There are a lot of horror game tropes I hate, like:
Jump scares
Cliche monster designs such as mutilated human, ghost woman, singing/giggling little girl, and worst of all, asylum inmate :cringe:
Having ‘insanity’ as a game mechanic
I also hate when horror games basically screams at you to “Be scared now!!!1!” including things like:
Player character breathing heavily when they see something you’re supposed to scared of.
Camera effects such as shaky cam, blurry cam, blood on camera or ‘insanity vision’.
A monster screaming in your face
A loud jumpscare music sting
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Dirt_Owl, do you even like horror games at all then?”
The answer is no. No I do not.
the worst horror game trope is youtubers screaming at horror games
Jump scares are the high fructose corn syrup of horror.
Today on Hexbear dot net, Dirt_Owl plays Amnesia: The Dark Descent and fills up the bingo card in one go
Reminds me of Japanese and Korean scary movies (need to find some Chinese ones to compare) where they don’t have jumpscares but do have body horror and creepy aesthetic which is pretty unsettling.
I once watched a little Japanese movie called “Noroi: the Curse” which was super cool. The psychic character was particularly memorable, as he’s the only one that understands what’s going on, but he’s super autistic so nobody pays any attention to him. It’s also a great snapshot of modern Japan and keitai culture circa 2004 (the same year as Lost in Translation immortalized). Highly recommend you download it. It has the creepy reality, we don’t have to make anything up, aesthetic in spades. Zero jump scares.
Not really horror scary per se, but Outer Wilds has some good ol’ existentialist dread nestled all throughout on top of being an excellent story and puzzle game to boot
Yume Nikki - It’s all about vibes, and it does it so, so well. Best of all, it’s free.
Some TW:
spoiler
Suicide, but really only at the very end.
Play soma and play the mode where the monsters cant attack you and enjoy creepy aesthetic and existential horror
See also: yume nikki, kinda up its ass but it’s an interesting experiment in creep
The cat lady (strong content warning for depression and suicidal ideation)
Little misfortune and Fran bow
