The Scariest Game You've Ever Played
Author: Asandra al'Terra
For some reason, many of us humans tend to enjoy being scared witless by horror stories in any form. Perhaps it’s because of a sense of insulation – the thought that this kind of thing could never happen to us. Even though we may be sleeping with the lights on, we’re still safe in our beds (except for the monster living in the closet, of course).
Horror video games add another level to that terror: rather than being passive observers of someone’s story in a book, campfire story, or movie, we become active participants who are running the show (or being run by it). These games also tell us a lot about ourselves – for example, I now know that I make an excellent and willing backseat driver but can’t actually play without a good concentration of ethanol in my blood.
In fact, the scariest game I’ve ever played was one where I gave away the controller within about five minutes – Outlast. In this game, you’re sent to an asylum that (of course, of course) is abandoned-looking, and chock full of horrors.
The catch is the part that scared me the most – you have no weapon. You’re armed only with a video camera to record the terror inside, and your only choices for survival are to run or hide.
I think my friend and I lasted maybe an hour. We stopped playing shortly after I got up to stretch in place, and he shouted, “DON’T LEAVE ME.”
It was a… stressful evening, to say the least, and I haven’t played/watched a horror game since.
Hallowe’en is approaching, though, and with its proximity comes a renewed desire to play (or, rather, make a friend play) another scary game. I turned to the members of TarValon.Net and asked for help: what was the scariest game you have ever played?
Some of the fears came from games that aren’t normally associated with horror games: Leira Galene, for example, couldn’t finish Assassin’s Creed 2 because of the heights (and, while I did complete the game, playing it on my large TV always made me feel very uncomfortable). Ealandrelle Melyma had the same feeling about Mirror’s Edge – it was another DNF.
However, this seed is a key to understanding what makes people particularly scared of given games. Most of those mentioned here happened to catch onto a particular personal fear and expand it – and the more personal, the bigger the fear. For example, Eli Soljourn stated, “For me personally, the feeling of helplessness is way more scary than psychological horror or mystery horror. Maybe because I rely on other people so much in real life, due to my disability, but that just creeps me out more than anything else.” This element of helplessness occurs in games like Outlast, Amnesia, and Among the Sleep. Eli Gaidin continues: “You don't fight the monsters, you simply run. The feeling of being powerless really gets under my skin, and these games all portray that feeling really well. I love them and hate them at the same time.”
In stark contrast, few people mentioned Resident Evil (RE), a famous survival horror game. Fraghin Alaxinar, an avid RE fan, enjoys most of the series. “I've been playing it since the first one and I really enjoy the games,” he said, “But in terms of being scary, it's not really up there. It has some scary moments to be sure, but Resident Evil has always been more action based, especially in later iterations.” Even so, it has its fans. Soronhen Ciryaher remembers playing the “groundbreaking” first RE game fondly: “[I’ll] never forget killing all the lights, turning up the sound, and playing it through.”
The balance of action and slow burn is also really important. Even in games that aren’t typically considered horror, like Bioshock, atmosphere is key. “I do enjoy games with deep plots and twists and I would be more freaked out by suspense and intrigue and pyschological headfu...*cough* things trying to mess with your head, than something that's just throwing buckets of blood at you,” says Inanna Landred.
Atmosphere is also really important to perhaps the strangest horror game of which I’ve ever heard. Alora Sionn was terrified by Five Nights at Freddy’s, a game where “the things trying to kill you are animatronic life sized robots shaped like whimsical animals.”
Not only are things trying to murder your face, but “the game starts out making you think everything will be ok, and it slowly builds the sense of not feeling safe and secure.” The anxiety grows through this, and a palpable change in game difficulty: “you have to last through the night with limited resources [and] multitask through all the cameras and the doors as the animatronics get smarter, faster and more unpredictable. It adds that extra stressor to the human psyche.”
Would Alora play it again? No. “It does have replay value and it is fascinating in a way, but it just gets to me too much.”
She isn’t the only one to not want to touch a terrifying game again – Zanus Athara won’t touch 40 Winks, a PS1 game, anymore, either. “I found it so scary because of the opening cut-scene with the brother and sister, mainly because it reminded me of me and my twin sister, so maybe the fact I could relate the game to my real life aided in scaring me…It is funny how it must be more than 10 years since I played this game and can remember it so vividly, it must have really had an effect on me.”
After all of this discussion, however, we still seem to have an overall ‘winner’ of our highly unscientific thread, judging by the number of times it’s been mentioned: Silent Hill 2, which Cursor Wrathwind described as “a traumatizing game.” He continues: “The incredible psychological depth and symbolism worked into every facet of the game is so unnerving, even though most of it is only perceived subconsciously. The fears of the game are very human...it's about lost love, suicide, childhood abuse, bullying...and the ability to deceive ourselves about the darkness within our own hearts. It makes such brilliant effect of haunting music, sound effects, limited visual fields, and psychological imagery in a way I've never seen before. The game terrifies me, even today, and after I finished it I felt emotionally RAVAGED.”
Want to see the other games mentioned or join in on our discussion? We’ll be keeping our interview thread active all through October. Click here, or comment below, to join the conversation!
