Halloween Horror Game Recommendations

With Halloween right around the corner, there’s always plenty of scares including: coursework deadlines, peer pressure and our very own Horror game recommendations! We thought we’d give you a fright this Felix issues with our personal selection of horror games old and new, that you can enjoy this upcoming Halloween. So here’s our list:

Doki Doki Literature club

Let’s get two things out there. First of all, this game is absolutely free. Incentivised yet? The second point is that this game is short. It should not take you more than 5 hours to complete, and that’s including the time it would take to get the ‘good’ ending.

From the looks of it, this game looks like a colorful visual novel with pretty 2D girls. You let down your defences and play what seems to be an innocent dating simulator. But, when you least expect it, the game does a 180 and throws in something which takes you completely by surprise. From that point on, the game shows its true colours and things become more weird and distorted as you keep on playing.

A lot of classic horror relies on shock and scare tactics, preying on people’s fight or flight instinct. In this game, you see and experience different things which make you uneasy and put you on the edge. The game is brilliantly designed to achieve this effect with visual and audio distortions as well as clever fourth wall breaking here and there. You literally need to reinstall the game to play it again.

If you want something short, free and unique, this is the game to play this Halloween. The trigger warning at the beginning may seem odd and out of place, but believe me, things will turn when you least expect it, and they will turn for the weird.

Dead Space 1 & 2

You’d think that this game sounds horrifying, exploding babies, cultists, horrifically messed up corpses, and a intentionally limited number of resources. But there’s a quiet power behind this lovecraftian simulation of black friday’s aftermath. A sense of satisfaction that can be found in exacting vengeance upon jump scaring monsters, as you stomp on their crawling bodies, having tactically dismembered them and used telekinesis to ensure that the eldritch horror stays down. None of these give you the exact power fantasy you get in many sandbox games, but it does deliver a fantastic sense of survival.

You faced a threat, you were afraid, you had no means of beating it and all you could do was crawl away in terror. But what was once prey, has now become a badass engineer; complete with a huge arsenal of weapons and enough telekinetic power to make professor Xavier envious. By the end of the game you’re pretty much a walking apocalypse, making the undead wish they stayed dead.

TL;DR Engineering degrees help you learn how to mow down a super powered zombie horde

Alien Isolation

It’s behind me. Those three words are what it feels like to play this game, once you meet the Xenomorph there are few so called “safe zones”. Even more so with practically everything wants to kill you as if they witnessed you kill their dog, in a John Wick rage you will have androids, humans and xenomorphs hunting you down. Androids and humans may be a hassle, but Xenomorphs ... nothing even comes remotely close to the sheer terror this creature, and I do mean creature not enemy or program, generates. Everything you do has a grave consequence:

You try to find out where it is, using the scanner? It can hear you scanning. You try to wait it out in a hiding place? Go ahead, wait too long, it’ll still hunt you down. Use weapons and distractions to draw it away? It learns to recognise distractions and it traces them to you! In what seems to a game of you against a hyper intelligent military AI.

If you truly want to feel like you are in a Alien film, then by all means, this game will leave you dreading the overwhelming difference in league that lies between you, and the stealthy behemoth that stalks you. Never has the Bear Grylls phrase “Survive, Overcome, Adapt” been more suitable for a video game.

Writer’s Note- Also you play as an engineer. Why is every horror game protagonist an engineer you ask? No idea, but they survive, and that’s why I chose engineering.

Resident Evil 7

Consider yourself one of the family, in this extremely horrible simulator of meeting your SO’s parents as you find yourself in a decrepit house in Dulvey, Louisiana running for your life from wolverine style regenerating serial killers and not to forget Zombies; this is a resident evil game after all ;) . Returning to its original true horror roots, this installment in the resident evil series does not disappoint, with it easily being the scariest game in the series due to its close quarter nature setting as well as its spectacular stealth and running sequences.

Armed with handguns, shotguns, flamethrowers and explosives you pretty much macgyver weapons together in a more horror intense version of dead rising, as you scrounge for anything that you can get your hands on. All in all, just like the regenerative abilities of the monsters that dwell in the household, you’ll find that Resident Evil 7 ’s extremely tense atmosphere doesn’t stay down for long . From its creepy soundtrack to its in depth story, you’ll find yourself constantly on the edge of your seat as you attempt to unravel the mystery that is the Baker family.