What are the scariest games you've played?

Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org to Gaming@beehaw.org – 46 points –

I feel like I've played a good amount of horror titles, and I find I don't really get scared much anymore.

What are some titles that scared you the most? I would love to hear your recommendations!

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Alien: Isolation. That shit is unplayable it's so scary.

It has a VR version and I'm pretty sure if I tried it I'd run into a wall in a panic a few times at least.

When it came out, I saw the trailer and decided that it's not for me. Way too scary. Then recently I watched a commented speed run and thought "Yep, I was right".

It was definitely intense, that's for sure. The aliens AI is pretty cool. At release, it was very exciting to see how advanced it seemed.

Minecraft probably. I avoid legitimate horror games (and movies) and the fact that you don't have saves can get a little stressful when you're down in a cave, don't know how to find your way back (and thus probably won't find your body) and then basically get jumpscared by dangerous enemies or holes in the ground.

Lol that's true. Nothing like a creeper or two to sneak up behind you in the dark.

if you want to know how to get back, pick a side (i chose left) and always put torches on that side going down. to come back up, keep the torches on your right. 🔥

Doesn't work that well when the way is constantly twisting and splitting. Cave layout can be extremely confusing.

Soma is definitely up there. It's slowburn and not jumpscares. But when that shit hit, it hit hard.

I thought it was pretty good! There were definitely some tense moments for sure

But what type of spooky are you looking for?

Oh man, absolutely anything to make me feel dread or have me not knowing what to expect. Which is vague, I know. I feel like I've played so many horror games that they start to feel too gamey? If that makes any sense? It's like I can predict when scares will happen or the gamey aspects sometimes don't immerse me.

Oddly enough, subnautica really had me on my toes a few years back. Fatum Betula was an indie that also gave me some heeby jeebies but wasn't exactly scary either.

I feel like I'll probably need to crawl through dozens of indie titles or something. Or possibly go back to titles made prior to 2005. I'm also not caught up on recent games in the past couple of years, so maybe there's something special I've missed.

But I'm also just curious to hear what made everyone else scared, too!

Welp, as a tie-over I can recommend plowing through some of the stuff on Gamejolt.

There's a few pretty good indie spookies for free. They aren't too long, but have some pretty good concepts if nothing else.

But yeah, one tends to get a bit numb on horror after a while. It helps to take a break every now and then.

I don't know if I've ever been on gamejolt before, thanks, I'll take a look!

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I'm chasing that next scare. Something to wow me again, haha. I'm sure there's gotta be something out there

F.E.A.R (the first one only) was absolutely scary and psychologically nerve wrecking...

The multiplayer was amazing though, the nail gun was something else !

The nail gun was so satisfying! The AI was cool! The way they would flank was pretty good for the time! The light and shadows were really great. Lots of tension mixed with the gun fights. In a lot of ways, Condemned reminds me of it, too.

The AI was cool! The way they would flank was pretty good for the time!

So truee ! Yeah I remember that was something really unique to FEAR ! Never had seen a similar AI in other games :/

Yeah now that you mention it, there really haven't been too many releases similar to FEARs gameplay style since then. It was a very unique combo of fps and horror. I would love to see someone tackle that style again

It's a shame that I'm a quivering pussy, because I think the combat against the replicants in FEAR fucking rules. The shooting feels awesome, slow-mo karate is awesome, the game feels awesome to play.

...and then the game goes quiet after the shooting stops, and it delivers some of the spookiest atmosphere I've experienced even after two decades of age. A single light fixture moves suddenly, showing the shadow of something just behind me, and I jump out of my skin and have to take a break from playing.

At the time, PT was the scariest thing I'd ever played. Was super obsessed with that demo.

Will never get over silent hills cancelation

PT stands on its own in the horror video game genre IMO. Too many games fail to convey one of the elements of horror well, typically overusing shock and disgust as it's hard to achieve psychological terror when your art medium has the potential for funny things to happen (like physics objects in amnesia deciding to fling themselves all over the room when you let go because they bounced wrong). Really interrupts the flow of the scared juice. The other half of horror games give you enough tools to completely defuse the horror after an initial few encounters (death stranding) or straight up don't try to scare you situationally, just acting as combat action games with horror themes (later resident evils).

PT remakes for PC are in a good place finally, "P.T. emulation" being a bit closer than unreal PT to the source material as a project. How konami could possibly drop a project with star power like kojima+del toro is beyond me, especially considering reception to the demo was GREAT and it was slated to release while streamers playing horror games was still in vogue. Unbelievable fumbled bag lying there

PT is great. I wish it was still easily accessible.

That whole situation is such a shame. There was so much potential there!

The original Resident Evil was pretty revolutionary and terrifying for me, but the 100% scariest I've played is the original Dead Space.

More recently, The Outlast Trials is really good, and I would HIGHLY recommend any of the Dark Pictures Anthology games, but my favorite is Man of Medan.

I really loved it. But way too early i realized what was up. I remember reading about the gas leak incident in some comic i read when i was a kid in the 80s, and my mind made that connection rather early. I still enjoyed it throughly, and I'm always waiting for whatever Supermassive is up to next.

Dead space is great. I recently played the remake and thought they did a pretty good job! The anti grav sections were cool

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's requiem. It's an older game, GameCube era. I don't like horror games and this one isn't true horror. There are some good jump scares and body horror though. I had to stop after a certain scene because of the jump scares. The sanity system is really great.

I've always heard about this game from time to time. It's one I really want to try at some point. It sounds amazing!

cliched yes, but I will always remember how scared as hell I was playing Silent Hill for the first time in high school, when you go down that dutch angle alleyway and the evil toddlers stab you to death...

i couldnt play any more for a few days haha, it was a pretty stand out memory for scary game stuff. Its hard to state how unexpected it was at the time, I hadnt played any early horror games, and I dont know how many similar experiences there were at the time (year 2000ish) so it really was brutal and surprising

I've yet to play the first 3 silent hills. I feel like they're the elephant in the room for me lol

I don't play horror games, Amnesia was too much for me. After that bit with the invisible creature in the flooded corridor, I uninstalled the thing and never touched it again. That was fifteen years ago

by tradition we don't talk about the game and instead tell people to play Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is probably one of my top 5

It's probably my favorite game that I've played in the past decade

I found the batman vr game on psvr scariest. It wasnt that scary a premise, but because of the immersion, it was extra. You knew joker was in a cell and you had to Kean in to see. Although you knew he would get you, you had no choice. You had to physically force yourself to be attacked bybsteppibg forwards.

Similarly, the jumping off a cliff to commit suicide in suoerhot vr was quite confronting and scary. I think they edited it out.

During my search, I keep seeing things about VR, and it seems like it very well could be the next big thing to scare me lol. The added immersion might be just the ticket.

I think some have said the start of resident evil village is quite scary on vr, but I havnt played it. Probably less so if you've already played it. There are a bunch of junonscare games but they interest me less.

the original resident evil. couldn't even get through the first 15 minutes before i threw the controller across the room. i don't play scary games anymore, but i love watching other people play!

silent hill was super fun to watch.

The friggin' dogs in Resident Evil.

I have a kind of funny story about that. I was too young to be playing RE when it came out, but that didn't stop me from sneaking it out of my dad's collection of grownup games to try it anyway.

So there's this well known jump scare, probably in the first fifteen minutes as you say where you're running down a hallway and suddenly some dogs jump through these glass windows. I screamed, fumbled the controller, and was eaten by dogs. Might have been the first jump scare of my life.

So I hadn't hit a save point, so you have to start the game over. So I decide to just leave the mansion through the front door instead of going out that way. And you get a cutscene where a dog jumps through the door and you have to wrestle it away.

I still haven't played the game since.

But my wife and I are a big fan of the series, so eventually we decided to marathon them on the condition that she plays RE1. She's playing the remake and goes into the room where the dogs jump through the windows and I'm holding my breath waiting for it to happen. Only it doesn't.

So I'm a little disappointed, but I figure it's a remake so maybe they're switching things up a bit and going to put the jump scare somewhere else in the mansion.

Sooner or later you have to backtrack through that corridor though, and on like the third time going through this "safe" corridor the dogs jump through the window. She screams, fumbles the controller, and is eaten by dogs.

Seven-year-old me was vindicated that my adult wife also got punked and I'm not alone.

The first Layers of Fear was pretty spooky, very PT inspired. The second one was decent too, but not as scary.

Outlast is the standard I hold walking sim horror games to. I can speedrun through it now since I've played it so much, but the first few times were terrifying.

Some people have mentioned Amnesia, so I'll throw in the recent iteration with Amnesia: The Bunker. It's like Alien: Isolation in a WW1 setting.

Speaking of which, Alien: Isolation is probably no. 1 for me. Between the alien, the androids, and even other people, that game is very stress inducing.

I really liked Outlast when it first released. Outlast 2 was pretty good as well. I think the tricky part is if you die or mess up too many times in horror games, the fear gets dulled.

I don't recall layers of fear creeping me out much, but I haven't tried the second yet. Definitely worth a shot

I find Amnesia titles don't do it for me anymore. I think maybe I played too much and got too familiar with how the AI works. I've peeled back the curtain, so to speak and ruined them for myself, aha.

I really liked alien isolation when it first came out. I thought it was a very cool take on horror. The AI seemed super impressive

If it's any consolation, Amnesia: The Bunker has a different AI than the previous iterations. I mentioned it's like Alien: Isolation, and the monster works very similarly, like reacting to how much noise you make and stalking which parts of the bunker you're in. Most items with every run are also randomized, so you can't memorize where to pick up supplies. (You can also customize the difficulty, which I thought was really cool.) But if you've already tried it, then my point is moot lol.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty okay! I ended up getting about halfway through, I think? I got caught by the monster a couple of times when he randomly decided to pop up, and I somewhat shifted from "this is spooky" to "I'm just avoiding this road block"

It's super tricky because I don't know how to keep myself immersed in the experience for a lot of these titles.

I did enjoy the fact that they tried something new with the bunker. I thought it was probably the closest I got to being scared since the Dark Descent, so I think that says something for sure.

I think I've been exposed to too much horror, which might have dulled the experience somewhat. I really enjoy hearing about what/why people enjoyed horror games, so I don't think your point was moot! I think horror is a very unique genre that pushes game design to its extremes in a lot of ways.

Killing Floor VR

Oh man I haven't gotten a chance to try VR yet and I bet that would help immerse me in a whole new way. I can't wait to see how VR improves over time

Easily the scariest was „Amnesia: The Dark Descen“ (2010).

Dead Space scared me so much it made me numb to lot of horror games since.

I don't much like scary games myself, but here's someone asking /r/HorrorGaming what their scariest games are:

https://old.reddit.com/r/HorrorGaming/comments/1303c5t/in_your_opinion_what_are_the_scariest_games_of/

EDIT: And yet somehow, despite not liking scary games, I've wound up owning some of these, like Darkwood, the Amnesia games, Clive Barker's Undying -- which I wouldn't call that scary -- Doom 3, Lone Survivor, Outlast, and Subnautica.

I've also played Clock Tower, which was on there.

I've yet to try darkwood, clive barkers undying, doom3, lone survivor, or clock tower. So I'll have to give those a try.

I'm specifically curious about darkwood because I'm unsure how a game in a top-down perspective could be scary. Same with Lone Survivor, actually. I'll have to see!

When I played the original Fatal Frame it was unlike anything I had played at the time. The Penumbra series was also up there.

These 2 series lead to me realizing I disassociate when I watch or play horror and I stopped consuming that genre.

Fatal Frame has gotten lost to history a bit, but I remember those games having the reputation as being the scariest that games have ever gotten when they were new.

I am not a fan of horror games all that much, and Half-Life Alyx is not one, but the horror elements are stronger than previous titles and I still haven't finished the game because of that. The game is incredible, but I just can't get past the scary parts.

“Hey there, Jeff” (0.0) that bit had me stuck for a month until I decided to push through it!

I found 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors to be very unsettling. I played it in bed at night with headphones on and it totally sucked me in. I guess this is a different type of horror to many of the games suggested here, which I personally don't find scary.

Ohh I've wanted to play the zero escape series at some point. I didn't realize it could be unsettling! Cool I will put it on the list, thanks!

The first game is much creepier than the second, I think due to a combination of the character designs, the writing and the general plot. The second game feels more akin to Danganronpa, in that the characters and setting are a bit surreal. Because it was a 3DS game, it also uses cartoony 3D models that make everything a bit lighter and less gritty than the original game. I haven't played the third one yet (still need to get around to 100% completing the second game).

Some games it was just the difficulty that scared me.

There were plenty of jump scare games that definitely got me like the early RE and SH games. Even Metroid games got me when I was a kid.

I haven't tried a horror game in more than 20 years though!

How has nobody mentioned Condemned yet? That game is unnerving from the very first minute you start playing.

Condemned 1&2 are excellent. I would love if they made a game like that again

The Cradle level in Thief 3 will forever and always be the scariest experience I've ever had in any video game, including horror games. It elevated an otherwise mediocre game to be a worthy entry besides the first two games.

I've never gotten a chance to play the thief games. They look right up my alley, though!

They're great. Just avoid the reboot. Its developers didn't even play the old ones.

Ahh, that's such a shame when that happens. I'll avoid it like the plague then!

I'm not a horror game enjoyers so my scariest games are Subnautica and Dredge both of which were already mentioned. But after reading some of your responses I'll recommend you Hellblade Senuas Sacrifice. It's not a horror game but it's an incredible intense experience. Headphones are a must tho.

Hellblade had some of the best audio design I've heard in a game. I'm curious what games will take inspiration from it in the future

@Megaman_EXE Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It is an absolute masterpiece in it's genre, the next 3 scariest games I've played pale in comparison to it, and all of them are also by Frictional Games. Frictional is an A+++ studio.

I really liked Amnesia when it was first released. Also, penumbra is really good, too. I always recommend them to people! I think maybe I've desensitized myself to frictional games development style because I don't tend to find their games scary anymore. Their latest game did have me tense for a bit, but it quickly wore off as I got used to it :(

I'm chasing that high of getting scared haha. I'm not sure what to do. I figure at this point I just need to play everything I can get my hands on

Darkwood. Incredible 2d survival horror game.

The first fear game really scared me when I was younger. I was 16 maybe and that's how I found out I don't like ghosts haha.

Playing in ym room at night alone in the dark. Ghosts coming out that I can't hurt haha

Fuck that was bad

Recently, some games that shouldn't have freaked me out, but did, were parts of Outer Wilds and Subnautica. Subnautica, in particular, got me with a very good jump scare that I think made me jump harder than any horror game has in the past decade lol.

I find games that induce dread really help with being scared. If you have any niche titles I would love to hear them too. I must have missed a lot probably anything prior to 2005. But even recent titles there's a chance I could have missed them too!

You should play voices of the void then. Game is chock full of random spooks with lots of very quiet and relaxing downtime, so they hit pretty hard when they happen.

I've really liked my time with Signalis. It does some neat stuff with it switching between the top down sections and first person puzzles/segments.

The world building and nods to other horror games was a lot of fun! I hope they make more horror titles in the future

Your ability to be scared has more to do with your ability to be immersed in the game. Some people need outlast and some people only need minecraft. But also if you play amnesia as it was intended it is very scary. You can also run around a table repeatedly and get a good look at tge monster if you are not in the "horror mood" nothing is scary.

Metro 2033 and Half-Life 2 lol, I cannot play horror games. I quit Metro, couldn't help myself.

But at least I completed all HL games apart from Alyx. With all achievements on base HL2 and EP2.

Ravenholm was manageable if I play without sound 🤣 But there was a long tunnel section in EP1 that was very uncomfortable and dark, felt longer than Ravenholm.

Probably one of the VR ones.

Phasmophobia is tense and mostly because you can die and get no points, but there's plenty of VRChat horror worlds as well. The quality varies wildly though, and you often face the worst VR horror of all: awful frame rates.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice had such a vivid portrayal of auditory and visual hallucinations and the psychological aspects thereof, as well as being rooted in genuinely spooky themes. Playing it in the dark with headphones was a truly psychologically scary experience and it didn't really rely on jumpscares for the scary factor. ( which to me is a huge plus )

Did anyone play the Blair witch game? I didn't find it too scary, but the woods in that game are phenomenal. I thought they did a great job with making it feel like you were actually in a forest.

It's gotta be Penumbra: The Black Plague and Amnesia: The Dark Descent back when I played them 12 years ago. Not many games have created the same amount of tension for me while playing.