10 Indie Horror Game
1. One Late Night
If you thought abandoned houses are creepy, think again. One Late Night will force you to change your opinion about haunted locations. This indie horror game presents a nightmarish adventure of an office employee who chooses to work late one fateful day, only to realize he made a big mistake.
One Late Night is a short game, but has plenty of tensed moments to keep you at the edge of your seat. The protagonist must escape the office and it’s you who can help him find clues, search for an escape route to get out of the haunted office. This exploration-based game can really get a bit intimidating in moments where you will need to search for clues in every room.
The puzzles are of normal difficulty for a seasoned seek and find adventure gamer. The office setting will make you feel a bit constricted for space and claustrophobic. In more than one occasion, you will feel totally vulnerable to the entity as there isn’t enough space to hide. The only way to escape is to search for clues, solve puzzles and escape the doomed office.
Graphically, One Late Night doesn’t disappoint at all. Powered by the Unreal engine, the game graphics are excellent and every object is highly detailed. Developers have dedicated their time and effort to create and the fact that this game is free is unbelievably true.
One Late Night
2. SCP: Containment Breach
Set in a top-secret facility dedicated to researching strange anomalies and creatures, SCP: Containment Breach puts you into the shoes of a test subject thrown in a chamber of human guinea pigs. The objective is to escape the facility alive or hunt for secret documents and find a solution to fix the breach.
The game has some of the weirdest creatures and anomalies you have ever seen, but the most frightening entity is a concrete figurine code-named SCP-173. The sculpture comes to life and is extremely dangerous, snapping necks of inattentive souls, but stays still if under direct line of sight. There are some more oddities and objects, each more bizarre and frightening than the other. Beware of the Shy Guy and the Plague Doctor and if you survive these two, then keep safe distance from the Peripheral Jumper and the main enemy.
To make gameplay more interesting, developers have introduced a “Blink Meter”. The faster your eyes blinks, the more uncomfortable it will be for you to search for objects or find a hiding place. You can set the blink rate manually or use eye drops to make it normal. Make sure your character blinks as you would do in real-life. An abnormal blink rate can really make survival extremely difficult.
A psychological/survival horror game, SCP: Containment Breach’s randomly-generated maps will make you feel trapped, claustrophobic, panicky and extremely scared. The game’s frightening atmosphere and even more frightening creatures and dangerous objects will keep you guessing while you run and hide from present danger.
SCP: Containment Breach
3. IB
J-Horror games have wowed the audience with their bizarre plot, grotesque monsters and unique gameplay mechanics. Most of these titles have been released for the PS2 platform and are good examples of top-notch horror that can give even the most popular movies a run for their money.
Compared to PS consoles, PC has fewer Japanese horror games. In the indie horror scene, there are a few brilliantly-designed 2D computer horror games. The one that immediately comes to mind is IB. It’s a scary exploration-based survival horror game that takes place in a haunted art gallery. The main character, a young girl named IB is lost in the art gallery full of bizarre contraptions, riddles and frightening entities.
While IB is nowhere closer to graphics of a PS2 J-horror game, it has plenty of scary moments to frighten players. Developers have done a great job creating a gloomy atmosphere with plain 2D sprites. Lights go off all of a sudden, mannequins start moving, grotesque-looking paintings come alive and a frightening stalker suddenly shows, every moment spent at the art gallery will make your heart skip a beat. There’s plenty more to meet the eye and the bizarre settings in each area truly make it one of the weirdest PC horror games of all time.
IB J-Horror Game
4. Nightmare House 2
Nightmare House 2 is a modification that requires players to have both Half Life 2 and Episode 2 installed on their PC. This free mod can be found at developer WeCreateStuff’s website or at Moddb. If you are fond of conventional horror games (the ones that have those predictable jump-scare moments, plenty of weapons/ammo and monsters straight from 70s horror movies), then NH 2 is for you. Set in a haunted hospital, the game puts you into the shoes of an amnesic man. The abandoned hospital setting is a perfect place for experiencing horrific encounters and NH 2 developers have left no stone unturned to make it an unforgettably frightening experience.
The first-person horror shooter seems influenced by the famed Penumbra series, Half Life and FEAR. The physics-based puzzles and characters are similar to top horror games, but the game's presentation, visuals and brilliant level design overshadow them.
Nightmare House 2
5. Kraven Manor
Kraven Manor’s graphics are so amazing, any player’s first reaction would be –“can’t believe this game is free”. The Amnesia-like gameplay and brilliant 3D visuals will make you forget top horror games for a moment. Developed using the Unreal engine, the game was actually a college project before it hit the indie gaming scene. It was developed by a team of Southern Methodist University students. You can download this free horror game to your PC via IndieDB’s page.
The atmospheric horror game lets gamers explore a huge manor full of secrets and a puzzle room. There’s no plot, but I can safely say that it lets you play the role of an adventurer, probably a ghost hunter who wants to uncover the hidden secrets of Kraven Manor. Upon entering the doomed mansion, you will find miniature pieces of each room scattered here and there, among other oddities. The miniatures are part of a series of frustratingly difficult puzzles. You will need to find these model rooms in hidden trapdoors and other areas and add them to the scale model in the puzzle area. A room materializes when the associated miniature model is added to the scale model. Finding room models isn’t easy as the manor has plenty of hidden chambers and trapdoors.
To make miniature-finding more difficult, there’s that occasional confrontation with a horrifying creature. His appearance is totally unpredictable and can really give you those jump scares. The sudden appearance of the scary entity would surely make you nervous each time you wander around the abandoned rooms. You will never know from which corner the creature will crawl from.
To me, Kraven Manor is an underrated game and deserves more kudos for the brilliant level design and visuals. The game’s ending is tense and extremely well executed. A must-download game!
Kraven Manor
6. REC Shutter
If movies like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and reality shows such as Ghost Hunters have scared the daylights out of you, wait until you play Shutter. The game lets you capture paranormal entities through the lens of a handheld camera. You will be exploring dark areas of a haunted madhouse, solving puzzles and occasionally bumping into paranormal entities.
Every moment spent in the asylum will be recorded on your handheld camera. You can investigate objects, search for clues and film ghosts in the haunted asylum. The game’s interactive part will ask you to take photos of paranormal activity with your camera. You will need to press the F button to take images of ghosts and ghouls.
Another unique feature besides the camera view is the panic meter, which increases whenever a paranormal entity is near. Your panic level also increases when you stare at enemies. The Panic System works a bit like SCP: Containment Breach’s Blink Meter and can really hamper your ghost-hunting adventure as it will be difficult to control your player. You can take pills when the panic levels are high.
REC Shutter can be extremely frightening if played after dark, with your headphones on. You can download this free survival horror game from sites like IndieDB and Desura.
REC Shutter
7. Cry of Fear
Cry of Fear (CoF) begins with a rather clichéd plot but turns out to be a terrific horror game, courtesy of a dark atmosphere, quick and deadly combat and extremely terrifying monsters that make weird sounds and spring from nowhere. The game gives you want you want – jump scares.
This horror shooter is another brilliantly developed Half Life mod; a completely revamped game with zero content from the Valve’s hit title. The gameplay style, combat and puzzles are unique. You won’t find any similarity between Half Life and this mod.
CoF’s visuals are not that bad. In fact, the primitive visuals do make it look creepier, just like it did for Half Life. Things get scarier when monsters come out from nowhere, leaving you totally confused. The horrific moments and the combat system is what make a game scary, and this clearly CoF’s developers know their horror. They left no stone unturned to keep the tension intact in every frame. To experience the scare-fest, download the mod from Moddb or Steam.
Cry of Fear
8. The Yore
The Yore is a short, isometric horror adventure game. While it may not be as scary as other 2D indie horror games, it’s quite playable and has a rather dark and haunted house setting. The game has a familiar plot – the main character wakes up in a room he has never seen before. You will need to help him uncover the mystery behind the haunted house. While exploring, you will solve puzzles by interacting with the environment.
Graphically, The Yore is too good for a free game. The animated characters are excellent and the entire atmosphere looks extremely scary. While developer Cobrasoft did a pretty good job presenting a scary atmosphere, the rather short gameplay session will surely make players wanting for more. The puzzles are too easy for the seasoned adventure player. The game will appeal to casual gamers more than hardcore adventure fans. It’s easy and too short and only 16 Megs large. You can download it for free from izzygames.com.
9. Deep Sleep
Don’t let Deep Sleep’s pixel art graphics fool you. This short point-and-click horror adventure game can extremely scary in some places. Deep Sleep is actually a dream sequence. The dark rooms and ghostly staircases surely look like somebody’s nightmare. You will need to get out of this dream, exploring rooms and solving inventory-based puzzles.
Playing Deep Sleep will make you feel gloomy and depressed. The game infiltrates your psyche to unsettle you. The puzzles are easy to solve, but you might need to go back to an already-explored room to find objects for a puzzle. Few objects can be combined with others to create a new one and then used in puzzles. Some areas can be darker than the others, so make sure you increase the in-game brightness by clicking on Game Options/Walkthrough at the top-right corner of the screen. A sequel to Deep Sleep, called Deeper Sleep, is equally terrifying. You can play both these games for free at Kongregate.
Deep Sleep
10. Sepulchre
Sepulchre is a free PC horror game with point-and-click mechanics. It takes place in a creepy train and has those horror novel moments to keep you at the edge of your seat. The game is not for those who prefer an outright scare-fest. It’s subtle, gloomy and has those tense moments to keep you glued to your monitor. Certain events within the game will leave you wondering about the objects and people around you. There aren’t any gory monsters to confront, but several sequences will leave you flabbergasted. The surprise ending is what makes it worth the download.
Sepulchre is a short game. You can download the free version from OwlCave’s website or pay just $2.99 and download the special edition featuring wallpapers, soundtrack and special copy of a horror novel. Download it till it is free – you never know when developers put a price tag on it.
All screenshots, courtesy of their respective indie game developers.
Sepulchre
Komentar
Posting Komentar