The Horror Games "Play or die"

Here's something interesting: Asylum Jam

The horror genre has a problem.

Its longstanding love affair with mental illness often falls back on predictable and callous tropes to generate chills. But the scariest thing about this theme is how inaccurate these portrayals can be.

That's why the Asylum Jam isn't just about making horror games or raising awareness of the negative depiction of mental health in games, creator Lucy Morris told Polygon during a recent interview. It's about opening a dialogue and avoiding misleading tropes through positive methods.

As great as Outlast was...it's a prime example of using these tropes, big-time.

By the Asylum Jam's rules, developers are not permitted to use mental hospitals, doctors or any other commonly found themes. According to Morris, these themes do little to expand on the genre. Developers need to move past negative stereotypes in order to open a larger discussion.

A quick bit of photoshoppery of that Frictional games teaser reveals...

IMAGE(http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i183/stevenmack/cogito_zpsbfc4fbbd.jpg)
(I think, therefore I am)

Somewhat related piece over at RPS about how things like Asylums have become such a cliche that they don't really generate horror effectively compared with the more introspective stuff that we can relate to.

Memories of a Fisherman

“You are simple fisherman, not a hero, not even a warrior, just a plain and simple fisherman. After returning from a long fishing trip, the island surprises you with a deadly silence, no one seems to be around. In fact everyone is missing, your family, friends, even the animals seem to be gone. You find a dead body, it’s Billy the farmer, he seems to have written a letter before dying. He describes a thing… a horror he went through before his final moments. It’s your duty as a father to find your family, you decide to explore the island in the search for an answer.”

Next Frictional Game is Soma.

Teaser site

Soma Systems

Teaser trailer

My brainbox is suitably intrigued!

The last horror (type) game I completed was "D". I think I played it in DOS mode on Windows 95.

I miss that game.

Funny, I remember this scene with the knight being awesome:

tanstaafl wrote:

Next Frictional Game is Soma.

Teaser site

Soma Systems

Teaser trailer

Neat! The text on their website is very SCP, which I can definitely get behind.

tanstaafl wrote:

Memories of a Fisherman

“You are simple fisherman, not a hero, not even a warrior, just a plain and simple fisherman. After returning from a long fishing trip, the island surprises you with a deadly silence, no one seems to be around. In fact everyone is missing, your family, friends, even the animals seem to be gone. You find a dead body, it’s Billy the farmer, he seems to have written a letter before dying. He describes a thing… a horror he went through before his final moments. It’s your duty as a father to find your family, you decide to explore the island in the search for an answer.”

Not sure when their indiegogo campain started, but the lack of support/interest is distrubing http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/me...

Could be because they're using the funding model where they get all the pledges even if they don't make their goal (even though their goal is fairly trivial as these things go). That would make me hesitate before jumping in.

Knock-Knock just released on Steam. The next game from Icepick Lodge (The Void, Pathologic)

As usual, it looks COMPLETELY different than any of the studio's previous games.

Also the free chapter of the (still alpha) Haunted Memories. Which I've not heard of but looks suspiciously like a prettier than average slender-clone. Still, it's free so I guess I'll give it a whirl.

Knock-knock has me interested but hesitant as The Void was/is just ridiculously unforgiving, so much so that most people I've let try it are unable to enjoy it at all. Never tried Pathologic so not sure how it fares in that regard.

I will buy this. I like to support one of the real art house developers working these days.

Pathologic is a fascinating game but one I am really hesitant to recommend, and not for the reasons you might think. It has a lot of design and bug problems but it is also rather... grim. Really fascinating game though.

Don't play it, just read these instead...

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008...

I read the first two installments of that and stopped when the third was going to have spoilers. Then I finally installed the game and need to start playing it soon.

Yup, Haunted Memories is a Slenderman clone. A competent, rather pretty one, with what looks like a bit more depth to it, but still a slender clone. *yawn*. Sounds like they have more depth to be added in later chapters but for now I think I'll pass.

*
Something else I meant to highlight - Patrick over at Giant Bomb has begin his "Shocktober", with some good content already (loving his obsession with horror games of late)

Could be spoilers in the Outlast stuff...
Interview with Outlast's creative director
Audio interview with the Creative Director
A sum-up of his experiences with horror and the Oculus Rift
The video of his Oculus Experience (members only)

Put an hour or two into Knock-knock, and definitely recommend it so far. Great visual and sound design, and interesting mechanics underpinning it. What I really like is that it engenders a distrust of the protagonist's mental state to the point where you're never entirely sure if what he's telling you is a good idea, and it's combined with hearing voices that vary from yammering to helpful to.... not. It all engenders an atmosphere of slightly malevolent confusion that dovetails nicely with the overtired/nightmare logic of the story.

Sonicator wrote:

Put an hour or two into Knock-knock, and definitely recommend it so far. Great visual and sound design, and interesting mechanics underpinning it. What I really like is that it engenders a distrust of the protagonist's mental state to the point where you're never entirely sure if what he's telling you is a good idea, and it's combined with hearing voices that vary from yammering to helpful to.... not. It all engenders an atmosphere of slightly malevolent confusion that dovetails nicely with the overtired/nightmare logic of the story.

Great little quirky game with unusual mechanics - yup, it's an Icepick Lodge game!

Also I took a steam screenshot of this earlier and only realised later that there was a ghost-girl watching me from the woods in the background that I totally didn't see while playing :O

* * * *

While waiting for more new stuff to come out I'm going back to play through some of the games I've missed over the years - starting with Cursed Mountain (a Wii game that was inexplicably ported to PC but ONLY as a digital download on Gamersgate as far as I can see...how odd...). I get the distinct feeling the game is about a million time easier than it's supposed to be when you're using mouse & keyboard

It's pretty primitive, but it's got great atmosphere and the Himalaya / Buddhism setting makes a nice change from zombies and little girls with long hair.

stevenmack wrote:

It's pretty primitive, but it's got great atmosphere and the Himalaya / Buddhism setting makes a nice change from zombies and little girls with long hair.

A game not set in an asylum? Madness!

It is an interesting setting. Sort of reminiscent of that Half-Life 2 mod Black Snow (although that has more of a The Thing vibe).

I have that on the Wii. The radio messages you get actually come from the speaker in the Wiimote.

Sonicator wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

Next Frictional Game is Soma.

Teaser site

Soma Systems

Teaser trailer

Neat! The text on their website is very SCP, which I can definitely get behind.

Those two trailers are incredible. I'm very excited for whatever this is going to be.

You have my utmost attention, Frictional Games.

Sweeeeeeet.

Yeah, for a game we've seen nothing of, it's looking pretty good.

If the game keeps up with that vibe, I'm totally in.

The first short really does have an SCP feel.

Speaking of hidden messages, anyone know what the Chinese characters say on the main page? Do they just continue the word "error"?

This is possibly stretching the limits of the concept of a horror game but it sort of fits with it's dark fantasy theme. Looks frickin' great regardless...got a Mike Mignola sort of vibe to it.

The concept behind Darkest Dungeon is to put the dungeon back in “dungeon crawler.” The environment itself is an antagonist – a scary, haunted place where your chances of survival are slim, hordes of terrifying monsters notwithstanding....

...we want to create the kind of team interaction and tension that arises in the most desperate situations. We want Hudson’s panic from ‘Aliens’, MacReady’s booze-battling from ‘The Thing’, James’s detached sadism from ‘The Hurt Locker’. We want you to manage a party of human heroes faced with almost insurmountable odds. If you can lead them to victory, you’ll have earned it.

Knock Knock? Yeah, that's kinda freaky.

Frictional has released a gameplay trailer for SOMA.

2015 - PS4 and PC.

tanstaafl wrote:

Frictional has released a gameplay trailer for SOMA.

There's also a dedicated thread for it here that cyrax started! Can't wait for the game.

Knock-Knock is really throwing me for a loop. It seems to have a lot of rules that I haven't quite gotten yet, and I'm dying all the time.