I’m convinced horror games are the best medium for horror. I love reading horror fiction and watching horror movies too. I just feel like when playing a good horror game, the player is “in the drivers seat”. I’m open to hearing other opinions though!
Mixed media that you don’t realize is mixed.
One time I was reading a webtoon, and out of nowhere it played a jump scare video. I didn’t realize it wasn’t just a series of images.
Not that jump scares are high quality horror, it was just something interesting.Imagine reading a book that somehow magically played creepy subtle sound effects to fuck with your subconscious as you read. An audiobook could maybe do something like that, although you’d be more primed for it. Maybe an ebook could do it somehow.
I remember playing the FEAR demo and it would subtly start mixing in a raising heartbeat prior to a jump scare to dial up your anxiety.
My favourite medium for horror is audio readings of written stories
Short stories.
Horror novels bring me down. Horror games too scary for me to deal with, the movies are either dumb or too, well, horrifying.
But short story horror is phenomenal. I have read every edition of “The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” and holy crap short horror stories are some of the best writing I have ever encountered, ever.
agreed on games. no horror movie or book has ever made me the same way as the time I found out the AI in alien isolation will learn your hiding spots and kill you if you resuse the same one enough.
Horror podcast for me. Loved the white vault
VR
Agreed, at least when you define “best” by “scariest”. I’m unfazed by horror films and can handle horror games, but VR horror games are something else. Many of them I can’t even play due to being too scared to walk around the next corner.
I’m pretty hyped for the Steam Frame. Been waiting for a non Facebook standalone headset
Same, friend. I’ve been playing VR horror since the Vive and I’m itching for the Frame.
games imo, but only if you are properly creative with what you do, otherwise you end up with comedy at best. Watched a streamer play some horror game with friend where if you make too much noise at microphone, you die. Biggest difficulty they had was they kept laughing too much at everything. At the end streamer also commented about the design of the game and how it would have been better if there had been for example, monsters that react to your sound differently; maybe some have to be yelled at to stay away or some are attracted to sound or whatever. But instead the game was just “if sound exceeds certain treshold you die and thats it”.
With games you can do so much more than any other media, since its possible for you to “be there” and have more at stake than just reading or watching things happen to someone else. But you have to be creative about the game and cant be lazy on the gameplay design, otherwise might as well just not bother and do some other genre.
I’m with you which is why I’ve only ever played a handful of them. I know dead space isn’t like a true horror game cause other than a few jump scares it did not elicit much fear in me. But fuck silent hills, like all of them. Resident evil is kinda hit or miss like 1 was ok but 2 scared the fuck out of me, while 4 just felt kinda like an on rails shooter.
You may be right about classic horror and jump scares, but I think psychological horror needs more space and introspection, and that fits better with literature. That’s my opinion, of course.
Idk, something like Dead Space wouldn’t work as a written narrative.
A video game allows a lot more space and doesn’t limit introspection at all.
The only thing that would maybe be better as vague would be eldtritch horror type stuff, that isn’t supposed to be able to be explained or “visualized”.
On the other hand, despite there being countless games based on H. P. Lovecraft’s works, none of them (that I’ve encountered) hold a candle to his written word.
There is just something about cosmic horror that only works when reading. The nature of the horror being about unknown and literally indescribable creatures, visual depictions just never come close to what my brain conjures up while reading it.
That’s what it was, is eldritch along the same lines? Those are definitely better as written. May have not been as clear as I should have been.
I haven’t played Dead Space but from what I read about the plot, a shooter with aliens, I don’t think it fits the type of horror I’m talking about.
That is a very simple summary that does not convey any of the actual horror (body, psychological, and jump scares) that occurs in DS. Reading the plot will spoil the twists, but is not the same as playing the game and reading thru the in-game journals, experiencing the cut scenes, the ultra vigilance the game instills, or the aura of dread from every corner of the ship as you walk thru it.
It’s not. Everyone saying it is hasn’t actually read cosmic horror, and don’t know what it actually is.
Which is something that can’t accurately be conveyed from one person to another, you just have to read it.
The nature of cosmic horror means that no visual representation can ever be accurate.
Though maybe you weren’t referring to Lovecraft when you said psychological horror?
I was thinking of some Stephen King story (It, to be specific, which I think is his most Lovecraftian work) but I agree with you 100%, the charm of Cthulhu is largely the vagueness of its description, any drawing you see out there is ridiculous compared to what the novels do
It’s overarching plot is about a marker that slowly makes people go insane, the shooter is just a VERY small portion of the game.
okay, that’s not very shooter, but it’s still 100% body horror and gore, nothing even remotely close to psychological horror
What is your definition of psychological horror then? Because anything that messes with your mind, and stuff like that does, fits in it. Unless you mean a sub-genre.
According to your idea, everything is psychological since you process everything in your mind.
No, psychological horror is based on psychological damage, not physical harm: domination, psychological trauma, diffuse fears like the unknown or the indefinable, things like doubting reality and one’s own sanity.
There are movies and games that deal with it, but never as well as a first-person narrator who puts a partial vision into writing, that’s why Stephen King hates the adaptation of The Shining; it doesn’t capture this at all.
No, psychological horror is based on psychological damage, not physical harm: domination, psychological trauma, diffuse fears like the unknown or the indefinable, things like doubting reality and one’s own sanity.
Which dead space does…… and that’s what “affects the mind” means. Why did you think I meant just using it? Lmfao.
Video lacks the context, but you’re doing the surgery on YOURSELF to figure out if you’re insane or if it’s the marker making you.
That’s textbook psychological horror, there is of course other types, like HP and Stephen king as well.
it’s film and it’s nowhere near close. but just to use an obscure choice, a binaural radio play is very effective. sadly the only one i know of is deadhouse by the bbc
you have to lie down flat and wear headphones. the first episode concerns two people working on your corpse, while you become aware of what’s happening. i thought it was terrifying
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09zr1dk/episodes/player
https://archive.org/details/bbc-deadhouse
would love to know if there’s anything else like this
Oh wow, this is very cool. Thanks for the recommendation!
hope you enjoy :)
Film or books or other passive mediums. IDK, video games just don’t build the same tension or hit the same. The lack of control in the other mediums makes a huge difference in feeling scary.
Video game horror never makes me feel unfomfortable or frightened. Jump scares don’t even make me jump (often because I end up not looking in the right direction at the time).
I think video games are good for terror. Subnautica for example, reaper leviathans are terrifying, but not horrifying. You encounter a reaper, and it’s a spike in adrenaline, but you don’t lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling about it.
Subnautica is a special outlier and shouldn’t be counted because it triggers thlassophobia :P
In all other games, I feel more like when you see the characters being dumbasses in a movie and go “I can survive longer than these numbnuts.” And you do.
I assert that terror is terror.
I agree I feel like games have to rely on jump scares toouch which always feels cheap
For me, movies/tv or novels/short stories because games just don’t make me feel afraid. Seeing something happen to someone else is actually mkre immersive for me, because most games have game engine limitations that remind me I am playing a game.
It can still be good as a game, just hot as horrifying. Also, gore and violence are not horrific to me on their own either, they can compliment the real horror I find terrifying which is powerlessness or losing a sense of self.
VR survival horror.
VR is the best medium for horror. Everything is scarier compared to flat games.
The problem with horror games is that it depends on the GM and other players.
To be even more radical, I played an amazing horror larp, but it could have failed dramatically if a single player started to laugh, even if it was to release tension
