It’s All Hallow’s Eve! Want something appropriate for the occasion? Here’s a couple recommendations to jostle your skeleton around:
Haunt the House: Terrortown
Want something spooky but too scared to touch any of the creepy games out there? This is for you then. In Haunt the House you float about town creating an atmosphere of terror and scaring people out of their wits. You’ll possess various objects in the buildings, getting more terrifying actions as the place gets more spooky. The people are a bit thick, so you’ll have to lead them around by making sure you scare them right out the door (or window). It’s rather brief and it can frustrating at points, but it’s full of beautiful sound and art design, charming animations and a dash of humor.
All Our Friends Are Dead/AuSable/Gyossait
- PC (itch.io)
I’ve been following Amon26’s work since about 2009 and I’ve always felt absorbed by the haunting spaces that he creates. AOFAD, AuSable, and Gyossait are all action-horror platformers. They’re filled with a heavy, oppressive atmosphere. Each is a surreal glitchscape that never lets you become comfortable, inspiring a sense of paranoia and fear. They are often conventional in terms of the actual action, but the tangible sense of atmosphere really does elevate them.
You can get them in a package that includes all three (as well as the FPS spin-off The Hunt) if you buy Gyossait, or you can name your price for the first two.
Siren: Blood Curse
- PS3 (digital download)
While in many ways a very conventional horror game, a couple of wrinkles make Siren more interesting than your typical horrorshow. The Shibito, the zombie-like enemies of the game, are mutated horrors that at first resemble their original human incarnations, then later take on more macabre forms. The game is also split up across several episodes, changing perspectives across multiple characters, some with more limited abilities than others. The most interesting part of course is the series’ trademark “sight jacking”, which allows you to see through the eyes of enemies in order to give yourself a picture of where danger lurks.
It’s also worth noting that Team Siren, the developer, is headed up by the director of the first Silent Hill, who would later go on to work on Gravity Rush.
F.E.A.R.
- PC, Xbox 360
FEAR is one of my favorite shooters. A devilish mix of Japanese style psychological horror and hyper-violent slow motion gunplay, FEAR managed to balance a sense of empowerment and vulnerability in a way that no other shooter (including its various sequels) has been able to match. It says a lot that you can go from turning a man into fine mist, slide kicking enemies, and pinning bodies to the wall to being paranoid and scared in the next moment. By now it feels dated, and the controls may require adjusting to, but the atmosphere, pacing, and precision gunplay are still excellent.
(P.S. header imaged sourced from here.)