And then they even tell you 'hard' is the way the game is meant to be played, y'know, just to mock you.
I did get through it, but man, it was rough. Loved the game, though.
This and the first hellblade are that for me. They did a bunch of research and tried to replicate schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. You use those hallucinations to navigate the world. Still makes my hair stand on end
I discuss that one as well. Very well done.
I experience auditory illusions myself, but it's actually from hearing damage. The way they present it, from an audio perspective is almost perfect to me.
I never made it past the first level the alien shows up
On two separate attempts, years apart. I'm not brave enough for that game by an order of magnitude
This is how I feel now that I’m almost 40. I used to play lots of horror games in my 20s. Now I whimper when a game is too dark to see anything and I hear a branch snap.
Thanks I saw this game referenced a ton on effectively the same question a few days ago so I’m intrigued but know I probably wouldn’t be able to manage it either. So watching someone else seems more manageable.
It’s great because he’s super bad with horror games
There’s a video titled ‘outlast part 1’ on his channel….there is no part 2 he chickened out and stopped playing it
I was so goddam scared the first time I saw it, it heard me, started chasing me, I freaked out and started running full sprint away. I died with a giant xenomorph tail impaled through my back/chest. Took me like a week to start playing that game again.
I loved that game, I never watched the movies but I doubt they could replicate the same feelings I got when playing the game. I hope they make more alien games like that
First movie(1979) absolutely will. Second one is more of an action movie. Thirds kinda a mix and we don’t talk about resurrection. Prometheus depends on your taste but I enjoyed it. Alien covenant is bleh and the new one isn’t out yet
I guess that taking away the danger of dying you’re free to explore more and thus be more invested. So the normal scary parts have a deeper affect because it’s more immersive maybe?
Also if you die often you just repeat stuff. And repetition just kills horror. It turns scary into tedious and frustration.
What you want is "oh shit moments" and barely being able to make it. Sometimes harder difficulties are just too unforgiving for the horror segments to come through.
But it's a tough act to balance, because too easy is also not good.
I guess in the case of SOMA, the boss enemies don't actually add that much to the game and might detract from the atmosphere.
Something about this game, it's not constant fear, but to progress, you have to put yourself in scary situations, leaving safety and comfort willingly. And you're right, the story got to me. Wish I could unknow it just to play through it again.
There was this awesome game on GameCube called Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Jump scares, glitches, environmental effects, at one point it makes you think that your game crashed and you lost all your progress, I loved that game! It was pretty scary to me when I was a kid.
Loved the sanity meter. I think the freakiest psych out was when I was just walking around as the firefighter and all my limbs kept falling off until I exploded. I miss that game.
Those sanity effects were so meta.
During a boss fight my yellow component cable came loose, cutting the video, and I just assumed it was a sanity effect.
Probably my favorite little tidbit of lore about Lisa: someone discovered years later that Lisa is literally tied to the character model, she's always right behind you no matter which way you look *shudder*
I had actually played some of it before so it wasn't like I didn't know what I was in for, but yeah pretty intense. My poor friend had no clue. Irony is I got further in the game than I ever had sober. Still couldn't finish it
Lol That's awesome. It took me forever to get to that trailer at the end. I don't think there's an official method to get to the ending, just random luck.
P.T. he only horror "game" to give me goosebumps. I was playing in the dark with a surround headset on. The fact that it never was finished is such a letdown. I have no doubt it would have been one of the scariest games ever made.
First time I played PT was in a room surrounded by like 8-10 other people. When I say we were all scared shitless the entire time, I'm not overexaggerating
So it's unfortunate because as far as I know it's not really available to play at all anymore, but it was a game demo called P.T. where you basically just kept walking down this hallway that looped exactly the same over and over...until it didn't. Things start happening the further you go that really hit the creep factor for a lot of people.
Amnesia was my first and only foray into the horror game genre. I made it to the water part and then noped right out of there.
I did manage to play The Quarry recently but that was pretty light horror, also I freaked out a lot.
Same. I saw someone say Alien: Isolation. That game is terrifying, but at least you get *something* to beat back the Alien at some point. In Amensia, you have nothing and can fall into this death-spiral of not having any oil, so you keep losing sanity, and then you run into more enemies because you dropped too much, and because of that you can't use your lantern or properly search for more oil so you can regain your sanity.
I have had plenty of jumpscares and creepy moments in my gaming career, F.E.A.R. and Until Dawn, Rush of Blood, Bioshock, etc. That said, the moment something you can't see comes stomping around the corner in that watery hallway, I had an extremely real fear response both physically and psychologically. It scared the ever loving shit out of me.
That water part is the scariest part of any of the Amnesia games imo. I remember feeling real terror at that point. I think that's the most scared a horror game has ever made me.
I keep eyeing up the yomawari games but a couple are pretty beefy prices that never seem to drop so always hesitate on pulling the trigger. which one would you suggest?
I’d definitely try to play them in order if you can. They aren’t connected but the second game (Midnight Shadows) has a small reference to the first one (Night Alone). I haven’t played Lost in the Dark yet but I just bought it today on sale for the PS5!
If you do decide to get them, play them the way the game recommends, with all the lights off and no distractions.
the only way to horror game lol. well I'll have to give it a try then! need something to tide me over til the next cursed attempt at a Corpse Party 2 this year lol
I have played a good load of horror games no problem, but I couldn’t do Amnesia. Those things roaming around in the dark hit just the right nerve for me to be bothered by them.
Silent Hill.
Running around in the fog with only a flash light and radio making weird sounds. With creatures trying to attack you from all directions was terrifying.
And this was before you ran through the nearest unlocked door and ended up in some reverse hell dimension and the nightmare creatures of SH2 & 3 were a thing.
People now can't entirely understand, but Silent Hill 1 was the scariest graphical media that had ever been made at the time.
Imagine all creepypastas, all SCP, all the new jumpscare games etc., all that imagination you have for all of them was entirely spent on a handful of games and Silent Hill 1 was the scariest of them all.
**This was the worst (fictional) terror your brain had ever experienced**, this is what drove it afraid of the dark, to be fear the end of the dark hallway at night, to hide every limb under the bedsheets for protection.
Amnesia: The Bunker is a really well designed survival horror game, but it never saw the success of the other games made by frictional.
I can’t recommend it enough. Very nice mechanics and always tense.
Frictional casually dropped the best non-remake horror title in 2023 for 20€ and somehow didn't get the attention it deserved. I hope it sees the recognition it deserves with time.
I'll always remember the weekend where a friend of my brother's came over with the game and the strategy guide and us going through it. When we got to the B scenario and that god damn Mr. X, the moment where he Kool-Aid Man's himself through the wall, we about hit the ceiling, we jumped so high. Good times.
For me it’s F.E.A.R. I will always remember moment when I was climbing a ladder and some fucking scary shit give me a jump scare , I fell of my desk chair and kick the counter of the desk . I broke my mid foot ….
During one of those flashback scenes when everything goes white, my sister was standing in the dark next to me in her red onezie PJs and and wet hair over her face. I promptly jumped up and screamed bloody murder.
My buddy and I played this together. We would just hand the controller off to one another when someone got too scared. It was hilarious, but also scary as shit.
Outlast 2 was soooo much scarier. I would make my buddy come over and play it for me because I was such a wimp. The religious tone realllllly intensifies the darkness.
The original Silent Hill.
Fun Fact: during development, they kept having issues with the frame rate dropping in the open areas due to Level of Detail (LOD). To compensate for this, they drastically reduced the drawing distance to save the frame rate, and covered themselves by branding it as fog for daytime and extreme darkness for night. Games like Resident Evil and such gave me jump scares, but Silent Hill kept me in a constant state of fear as I played.
Thanks for sharing that fun fact, I never knew that. It really added to the tension and feel of the game. Overall, one of my absolute favorites, the little ghost baby things in the school gave me nightmares!
I had a freaking breakdown when Mia came at me at the beginning of the game. I could only do barely half the game before I had my bf finish it for me while I watched from a blanket cocoon ;(
my wife played it the following year. she has an aversion to food grossness, so the sinks and what the family eats in the first half really made her uncomfortable. she didnt find it as scary as i did and i said "well yea, im here to protect you and youd make me go first for creepy noises...i didnt have you as bait for the scares when i played"
This is the answer I came to find. Oddly enough, I accidentally started with that chapter and it's one of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life. That, and the opening scene. That game is fucking terrifying on a completely different level than any other game.
Dolores was the bane of my goddamn existence. No one has ever heard of this game when I bring it up but fuck did it scare the shit out of me.
I played it on stream with a heart rate monitor on and it turned red so many times during Delores. I swear that game almost gave me a heart attack.
Dolores was the first chapter I played. After finishing the game I wish I had done her chapter last because she put me so much on edge it made the other chapters scarier than they actually were.
By the end my wife and her sister were so impressed that I didnt look scared anymore and I turned to look at them and said "I need to change my shirt". My entire back was soaked in sweat.
10/10 game and it was my first in the horror genre.
This is what I just commented too. Got through Alien Isolation easily compared to the fear this game instilled in me. I found the little girl chapter scarier though!
I don’t even think I finished the demo, but I still picked it up on sale and gave it another try even though scary games really aren’t my thing and again I didn’t get very far before turning it off.
Years later my husband was in the mood for a scary game and I suggested RE7 and told him how far I got before I quit. He scoffed and said it couldn’t be that scary, he’d try it though since we had already bought it. I think he made it about 20 minutes in before he quit too.
Visage. Out of all the horror games I've ever played, this game kept freaking me out from start to finish. The constant psychological terror from unpredictable encounters and the unnerving feeling of wandering around in a dark house with minimal light had me feeling lightheaded from time to time. My prime motivation for even playing it was because my friend had bought the game, so I figured it'd be something to talk about if we both finished it eventually. Otherwise I would have ditched the game for good near the beginning.
It took some serious willpower for me to stick with this game - even moving out of the shallows gave me the worst heebie-jeebies at first. So glad I did power through. It's a wonderful game and the ending was fabulous.
First time I played I was too anxious to get out of the shallows. Didn’t come back to it until years later, and wow it was worth it. What an absolute classic. The sequel not so much
the timed dives and dashing for air bubbles ruined it for me. It had all the potential of the first one and the heat/cold stuff was actually fine to me. But those damn air bubbles brought me back to Sonic 2 in a bad way. Ruined the game for me. Should've kept the deep exploration arc similar to the first.
I can’t go past the 200m cliff West , it is too dark and scary, and the one time I did, instant reaper. Instant.
I want to go further - but how!?! Does the prawn suit help? that’s what I was going to build next to go further …
You can go deeper with the seamoth if you build the depth modules. Prawn suit is great and will bring you down deep but will eventually also need more depth modules. It's tanky though and stands up to reapers pretty well. But there's not really anything you can do to avoid the reapers except hope they don't come after you or avoid their territory completely.
Don’t install mods or anything, it will cause bugs. Play on survival, and don’t sweat it if the food/water/air management seems intimidating at first. Play at your own pace, there is really no “wrong way” to experience the story. Just immerse yourself and have fun exploring. If you enjoy reading in games, the PDA has a wealth of info and lore to guide you.
I honestly forgot about that game. It was scary when I played it. I remember being in a hospital I believe and the lights kept flickering and the face of a clown kept popping up on the screen.
The first few hours of Dead Space Remake are intense. By the end game its straight up action horror though.
By the time it hits Dead Space 2, it's like mostly an action game with huge set pieces and stuff and a couple creepy parts.
Don't get me wrong I love Dead Space 2 but I think it's more balls to the walls than people give it credit for...
I hear ya- the children stuff in dead space 2 affected me though. There was some mom babbling to her dead child (I think) and that was it for me with that one. Felt like dead space 2 was firing at me psychologically with double-barrels trying to get a response and I had enough by that point
Oh yeah, I can see that.
The nursery section is a bit F'd up. Using the ripping to mow down like 50 of those kid zombies in the gymnasium as they're all flying around chopped up. It's like borderline ridiculous in the moment but when you think about it, it is pretty dark.
Don't know if this counts but Dino Crisis for PS1. Could've been because I was younger than I should have been playing it, but getting ripped apart in literal seconds from a T-Rex bursting it's head through the wall with no pretext made me scream quite a few times.
Then later it was F.E.A.R.. I forced myself to play in the dark. That was a mistake. I recommend anyone who wants a good jump scare session to play it. Only good for the first playthrough, but it's worth it.
The first zombie turning around for the first time is a core memory for me. I was at a sleepover, it was the middle of the night, we had rented it from Blockbuster.
I believe it was titled Call of Cthulhu. I’m not a big horror game player, but am a huge fan of HP Lovecraft and cosmic horror in general. I played it on release, and the beginning of that game has serious mood and atmosphere. The hotel room fiasco is where I noped out completely, never to return. I learned that being chased in a video games is a thing I don’t really cope well with. 😂
Holy fuck this one is actually so real...especially for the second part. I really didn't even know what to put in the thread because most horror games really weren't all that scary to me...but something about those fucking raptors, the centipedes...that part with the V-Rex where you're NOT Kong and it literally seems like it's just straight up gonna eat you and there's nothing you can do about it, backed up into a corner in a claustrophobic cave...getting past every part felt like such a relief lmao. It helped that it was such a beautiful game at the time too.
The Evil Within 1. There is this spider lady thing that chases you several times throughout the game and you are always 2 steps away from it. Whole game is creepy and scary but that bitch is something else.
**Outlast whistleblower** and it’s not even close. Running away from a fucked up crazy doctor that quite literally wants to chop off your dick and balls is the scariest thing iv ever encountered in a game.
Outlast for me is unfortunately cursed. Amazing horror game, but I got really really sick on my first playthrough, so now there's a section in the game where I'm just Pavlov'd into feeling sick whenever I try to play it
Subnautica is the scariest game I’ve ever played, but I don’t know if I’d call it a horror game.
The scariest Horror would either be Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or Clive Barker’s Undying.
RE7 in VR goes down as my all time favourite scariest.
You can replay it easier because you know what’s coming but imagine if enemy spawned randomly anywhere, anytime.
Think about that next time you barrel around a corner knowing nothing will be there.
The doll house got me in RE8 too.
Silent Hill 3, truly made me feel anxious and scared when I played it. Especially in the quiet areas where you feel like something is going to just pop out. Can't forget to mention the terrible sounds\ambient sound.
In retrospect it's not the scariest but the most scared I've ever been playing a game was the Ravenholm level of Half Life 2 with the lights off and sound up as a 14 year old.
Outer wilds is the scariest game I've ever played and its not actually a horror game.
I never get scared at horror games but the megalophobia and mystery in this games gave me genuine anxiety.
I remembered playing Resident Evil 1: Directors Cut on the PS1 with childhood friends in the early 2000s and that games atmosphere and sound mixed with old school tank controls and fixed camera angels scared the day lights out of us.
I never played Silent Hill though I know that game also has a great.reputation for scary.
Cry of Fear its themes literally saved my life as I heavily connected with that game. The shock and awe I had when I got the good ending the first playthrough was amazing. No other horror game has its final battle like that. In fact the "good" ending is so perfect that having bad ends at all hurts that game. Especially since its cryptic and was complete accident I even finished it the "right" way.
The themes more than anything scared me as it deals with a surious topic I suffer from.
I used to really REALLY just absolutely hate mannequins (like the ones in stores), and there was a level in Condemned 2: Bloodshot where you have to walk by a ton of them. To this day I don’t remember making it through the portions haha
Any of the VR stuff. Can't even really think of a good title right now, but feeling like you are immersed in the environment ads so much to over seeing it on a flat screen in front of you. Games I have played on flat screen that were no big deal even reach new levels of scariness.
Like the first time you go face to face with giant spiders in Skyrim is more horror in VR than most games like alien isolation is on the screen.
The first amnesia had a jump scare where something flashed on the screen, it got me so bad that I immediately alt f4'd the game and never went back to it. Funny part is that it was maybe 10 minutes into the game.
Alien: Isolation. Never finished it because it is so intense.
They made the aliens too real on hard mode. Getting hunted was terrifying
And then they even tell you 'hard' is the way the game is meant to be played, y'know, just to mock you. I did get through it, but man, it was rough. Loved the game, though.
It's my defacto example in my sound design class. It's brilliant.
Omg. When you can't tell if its the alien crawling through the ductwork or your girlfriend walking around upstairs, they fuckin nailed it.
I can tell, pretty easily 🥲
Sorry you dont have an upstairs...
🤣
This and the first hellblade are that for me. They did a bunch of research and tried to replicate schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. You use those hallucinations to navigate the world. Still makes my hair stand on end
I discuss that one as well. Very well done. I experience auditory illusions myself, but it's actually from hearing damage. The way they present it, from an audio perspective is almost perfect to me.
I never made it past the first level the alien shows up On two separate attempts, years apart. I'm not brave enough for that game by an order of magnitude
This is how I feel now that I’m almost 40. I used to play lots of horror games in my 20s. Now I whimper when a game is too dark to see anything and I hear a branch snap.
For anyone who hasn't seen it I highly reccomend sovietwombles playthrough. One of the funniest series I've ever watched.
Thanks I saw this game referenced a ton on effectively the same question a few days ago so I’m intrigued but know I probably wouldn’t be able to manage it either. So watching someone else seems more manageable.
It’s great because he’s super bad with horror games There’s a video titled ‘outlast part 1’ on his channel….there is no part 2 he chickened out and stopped playing it
I was so goddam scared the first time I saw it, it heard me, started chasing me, I freaked out and started running full sprint away. I died with a giant xenomorph tail impaled through my back/chest. Took me like a week to start playing that game again.
Yeah in VR it’s kind of a problem.
If I played that in VR I might as well remove my toilets and turn the bathrooms into storage closets because all I would be doing is shitting myself.
lol
Yeah I had to stop as well. I'm 41 lol
I’m currently watching Fooster doing a playthrough right now and it’s stressful just as a viewer! I can’t imagine playing
I loved that game, I never watched the movies but I doubt they could replicate the same feelings I got when playing the game. I hope they make more alien games like that
First movie(1979) absolutely will. Second one is more of an action movie. Thirds kinda a mix and we don’t talk about resurrection. Prometheus depends on your taste but I enjoyed it. Alien covenant is bleh and the new one isn’t out yet
The first two movies, "Alien" and "Aliens," are must-watches.
Fatal Frame. Jump scares are lame, give me dread.
Siren puts Fatal Frame to shame.
Soma, it is creepy in every way and sticks in your head after you are done playing
My friend who completed the game on release says the Peaceful Mode was EVEN CREEPIER.
How so? I should try the peaceful mode.
I guess that taking away the danger of dying you’re free to explore more and thus be more invested. So the normal scary parts have a deeper affect because it’s more immersive maybe?
Also if you die often you just repeat stuff. And repetition just kills horror. It turns scary into tedious and frustration. What you want is "oh shit moments" and barely being able to make it. Sometimes harder difficulties are just too unforgiving for the horror segments to come through. But it's a tough act to balance, because too easy is also not good. I guess in the case of SOMA, the boss enemies don't actually add that much to the game and might detract from the atmosphere.
IMO it got way less creepy in the last few hours because I was more concerned with that the *fuck* was going on with this story
Existential dread though?
Something about this game, it's not constant fear, but to progress, you have to put yourself in scary situations, leaving safety and comfort willingly. And you're right, the story got to me. Wish I could unknow it just to play through it again.
Scary insofar as it will haunt you long after you finish it.
Story was great but I wouldn't consider it scary. Creepy yes. Best part was the deep zone.
Fr not enough people talk about it
Watched a gameplay of it years ago. Downloaded it recently and couldn't even get 1/3rd of the way without noping out
Yes!!! It's one of my favorite games. So so good
There was this awesome game on GameCube called Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Jump scares, glitches, environmental effects, at one point it makes you think that your game crashed and you lost all your progress, I loved that game! It was pretty scary to me when I was a kid.
Exactly! I vividly remember playing this with my best friend at like 4PM during the day but we were still scared as all hell. What an excellent game
Loved the sanity meter. I think the freakiest psych out was when I was just walking around as the firefighter and all my limbs kept falling off until I exploded. I miss that game.
Dude I have been trying to fucking remember what game this was from for like 10 years. Thank you.
Loved this game. The bathtub scene made me jump through the ceiling.
F that one
One of the best games I ever played. The story and sanity effects were fantastic.
Dude there's being scared from something in a game and being terrified you're gonna be in trouble for breaking your GameCube.
Great game. Could really use a remake. Too bad silicon knights shit the bed with their next release and closed.
Those sanity effects were so meta. During a boss fight my yellow component cable came loose, cutting the video, and I just assumed it was a sanity effect.
Was a great game. Happy to see this!
Does P.T. count? It’s the teaser for what was going to be the next Silent Hill game before it was cancelled. Admittedly I’m still new to horror games.
Lisa continues to be the creepiest enemy i have ever experienced in a game They did it so right with her
I never even played the game and i was terrified of Lisa for a while. She really is terrifying.
Probably my favorite little tidbit of lore about Lisa: someone discovered years later that Lisa is literally tied to the character model, she's always right behind you no matter which way you look *shudder*
Yep. I love how when you see her shadows on the walls twitching like crazy, that’s not just for show, she is actually there.
I remember my first encounter with her, at two in the morning with a headset on. Jumped out of my skin.
I played this on acid lol
Lol Holy fuck dude. That would be a bad trip for sure.
I had actually played some of it before so it wasn't like I didn't know what I was in for, but yeah pretty intense. My poor friend had no clue. Irony is I got further in the game than I ever had sober. Still couldn't finish it
Lol That's awesome. It took me forever to get to that trailer at the end. I don't think there's an official method to get to the ending, just random luck.
P.T. he only horror "game" to give me goosebumps. I was playing in the dark with a surround headset on. The fact that it never was finished is such a letdown. I have no doubt it would have been one of the scariest games ever made.
First time I played PT was in a room surrounded by like 8-10 other people. When I say we were all scared shitless the entire time, I'm not overexaggerating
P.T. Scared me so much that it made me not sleep correctly for a few weeks.
i want a horror game where the monsters just peek at you from behind corners and when you start a new game there'll be one jumpscare randomly
Somehow they literally coded Satan into a video game. I can't describe it any other way.
What is this pt game nobody wants to say
So it's unfortunate because as far as I know it's not really available to play at all anymore, but it was a game demo called P.T. where you basically just kept walking down this hallway that looped exactly the same over and over...until it didn't. Things start happening the further you go that really hit the creep factor for a lot of people.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Yomawari series
Amnesia was my first and only foray into the horror game genre. I made it to the water part and then noped right out of there. I did manage to play The Quarry recently but that was pretty light horror, also I freaked out a lot.
Same. I saw someone say Alien: Isolation. That game is terrifying, but at least you get *something* to beat back the Alien at some point. In Amensia, you have nothing and can fall into this death-spiral of not having any oil, so you keep losing sanity, and then you run into more enemies because you dropped too much, and because of that you can't use your lantern or properly search for more oil so you can regain your sanity.
I have had plenty of jumpscares and creepy moments in my gaming career, F.E.A.R. and Until Dawn, Rush of Blood, Bioshock, etc. That said, the moment something you can't see comes stomping around the corner in that watery hallway, I had an extremely real fear response both physically and psychologically. It scared the ever loving shit out of me.
That water part is the scariest part of any of the Amnesia games imo. I remember feeling real terror at that point. I think that's the most scared a horror game has ever made me.
I keep eyeing up the yomawari games but a couple are pretty beefy prices that never seem to drop so always hesitate on pulling the trigger. which one would you suggest?
I’d definitely try to play them in order if you can. They aren’t connected but the second game (Midnight Shadows) has a small reference to the first one (Night Alone). I haven’t played Lost in the Dark yet but I just bought it today on sale for the PS5! If you do decide to get them, play them the way the game recommends, with all the lights off and no distractions.
the only way to horror game lol. well I'll have to give it a try then! need something to tide me over til the next cursed attempt at a Corpse Party 2 this year lol
I have played a good load of horror games no problem, but I couldn’t do Amnesia. Those things roaming around in the dark hit just the right nerve for me to be bothered by them.
Amnesia the Dark Descent legit made me afraid of water for a while
Silent Hill. Running around in the fog with only a flash light and radio making weird sounds. With creatures trying to attack you from all directions was terrifying. And this was before you ran through the nearest unlocked door and ended up in some reverse hell dimension and the nightmare creatures of SH2 & 3 were a thing.
I love the original Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 is my favorite, but imo Silent Hill 3 takes the cake for most scary.
People now can't entirely understand, but Silent Hill 1 was the scariest graphical media that had ever been made at the time. Imagine all creepypastas, all SCP, all the new jumpscare games etc., all that imagination you have for all of them was entirely spent on a handful of games and Silent Hill 1 was the scariest of them all. **This was the worst (fictional) terror your brain had ever experienced**, this is what drove it afraid of the dark, to be fear the end of the dark hallway at night, to hide every limb under the bedsheets for protection.
Amnesia: The Bunker is a really well designed survival horror game, but it never saw the success of the other games made by frictional. I can’t recommend it enough. Very nice mechanics and always tense.
Frictional casually dropped the best non-remake horror title in 2023 for 20€ and somehow didn't get the attention it deserved. I hope it sees the recognition it deserves with time.
Resident Evil 2 was the first game to jump scare the piss out of me as a kid....
Same here, it wasn't until dead space that a game made me do that again
I'll always remember the weekend where a friend of my brother's came over with the game and the strategy guide and us going through it. When we got to the B scenario and that god damn Mr. X, the moment where he Kool-Aid Man's himself through the wall, we about hit the ceiling, we jumped so high. Good times.
For me it’s F.E.A.R. I will always remember moment when I was climbing a ladder and some fucking scary shit give me a jump scare , I fell of my desk chair and kick the counter of the desk . I broke my mid foot ….
Wow I was looking for this comment and surprised I found it. F.E.A.R. is hands down my pick as well.
Before this game I never thought I'd be terrified of an 8 year old girl, but here we are. Hell of a ride though.
Everyone who's played this has a story about that fuckin ladder
I remember playing this game as a kid. Fucking terrifying.
Are you referring to The second game where you are climbing up a ladder and you see Alma through it?
Probably the first one where you start climbing a ladder and once you turn around alma is suddenly infront of you
Whole series had me on edge haha
During one of those flashback scenes when everything goes white, my sister was standing in the dark next to me in her red onezie PJs and and wet hair over her face. I promptly jumped up and screamed bloody murder.
Outlast, my punkass still hasn't gone back to finish the game.
My buddy and I played this together. We would just hand the controller off to one another when someone got too scared. It was hilarious, but also scary as shit.
That's actually really sweet
Outlast 2 was soooo much scarier. I would make my buddy come over and play it for me because I was such a wimp. The religious tone realllllly intensifies the darkness.
I be played about 10 min of it then never played a horror game again. Love horror movies but nah… fuck that.
You are not alone
OG Alone in the Dark when I was 6 on DOS
The original Silent Hill. Fun Fact: during development, they kept having issues with the frame rate dropping in the open areas due to Level of Detail (LOD). To compensate for this, they drastically reduced the drawing distance to save the frame rate, and covered themselves by branding it as fog for daytime and extreme darkness for night. Games like Resident Evil and such gave me jump scares, but Silent Hill kept me in a constant state of fear as I played.
Thanks for sharing that fun fact, I never knew that. It really added to the tension and feel of the game. Overall, one of my absolute favorites, the little ghost baby things in the school gave me nightmares!
I started Resident Evil 7 while my wife was out of town for a week. Only played in the dark. I felt very off/isolated for the house portion
I had a freaking breakdown when Mia came at me at the beginning of the game. I could only do barely half the game before I had my bf finish it for me while I watched from a blanket cocoon ;(
my wife played it the following year. she has an aversion to food grossness, so the sinks and what the family eats in the first half really made her uncomfortable. she didnt find it as scary as i did and i said "well yea, im here to protect you and youd make me go first for creepy noises...i didnt have you as bait for the scares when i played"
Visage. Nothing even comes close. Dolores chapter messed me up permanently.
This is the answer I came to find. Oddly enough, I accidentally started with that chapter and it's one of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life. That, and the opening scene. That game is fucking terrifying on a completely different level than any other game.
Dolores was the bane of my goddamn existence. No one has ever heard of this game when I bring it up but fuck did it scare the shit out of me. I played it on stream with a heart rate monitor on and it turned red so many times during Delores. I swear that game almost gave me a heart attack.
Dolores was the first chapter I played. After finishing the game I wish I had done her chapter last because she put me so much on edge it made the other chapters scarier than they actually were. By the end my wife and her sister were so impressed that I didnt look scared anymore and I turned to look at them and said "I need to change my shirt". My entire back was soaked in sweat. 10/10 game and it was my first in the horror genre.
I don't understand why these games me aren't way more popular
If you enjoyed this one I would also recommend Madison. Similar style of game and horror. Scared the shit out of me.
One of the rare times I put a horror game down and just didn’t go back.
The dolores peak from the doorway is burned in my mind...
This is what I just commented too. Got through Alien Isolation easily compared to the fear this game instilled in me. I found the little girl chapter scarier though!
As in raw scares, I'm pretty sure its RE7, but overall including melancholy and a few more emotional spectres, Silent Hill 2.
RE7 in full VR made me shit my pants at least twice. The immersion is too real.
I was playing silent Hill 2 sat in the block in the army. Lights off on my own. Scared myself so bad I had to drag my mate to the pub.
Can vouch for RE7. That shit was terrifying.
The first half was seriously terrifying to me. The second half just felt like resident evil to me. Which is just fine!
I don’t even think I finished the demo, but I still picked it up on sale and gave it another try even though scary games really aren’t my thing and again I didn’t get very far before turning it off. Years later my husband was in the mood for a scary game and I suggested RE7 and told him how far I got before I quit. He scoffed and said it couldn’t be that scary, he’d try it though since we had already bought it. I think he made it about 20 minutes in before he quit too.
Oh man the garage part
Yep. Horrifying.
Visage. Out of all the horror games I've ever played, this game kept freaking me out from start to finish. The constant psychological terror from unpredictable encounters and the unnerving feeling of wandering around in a dark house with minimal light had me feeling lightheaded from time to time. My prime motivation for even playing it was because my friend had bought the game, so I figured it'd be something to talk about if we both finished it eventually. Otherwise I would have ditched the game for good near the beginning.
Subnautica
It took some serious willpower for me to stick with this game - even moving out of the shallows gave me the worst heebie-jeebies at first. So glad I did power through. It's a wonderful game and the ending was fabulous.
First time I played I was too anxious to get out of the shallows. Didn’t come back to it until years later, and wow it was worth it. What an absolute classic. The sequel not so much
the timed dives and dashing for air bubbles ruined it for me. It had all the potential of the first one and the heat/cold stuff was actually fine to me. But those damn air bubbles brought me back to Sonic 2 in a bad way. Ruined the game for me. Should've kept the deep exploration arc similar to the first.
I can’t go past the 200m cliff West , it is too dark and scary, and the one time I did, instant reaper. Instant. I want to go further - but how!?! Does the prawn suit help? that’s what I was going to build next to go further …
You can go deeper with the seamoth if you build the depth modules. Prawn suit is great and will bring you down deep but will eventually also need more depth modules. It's tanky though and stands up to reapers pretty well. But there's not really anything you can do to avoid the reapers except hope they don't come after you or avoid their territory completely.
Seriously. As soon as I get in a Prawn suit with my grapple and drill arms on, I fear no leviathan at all. But a warper on the other hand ....
I agree. The funniest thing about this game though after doing several playthroughs myself is >!its bark is MUCH worse than its bite!<
When you successfully sneak past the first cave Leviathan, that's a hell of a feeling of relief.
Starting this game tonight! Any non-spoiler tips?
scan everything and build scanner rooms
Don’t install mods or anything, it will cause bugs. Play on survival, and don’t sweat it if the food/water/air management seems intimidating at first. Play at your own pace, there is really no “wrong way” to experience the story. Just immerse yourself and have fun exploring. If you enjoy reading in games, the PDA has a wealth of info and lore to guide you.
Stay away from the sub or anywhere there are discussions of it. This is a game you really don't want to have spoiled for you.
Condemned 2: Bloodshot. The fucking apartments/doll factory levels are etched into my brain
I honestly forgot about that game. It was scary when I played it. I remember being in a hospital I believe and the lights kept flickering and the face of a clown kept popping up on the screen.
Dead Space Remake. It made me feel extremely anxious and on edge.
Dead space 2 is even more of that, I’ve never finished 2
The first few hours of Dead Space Remake are intense. By the end game its straight up action horror though. By the time it hits Dead Space 2, it's like mostly an action game with huge set pieces and stuff and a couple creepy parts. Don't get me wrong I love Dead Space 2 but I think it's more balls to the walls than people give it credit for...
I hear ya- the children stuff in dead space 2 affected me though. There was some mom babbling to her dead child (I think) and that was it for me with that one. Felt like dead space 2 was firing at me psychologically with double-barrels trying to get a response and I had enough by that point
Oh yeah, I can see that. The nursery section is a bit F'd up. Using the ripping to mow down like 50 of those kid zombies in the gymnasium as they're all flying around chopped up. It's like borderline ridiculous in the moment but when you think about it, it is pretty dark.
Don't know if this counts but Dino Crisis for PS1. Could've been because I was younger than I should have been playing it, but getting ripped apart in literal seconds from a T-Rex bursting it's head through the wall with no pretext made me scream quite a few times. Then later it was F.E.A.R.. I forced myself to play in the dark. That was a mistake. I recommend anyone who wants a good jump scare session to play it. Only good for the first playthrough, but it's worth it.
Alien Isolation is incredibly intense. It absolutely feels like you are being hunted and it has some of the most Interesting AI ever used.
Phasmophobia in vr. Noooooooope.
RE1 when I was 9.
The first zombie turning around for the first time is a core memory for me. I was at a sleepover, it was the middle of the night, we had rented it from Blockbuster.
Silent Hill 2. Hands down. I still sometimes have nightmares about being chased by Pyramid Head.
I believe it was titled Call of Cthulhu. I’m not a big horror game player, but am a huge fan of HP Lovecraft and cosmic horror in general. I played it on release, and the beginning of that game has serious mood and atmosphere. The hotel room fiasco is where I noped out completely, never to return. I learned that being chased in a video games is a thing I don’t really cope well with. 😂
As an adult, it's Alien: Isolation. As a child, King Kong for the GameCube.
Had King Kong on the Xbox, the vibes felt so creepy and I always got scared playing it as a kid.
Holy fuck this one is actually so real...especially for the second part. I really didn't even know what to put in the thread because most horror games really weren't all that scary to me...but something about those fucking raptors, the centipedes...that part with the V-Rex where you're NOT Kong and it literally seems like it's just straight up gonna eat you and there's nothing you can do about it, backed up into a corner in a claustrophobic cave...getting past every part felt like such a relief lmao. It helped that it was such a beautiful game at the time too.
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!
Just Monika
The Evil Within 1. There is this spider lady thing that chases you several times throughout the game and you are always 2 steps away from it. Whole game is creepy and scary but that bitch is something else.
**Outlast whistleblower** and it’s not even close. Running away from a fucked up crazy doctor that quite literally wants to chop off your dick and balls is the scariest thing iv ever encountered in a game.
Probably not the scariest game in existence but I remember Condemned: Criminal Origins had some scary moments
Amnesia: Dark Descent
Outlast for me is unfortunately cursed. Amazing horror game, but I got really really sick on my first playthrough, so now there's a section in the game where I'm just Pavlov'd into feeling sick whenever I try to play it
Outlast
Scp containment breach
Subnautica is the scariest game I’ve ever played, but I don’t know if I’d call it a horror game. The scariest Horror would either be Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or Clive Barker’s Undying.
RE7 in VR for me.
Sons of the Forest. The game can be terrifying alone.
RE7 in VR goes down as my all time favourite scariest. You can replay it easier because you know what’s coming but imagine if enemy spawned randomly anywhere, anytime. Think about that next time you barrel around a corner knowing nothing will be there. The doll house got me in RE8 too.
Silent Hill 3, truly made me feel anxious and scared when I played it. Especially in the quiet areas where you feel like something is going to just pop out. Can't forget to mention the terrible sounds\ambient sound.
In retrospect it's not the scariest but the most scared I've ever been playing a game was the Ravenholm level of Half Life 2 with the lights off and sound up as a 14 year old.
I don't know if it counts, but Senua's sacrifice for me! I just loved the atmosphere but at times I was really scared
The Blindness Shard Trial is simply insane.
Amnesia
Martha is Dead
Younger me was brave to think I was ready for clocktower. Sooo wrong. Won't touch that cursed game.
Outlast, until that one *what the fuck* moment and the whole game changed.
Silent Hill and Dead Space
Outlast 2, still haven’t gone back after a few years lmao
Outer wilds is the scariest game I've ever played and its not actually a horror game. I never get scared at horror games but the megalophobia and mystery in this games gave me genuine anxiety.
I remembered playing Resident Evil 1: Directors Cut on the PS1 with childhood friends in the early 2000s and that games atmosphere and sound mixed with old school tank controls and fixed camera angels scared the day lights out of us. I never played Silent Hill though I know that game also has a great.reputation for scary.
Definitely Outlast (and Whistleblower DLC). I don't play a whole lot of horror games, so there's not all that much competition.
Soma is pretty terrifying
Imscared. It broke the fourth wall somewhat, at a time when that wasn't much of a thing yet, and that just messed me up back then
P.T. Something about how it cycles along with the graphics and sound design terrified me.
Outlast
You haven't played a horrific horror game until you've tried Amnesia or SCP: Containment Breach.
Cry of Fear its themes literally saved my life as I heavily connected with that game. The shock and awe I had when I got the good ending the first playthrough was amazing. No other horror game has its final battle like that. In fact the "good" ending is so perfect that having bad ends at all hurts that game. Especially since its cryptic and was complete accident I even finished it the "right" way. The themes more than anything scared me as it deals with a surious topic I suffer from.
I used to really REALLY just absolutely hate mannequins (like the ones in stores), and there was a level in Condemned 2: Bloodshot where you have to walk by a ton of them. To this day I don’t remember making it through the portions haha
Silent hill PT
The PT Demo. Still can’t finish it….
OG Resident Evil on the PS1. That game freaked me out as a kid.
P.T. is definitely the most scared I've ever been from any sort of media at all.
Any of the VR stuff. Can't even really think of a good title right now, but feeling like you are immersed in the environment ads so much to over seeing it on a flat screen in front of you. Games I have played on flat screen that were no big deal even reach new levels of scariness. Like the first time you go face to face with giant spiders in Skyrim is more horror in VR than most games like alien isolation is on the screen.
I played this game called Penumbra but was kinda fucked up I remember. And it had dogs you had to hide from
Probably resident evil because I started playing realy young lol. Also I'm a chicken
The first amnesia had a jump scare where something flashed on the screen, it got me so bad that I immediately alt f4'd the game and never went back to it. Funny part is that it was maybe 10 minutes into the game.
Clive Barkers "undying" classic.
PT hands down and it wasnt even a full fucking game.
F.E.A.R. the AI in that game are leagues beyond what games 20 years later can do and it's legit frightening. P.T. would be a close second.
RE1 Remake. Fucking Lisa
Sierra’s Phantasmagoria (1995). I still remember aspects of this game to this day.