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Since it's the season, I've been looking for appropriate games to play. One problem: I'm a big scaredy baby. So I'm trying to find games that LOOK spooky, but AREN'T spooky. Games that use the dressing of horror elements, but aren't actually designed to be scary (exception being they might be loving hard and you're afraid of getting a game over). Let's name some poo poo. Castlevania - NES  You're a vampire hunter who goes to Dracula's castle and fights zombies, bats, ghosts, medusa heads, the grim god-damned reaper, and much more. Later games in the series continue in the same vein, where you fight all kinds of monsters, but it's never designed to be a horror series. Monster Party - NES  A boy with a baseball bat is enlisted by a gargoyle to help save his homeworld. Originally meant to use parodies of famous movie monsters, the game was changed to be a much stranger and wackier product. It's ALMOST scary because of how little sense anything makes, but in the end you are still smashing giant tempura with a baseball bat. Zombies At My Neighbors - SNES, Genesis  Tons of horror classics like chainsaw maniacs, killer dolls, mummies, vampires, werewolves, and more (oh, and zombies) are running around dozens of stages killing your neighbors. You use all kinds of weapons to kill them, save your neighbors, and make it to the next level. A top-down run-and-gun type of deal that doesn't take itself too seriously. Yokai Dochuki/Shadow Land - Arcade, PC-Engine, Famicom  A boy travels through Hell to reach Buddha and receive his fate for the afterlife. Along the way, you fight encounter a bunch of creatures from Japanese folklore. Again, not trying to be scary, but you ARE going through Hell and fighting ghosts and demons. Gregory Horror Show - PS2  Based on a series of shorts by the same name, you play as a new resident of Gregory House, a mansion that serves as a hotel for a variety of strange characters. Your goal is to collect lost souls and deliver them to Death, but beware that some guests will chase you down and terrorize you. Designed to play like a horror-adventure game, but filled with so much silliness and dark humor that it's not actually scary. Ghost Master - PC, PS2  You play as the titular Ghost Master, and you assemble teams of ghosts of various types with varying abilities, which you then use to scare the crap out of everyone. Strategy and puzzle elements make this game stand out, as does the cartoony Sims-like graphical style. So do you get the idea here? Name some more games that you feel fall into this category! Remember that it's not about if YOU find the games scary, but if the game was DESIGNED to be scary. Or not scary, as the case may be. Which is the case. We want "Monster High" here, not "A Serbian Film." Jamesman fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Oct 20, 2018 |
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Oct 20, 2018 01:19
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Maybe like... Dante's Inferno, Devil Daggers, some of the DOOM games, Viscera Cleanup Detail is that kind of what you mean? i dont know if i get it
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Oct 20, 2018 20:17
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Games that aren't spooky, but use spooky elements. Games that aren't intended to provide a horror experience, but use stuff you would find in horror. Those aren't bad suggestions. Focusing on Doom, most of the games in the series are just FPS action where you're blasting away demons, and it's not trying to evoke a sense of horror, despite the horror-like elements. Doom 3, however, DOES try to evoke that, so it wouldn't be what I'm looking for. Here's a few more examples. Luigi's Mansion - Gamecube, Nintendo DS  A series where Luigi goes around solving puzzles and rounding up ghosts. It's filled with ghosts, but done in the cartoony, safe, child-appropriate way Nintendo does almost all of its games. Grim Fandango - PC, PS4, Vita  A game set in the "land of the dead" where everyone's a skeleton, but this adventure game takes a film noir approach to things and doesn't go for spooks.
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Oct 20, 2018 20:40
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Wait never mind. If I had to think of a game that isn't really based on horror but still creeps me out sometimes, it's Subnautica. Maybe Dead Rising or Dying Light is also what you are going for? Kind of goofy games to me, but have some minor spots with horror in them. blackguy32 fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Oct 20, 2018 |
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Oct 20, 2018 20:46
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I've been calling it 'spoopy' and while I don't have any good suggestions I'd love to see more because I love that poo poo. It's like... horror aesthetic but campy? Like, a rotting skeleton falling out of a coffin is arguably spooky but a skeleton playing its ribs like a xylophone is spoopy, y'know what I mean?
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Oct 20, 2018 20:54
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Don’t know op but zombies at my neighbors is one of my favorite games. Timesplitters was not a horror game but had some aesthetic levels and had a horror / Hell tile set in the map maker mode.
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Oct 20, 2018 20:57
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How the hell could I forget Costume Quest! I liked the first one alot and if I had to play a Halloween themed game that wasn't scary, that would be it.
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Oct 20, 2018 21:02
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Half Life has zombies.
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Oct 20, 2018 21:04
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yeah, Costume Quest is definitely what you're looking for. MediEvil is also horror themed but definitely not horror. I mean, one could argue that being able to detach your head and crawl around is a kind of horror, but .. Ligament fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Oct 20, 2018 |
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Oct 20, 2018 21:08
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Ligament posted:yeah, Costume Quest is definitely what you're looking for. MediEvil is also horror themed but definitely not horror. speaking of zombies, Stubbs the Zombie was a really good game and everyone should play it.
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Oct 21, 2018 05:23
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Accounting (VR game) has some skeleton's if you're able to play VR at all, or just watch a Let's Play video of it. There's also an older isometric MMORPG called DarkEden, which pre-dates Diablo 1 that I really loved playing years ago. It's Humans vs Vampires, and later another race was added, but had some really cool concepts for such as old game. There's no horror to it, but it has a great atmosphere/setting.
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Oct 21, 2018 06:09
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Ghost Master was sick btw Anyway OP I’d suggest Hollow Knight maybe? If bugs creep you out a lot then maybe not but it’s a good blend of the cartoonish and the somewhat unnerving
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Oct 21, 2018 06:13
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Grim Dawn is another horror themed ARPG I've played through that was fun. e: Also Torchlight II. Comic-y horror aesthetic. e2: Vampyr isn't a jump horror game, but has horror elements. kloa fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Oct 21, 2018 |
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Oct 21, 2018 06:22
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Most people rag on Fable 3 for being the worst of the series, but I really like the main villain, The Crawler, and thought it was a pretty unnerving antagonist.
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Oct 21, 2018 06:36
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Play some Painkiller
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Oct 21, 2018 06:40
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i dunno if these count but Sunless Sea and its sister game(s?) have a lot of horror imagery without being actively terrifying. Cultist Simulator is kind of the same way but a lot more text/setting horror elements than graphical
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Oct 21, 2018 13:39
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Killing Floor, DOOM, any Mario ghost level.
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Oct 21, 2018 15:22
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Slayaway Camp. It's a bare bones, puzzle game with a Friday 13th aesthetic. You're the killer. It has an official Jason tie in sequel. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit. It does the Zombies Ate My Neighbors thing, but as a genre mixing platformer. Plants vs. Zombies. All the rage a while back, in case you have been living under a rock. Only the first PvZ is free from micro-transaction hell. Don't bother with any sequels. Zafehouse: Diaries. Text based zombie survival. All the fun of being in the zombie apocalypse, with none of the gore or jump scares. It has a sequel I haven't tried. Attack on Princess fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Oct 21, 2018 |
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Oct 21, 2018 16:09
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Syndlig posted:speaking of zombies, Stubbs the Zombie was a really good game and everyone should play it. Man, that's a blast from the past. I have not thought of that game in like... fifteen years? Pretty sure I still have my physical copy in a box somewhere. If only I had an optical drive. Maybe Brutal Legend fits this thread? I don't know if all the metal cheese fits the term 'horror', but it is packed with grotesque and creepy enemy designs and leans into the theme so gleefully it's hard not to be swept away by its sheer enthusiasm, and I say that as someone who generally turns his nose up at metal. YMMV on the gameplay, though. I liked it.
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Oct 21, 2018 16:58
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Tomb of Tyrants Lets you build a dungeon full of monsters and serial killers and other assorted nonsense. My name is also a weird abbreviation of it.
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Oct 21, 2018 18:17
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Darkest Dungeon is an Eldritch horror themed game but is a turn based strategy game and has no jumpscares or anything of the sort. Xcom games are also full of body horror with your guys exploding and dying in gruesome ways, fusing them to machines, etc, but nothing jump scare or fear tension wise. Abyss Oddysey is a roguelike sidescrolling platformer with a spanish horror theme, and a much cartoonier suggestion is the same vein is Rogue Legacy. Both are, interestingly enough, by spanish devs as well.
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Oct 21, 2018 19:14
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I keep meaning to buy Wailing Heights when it's on sale but always forget. It presents itself as Universal Monsters in a jazz band which is very much my thing.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:56
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Killer7/Shadows of the Damned/Lollipop Chainsaw come to mind (and maybe some of Suda's other work) Shin Megami Tensei games are all about demons and monsters and cyberpunk stuff so maybe that also kinda fits but they're all huge RPGs so they're not exactly pick up and play for the season sorts of things.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:00
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Bloodborne is probably the ur-example, though it might verge a little into horror for you.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:04
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I don't know how I forgot about Plants vs Zombies. That's a great example. Lot of great examples so far. Keep em comin! Here's another one from me while I'm at it. Unholy Heights - PC, PS4, Switch, Nintendo DS  You're a landlord for an apartment complex, and your tenants are all monsters. Skeletons, ghosts, demons, werewolves, and more all show up to look for a rooms to rent. You decorate the apartments with the amenities they want, they pay rent, you buy more upgrades to keep them happy. And you do this so you have an army at your disposal when adventurers come by and try to attack you. Might lean more towards typical RPG elements, but the roster of tenants has enough spoopy characters that I feel it applies.
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Oct 22, 2018 02:43
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1stGear posted:Bloodborne is probably the ur-example, though it might verge a little into horror for you. bloodborne is absolutely straight horror, what the hell
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Oct 22, 2018 02:50
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Maniac Mansion! Sure, the Edison family are enslaved by a meteor and kidnapping people to harvest their brains, and your characters can be killed, but it's a point-and-click adventure. E: Shadow Hearts, and Shadow Hearts 2. Set before(#1) and during(#2) WW1, they're JRPGs following the world of Koudelka. You play as a 'Harmonixer' that can form pacts with demons; and a lot of the enemies are horror based, demons and zombies and the like. Sanity Points are a game mechanic, you get a vampire an adept and an exorcist as party members. A demon is after your soul to boot! The second game has some more humorous aspects, but necromancy is a major plot point. In the sequel, one of your party members is a homosexual pro-wrestler vampire. Also, the final boss of the first game is God. The outright spookiest part is an optional dungeon in the first game called 'Kowloon Fortress'  LadyPictureShow fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Oct 22, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 03:17
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I feel like the King's Field/Shadow Tower series probably fits into that category. Pretty much a proto-Dark Souls made by 'From Software' in the early days of the PS1, they were all pretty much first person dungeon crawlers but they were all fairly bleak and claustrophobic with a limited field of vision that added to the overall tension (also most of the series had no background music, so it was just trawling through dark dungeons wondering what was waiting around the next corner).
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Oct 22, 2018 04:44
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F.E.A.R. is a bit of a stretch since it's purposefully emulating Japanese horror flicks, but the actual game is all balls to the wall action interspersed with spook psychic girls and jump scares.
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Oct 22, 2018 04:54
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Death Road to Canada involves a lot of zombies but is cool and fun, not scary.
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Oct 28, 2018 00:13
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Oxxidation posted:bloodborne is absolutely straight horror, what the hell kind of, it's a horror story and aesthetic but its also about carving through werewolves with a giant straight-razor while dressed really fancy it's like saying resident evil 4 is a horror game. it is but thats not necessarily how you interact with it Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 00:17
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Always wanted to play Shadow Hearts Is Unholy Heights good? I’ll give it a shot if it’s worth it.
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Oct 28, 2018 00:28
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Rule of Rose kind of has all the aesthetics of a survival horror game, but then it ends up being just really melancholy and soul shattering
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Oct 28, 2018 06:11
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because i just played it, Return of the Obra Dinn
MY INEVITABLE DEBT fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 15:03
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Darkest Dungeon, straight up. The game isn't scary, it's just an unforgiving turn based rpg, but the setting is gothic horror, and a major mechanic of the game is how scared your characters are.  
Sandwich Anarchist fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 15:13
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I thought of two that were on Sega Genesis: Decap Attack and Haunting Starring Polterguy in Decap Attack you're a mummy that shoots his head. it has a fun soundtrack that I listen to sometimes. its also a good example of how weird games got when ported to USA consoles in the 1990's in Haunting you are basically Beetlejuice and have to scare off the living also check out Monster In My Pocket on NES which is absolutely horror aesthetics (knock off Universal Monsters and all) without being horror. also has a fun soundtrack. Ligament fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 15:13
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