I've browsed the category on Steam, but my eyes glazed over after about the 10th page of Unity walking simulators, anime schoolgirls, and RPG Maker games with default assets. I'm also looking for something that'll really get under my skin rather than casual action-horror titles.
Examples of horror games (both old and new) I particularly like to give you an idea of what might resonate with me:
- Silent Hill 2
- Lost In Vivo
- IMSCARED: A Pixelated Nightmare
- Clock Tower
- Five Nights At Freddy's (I might catch some flak for this one, but it was a genuinely clever and well-executed premise before it got memed to death and I'll die on that hill.)
- ANATOMY
- Stories Untold
Horror games a lot of people seem to like but I don't:
- Doki Doki Literature Club (it was a bit too anime for me)
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent (I finished it, it was okay, never really scared me though)
Alien: Isolation (double if you have VR)
SOMA is more psychological thriller than horror, but can be deeply unsettling if you're interested in identity or philosophy of mind.
Yahtzee's Chzo mythos is graphically very old school but damned good and also free.
Have you played Subnautica? I don't think any other game has scared me as much as that.
I have, actually! I was thinking of it as a survival/crafting game, but it definitely creeped me out more than most horror games ever did. I always felt uneasy any time I had to leave the safe biomes. Devs knew exactly what they were doing when they implemented the reaper and ghost leviathans.
How about Darkwood? Top down survival horror with some killer atmosphere.
Played that one too! The nighttime sections were especially creepy to me. I kept dying on the second chapter to those monsters you have to shine your flashlight on before you can kill, though, which eventually turned me off of the game.
1: I'm gonna start this comment by suggesting that you play every single game by Kitty Horror Show. Most of those games are hour long experiences and not true "games" but holy damn they're cool. There's no narrative connection between them so feel free to start from the most recent since those are the best and work your way back.
2: Have you played Alien: Isolation? It drags a bit in the second half but the atmosphere and execution of hiding from the Alien is great. Plus I loved walking around that 70s sci-fi ship and I wish I had a VR headset so I could do it again.
3: Also in the AAA horror sphere: Death Stranding. My GOTY the year it came out, the sequences of sneaking past monsters with powers you don't understand armed with only vials of your own blood are a standout moment, and the theme of connecting people who are all quarantined from each other across America hits pretty close right now. Like Alien it gets worse in the latter half when you start to get good at circumventing the monsters, but it never gets bad.
It's not on steam, but if you can set up Zdoom with Ghoul's Forest 3 that was probably the scariest shit I've ever played.
Oh hey, this looks interesting! I do have ZDoom set up, so I'll have to check this out. Thanks!
EDIT: Just checked a wiki and I noticed it mentions the Yurei pops a bunch of shock images if it kills the player. How concerned should I be? I don't want to look at, like, decapitation photos or harlequin fetuses or shit like that.
spoiler
There's one event if the final monster gets you where a bunch of scary photos flash on the screen for a second. Some of them are gorey, but it's all movie/makeup shit. It's not actual pictures of dead people.
They'll probably be too Anime for you, and they aren't really games, but Higurashi and Umineko When They Cry are maybe the best horror I've ever seen. There are some scenes that I think about just about every day.
Lone Survivor - a 2D Silent Hill-like story.
Oxenfree - quality psychological horror.
Penumbra (Overture + Black Plague) and SOMA - I think they're worth trying since the plots are very different from Amnesia, but if the gameplay is what you dislike about Amnesia then skip.Oxenfree looks very interesting, as does Lone Survivor! I'll be sure to check them out.
It's still in early access, but Golden Light may be something to keep an eye on.
I've been playing darkwood, but only about 45 mins at a time.
