the button below or email me at gameandword@substack.com so we can agree to terms:
Purchase Links
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow (2022)
At A Glance
Developer: Cloak and Dagger Games
Publisher: Wadjet Eye Games
Platforms: PC
Game Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
Horror Genre: Folk Horror, Psychological Horror
Age Rating: Unrated [ED NOTE: Would probably rate this “T” for Teen (Ages +13)]
Difficulty: 🤔
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸
Squick: 🤢
Themes: 👹 🔮 🐙 🧚 👀 🧠 🤪 🫠 🫣 🩸 🚫 🌀 😬
In-Depth
Wow, where do I even start here? The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow took me entirely by surprise. I really only found out about it thanks to a press release I got last month. Being a fan of Victoriana, point-and-click adventures, and spooky stuff in general, I requested a review copy, and played through it twice.
My verdict: Hob’s Barrow is to video games as The Wicker Man was to movies. It is Folk Horror distilled to its very essence, and sets the bar for both Folk Horror and point-and-click adventure games going forward.
In Hob’s Barrow, you play as archaeologist Thomasina Bateman, who receives a mysterious invitation to excavate a barrow (basically, a type of ancient burial mound found all over the British Isles) outside the remote village of Bewlay.
But when she gets there, her local contact is nowhere to be found, the standoffish locals deny any knowledge of the barrow, and she starts having ominous dreams and visions. It soon becomes clear that something sinister is afoot. But Thomasina, being a woman of science and knowledge, has a curiosity that won’t be sated until she digs into that barrow and unearths its secrets.
She soon finds out, as the innkeeper repeatedly warned her, that “there are some stones best left unturned.”
And that’s all I’ll say. You’ll have to play the game yourself to find out the rest. You may want to turn the lights off for this one.
Purchase Links
Darkwood (2017)
At A Glance
Developer: Acid Wizard Studio
Publisher: Acid Wizard Studio
Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: 2D Top-Down, Souls-like, Survival Action-Adventure
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Folk Horror, Psychological Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature (+17); Blood, Strong Language, Violence
Difficulty: 😤
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸
Squick: 🫢🫢
Themes: 🔪 🧟 🧌 🕷 🐾 🧿 🔮 🐙 🧚 👀 🧠 💩 🤪 🦠 🫠 🫣 🪓 🩸 🚫❓🌀 😬 🏃
In-Depth
Darkwood is another game that’s not for the faint of heart. In it, you play as an amnesiac wanderer who finds himself stranded in the middle of a Polish forest in the throes of some sort of otherworldly corruption. Writhing vines encroach on the land, local villagers succumb to madness, and docile woodland critters become fierce and aggressive.
And that’s before the night falls..
As the sun starts dipping below the horizon, you have no choice but to hunker up an abandoned house, barricade the doors and windows, and pray to the eldritch gods that now rule this forest that the monsters outside either a) don’t notice your presence, or b) don’t break through your barricades and feast on your entrails.
If you can make it until dawn, the monsters retreat, the sunrays peek through the forest canopy, and you can breathe easy for a few seconds… but don’t dally too long, because you’ll need to replenish wood for your barricades, bandages for your wounds, and ammo for your weapons. Because before you know it, the sun will disappear below the horizon again, and the monsters will come back for more…
These nighttime sequences are some of the most intense in all of horror gaming. Admirably, Darkwood almost entirely eschews jump scares, instead making masterful use of environment and atmosphere to make your hair stand on end. At night, you can only see what your flashlight illuminates—but it also attracts monsters, so maybe it’s safer to just stand in a corner and wait out the night in total darkness… but you can hear those… things outside, pounding on your door, ripping down the planks you boarded up your windows with. Maybe some of them have already snuck in your house? Should you dispatch them, then? Or would the noise only lead more of them to you?
Oh lord… when will dawn come? Where is the sun? Are you there, God? WHERE ARE YOU?! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKE———
…oh, phew. It’s morning again.
…
*breaks down*
Purchase Links
In Space, No One Can Hear You Lose: Space Horror Games
"Being lost in space has been known to drive one mad. Too much time contemplating infinity is not good for the mind."
~Allura, “Voltron: Legendary Defender”
~~~
“He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles.
And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.”
~Arthur C. Clarke, “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Spooooooky… in SPAAAAACE!!!
Space is beautiful, fascinating, and awe-inspiring. If you had the chance to become a space explorer, zipping around the space wilds in your spaceship, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity?
Well, you might want to think that through. Why? Well, do you know what else space is?
Space is so hostile to life—to the point of literally atrophying your bones and cooking your insides with gamma radiation just for being there—that you’d think it harbors some petty space grudge against lifeforms.
Space is so incomprehensibly vast that just looking out the window can trigger an existential meltdown, yet your spacecraft’s so cramped and claustrophobic that you’ll get panic attacks from using public restroom stalls for years after you return home.
And that’s assuming you even make it back to Earth. Space is home to a lot of nasty things you don’t want to run into: asteroids, black holes, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, xenomorphs, killer cyborgs, traitorous AI, time/dimentional rifts, and unfathomable extradimensional beings so impossibly large, ancient, and ugly that their appearance alone drives people insane.
Oh, and remember that part about space being so BIG? Well, you’ll be so ridiculously far from the nearest person that if you were unlucky enough to encounter a space hazard, you’d be pretty much space screwed:
No matter how many times you send out that space distress signal, it’d take several months—or years—just for someone to receive your transmission. By the time a space rescue party actually reached your ship, you’d be long dead; if space baddies hadn’t done you in, then space old age would.
What’s what? You’ve got escape pods? Yeah, those are practically useless. Most space pods aren’t large enough to have their own wrap/hyperdrive, which means you’ll at best make it 0.0000000000001% of the way from your ship to the nearest space station before running out of air. So your handy-dandy escape pod is really nothing more than a rinky-dinky space coffin.
And if, by some miracle, you don’t encounter any space hazards? Great flying, captain! Enjoy your slow descent into space madness as the soul-atrophying conditions aboard your spaceship gradually nibble away at your sanity day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, interminable space second after interminable space second…
…
Oh, you thought that was disturbing? Believe it or not, those were positively vanilla scenarios compared to space horror games, some of which—like a mad genetic scientist—combine the medium’s mirror neuron-activating properties with the subgenre’s staple (and highly disturbing) themes of isolation, existential terror, cosmic insignificance, fear of the unknown, and hunter becoming prey in an utterly (literally!) alien environment very far from home.
The results include some of the most disconcerting experiences not just in gaming, but in any medium.
Axiom Verge (2015)
At A Glance
Developer: Thomas Happ Games
Publisher: Thomas Happ Games
Platforms: PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation
Game Genre: Platformer, Metroidvania
Horror Genre: Sci-Fi Horror
Age Rating: “E10” for Everyone +10 (Ages 10 and Up); Fantasy Violence, Mild Language
Difficulty: 🤨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵💫😵💫😵💫
Blood/Gore: 🩸
Squick: 🫢
Themes: 👽 🕷 🧿 🐙 👀 🤖 🫠 🪞 👨🚀 🚫 🌀 😬
In-Depth
Axiom Verge is an homage to Metroid, the classic Nintendo franchise about space, isolation, and item-based progression. In it, you play an amnesiac protagonist (noticing a pattern here?) who wakes up in a strange, alien, cybernetic dimension.
It’s not an overtly scary game, but its uncanny, alien aesthetic is certainly creepy, and it touches on some deep, heavy, metaphysical themes as you slowly uncover the truth of who you are and what happened. Check it out.
Purchase Links
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)
At A Glance
Developer: The Dreamers Guild, Cyberdreams
Publisher: Cyberdreams
Platforms: PC
Game Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
Horror Genre: Sci-Fi Horror, Surreal Horror, Psychological Horror
Age Rating: Unrated [ED. NOTE: Would give this a strong “M” for Mature]
Difficulty: 🤯
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸
Squick: 🤢
Themes: 🧿 👀 🧠 🤖 💩 🤪 🫠 🫣 💥 🩸 🚫 🌀 😬
In-Depth
Quite possibly the bleakest game ever committed to code, based on the bleakest short story ever committed to paper.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a 1995 point-and-click adventure game, based on Harlan Ellison’s unrelentingly depressing 1967 short story of the same name. Now, I won’t go into too much detail about the plot, because I’d rather not be depressed for the rest of the year.
But in a nutshell, the story takes place in a post-nuclear armageddon near-ish future, where AM, a rogue AI, has imprisoned the last five surviving humans in its underground lair, keeping them perpetually alive just so it can repeatedly subject them to the most brutal and sadistically… inventive types of physical and psychological torture imaginable.
Then, one of the captives, Ted, goes through hell itself to kill his companions. By consigning his friends to the sweet relief of oblivion, Ted finally saves them from their misery… but is unable to save himself.
AM, unsurprisingly, is none too pleased PISSED about Ted’s act of sacrificial altruism. In retaliation, he… well, I won’t spell it out here. As I said, I don’t like feeling depressed, thank you very much. Let’s just say that there are fates worse than death (if you want a hint, it’s in the title).
The video game departs slightly from the short story, in that very clever players with strong emotional constitutions can unlock a slightly happier finale than the short story’s unabatedly grim downer of an ending. This was a hard won concession by the developers, which Ellison only reluctantly granted when the devs explained the concept of actually rewarding players for completing objectives.
That said, if the player really screws up, they’ll get treated to an ending that’s somehow even more depressing than the source material’s.
As you can imagine, this game is not for the faint of heart. Although it bombed commercially, it has subsequently attracted a cult following, and adventure game critics have long recognized its innovative spirit and the unease it instills in even the most jaded players. It really is one of those games that’ll mess with your mood if you play it for too long.
If, after reading all this, you still want to check it out, I recommend reading or listening to the short story first. Not because you necessarily need it to follow along, but it’ll provide some very useful context and background info.
Purchase Links
CARRION (2020)
At A Glance
Developer: Phobia Game Studio
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platforms: PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch
Game Genre: Platformer, Action-Adventure, Metroidvania
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Sci-Fi Horror, Body Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature; Blood and Gore, Violence
Difficulty: 🤔
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀
Jump Scares: 🙄
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵💫😵💫
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🤢🤢🤢
Themes: 👽 👀 🤖 💩 🦠 🫠 👨🚀 🩸 🌀 😂 😬
In-Depth
How’s this for a twist?
This is a sci-fi horror game about a lethal, parasitic alien lifeform that breaks out of its containment chamber and starts devouring the scientists studying it, soon growing out of control, and threatening to overwhelm not just the research station it’s running amok in, but possibly humanity at large…
Only you play as the alien lifeform.
Yup. ‘Nuff said. It’s every bit as fun as it sounds!
Purchase Links
SOMA (2015)
At A Glance
Developer: Frictional Games
Publisher: Frictional Games
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Game Genre: FPS, Action-Adventure
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Sci-Fi Horror, Psychological Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature; Violence, Blood, Nudity, Strong Language
Difficulty: 😮💨
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 🥱
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸
Squick: 🤢🤢🤢
Themes: 🧿 👀 🤪 🦠 🫠 🫣 🪓 💥 🚫 🌀 😬 🏃
In-Depth
In short: Amnesia: The Dark Descent meets James Cameron’s The Abyss.
Frictional Games, the developers behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent (covered earlier in the codex), have been working for over five years on its follow-up SOMA, which initially appears to follow its predecessor’s same formula, only in a decrepit underwater research station instead of a gothic castle.
But it turns out to be anything but. SOMA is scary, sure, but it also touches on deep metaphysical, ethical, and philosophical conundrums that’ll stick with you long after you’re done playing.
Purchase Links
Steam | Xbox One [Available on Game Pass!] | PlayStation 4
Scorn (2022)
At A Glance
Developer: Ebb Software
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S
Game Genre: FPS
Horror Genre: Survival Horror, Sci-Fi Horror, Body Horror
Age Rating: “M” for Mature; Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes
Difficulty: 🤔
Spook-o-Meter™️: 🙀🙀🙀
Jump Scares: 🙄
Disturbing/Unsettling: 😵😵😵
Blood/Gore: 🩸🩸🩸🩸
Squick: 🤮🤮🤮
Themes: 👽 🧿 🤖 💩 🫠 👨🚀 🪓 🩸 🚫 🌀 😬
In-Depth
Basically, if H.R. Giger designed a first-person shooter. Squicky body horror galore! Unfortunately, the gameplay is linear, the puzzles obtuse, and the phantasmagastic body horror overload quickly falls subject to the law of diminishing returns (ie, it’s not nearly as gross towards the end of the game because you’ve been so thoroughly desensitized to it) and hinders progress as it’s easy to get lost and not know where to go next, because damn near EVERYTHING looks the same!!!
Still, at least initially, the visuals are beautiful, seamlessly animated, and delightfully gross-tastic. If you have a Game Pass subscription, it’s worth at least checking out, for this reason alone.
Purchase Links
Steam | Xbox Series X|S [Available on Game Pass]
Footnotes
Patent pending.
Wait… why are you giving me that look?
Namely, the Necronomicon.
This is a great resource! I really enjoyed beating Luigi’s Mansion 3. Thanks for putting Costume Quest on my radar.
Wow this was such a great write up! My siblings and I always loved playing Luigi’s Mansion. We somewhat recently got into the Until Dawn series and boy was that fun! Locked ourselves in a dark room for a whole weekend and played it nonstop haha. We also really had fun watching our dad play Bioshock. Shut the curtains and watched him play through it like it was a scary movie. I’ve heard of Amnesia before but never quite knew what it was (except that PewdiePie screams a lot when he plays it 😆) Your description was super awesome and totally makes me want to try it! Knowing me, though, I’d be the first case of a player having a heart attack. LOL