Per my own need to talk about some of the phenomenal games I've played (currently Oxenfree), this is now the Indie Horror Games thread. I got nothin'. Have at it.
it's just a "wander around and explore a girl's weird dreams" type game it's surreal and unsettling, but it's not exactly plot heavy? it's fun to see just how weird it is.
I loved Ib and Mad Father! I also like the yandere games like Shihori Escape, Yanderella and Mikoto Nikki. Paranoiac was good too.
-screams- I looooooove rpg maker games. Ib and Mad Father I both liked, though Mad Father was a little difficult to get through, writing-wise. The puzzles and weird monsters made up for it. I'm also a huge sucker for Paranormal Syndrome, which is a long game with a lot of interesting gameplay, and so varied in content that the chapters almost feel like different games. (The chapter that takes place basically in Hell is so personal aesthetic I cannot stand it.) It's a whole lot of good puzzles and horror without relying on things like gore or screamers to get to you. It makes you use your brain to solve things and put shit together and then scares the crap out of you and chucks all that logic it just teased out right out the window >u< Dreaming Mary is very well written but the first game to freak me out so bad I don't want to revisit it in a long time. That's not because of jumpscares or an excess of blood it... hit me thematically. I'll trigger warning in a spoiler because I feel like the trigger warning kind of IS a spoiler so for maximum story I would suggest jumping in, but if you do have triggers and want to be safe, Spoiler: tw for Dreaming Mary Child sexual abuse is the secret theme of the game. It's not played for shock, it's very heart-felt and well written, but it is using the fact that CSA is horrible and inspires feelings of horror. In any case, it's probably the game with the best art on this list, it's all very personalized and well done, the true/more complex endings are reaaaaally hard to get (I guide dangit'd it but some managed without) and the horror is... gosh... so fucking chilling. Damn. And one of my favorite weird indie games ever made (it's short but it's SUCH ATMOSPHERE) is Au Sable, a little sidescroller about HUGE MISTAKES and blood. I'm bad at sidescrollers but goddamn I worked SO HARD to complete this weird thing. I've played a lot of indie games and liked a lot of them but these are the horror/spooky ones that stick out to me upon thinking... oh yeah I remember Crooked Man being fun too, if not as fun as Ib or Paranormal Syndrome. I've only played it once, unlike Ib, which I have played a dozen times and should not be counted. I tend to stray away from jumpscare-heavy or really difficult games and go for atmosphere, so they should be more in the '16 bit nostalgia' area. @MayaaFeys are you me? I love love love Ib. Every time I play I have to force myself to pick someone other than Gary to shove my love and attention onto if I want a new ending, because I just love Weird Gay Older Brother so much and want to get his happy ending every time >u< The atmosphere is so good, the puzzles are so good, the writing is so good... I was hooked by all the weird art that is somehow so well suggested in a few pixels and that's still my favorite thing about the game. The weird art with weird names and the whole literally surrealist atmosphere it has. I knew I would love this game the first time I saw that... painting? Sculpture? Of that giant fish-monster in the deeps taking up the whole floor. Yeeessss ...and I know I just said that I love Gary so much and want him to be happy, but his bad ending i my favorite ending in the game >u< Spoiler I love just... not trying. Watching the big doll creep up on him until he starts screaming :3 And then you get that delightful 'oh god what happened to you' ending where the full horror of it just creeps up on you. Aaaaa. So suggestive, so subtle, so beautiful. Good night blue rose prince. I tried to play Yume Nikki once a while ago but just... didn't get anywhere? I felt like I wasn't achieving anything I was meant to. I should try again.
OH YEAH and I tried to play Witch's House too but... couldn't. It's hard for me to get through a game that tests how FAST you can do things, so I never got through that initial teddy bear chase >u< It wrecked my nerves too bad, I knew I couldn't finish it. I can't handle anything that makes me go really really fast and doesn't give me time to think. ...also the creepy atmosphere was getting me something fierce. Why do I like these things so much?... I startle when people I know are in the same room as me suddenly speak up?... Just creepy music can make me cry?... What's wrong with me.
I loooove atmospheric horror games. It's why Amnesia and some of it's full conversion mods are so near and dear to me. Holy shit. I'll have to check out the first two you mentioned. I'm bad with jumpscares too. I don't like the feeling they give me, even though games like fnaf have gotten me used to them at this point. The times they do get me... idk. My chest does weird things and hurts and it really sets off my anxiety. But atmosphere doesn't do that to me. Not sure why either. Part of the reason I love thriller novels so much. I kinda like being on my toes. I love the IB ending Spoiler: sacrifice ending where Ib sacrifices herself and saves Gary and Mary, and Gary and Mary enter the overworld as siblings. Idk. Sacrifice yourself endings are always my favorites for some reason. I think it says something about my code of morals if I wanna get meta and edgy about it. I just recently chose a self-sacrifice ending in the side-scrolling game Oxenfree.
Mmmm yes that too. I super love that sort of ending, where you have the choice to sort of... not win? Let someone else have the victory instead? It's super antithetical to how most games work so I just love doing it. Not being the hero. Being aggressively subversive to the genre. I also really like the fact that depending on what route you play, Mary can be construed as a straight villain who was waiting to kill you all along or a really confused little girl who doesn't know what's going on and who really needs and deserves your help. And since I really want to help Gary AND Mary... sure yeah let's just stay in picture purgatory I want them to be happy. Beautiful blue prince. Lovely princess sister. You idiots. It's one of those situations where there's so little content so you can't BELIEVE you love the story and the characters so much but you just do. My heart fills with love whenever I see that blue idiot passed out on the ground again. Or when Mary first shows up, smiling and bouncing along, cheerful as you please >u< I've grown more tolerant to jumpscares too but I think jumpNOISES will always just be a flat no, click on the red X, do not collect 200 dollars. Whether I should or not, I actually usually play games with the sound off because I handle creepy noise or loud noise so poorly. Turning it off usually makes the whole experience much more enjoyable buuuuuut sucks when the game thinks the noise cues it's giving you are all you need to alert you to a monster sneaking up. A ha ha ha. Whoops. /feels comforted, thanks
You know I tried to play Charon's games and didn't really like them, but I must have picked the wrong ones, because Shihori Escape was a nice little short story braincandy and I'm really enjoying the story Yanderella is building up. Thanks for the recc!
Hey, they're not everyone's cup of tea and that's cool. I know a lot of horror fans who cannot STAND the yandere trope. I love that shit though so I will TAKE WHAT I CAN GET
Oh I love yandere. It was something about the writing, and it's still bothering me a little, but for some reason, now I'm really into these. There's a certain... japanese? anime-influenced? (I don't really have enough background to say) way of writing women where they're just... care-free and unconcerned with serious shit and permissive of slights that seems just unrealistic to me? There were notes of that that were grinding my gears in earlier play attempts, but either I'm seeing how it's used more clearly or I give fewer shits now. Who knows! I'm seeing that that sort of characterization can be directed toward a point, and it's nice.
That's fair. The main reason I love yandere is, to me, it feels like a subversion of the Nadeshiko ideal we see portrayed so often in anime and manga and games. This unrealistically perfect and beautiful woman who only lives to love and serve her man! But take that constant pressure, the psychological damage living as that idea would do to a real woman. Why wouldn't they snap? Why wouldn't they take it to its most extreme conclusion, loving you so much they'd kill for you, or just kill you... Also it's supremely gratifying to see douchey male leads who expect that sort of ideal get stabbed in the nuts, lololololol
rolls into thread five minutes late with starbucks HEY I FUCKIN' LOVE THIS SHIT. Aside from the above mentioned games (I love all of them!!), I want to scream about OFF, Mortis Ghost's 2007 game where you guide the Batter through a series of colourful Zones, purifying them. It's quirky and off-beat and fun - this is what the normal battle music sounds like! The four elements of the world are Smoke, Metal, Plastic, and Meat! The Elsens which populate the world are adorably cowardly! It's great fun! People have LPed it, too, if playing it doesn't strike your fancy. And now I'm gonna talk about why it's so good, but beware the spoilers, because I lay out a lot of the revelations out here. Spoiler: Also, content warnings for the game. Nothingness/THE VOID, playing as the villian, body horror (a lot!! of body horror!!!), cannibalism, the world ending, abusive language, incredibly disjointed music, killing small children, killing innocents who aren't attacking you, aaand that's all I can think of because I haven't played it in forever so I'm really sorry if I missed anything! Spoiler: Okay, SPOILERS IN PROGRESS If you go back to a Zone you've previously Purified, nothing is there. This music plays over an empty, barren white world, and these very strong enemies appear to assault you. That's the first hint something is very, very wrong with the Batter's mission, and you have to deliberately backtrack to find it. It's only when you defeat the third Guardian that the game tells you - when a Zone is deprived of its Guardian, it disappears. And while the Guardians at first seem incredibly unsympathetic, as time goes on, the game begins to show them in a new light - as people who really, truly had a wish to save the world. Bitter and cruel as they might have become, they were fighting to defend the world. You, and the Batter, are fighting to destroy it. Sorry, 'purify' it. OFF is an incredibly atmospheric horror game, which lays out its hints that something is very wrong and lets them build up over time. The Batter is emphatically not you, and he will do everything in his power to complete his goals. Some of these things are terrible. (At one point, you have to murder an enemy whose only 'attack' is asking for HELP.) You, the player, are spoken to directly at several points during the game, over the Batter's head. But it's strongly implied that the world has already ended - that this facsimile, made from meat and smoke, is just what the survivors managed to rebuild. A fake world, created for the sake of a child. Is it right to destroy a world like that? That's the question OFF poses to you. The Batter's already decided, one way or another. It's so good you guys.[/spoilers]
@Salted Earth have you played HOME? personally I think it's the best of the OFF fangames, though the puzzles are kind of rough
@Lambda I have not played HOME, but maybe I should! I haven't really checked out any of the fangames, honestly, it's a real blind spot of mine.
