Horror Games Megathread

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Len: Jan 21, 2008; Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!

Xenomrph posted:

Was Moons of Madness actually bad? The trailer looked sweet and it’s got a “mostly positive” rating on Steam.

Everytime it comes up in any thread that isn't the Secret World thread it just gets "meh"

# ? Oct 24, 2020 02:44

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# ? May 15, 2024 01:34

Black August: Sep 28, 2003

For those with interest, I'm running that haunted-game story I talked about before.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3944412

# ? Oct 24, 2020 02:55

Sakurazuka: Jan 24, 2004; NANI?

I really wanted to like it and the best I could come up with was 'meh'.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 02:55

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Also I�m late to the party but I really liked Soma; I�m a huge sucker for undersea thriller stuff so the setting was automatically my jam, and the philosophical/existential horror stuff was great. I had a blast with it.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 03:13

Faffel: Dec 31, 2008; A bouncy little mouse!

Soma was awesome and did a lot with the framework/feel/setting Starfish without copying the plot directly. Great game and my favourite Frictional since Black Plague tbh.

https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6953

Some terrible nerd like myself may find this write up interesting, from the author of Soma's most obvious inspiration.

Faffel fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Oct 24, 2020

# ? Oct 24, 2020 03:15

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

I�m not familiar with Starfish, what is it?

# ? Oct 24, 2020 04:03

Faffel: Dec 31, 2008; A bouncy little mouse!

Book by Peter Watts about a bunch of weirdos working on a geothermal harvesting plant on the bottom of the Juan de Fuca strait. It's a pretty old book now, being from '98 but it has some solid prescience, some stuff that aged poorly, and some generally interesting ideas.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 05:38

RightClickSaveAs: Mar 1, 2001; Tiny animals under glass... Smaller than sand...

Just finished Amnesia: Rebirth, it didn't do a lot to knock SOMA off my place as favorite Frictional game, but had its moments. It could have been at least a couple hours shorter but I think that about almost everything lately. The environments get more interesting after the first couple hours, though SOMA's sci-fi derelict spaces are still the winner in my nerd ranking, Rebirth does a great job especially with the alien ruins/old Roman excavation mashups. Still a little too much exposition through notes for me, although the categorization of it all in the journal made it easier to go back and tie things together a little more. I agree with the poster from earlier who said the cast of characters was a little overloaded, I struggled to remember 3/4 of them.

There was a little too much run and hide from monsters for me, but it was far less than Dark Descent had and not nearly as frustrating as some of SOMA's sections were pre-harmless monsters patch. Also, Rebirth handles fail states pretty well, it's a little annoying as you have to wait a while for the sequence to play out, but it generally seems to place you somewhere so you can just get on with the game. I probably hit it at least 10 times, a couple were intentional because I just got tired of trying to sneak around.

I like the chatty protagonist, the commentary is often perfectly timed, and her cries of pain when you do something stupid always made me pull back on the bunny hopping around like a loon for at least a few minutes.

Faffel posted:

Soma was awesome and did a lot with the framework/feel/setting Starfish without copying the plot directly. Great game and my favourite Frictional since Black Plague tbh.

https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6953

Some terrible nerd like myself may find this write up interesting, from the author of Soma's most obvious inspiration.

Ohh I was not aware of this, thanks for the link! This is really cool to read, I have not read Starfish but read Peter Watt's Blindsight. Also his site seems to defy you to find who actually wrote it, I had to click around a few different places before I realized who it was.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 06:08

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Xenomrph posted:

Was Moons of Madness actually bad? The trailer looked sweet and it�s got a �mostly positive� rating on Steam.

"Mostly positive" as Steam understands it is a fairly low standard. It means about a 75% rating, which I think is more or less what it deserves as a game that is competently executed, but in pretty much no way really remarkable or memorable.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 08:08

Danger - Octopus!: Apr 20, 2008; Nap Ghost

Faffel posted:

Book by Peter Watts about a bunch of weirdos working on a geothermal harvesting plant on the bottom of the Juan de Fuca strait. It's a pretty old book now, being from '98 but it has some solid prescience, some stuff that aged poorly, and some generally interesting ideas.

Word of warning - later in the series, things get really gross really fast. One of the characters is a sexual sadist and there are some lengthy and very graphic depictions of torture and mutilation. It honestly ruined the series for me because it was doing a bunch of great stuff until that point.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 14:00

Hector Delgado: Sep 23, 2007; Time for shore leave!!

Visage comes out on consoles on Oct 30. :dance:

# ? Oct 24, 2020 17:53

Faffel: Dec 31, 2008; A bouncy little mouse!

Danger - Octopus! posted:

Word of warning - later in the series, things get really gross really fast. One of the characters is a sexual sadist and there are some lengthy and very graphic depictions of torture and mutilation. It honestly ruined the series for me because it was doing a bunch of great stuff until that point.

The sequels are bad but the details behind why that particular plot point happen are kinda cool. Dude was in full edginess mode back then I think.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 20:25

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Layers of Fear 2 is currently available for free on the Epic store, for anyone who is interested.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 20:27

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Cardiovorax posted:

Layers of Fear 2 is currently available for free on the Epic store, for anyone who is interested.

Are you loving kidding me, I just bought that as part of a horror bundle. Son of a bitch.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 20:41

woodenchicken: Aug 19, 2007; Nap Ghost

Xenomrph posted:

Was Moons of Madness actually bad? The trailer looked sweet and it�s got a �mostly positive� rating on Steam.

Quality of the experience aside (it's boring), it's also the slowest running modern game I've encountered. Move over, Dishonored 2, Arkham Knight and Horizon Zero Dawn, there's a new system requirements king in town, and it'll regularly drop to 40fps no matter how much you lower the quality settings of its samey corridors.

# ? Oct 24, 2020 22:09

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

so uh i was going back through this thread and found a twine game called CYBERQUEEN that got posted, basically about being tortured by SHODAN

i went in expecting body horror, and while i kinda got that, i did not expect going in that it was going to be, straight-up very overtly, a hosed up BDSM thing where the author was very clearly writing every word past a certain point one-handed, and piss and/or poo poo come up nearly every page.

don't play CYBERQUEEN unless your bedroom tastes are the kind of poo poo that makes people want to gently caress Pyramid Head.

e: on a less angry note, does anyone have any recs for nasty body horror stuff that goes for "this is cool/scary as poo poo" vs "this is made to get like two people on earth rock hard and severely put everyone else off"

# ? Oct 25, 2020 09:31

Jack-Off Lantern: Mar 2, 2012

No, he wrote it one handed from the very start.
Thanks above poster, for making me curious. I did not heed your warnings

# ? Oct 25, 2020 09:48

Piss Witch: Oct 23, 2005

WeedlordGoku69 posted:

so uh i was going back through this thread and found a twine game called CYBERQUEEN that got posted, basically about being tortured by SHODAN

i went in expecting body horror, and while i kinda got that, i did not expect going in that it was going to be, straight-up very overtly, a hosed up BDSM thing where the author was very clearly writing every word past a certain point one-handed, and piss and/or poo poo come up nearly every page.

don't play CYBERQUEEN unless your bedroom tastes are the kind of poo poo that makes people want to gently caress Pyramid Head.

e: on a less angry note, does anyone have any recs for nasty body horror stuff that goes for "this is cool/scary as poo poo" vs "this is made to get like two people on earth rock hard and severely put everyone else off"

https://pantagruel.itch.io/discover-my-body

Discover My Body is the only one I can think of.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 09:51

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

WeedlordGoku69 posted:

so uh i was going back through this thread and found a twine game called CYBERQUEEN that got posted, basically about being tortured by SHODAN

i went in expecting body horror, and while i kinda got that, i did not expect going in that it was going to be, straight-up very overtly, a hosed up BDSM thing where the author was very clearly writing every word past a certain point one-handed, and piss and/or poo poo come up nearly every page.

don't play CYBERQUEEN unless your bedroom tastes are the kind of poo poo that makes people want to gently caress Pyramid Head.

e: on a less angry note, does anyone have any recs for nasty body horror stuff that goes for "this is cool/scary as poo poo" vs "this is made to get like two people on earth rock hard and severely put everyone else off"

strong post/avatar tension going on here

# ? Oct 25, 2020 09:52

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

Discendo Vox posted:

strong post/avatar tension going on here

my problem with that game is not "horny," horny is in and of itself perfectly acceptable.

my problem with that game is not "horny + horror," there's poo poo that makes that work, HR Giger, Cronenberg, Clive Barker etc.

my problem with that game is that, not only is the balance tilted way more towards horny than i would expect, but in addition, the specific things the author is apparently horny for makes me not want to see the inside of their refrigerator, for fear that i'd find more severed heads than food.

e: like i'm ordinarily a kink-friendly person, but if your kink is "receiving severe brain damage while pissing and making GBS threads yourself all over a blood-soaked operating table" then uh well good for you but i'm running as far in the opposite direction as i can, at speeds that would probably make sonic the loving hedgehog go :stare:

# ? Oct 25, 2020 11:46

Pyrolocutus: Feb 5, 2005; Shape of Flame

Between Agony, Lust For Darkness, and this, there's been a bunch of horror games where I've had to go "well, it could be okay if the sexual stuff is pulled off well...annnnd every review is saying the sexual stuff is done horribly wrong." *scratches game off list*

# ? Oct 25, 2020 14:04

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

"Acceptable depiction of sexuality" is about as personal a subject as anything gets, which is why smart developers who actually want their game to have wide appeal don't even try.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 14:06

FirstAidKite: Nov 8, 2009

They really should just go full hellraiser with it imo

# ? Oct 25, 2020 14:15

Hel: Oct 9, 2012; Jokatgulm is tedium.
Jokatgulm is pain.
Jokatgulm is suffering.

Pyrolocutus posted:

Between Agony, Lust For Darkness, and this, there's been a bunch of horror games where I've had to go "well, it could be okay if the sexual stuff is pulled off well...annnnd every review is saying the sexual stuff is done horribly wrong." *scratches game off list*

Yeah for too many games of that type has sexual horror that amounts to trans people, women enjoying sex and sexualized mutilated female bodies. which feels very lovely.

Now I kinda want a horror game where the creepy demonic sex cult are just good, inclusive and helpful people and not the villains causing the end of the world/ killing everyone.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 14:46

Eox: Jun 20, 2010; by Fluffdaddy

Hel posted:

Now I kinda want a horror game where the creepy demonic sex cult are just good, inclusive and helpful people and not the villains causing the end of the world/ killing everyone.

The player character is a puritan and looking at sinful things drains your sanity bar

# ? Oct 25, 2020 15:25

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Even with a "good" sex cult, anything that's not hetero man on top will be seen as gross and horrible by someone.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 15:41

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Which is pretty much fine, honestly. "Don't kinkshame" also means "don't shame people for not being into or comfortable with your own kinks." There are a lot of things I wouldn't be willing to do and also don't want to have to see.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 15:48

The Chad Jihad: Feb 24, 2007

I feel like you could make serious bank on a quick Phasmophobia rip-off where the ghosts are sexy and the pcs are priests and nuns

# ? Oct 25, 2020 15:50

FirstAidKite: Nov 8, 2009

Hel posted:

Now I kinda want a horror game where the creepy demonic sex cult are just good, inclusive and helpful people and not the villains causing the end of the world/ killing everyone.

Yeah, Hellraiser

# ? Oct 25, 2020 16:42

Blockhouse: Sep 7, 2014; You Win!

FirstAidKite posted:

Yeah, Hellraiser

The problem is Cenobites think solving a rubiks cube counts as consent

# ? Oct 25, 2020 19:35

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Blockhouse posted:

The problem is Cenobites think solving a rubiks cube counts as consent

I think in one of the books they were actually willing to back off after the person solving it told them they had no idea what the thing was for.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 19:41

Marshal Radisic: Oct 9, 2012

I thought that Christoph Frey's The Space Between had a good handle on depicting sexual anxiety, and the most salacious image in that game is a woman standing behind a sheet with two holes cut out of it.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 19:53

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Marshal Radisic posted:

a woman standing behind a sheet with two holes cut out of it.

Jesus Christ NSFW that poo poo, holy gently caress

# ? Oct 25, 2020 20:10

a mysterious cloak: Apr 5, 2003; Leave me alone, dad, I'm with my friends!

Marshal Radisic posted:

I thought that Christoph Frey's The Space Between had a good handle on depicting sexual anxiety, and the most salacious image in that game is a woman standing behind a sheet with two holes cut out of it.

MODS?

Blockhouse posted:

The problem is Cenobites think solving a rubiks cube counts as consent

Frank knew what he was doing. Kirstie, not so much. But they at least considered letting her go. Sort of.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 20:14

Neo Rasa: Mar 8, 2007; Everyone should play DUKE games.

FirstAidKite posted:

Yeah, Hellraiser

Still sad this never got fully created and released can you even imagine this poo poo on the NES from the publishers of Chiller like holy poo poo

# ? Oct 25, 2020 20:16

RightClickSaveAs: Mar 1, 2001; Tiny animals under glass... Smaller than sand...

WeedlordGoku69 posted:

e: on a less angry note, does anyone have any recs for nasty body horror stuff that goes for "this is cool/scary as poo poo" vs "this is made to get like two people on earth rock hard and severely put everyone else off"

You know, I really struggle to think of any horror games that have that as a central theme. I'd be interested in any recommendations as well.

It did make me think of a recent find, Online Simulator: https://rosalievile.itch.io/onlinesimulator
This one sorta takes a fetish aspect of a specific thing dental expansion but has fun with it, it's a very funny game, and one of the internet simulation genre (think Hypnospace Outlaw) where the interface is a 90's-themed browser world filled with weird rear end communities you have to poke around in.

Also as another excuse to squawk about Soma some more, it has body horror as one of the concepts touched on, but is not nearly the main focus.

Also also a form of body horror is a plot point in Amensia Rebirth, although also not the central idea; there are a few scenes specifically that deal with it (pretty big spoilers: the protagonist is being turned into a mindless, flesh eating ghoul, and you get a glimpse of your decaying face toward the end, as well as a lot of flashes of your arms starting to become cadaver-like throughout the game

Lifeglug posted:

https://pantagruel.itch.io/discover-my-body

Discover My Body is the only one I can think of.

I love stuff like this, minimalist but really effective and uses a specific art style to make the most out of it.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 21:16

weekly font: Dec 1, 2004; Everytime I try to fly I fall
Without my wings
I feel so small
Guess I need you baby...

Blockhouse posted:

The problem is Cenobites think solving a rubiks cube counts as consent

I think in two he says �it�s not hands that open the box it�s intent� or something when the doctor has one of his patients solve the box for him.

# ? Oct 25, 2020 22:19

Neo Rasa: Mar 8, 2007; Everyone should play DUKE games.

weekly font posted:

I think in two he says �it�s not hands that open the box it�s intent� or something when the doctor has one of his patients solve the box for him.

Yeah I always got the impression that if the person doesn't have some genuinely intentional curiosity they won't really mess with them. In that scene the other cenobites do start to roll out like it's business as usual but Pinhead pretty quickly also comes out and makes it clear that this is just some random kid playing around.

With Kirsty though they're all like, really? You're hanging around investigating and being around while the box opens but totally not interested in what the box unleashes how many times now? Which made sense since technically she DID want to head to the other side and find out wtf was going on with her dad.

# ? Oct 26, 2020 01:32

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Neo Rasa posted:

Yeah I always got the impression that if the person doesn't have some genuinely intentional curiosity they won't really mess with them. In that scene the other cenobites do start to roll out like it's business as usual but Pinhead pretty quickly also comes out and makes it clear that this is just some random kid playing around.

The Cenobites make for a really interesting horror antagonist because in a lot of ways, they're not really antagonists at all. They don't go after anyone of their own initiative, you have to specifically invite them. They're also exactly what they claim to be: a group of like-minded people dedicated to exploring sensations beyond the limits of human comprehension. "Sensations beyond human comprehension" tend to be beyond human comprehension for a reason, which is where the horror comes from, but fundamentally they don't do anything other than to give people exactly what they asked for. Whether that's a good thing or not depends entirely on whether the summoner really understood what they were getting into.

What they do to people is gruesome and horrifying without being intentionally cruel or malicious, which is a very interesting dichotomy given the narrative role they fulfill.

# ? Oct 26, 2020 01:47

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# ? May 15, 2024 01:34

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

They're not great about respecting the withdrawal of consent, that's for sure.

# ? Oct 26, 2020 01:49

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