Summary
Horror in video games hits differently than any other kind. Unlike movies, books, or TV, the onus is on the player to resolve whatever spooky situation might transpire. The genre continues to innovate, but sometimes the most powerful scare is the one the player didn’t expect. RPGs are a frequent culprit for this - sneaking frightening experiences into the story to shake things up.
RPGs tend to tell grand, sprawling storiesin complex worlds. That gives the developers the license to fill those worlds with all manner of monsters, locations, and characters that make the blood run cold. It’s one thing to threaten the character the player has been building for 60+ hours, it’s another thing to scare their wits out in the process.
Why it’s Scary:
How does a sequel show it isn’t messing around? Kill the protagonist in the opening. This wasMass Effect 2’s gambit, and it set the tone for a much darker mid-section to the trilogy. Elements of the originalMass Effectwere frightening, but the sequel took things to new extremes. The player is forced to work for one of the previous game’s main villains, whilst being hounded by a silent race of insectoid body snatchers.
The influence of the reapers intensifies throughout the main storyline, and the side quests offer little comfort. From thehaywire AI of theOverlordDLCto the eerie silence of the Normandy crash site, a sense of despair, isolation, and the end of everything.
Cut from the same cloth asPanzer Dragoonwith a blend of flying and ground combat, many a poor soul likely picked this 2004 PS2 title up thinking it would be a light fantasy romp. The game is actually a disturbing, unrelenting march through a desolate world where the only character having any fun is the player avatar - a bloodthirsty maniac.
Themes of abuse, cannibalism, and insanity permeate the plot, and the game’s score reflects this with abstract, urgent orchestral arrangements. Some of the in-game imagery plays on the idea of corrupted innocence, and while there isn’t much explicit gore, the unease lingers.
TheVampire: the Masqueradeseries has enjoyed a reputation for kitsch, gothic fun ever since it made the jump from the tabletop to desktop.Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlineswas the second installment, and it was a massive increase in scope from its predecessor, not least because it was among the first to utilize Valve’s Source engine.
That atmosphere was routinely sinister, and led to one level so terrifying it lives in infamy to this day. Ostensibly, the Ocean House Hotel mission is a routine fetch quest, but once inside, it’s anything but. Soft, disjointed piano breaks the silence, threatening messages are scrawled on the walls, and an invisible phantom tries to kill the player with hurled objects. The only way to explore this level is slowly, never knowing what might fly across the room next.
For many, the most familiar thing aboutEarthboundis Ness, the player character, immortalized by theSuper Smash Bros.series. Increasingly though, the third installment in theMotherseries hasgained a cult followingbecause of its surprisingly macabre nature.
The innocent, cartoonish outer layer peels back to reveal a game with the oddity and menace of a David Lynch film. Enemies are abstract, the fabric of the world changes, and at the culmination, the party faces Giygas - a swirl of screaming chaos so incomprehensible that even its attacks can’t be understood.
As John Carpenter’s 1984 filmThe Thingtaught us, the Antarctic is the last place anyone would want to encounter an otherworldly invader.Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, a Nintendo DS exclusive entry in thesci-fi RPG franchise, takes this notion to creepy new places.
The “Schwarzwelt”, the spatial distortion that acts as the villain of the game, is an unknowable, mind-bending threat. The creatures lurking within mimic friendly characters, jabber in unintelligible codes and toy with the player as the cast gradually succumbs.
Demon’s SoulsandDark Soulsboth toyed with horror iconography, butBloodbornetook it much further. It took the building blocks of its predecessors and used them to create a manic, gothic hellscape.
Pulse-pounding boss battles are one thing, but the tragic, brutal iconography ofBloodbornemaintains a constant sense of dread, especially once dream and reality begin to weave in and out of each other at the game’s midpoint. Almost no respite is offered, and the few friendly characters almost all meet grizzly ends.
For many, the relatable is more frightening than the supernatural. 2020 indie titleOmoriblends both, inviting the player to explore a hallucinatory mind palace of half-remembered places and people, uncovering increasingly disturbing details about who the protagonist is andhow he came to be there.
Half the game is spent in a classic, top-down 2D RPG environment, while the other is unfurled in interactive cutscenes with a hand-drawn, children’s storybook motif, which seems quaint at first, but gradually steers things to a darker place. Most unsettling is that the events recounted could have happened to anyone, and the game lays bare the stress and confusion of processing guilt.
Turn-based combat is not a gameplay style that naturally lends itself to horror. It’s hard to get too scared of a monster that waits patiently to be hit before hitting back.Shadow Heartsis one of the few games to get it right. Utilizing both a sanity meter and the “Judgement Ring” timing challenge, it creates a more tense battleground that rewards quick thinking and dangles a ticking clock over the player’s head.
The game is set in Asia shortly before the First World War, as the party attempts to forestall a demonic cataclysm. The problem is, not all of the characters can be trusted, and many of them are barely clinging to lucidity. Ifa party member’s sanitydoes deplete in battle, they will go berserk and turn on the others, sometimes transforming into a hideous beast in the process. The constant threat is enough to keep the game tense throughout.
Be Careful Out There
Many people wonder what they would do if they survived the apocalypse. InLook Outside, the answer is - carry on. The game offers little insight into what is actually happening, and tasks the player withtrying to survive 15 dayswhilst contending with monsters and widening rifts in reality. Stay alive, don’t go nuts.
Venturing outside is the best way to do this, and the game finds ways to shove the player out the door, but that way lies madness. The monsters are one thing, but human characters pop up too. Some of them can even be added to the party, but placing trust in them is always a calculated risk.
It’s clear something sinister is in store when a game opens with the cast of a stage play catching fire. This is how Eve is introduced, the eponymous antagonist of this 1998 PS1 title. The gameplay is built around turn-based combat and random encounters, and that’s about as normal as things get.
Most of the enemies players face are sickeningly disfigured victims of Eve’s powers, and they gradually become more grotesque as the game progresses. The narrative references cellular structure and mitochondria, and raises disturbing questions about how fragile the physical form really is.
