Daardoa
This game is the definition of helplessness. From the start, you are thrown into an eerily empty world filled with nothing but trees and impossible architecture. No one to hold your hand, just an ominous message subtly hinting you towards your goal. The game is oddly calming yet incredibly tense at the same time, which made it difficult for me to put a pin in any feeling in particular, making the experience much more frightening. The fear of the unknown is real in this game.
From a technical standpoint, the game runs smooth as butter. There’s a creepy glow and shine on the textures, and the graphics are really crisp. The overall gameplay loop is simplistic enough to understand rather quickly, but the game turns things around and takes the bit of familiarity you gain with your surroundings and completely throws it away, rendering you almost petrified to move into the dark. The sound design is superb, with low ambient drones and rumbles filling the environment, leading to scraping, horrifying sounds as you encounter enemies.
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Horror Psychological Games.
If you enjoy Vidas Games, then this is something you’ll like. If you don’t know who this is, then you may feel different. What I enjoy is the world you are place in. This includes the atmosphere present and the story shown. I enjoyed the environment, but the story felt like “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”. You walked a good two minutes to reach either end of the map in order to collect a total of three “Ancients”. Each had their own housing area with a jumpscare attack present. I would be fine with this if dying wasn’t so punishing. There is no save and you have to start from the beginning if you died at any moment. Dying extending my gameplay three times what it was meant to be. It’s scary to be chased and at times the area is unsettling, but that is it. It’s an okay game, but it has you walking a lot with the threat of starting over.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Parasomnia Verum
Good game with high quality sounds. It gave me the chills a couple times! If there was one thing I learned from playing this game it’s always run! If you want to watch my playthrough, check out my video! https://youtu.be/t7ZDwMfyLJg
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Horror Atmospheric Games.
Another great title by Vidas Salavejus if you loved his previous games.
This one is only 30 minutes of gameplay with one amazing jumpscare and some creepy parts with nice cutscenes.
On the negative side, the dark grey textures are kind of lame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asN-5qOy9Hs
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Antimatter Elevator
Trippy, stressful, satisfying! Perfect ending is DIFFICULT!
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Horror Minimalist Games.
Game gets super repetitive, music is just… Weird, nothing really interesting here that would be worth your time, and plus you can’t run the game in full screen so theres that, honestly I got bored of the game. And only put in a couple of minutes in it…
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Domestic Defense
buying it while having a totally different expectation leads to this review. You might enjoy it.
I was hoping to receive a serious home invasion horror game which is focused on self defense through various mechanics combining elements of FNAF with Welcome To the Game intruder sequences for example. I was really disappointed to find out that it is absolutely NOT like that.
It´s more of a meme/joke based environment, with no real explanation of what is going on, which is not the worst but tbh. we have so many games failing to create serious experiences and believable immersive environments that this feels like an excuse. Note that this review is based on the first impression, I do not know much but I can tell you why the game lost me in the first 15minutes… It seems the game works against its own intentions: The map is SO ridiculously large which draws the focus to running around in search for the intruder and basically anything else more than anything else, also making the camera system quite useless if you need minutes of getting to a general area when you see something/body on the screen. I dont want to play a labyrinth game with wonky mechanics if the game is advertised as “domestic defense”, I don´t wanna play annoying-jumpscare-simulator from a boy that wanders around replacing the lack of horror atmosphere (that is is lost by how the game delivers the gameplay) with loud in-your-face-screams…
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
This game seriously gave me goose bumps and chills! It’s very reminiscent of grandma and grandpa but I really enjoy this experience. The controls are not bad but different and that makes things interesting as well! The game play was fun, the horror is there, achievements on steam, totally awesome!
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Family Is Nothing
You don’t know where you are or why, but it feels like it could be home. This woman; you know her, don’t you? But wait, who are you? Everything feels so familiar, but none of it makes sense. And still, there’s something wrong here, like a low hum of warning, droning beneath the eerie silence of this place. Maybe you should leave.
Sometime in the late 1970’s a small, isolated town is plagued by a masked lunatic. You find yourself at the door of a vast home nestled in the mountainous outskirts of the lonely forest surrounding the town. Experiencing a bizarre lapse in understanding, you are left to your own wits to find an answer to a question you don’t even know to ask. Meanwhile, you are being hunted, and perhaps a narrow escape is as good an answer as you are going to find.
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Immersive first-person exploration
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No HUD
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“Implied” inventory that manages itself without needing to sift through clunky menus (simply interact with things of note)
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Claustrophobic hallways and tight corners
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Panic room with sealable door for guaranteed safety
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All original assets and soundtrack, including 4 tracks produced in the style of classic 70’s rock
Knock-knock
Don’t look at the Metacritic reviews.
It’s hard to explain this minimalist game, but it definitely has something about it. A very special experience that completely justifies the whole mystery surrounding it. Don’t read anything about this game. Simply get it and play it if you’re into subtle creepy games, if you’re into urban legends, creepypasta - this is a lot like it, but on a superior level of quality and attention. This is my favorite type of horror. The entire game is like a weird lucid dream yet, not where you are in total control. There are visitors.
– Real player with 30.1 hrs in game
Knock Knock is Dark Souls meets The Stanley Parable which plays hide and seek with Amensia: The Dark Descent. According to the game one should play at night in the dark, alone (and most likely with headphones on).
The biggest Steam complaints I found in the reviews was this game was repetitive and frustrating. What RPG game, for example, Dark Souls, is not repetitive and frustrating, and just because Knock Knock has no blood splatter and gut spillage that does not mean one does not die, which happens more often then one is lead to believe. (When one dies, it is done without fanfare.) This of course leads to the entire campaign having to be redone from the beginning which is both frustrating and repetitive just like in Dark Souls (and screaming at the computer scene in utter frustration can occur). Another comparison to be noted between the two is where as the player collects souls in Dark Souls, in Knock Knock the player collects time. Each campaign though not timed until the much later levels is timed based. The player must collect time to reach the dawn of the day either by surviving the night hours by watching the slow moving clock or finding a “clock” which speeds up time (found only by turning on lights and remembering). Running into the monsterous “guests” (some of whom will hunt the player down), let into the house through breaches of the dimensional fabric (which need to be closed or can be walked through) will lose the player time or their life. This whole game is one way, no level can be repeated, only the entire game once an ending is reached.
– Real player with 20.9 hrs in game
The Mortuary Assistant
Having completed your degree in mortuary sciences, you have taken on an apprenticeship at River Fields Mortuary. Over the past several months you have logged many hours aiding the Mortician in daily tasks along with learning the ins and outs of the embalming process as well as how to properly handle and care for the deceased.
Over your time at River Fields, you have heard rumors of families bringing their deceased loved ones believed to be possessed or otherwise entangled with the paranormal to this specific mortuary to put to rest. But, with such a stigma around death and what happens when we die, it’s no surprise people make up stories around the dead.
Late one night, you are called into work to handle some embalmings. Death doesn’t keep day time hours. But there is something different about these bodies because there is something different about you. The phone rings with the Mortician on the other end. The rumors are true, and you can not leave.
Perform embalmings, handle the various jobs around the mortuary, and exercise demonic forces. All in a day’s work.
Dante’s Hotel
Dante’s Hotel is a first-person psychological horror game.
Assume the role of Dante, a soul in search of redemption and experience every
battle and terrifying events up-close, through a first-person perspective.
Explore a mysterious ever-changing hotel in a reinterpretation of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem (The Divine Comedy), and enjoy a genuinely terrifying experience.
Experience survival horror like never before.
You’ll wander through dark corridors, explore every room and get lost in endless mazes. This twisted environment is full of lost and demonic souls.
Master Reboot
Master Reboot had been in my backlog for several months but I finally took the time over the past few days to play through and even 100% the achievements.
The game was not flawless by any means but to my mind the warts are just about what one should expect from such an ambitious indie project. Missing things like a key/controller config, multiple save slots (or a persistent way to view ducky and animated memories), borderless window, etc. are all minor quibbles that at worst I’d appreciate seeing in future projects.
– Real player with 15.0 hrs in game
This game is a first person adventure game, a true adventure game where your focus is on wandering environments and solving puzzles along a storyline, not like the ‘adventure’ classification some games like the Legend of Zelda are sometimes given.
The game is set in a cyberworld/server where people that die have their memories preserved so that their loved ones can ‘visit’ them when they are gone. During the game you get the idea that things like the cyberworld weren’t common, so the memories you visit are relatively normal, like current 21st century experiences people might have as opposed to experiences in the transitioning cyberpunkesque world that the cyberworld exists in. However, the visuals in the game are just what you would expect from a game in the cyberpunk genre when not in the isolated memories. The visuals are relatively simple looking as far as being like crysis, but the style is appropriate for it and works well with the game. The sound in the game is pretty decent, but one of the added things that some may love or hate is that you constantly hear soft shouting or other horror tropes to give off a horror game atmosphere, even when you aren’t being chased by enemies or dangers that should actually give such a feeling.
– Real player with 12.4 hrs in game
Paratopic
More reviews on our Curator Page
Released in late 2018 by Arbitrary Metric, Paratopic is an extremely well crafted indie psychological horror game, that took everyone by surprise.
In an unconventional way, Paratopic is an atmospheric adventure, one set to dislocate you from your safety, into the underground minds of a corrupted dystopian! Our protagonist has an undesired job, yet needed, to fill a certain agenda, one that feeds upon human innocence, and guilt alike.
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game
Paratopic
Paratopic starts out feeling like some sort of deranged cross between the cryptic randomness of Goichi Suda’s Killer7 and the otherwordly chaos of the place between realities, The Black Lodge, seen so often in the iconic Twin Peaks. Controlling and manipulative voices distorted guide you through a criminal underworld as you take the role of a hardened and outlawed smuggler of strange contraband; A runner for highly-illegal VHS tapes whose contents are a dangerous mystery.
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game