I've played alot of creepy games {and watched creepy movies but thats neither her nor there] . My top list is

5. Bioshock 1 and 2 {Xbox 360}
Creeping around in the dark listening to psychotic Splicers talking to themselves, The little sisters, And especially the Plaster Splicers silently sneaking up on you.

4. The White Chamber {PC Game}
You wake up in an space coffin and find an space station full of bodies and horror and you have to figure out just what happened. The twist ending is pretty well done.

3. Rule of Rose {Ps2 Game}
A 19 year old girl takes a bus out to an orphanage and becomes the victim of a group of sadistic children. It's creepy especially when you start analyzing some of the things in it.

2. Dead Space 1 and 2 {xbox 360}}
Years of video games have made me paranoid. Danger lurks behind every corner and you can't even back against the wall because that might be where danger comes from.

1. The Ugly {A Newgrounds flash game}

Surprised number 1 is a flash game from the late nineties / early 2000s?
Read the plot below which is spoiler coded.

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Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
You play a girl {or boy?} who comes home to find the house mysteriously empty. After you activate the radio and hide behind the curtain you discover there's a stranger in your house he sees your shoes but doesn't confront you after all it's his game now. He leaves. You go to the bathroom and find out he's killed your father and eventually you get to either go to your room {Don't do it because he's hiding under your bed and you can see it but you can't go back when you go into your room. If you go into your parents room you find your mother dying but she manages to give you the gun hidden under the bed and when the killer comes to get you he gets a big surprise.

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This message had punctuation tweaked by the user at 06:37, Wed 08 May 2013.

sanity requiem eternal darkness. for the game cube, game made me develop phobias from being traumatized by the level of head messing that game did. I wish I could un play it.

Dead space 1. not 2 or 3 because even on the hardest difficulty, im still a badass with a gaint gun pew pew pa pewin everything before it got a chance to crawl at me.

The darkness. Game freaked me out and the story made me cry my eyes out, twice.

resident evil 0-3. Those darn camera angles were the creepiest thing ever.

Legend of zelda, ocarina of time. I had to have a friend do the well and the shadow temple for me. for its time it was terrifying. Now the graphics will scare you before the content will.

uninvited. for the pc.

In reply to Andrew Wilson (msg # 2):

That thing in the well is still pretty dang scary.

I played the darkness but all the powers did for me what dead space 2 and 3 did for you.

Majoras mask is pretty creepy especially with Ben Drowned at there.

Another vote for Eternal Darkness.  :)

Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Enough said. This game has seriously made me develop a neurosis about being alone in the dark. Not having a weapon to defend yourself is just cruel and unusual.

Cry of Fear
If you've never played it, it's free on Steam. I can't describe what makes this game so creepy. It just...is.

Silent Hill
Or at least the idea behind it. A buddy and I are really into the lore and ideas behind it and that in and of itself can be rather unsettling.
This message was last edited by the user at 09:06, Wed 08 May 2013.

Slender...

I know its a meme and it's very hipster of people to have an opinion about it all, but that game is pretty much the only one I can think of that brought an emotion of fear into things.

#2 for Dead Space when it is the first time you play it and if you play it in the dark. The ending (you know what I mean if you finished it) makes me jump up to my heckles every time...

Brrrr...

Lesser ones would be Ravenholm taken over by Headcrab zombies in Half Life 2, that was so hard and they keep coming, it was pretty frightening when you see a black headcrab zombie (that can throw poison headcrabs that leave your health at 1% temporarily) and a few normal ones to back it up.

Metal Gear Solid 2 when The Patriot AIs are revealed, from the Colonel spouting nonsense onwards, anything to do with them. Not scary, but very creepy. The music of running round Arsenal Gear as they repeatedly codec you and spout about Meryl and VR missions and other things like alien abduction, along with their 'Reason you suck' speech before you have to fight Solidus always just left me feeling, well creeped out by it all.

F.E.A.R.

The playable cutscenes against a guy that turns to ash JUST as you catch up and shoot him and the little girl/ghost thing that pops up unexpectedly worked for me.

STALKER.

The mission where you go into that underground bunker, and encounter one of those invisible bloodsucker things.

You also run into a few of them during a sidequest, in an abandoned village. I spent probably three hours of RL time, on the edge of my seat, sitting in the grain silo of that village with a sniper rifle, scanning through the village for a bloodsucker. You could barely make them out due to the distortion of their invisibility.

Managed to take one out from my crow's nest, after three hours of waiting. I then ran down to confirm the kill: only to run into its buddy, right outside the door of the grain silo.

I had to buy a new set of trousers.

I love spooky games.

Silent Hill 2 was definitely the winner for me. While the actual creep-factor is only so-so, due mostly to limitations in technology, the plot just oozed into my head. I'd love it if they remade that game.

Dead Space was great, although I need to finish it. I haven't played the later ones.

I keep hearing about Paranoia. Just the set up is enough that I think it may be a bit much for me :P

Resident Evil 1. Only game that's ever actually scared me. I used to play it late at night, after the kids had gone to bed. My ex-wife would sit and watch and we'd play it for a few hours. And it was always dark. And quiet. And we'd never played a game quite like this before. To this day the sound of footsteps on metal stairs gives me shivers.

In reply to truemane (msg # 10):

I was in a Teenage Mutants Ninja Turtles pnp game in which the GM insisted that we role-play out encounters where the players were being seduced by nymphomaniac animal women.  I found that pretty creepy.

In reply to Shiv (msg # 11):

Yike! That is creepy. Also, your use of the word 'insisted' gives the mental image an extra creepy vibe. *shudders*

maybe they should play F.A.T.A.L. ...  :-O

You're telling me!

His "insistence" was closer to coercion: "You want to learn the information to move the plot forward, don't you?"

That game happened in the late 80's and we still tease him about that incident.

In reply to Shiv (msg # 14):

It blows my mind that you still talk to him at all.

Y'know, I only seen FATAL as some sample pages over on 1d4chan...

---- circumferance?

Aw, hell no! :x

Also, I would suggest not playing this one Cthulhutech adventure that has you roll a fear check to not get... well, strong-armed into something-something with a bunny girl... ^^'

That's right, you roll to resist that from happening to your character...

I love creepy games.

Dead Space definitely is the best series of all of them for gameplay, atmosphere, and getting my adrenaline flowing, as well as making me jump.

F.E.A.R. (at least the first two and to some extent Perseus Mandate) has a great creepy feel to it.  This one is especially good if you like creepy Japanese horror films.  (EDIT: Notice I left out FEAR 3.  It's fun, but not nearly as good, and it can be finished quickly, so it's a good weekend rental.)

Believe it or not the earlier Aliens vs. Predator games (#2 in particular) did a great job of incorporating the creepy vibe with darkness, sound, and that motion detector.

Silent Hill is...okay...but it seems more weird and I can't recall it ever making me jump or my adrenaline flow, but it's been awhile.

Doom 3 did a good job with atmosphere and sound.

Left4Dead 2 is good for an open world type of game, especially the wailing of the witch and the cornfield and rain scenes.

I love the Bioshock games too, but never found them particularly creepy.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:31, Wed 08 May 2013.

I don't remember the name of the game but it was for PS2, my buddy got it and we I was there most of the time when he played.  If I remember right it was like some asylum island gone crazy with creepy experiments.  And there were these creatures that had blades for arms and legs.  I found the game pretty creepy and enjoyable

In reply to st_nougat (msg # 18):

The suffering?


Oh I forgot Clock Tower 3 and White Noise {the Xbox indie knockoff of slender}
Oh and Everblue 2 when your in almost pitch black water. Oh and the sewer level of Shadows of the Empire. Any game with a large body of water and something shadowy moving in it.

Well.  That's a nice long list of games I will NEVER PLAY.  o.o

Though I did watch my older brother play the first Resident Evil and Silent Hill back in the day.  Which was scary enough for me, thankyouverymuch.  o.o

In reply to AfrokingJ (msg # 19):

That sounds about right (thank you Wikipedia and Afroking)

Neither Bioshock nor Doom ever came off as Creepy to me.

System shock did a fruiting good job of it.

Amnesia I did in 1 night and fruit that game messed with my head.

The early silent hill games were good, although that could have been because I was very young.

Slender is for many people a jump scare game. Slender the arrival is better, but both games have the problem that unless you know WHY slender is supposed to be scary, its not as scary as its supposed to be.

I HOPE someone makes a game or movie.... several hours long game or 2 hour movie, that does slender RIGHT.

Cracked almost had the right idea... then ruined it with the final revelation showing they missed the point about Slenderman.



Clearly it also shouldn't be, 'no adult under 40' Its the children that are safe from slender... the adults should fear.

Edit: Thanks Snowmantle. I can't believe I someone bet the mods to that.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:43, Wed 08 May 2013.

public thread here...

Oh I forgot "Illbleed" and "The Ring: Terrors Realm" {Bet the Devs wish they could.}

Manhunt was pretty creepy and the sequel really stepped it up for messing with your melon...

Does this include Doom 3?  The other Doom games notwithstanding, Doom 3 did a good job of atmosphere and some creepiness (before it was better perfected in Dead Space).  The other Doom games are more action based.

I just finished Bioshock: Infinite.  It has become less creepy over time and more of a great and mindbending story, this one with a twist ending that even caught me a little by surprise.

To quote Yatzee, "...Doom 3 tripped and fell over in the dark and forgot it wasn't System Shock."

Having been a fan of System Shock, all I could see was a bad attempt to imitate a classic horror game, when what I wanted when I brought Doom 3 was Doom 3. Which kinda ruined any creepyness and suspense.

It may have been creepy...but all it did was frustrate me.

I never played System Shock, so that's why I saw it through a completely different lens.

I'm kind of amazed that The Path hasn't come up yet: http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/

It's really hard to explain, but exceptionally terrifying.  I don't think I slept for a week after I finished playing through as Carmen.

I have never even heard of it.

I'm a gamer with a very limited gaming budget (especially for gaming time without kids making noise downstairs). I am intrigued by what I'm reading. Is it still worth playing, being all these years out of date?

I would imagine so -- the themes are all pretty timeless and universal.

I never heard of it either.  It also appears to be only for PC/Mac, not console, thought looking quickly at the site and 3D capabilities, it seems like it would make a good console game.

Yeah, I don't really go for console games, but my friends and I are all die-hard Steam users, so I guess I thought it was more well-known than it is.

Well, then I'm not longer amazed, but seriously, go check it out.  Preferably, during the brightest part day, when you're not alone in the house, and with a stuffed animal of your choosing to cuddle with while you rock back and forth and ask God why.

Yeah, I tend to console games now since my wife and kids tend to monopolize the computers and laptops.  Having multiple teenagers in the house is not fun.  I can also play console games more easily on large screen TVs with surround sound and 3D.

It says it's a short game.  How long does it take to run through?

Depends on how fast you want to blow through it.  If you want to just run around until you find the wolf, maybe 30min-an hour each; if you get a little more in depth, stop to pick things up, really take your time and let yourself get immersed in it, 1-2 hours per character is probably a safe bet.  Ginger and Carmen both took me closer to 3 hours.

Tl;dr: the game will keep a fairly casual player busy for a week, easily.

Oh, and I highly recommend playing the characters in order of age, starting with Robin (the youngest).  I went in a crazy order and was still scared out of my wits, but my friends who played youngest-to-oldest were seriously wigged out even worse than I was (one of them still hasn't finished), and the ones who played oldest-to-youngest were less impressed overall.

It is unfortunate that on the whole, Horror games tend to be limited to PC.... even there, they are REALLY rare.

Although the same is true for fighting games (like street fighter) tending to be limited to consoles.

Both PCs and Consoles can do both. But the devs don't tend to let it.

I'm not sure that's actually the case. Just looking at what's listed here:

Bioshock 1/2 - platform & PC
White Chamber - PC only
Rule of the Rose - platform only
Dead Space 1/2 - platform & PC
The Ugly - Any Internet- and flash-enabled device (not sure if that includes platforms or not, but I'm going to skip it, as it's not strictly a PC game).
Sanity Requiem: Eternal Darkness - platform only
The Darkness - platform only
Resident Evil 0/1/2/3 - platform & PC/platform only
Legend of Zelda - platform only
Uninvited - platform & PC
Amnesia: Dark Descent - PC only
Cry of Fear - PC only
Silent Hill 1/2 - Platform only
Slender - PC only
Half Life 2 (Ravenholm Scene) - PC & platform
Metal Gear Solid 2 - PC & platform
F.E.A.R. - PC & platform
Stalker - PC only
Aliens vs. Predators 2 - PC only
Doom 3 - PC & platform
Left4Dead 2 - PC & platform
The Suffering - PC & platform
Illbleed - Platform only
The Ring: Terrors Realm - Platform only
Manhunt - PC & platform
System Shock - PC only
The Path - PC only

Of those that are PC only, the majority seem to be very small, indie companies. Because of the high cost of developing and selling products for platforms, it seems reasonable that tiny indie companies won't market to them. But for the most part, horror games appear to be released for both PC and a platform.

(In this list there are slightly more games released only for PC than only for a platform, but it's almost even.)
This message was last edited by the user at 13:57, Fri 10 May 2013.

Pacman: some poor deformed dude running around eating 'power pills' and being chased by 'ghosts'???

tell me that's not just a bad trip!

:-O

waka waka waka

Pacman - platform only

I actually have Half Life 2 on my PS3 as part of the Orange Box (with Team Fortress and Portal), so it'd be platform and PC, not PC only.

Just sayin' ^^'

Noted :P

watching my 4 year old godson play Theme Park when he realizes he can just drag&drop all of the unhappy people into the pond to drown and then the satisfaction rating for his park goes up... CREEPY  :-O

A lesson for everyone I think there ^^

In reply to cero1 (msg # 44):

Be happy at theme parks or an infantile god will drown you?

I'm sure someone could make a movie out of that.

That's not too far from the theme of Stephen King's "Under the Dome."

EDIT: And I guess we should also mention the Twilight Zone episode (as well as the movie incorporating that episode).
This message was last edited by the user at 23:36, Fri 10 May 2013.

Fhtagn Cthulhu! ^~

On that note, was Call of Cthulhu (the video game) mentioned? Towards the start when the Great Old Ones come along, that was really freaky... They were so big and uncanny looking... ugh *shivers*

In reply to The_Blob (msg # 43):

Wow...nobody suggest that to my boss (yes, I work at a theme park).

Really? CoC was fun and I guess it was CREEPY, but not effective horror.

I finished the Path. It is indeed creepy, but very muchso a WTF creepy. I don't think at any point I was scared, and a few points I was frustrated (for each girl, there's a wolf who ends her story. But you might accidentally 'engage' the wolf before you're done exploring, cutting off the story before you've had much time to explore or meet the character. And there's no redoes if you did it wrong until you go through with each other girl as well. There are clues that you're about to meet the wolf, but I hadn't figured them out until the very end, so ... Robin was the only one I really had the luck and patience to properly explore.)

So, someone asked about System Shock....

http://www.escapistmagazine.co.../7356-System-Shock-2

Obviously its Yahtzee, so some things can be taken with a pinch of salt, but for the most part, he sums up the game really well.


And yes, System shock is the origin of Bioshock. It probably would have been called System Shock 3 had they been able to secure the naming rights off the publisher.

And yes, he is both accurate in that BioShock was dumbed down, and that it wasn't a big deal. Honnestly, as much as I enjoyed the game, getting to a point and finding out I had to start again due to bad skill point spending, made me want to punch babies.

Wow, thank you for that truly creepy yet hilarious story... couldn't help but smile!

Well, although I find that a complete thought, I am being told the message is too short for the quote, but I can think of no good way to trim the quote, so I will start an unrelated thought.

I too thought DOOM 3 was very atmospheric, and though I am not sure it would qualify as traditionally 'creepy', it did draw me in, then make me jump a time or two.

I fear I am too cynical to really enjoy a creepy game, much the way movies which are creepy usually only elicit a chuckle from me, I do not find myself immersed enough into the games to 'get' the creepiness.

I actually wish I could suspend disbelief more easily when it comes to creepy, the way I can with fantasy/sci fi stuff.

I do find the concept of games which parody real life tragedies creepy, but more in a meta-way, disturbed at the idea, then at the game-play itself.

In reply to Piestar (msg # 52):

so a combination Rule of Rose , Clock Tower 3, and A Home invasion would be best for you?

Actually I have never heard of those games, but I looked up Rule of Rose and Clock Tower Three, and I would have to say no. The game mechanisms sound too point-and-clicky to allow immersion into the story.

I think if I  were to request suggestions for the perfect creepy game for me, it would have to be a first person game, not a first person shooter exactly, but it helps to feel like it is 'me' in the story.

Sound would be a key factor, I found the zombie noises in Resident Evil Two to be very evocative, though the rest of the game wasn't really that creepy.

I also like the sense that my choices make a difference, even if every choice eventually appears to be the wrong one. Indigo Prophecy did this pretty well.

The closer to things that can really happen, the better, for example, perhaps the best creepy book I ever read was Intensity, by Dean Koontz. Most of his books are too out there to really draw me in, but 99% of this book could really happen. Makes it much creepier to me.

So if it wasn't for the magic element, Amnesia would be a good choice.

Penumbra may be supernatural less... BUT I am not sure.

Both of them are First Person games, with lots of sound, and the complete inability to attack anything, based around hiding. They have puzzle elements where your choices can delay or advance you HOWEVER, the games themselves are very linear, and for the most part, the puzzles never occur at the same time as the monsters, decreasing the tension.

However it has 4 endings. However most of the choice for that is late game... but the magic side of the game would ruin it, so it would be good for the first... 10minutes, 20minutes