The Gaming Den

So FNAF and others have turned horror games into "don't look at the monster!" and just noise and startlement. I'm tired of it but want to be spooked.

I'm looking for something slower and maybe more psychological. Anyone got some good recommendations for anything sort of Lovecraftian? I mean, something that plays the slow build and has exploration rather than just...panicking.

Alien Isolation maybe?

Pathologic. It has one jump scare, but it's a brilliant one.
The Void and Knock-Knock might qualify as well, but they're a bit more "out there".

System Shock 1 and 2 do have some slow build and exploration.

Top Tier is of course Silent Hill 2 (Playstation... 1? 2?).

After that you can look at the other SH games, though I can't reliably rate them in any order other than "2 then the others".

Eternal Darkness (Borg Cube) is also amazing, but if you actually have a Gamecube you already have ED.

Do I need to mention the Resident Evil series? Is it WORTH mentioning? I mean, it doesn't scare the viewer, it's just horror themes, in the sense of "Look, there are zombies there. Zombies are a part of the horror genre so that makes it horror." It's not going to spook you and I'm pretty sure you're familiar enough with the games to know that. RE4 (Borg Cube, PC, and probably everything else as well, it's one of those 4 games that Capcom promised would be totally exclusive to Nintendo... for a little while) is the best, but it's also the least horror-y, and also the least Resident Evil. That's not actually a coincidence.

Fatal Frame/Project Zero (various Playstation consoles) varies in quality, but are decent enough. At least, some of them are. I forget which. It's "the one where ghosts only show up if you point a camera at them". Apparently the most recent one fails at horror because they decided to focus too much on water splashes turning your clothes transparent so the whole time you're reminded that you're playing someone's wank material. But the earlier ones don't do that and have their spooky moments.

Dread Out (PC - available on Steam) is a kind of quirky... Vietnamese IIRC? game, and it's kind of similar to Fatal Frame. You wander around a haunted old building and some times you have to use a camera phone to banish ghosts. It's not bad, from the 30+ minutes I've seen.

Hugo's House of Horror (ancient PC) Sorry.

Darkest Dungeon is very much about mixing lovecraftian horror elements with fantasy dungeon crawling. Gameplay is mix of CoC, Rogue, and Warhammer Fantasy RPG. Ironically, playing without light sources was (at one point) more powerful than conserving torches.

While Space Station 13 will make you actually fear without "jumpscares", because not only is its interface (approaching autistic levels of complexity of process) difficult to manage, but because the dozens of potential monsters/traitors that could spawn in a game round are operated by an other player. Also, you're just as likely to die from shitting yourself to death from an airborne pathogen; as you are to solo-kill a xenomorph queen with a makeshift stunbaton.

The Long Dark is more solo survival horror, falls, cold, starvation, thirst, darkness, wolves & bears are potential dangers. Rust is multiplayer survival terror, where both wolves & bears compete to be more dangerous than human players.

The Dying Light veers between the player starting off as a terrified little weakling, who can (if you specialize early; or max out the character) become the only creature in the city who hunts the undead invisibly. It has solo and multiplayer modes.

If you're into indie roguelikes with rabbitholes of detail; Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead can provide you with dozens of starting positions (ranging from an addicted hobo to cyborg commando); and its customizable levels of detail mean that while you're likely to die from dysentery from unboiled water in your early play throughs; you're also very likely to create a one-stop mobile kill-fortress that can shred all but the largest hordes of creatures in the world (giant insects (ants, bees), carnivorous slimes, rogue NPC humans, turrets, sec bots, shoggoth/zombi, cyborgs).

[Edit]: System Shock 1 is also a good example. It's easy to be running scared as early as the first level.

Other suggestions people have made for Fatal Frame (1; not sure about the later ones) being scary are valid. I find most console; specifically Playstation "horror" games to be really insistent upon being a film masquerading as a game due to their bullshit fixed camera angles. Resident Evil is the earliest; and most copied, offending title.

The problem is that FF isn't so much scary; as it is stacked against the player. If you don't "grind" ghosts in the first stage to get camera upgrades, you'll be utterly boned by the time you end the 2nd act and are in the beginning of the 3rd act due to "incessant" ghost spawns.

If you're into proc-gen, The Consuming Shadow (PC, available on Steam) is probably worth the list price for a while even after you've seen all the text. Really builds up an oppressive atmosphere without counting on jump scares.

Might possibly be worth poking The Last Door too. I think the first episode's available for free and the rest might even be worth the money.

Cry of Fear is a horror shooter with a thick atmosphere and an unbeatable price (being free).

Outlast has a few jumpscares, but mostly creates tension with atmosphere and stealth.

Also relying on stealth is Albino Lullaby, which should be on sale on Steam right now. It has its very very unique and surreal style and atmosphere.

I havn't played it, but Town of Light has a good reputation for psychological horror.

EDIT: Albino Lullaby also has a Demo on Steam.

I second Silent Hill 2 (for Playstation 2)

I recommend and obsure one called Hellnight aka Dark Messiah for the Playstation 1. It only came out in Europe and Japan. The main thing about this game is that there is only one enemy. You can't kill it, and can only run or if you have certain characters with you then you can slow it down. Also you can't sprint forever.
Graphically it's not that great but the atmosphere makes it very tense. It really gets tense when you can hear the monster and you are trying to find a place to hide.

Clock Tower 1 and 2 - Playstation 1 and SNES

Make sure to avoid the HD remake of the Silent Hill games because they messed them up.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Make sure to avoid the HD remake of the Silent Hill games because they messed them up.

That Comic Sans doe...

Koumei wrote:Hugo's House of Horror (ancient PC) Sorry.

Oh, that takes me back. No unlimited ammo basic weapon, had to register to use the cheats (they weren't codes, they were options in a menu) and it kept causing serious computer issues...the game would like to load straight away when you turned the computer on.

Also notable in that it was a sequel to 3 point and click adventures that weren't horror at all.

Which segues nicely into the XDAS point and click games which are rather good horror. Or alternatively to games which aren't horror, they just become horror like unexpectedly. IMHO, that makes more of an impact than when you go into a game knowing its going to be horror.

I'd recommend The Suffering.

Mario 64, go for a swim

Thaluikhain wrote:Also notable in that it was a sequel to 3 point and click adventures that weren't horror at all.

I was only aware of the text insert adventures (slightly different from point and click), where the first was horror-themed in that it's a haunted house. The second was a shitty non-murder mystery, and the third was about finding a cure in a jungle. But at any rate, the first one was the one I meant, I did not know there was some other game with the same name.

Koumei wrote:

Thaluikhain wrote:Also notable in that it was a sequel to 3 point and click adventures that weren't horror at all.

I was only aware of the text insert adventures (slightly different from point and click), where the first was horror-themed in that it's a haunted house. The second was a shitty non-murder mystery, and the third was about finding a cure in a jungle. But at any rate, the first one was the one I meant, I did not know there was some other game with the same name.

Ah yes, that's correct, been a long time since playing those.

The other one was a weird Wolfenstein rip off, notable for different weapons that did different amounts of damage to different enemies, and you start the first level chasing a scientist, instead of everything shooting at you.

Koumei wrote:
Hugo's House of Horror (ancient PC) Sorry.

Oh shit, that does take me back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bklfbpP5J5Q

OgreBattle wrote:Mario 64, go for a swim

The eel does fucking cone out. Found that out as a kid and stopped playing the game for months.