Howdy! I'm currently writing my Bachelor Thesis on the topic of what design elements in digital horror games invoke anxiety in players. For that, it would be great if you could answer this short google forms question (it's literally just a single question), so that I can collect a list of some good games that I can analyse without personal bias! Feel free to send multiple responses if you want to!

https://forms.gle/3LFdzNnwqxohJDDA6

I'm glad for any help you guys can offer!

P.S.: I know this may be a question that has already been asked in the past, but I would like to collect this information in a way that I can properly reference within my thesis!

When I first saw Hello Neighbor, in its early Alphas and Betas, I thought it was genuinely kinda spooky. Maybe it was because I was probably, like, 7, but some parts of the atmosphere and tension in some earlier builds made me scared. Come nowadays, and Hello Neighbor isn’t exactly see as a Horror great. I think that there’s a few different elements this might be attributed to.

1. The lack of penalty for getting caught. At most, you lose some progress, and maybe an item, but you can just get back in a few minutes anyways. It’s annoying, not threatening, since sometimes people don’t care about getting caught.

2. The boring Yet convoluted plot. Hello Neighbor follows a story I don’t truly remember aside from a child accidentally offing her sister, then his dad trapping Him in the basement. And the lack of good visuals to represent this(as far as I can tell) cement this as a weak-spot to me. And the fact the third act is all a dream probably doesn’t help.

3. Overly convoluted puzzles, and impossible building shape with a lack of horror atmosphere. The building doesn’t make sense, and when the neighbor isn’t really any supernatural guy, it kinda falls and gets more “how?” In the annoyed sense, due to it being seen in broad daylight, and constantly having a safety net somewhere. And the puzzles are convoluted and confusing, and hard to really figure out unless you have prior knowledge.

These details among many glitches make Hello Neighbor much less a horror game, and much more a lesson on how NOT to make a horror game. And yet, I feel like certain details could mix and mash From earlier alpha builds and ew ideas to make it actually engaging and interesting to play. I’ll share, and see if people think I’m dumb, right now.

For point 1, I thought of something similar to what happens in Granny, where if you get caught too many times, you die, and reset. Obviously, if the game is as long as Hello Neighbor, I’d put checkpoints for where those deaths send you back somewhere, but it’d be probably after each act. This makes things more tense and stressful when you have to make sure not to stop caught by him, or else be forced to go Back much further. Giving back tension to this game. As for the Way you die, it’d be a Mix of the dream sequence from the Pre-Alpha or Alpha 1, and the ending of Alpha 1. I’ll explain the former, but the latter should make sense.

For point 2, I decided to overhaul the plot. Instead of it being a simple yet convoluted plot like THAT, I’m going to give simple plot points that can be expressed in atmosphere and design. The neighbor is an inhuman, creepy demon puppeting His own body around in unsettling ways, and is the cause behind children disappearances in the town the game takes place in, sacrificing them for his own pleasure. Simple, and has breathing room.

For point 3, the building will still be impossibly made, yet some of the rooms will have odd, fleshy parts of it. Some security cameras replaced by actual eyes and mouths in the walls, showing that the building wasn’t man-made, it‘s an entity acting and mimicking a house. The basement will Be like in Alpha 2 at the beginning, where it’s creepy, cramped, and dimly lit by candles, with runes and symbols all around, with red splotches around every rune.

The later parts of the basement become more organic, like a breathing mound that you’re trapped in, and listening to it breathe while making your way to the end of it. The final act part of the basement will be much darker than the white void, and show the neighbor’s true, demonic form, that form being the reason he grows giant. The methods of defeat being through some proper help from a higher power, since you alone wouldn’t be able to defeat this demon.(Aka, replace the dumb ways you hurt him with actual rituals against him), and the final strike will be the incantation to banish him, being written on his back by the player.

As for the puzzles, that’s pretty simple to fix, and I’m adding that I’m spreading the abilities across the three acts. First act, first player character, you have the double jump, though kinda nerfed. Second act, you have the crouch, but if you use it too long, you make A noise that attracts the neighbor once you stop crouching. In act 3m you have the 1-use shove, which will function the same as before. You lose all abilities in the final act.

for some bonus stuff, the atmosphere will get much more tense when the neighbor gives chase, using a mix of all the Alpha chase music to get across that you’re in danger and need to leave.

How did I do for pitching a redo of this game? Poorly? Good? Mixed? Did it make people consider taking elements from my ranting thoughts? You tell me, but I’m just glad I can finally let these ideas loose.

I know this is a generalized statement but I find boss fights in most horrors to be way too easy, I dont want a dodge roll in every horror but the Dodge mechanic from SH2 really helped add to the feeling of avoiding attacks on time rather than shoot shoot run aweay shoot shoot. I only wish the boss fights were more difficult because they could have been.

Any horror games that have really difficult and immersive boss fights?

He looks like Leon (RE4 Version)

I found it yesterday. it looks kinda buggy to me.

I switched through the monitor camera feeds several times, but nothing happened.

am I missing something?

Zoonomaly and Zoochosis for me

Will miss delight ruined poppy play time for me

You see I was excited because a few days ago poppy play time chapter 2 and 3 were added to switch and both chapter 1 and 2 great and so was chapter 3 until she showed up the first few loses we’re fine but after at least 50 losses it is not even fun anymore and basically it ruined the game for me 😢😭👎

I just want to say, I had an ok time, I would rate it an 8/10. Gameplay and pacing being my biggest complaints. Although some people I'm aware had an amazing time and that's fine!

But on a critical level, reflecting on my experience I found that the pacing (tied with the gameplay) seriously messed me up going through everything. You are constantly forced to open a menu to either profile people/add stuff to the board, etc which pauses the game basically. Or on Alan wakes sections you constantly have to go through the same 4 scenes and you have to change the scene up to 4 times going between them. Constantly pausing the game just to get a door to the next part where you do the same thing

On top of that the combat wasn't fun for me. After 13 hours I turned on the gameplay modifiers so I had infinite ammo and invulnerability so I could just get through everything cause the enemies are bullet sponges and I constantly wasn't able to dodge when I told the game to. It takes like 8 seconds to heal, 8 seconds to reload (seemingly) and while in combat it constantly messed me up. At least allow me to upgrade reload speed!

In conjunction to this getting ammo and health or advancing is always blocked off somehow. Always have to do something that is locked, needs a code, hidden somewhere nonstop. Literally every 5 seconds. I get it's technically survival horror, but dear lord just give me an easy win for once or some supplies without having to solve some math equation doing trigonometry. Like having to do all of that just to get a stash is annoying. I work all day and only have so much time, I don't want to solve over complicated puzzles every 5 seconds (I know people will say I'm just not smart). I just looked up most codes

Look, I like survival horror, I recently beat SH2R in a week after it came out and it did everything like this perfectly imo. Puzzles aren't easy but they're intuitive. You have to find things and play around with them, put pieces together and explore. But it was a matter of finding stuff and messing around with it. But it seemed to make logical sense

All in all the story was pretty good but felt stretched out, the graphics are awesome, great sound design, characters very flushed out, great lore and had really creative design. I even pushed myself through to get to the ending which didn't resolve and was unsatisfying

TL;DR I never got scared once, if anything it was just creepy/weird. Combat was annoying and gameplay messed with pacing so I never had "fun". Game has a lot of great ideas and elements but maybe just not for me

its a horror game in a old hotel you have a bb gun there was dead dogs in the back yard i sow markiplier play it and i can't find it now please if anyone nowes the name

It can be anything but it will only be "one" of that thing.

Playing Fatal Frame for the first time. The final boss kills you in one hit. She also can teleport and regenerates health every time she does. In addition to all this, the only save point is 10 minutes away past several enemies

I want to express how much i hate all bosses that can one shot you. It is genuinely a cheap tactic to make a game more difficult. More often than not the attack is a surprise or random, making it even more unfair. If it was on the hardest difficulty then sure, but it’s always a thing across all game modes

This isn’t isolated to older games. Resident Evil 4 remake decided to change Salazar’s boss fight to add a one shot move. Horrible decision

Does anyone actually enjoy bosses that can randomly one shot you?

I'm very curious as I do want to play it! It would also be great if you could answer a few questions!

How's the difficulty level? How does it compare to the original in your opinion (if you've played it) and which game in the series would be best for someone completely new to the series? How's the scare level?

Thanks and I hope those of you who bought it have been enjoying/enjoyed it! (Heard it's quite short so I'd assume at least some of you have finished it.)

Thanks!

Does anyone have a good list of free indie horror games

So I finally pushed through my fear of playing these games and bought Alan Wake 2 and silent Hill 2 for ps5. I never played any games of this genre except RE4 remake (not sure if it was classed as horror or action tbh so I don’t count it much). Played Alan wake Remaster it was “alright”, not really scary or anything. But 2 was way more at the start, till I got used to it. I think I was afraid of the idea of playing this games.

I hear tho silent hill 2 is really scary, but at this point idk what scary exactly means. I’m mostly annoyed of jump scares if it’s on every corner (but the Alan wake 2 ones, were not that crazy). Idk what to expect but I don’t wanna spoil myself on some randoms video about this.

I used to watch lot of thriller films and psychological horror, but for some reason always too scared to even touch a game. If anyone can help I would appreciate it. I also bought RE 2, 3, 5-6 on the Halloween sale

Would you rather be chased Lucifer in demonophobia or pyramid head in silent hill

The idea of playing as a monster and switching between monsters sounds pretty cool... but how would you execute it?

Hello guys. Has anyone played any third person horror games from the Google Play Store?

It's releasing next week and I haven't really heard much about it.

Posting this because I haven't seen much talk about it and the game seems fairly obscure, so I wanted to write a few paragraphs about what I love about this game. Personal loveletter if you will, me and my bf are having an absolute blast playing it together for quite a while.

Now, I haven't written a lot of reviews, so I'm just doing what feels right lol. I don't think I'll encompass everything I love in this game, but I will try to get the points I like the most across.

The Blackout Club is a stealth horror game, where each run with a randomly picked objective happens on one, quite large and well crafted map. Almost every enemy in this game is blind, however the noise system and enemy AI are crafted well enough for those enemies to still pose a challenge, especially that taking such an enemy permanently is something you can seldom do.

I don't want to spoil too much for the game for anyone wanting to try it. However one of the mechanics that demands additional stealth for the game is a special enemy that has chance to appear if the player makes either makes too much noise or a body/evidence of their presence (like broken down doors) gets discovered, and this chance increases each time this happens. This enemy is a looming threat for the rest of the mission. It is slower than the player's running speed, but it has doors all across the map it can crawl out of and the only way to see it is either closing your eyes ( A fairly cool mechanic, relevant for several objectives ) or by covering it in foam. With the way the map designed, you can get yourself trapped if you're not careful enough.

Speaking of which, I love how the map is designed, each building on the surface, consisting mostly of two story houses, is unique, in the underground however, again not spoiling too much, there is a great complex of what I could describe as a good modern art-like structure of an impressive scale and plenty of alternate paths. The map also unlocks sections as you progress, keeping the player from getting overwhelmed before they get to know the parts they're already familiar with.

The atmosphere is amazing too, the game plays a lot with the eldritch fear of the unknown, with sleep and sound being the main themes. The player characters are teens, and while a lot of the time portrayal of such is done poorly, here the writing and voice acting feels very natural. Same goes for the rest of the writing, it really sets the tone well.

I just love this game, I haven't even mentioned the different objectives, each having a quirk to them making each one feel distinct, and as you level up you unlock harder objectives which require better skills and knowledge of the map. There's also a fairly basic, but solid build system that can cater to your flavor of stealth. There's random events that can happen during missions especially in the later stage of the game. There's the movement and stamina management system that just feels really good.

I really recommend it especially if you got someone to play it with. This game didn't get nearly enough recognition it deserved.

I want to find some new horror games that i would like and play and actually get scared, i need a game that would keep me on my toes so i am DESPERATE to find some horror games (bonus points if they're coop too

I have played
cry of fear
Outlast
Resident evil 7
The complex Found Footage
FNaF games
Sons of the forest games (if they count)