You’re looking for horror secret tips that REALLY scare you? Our horror expert shows you five games you’ve probably never heard of.
Puppet Combo has become one of my all-time favourite developers. Sure, the retro PlayStation 1 look used in all their games takes some getting used to and isn’t for everyone. But with their lo-fi slasher games, even I, as a hardened horror fan, regularly fall into panic.
In Nun Massacre you play a father who wants to pick up his sick daughter from a Christian boarding school. But of course the school is completely deserted and you have to explore the run-down corridors, read notes and solve little puzzles.
Nothing happens for a long time, but when the bloodthirsty nun finds you and chases you, all hell breaks loose from now on. Oh God, that sound when the nun is chasing you – I’ve never experienced such a horrible and inhuman noise before. Supposedly you can hear the real death screams of a senior citizen who was murdered during an emergency call to the police. Very, very disturbing.
Murder House
While we’re at it anyway: Another game from Puppet Combo! And this one even fits in perfectly with Easter.
Because in Murder House everything revolves around the Easter Ripper: The game begins with you in the role of a little boy who has fallen asleep in a shopping centre and wakes up long after the shops have closed. But instead of an exit, you find only a psychopathic killer in a pink Easter Bunny costume.
However, this is only the prologue, in the real game you go three years later as part of a camera crew to the abandoned house of the Easter Ripper. It’s just too bad that the serial killer still lives there. A game that is in no way inferior to even the cheesiest and bloodiest 80s horror films.
Visage
Admittedly, at least the die-hard horror fans among you should have heard of Visage. But this game simply cannot be missing from a list of REALLY scary horror games.
First of all: Visage is an extremely difficult game. Without a walkthrough you can’t do anything, because some of the puzzles are completely opaque. But if you can make friends with it, you will get a truly breathtaking experience.
For me, Visage is the scariest game I have ever played. Full stop. Even in Amnesia, I didn’t feel as helpless as I do when sneaking through the corridors of this haunted house. If you’re a grown man afraid to go from your PC to your bedroom at night, EVEN IF ALL THE LIGHTS ARE TURNED ON, then Visage has done something completely right.
Even the normally detached John Wolfe, my all-time favourite horror game YouTuber, lets out a (animal primal scream) at this game-turned-nightmare.
Unforgiving – A Northern Hymn
A holiday in Scandinavia, roaming the countryside and learning about local customs, sounds like a good idea at first. But anyone who has seen horror films like Midsommar or The Ritual can guess which direction the journey in Unforgiving – A Northern Hymn will take.
At the beginning of the game, your heroine is the victim of a kidnapping and is sitting on the back seat of a car. One deft kick to your kidnapper’s head later, the car lands in a ditch and you are free. Big mistake, because now you’re fleeing through a pitch-black forest that’s quite a challenge.
The puzzles and story are no more than standard horror fare, but the atmosphere is completely convincing. Unforgiving plays cleverly with its soundscape, light and darkness – and with your expectations.
Whenever you, as a seasoned horror veteran, are sure that the next scary moment must be lurking, nothing happens. And just when you’re feeling safe, the bloodcurdling scream of a mythical beast from long forgotten times suddenly pierces the silence of the night.
I’m on Observation Duty
The last tip is not mine, but from esteemed colleague Natalie Schermann, who insisted that I’m on Obversavtion Duty absolutely belonged on this list. As an employee of some kind of paranormal activity monitoring company, your job is to click through various live cams in a haunted house, spotting anomalies along the way.
Most of the time you look for differences and then have to report them: The microwave is suddenly missing from the kitchen or a pillow is missing from the bedroom? An anomaly is guaranteed to be to blame, so quickly eliminate it with a mouse click.
Many of the anomalies are more curious than really scary. However, things get really scary when you suddenly discover an intruder-type anomaly while zapping through the cameras. You’d best find out for yourself what that exactly means.
Which game made you really wet your pants? And which horror titles should have been on this list? Write it down for us in the comments!
