So much horror is the terror you inflict upon yourself. No visual fidelity or storytelling can truly surpass the fear that exists in the gaps of your understanding. One of the secrets to producing a truly terrifying piece of media is to leave enough to the imagination to let your own brain fill in the blanks.
In comes Analog Horror, a genre rooted in low-fidelity graphics reminiscent of the 90s. It relies on poor quality video, the liminal feel of old media, and a general sense of inaccuracy to create those gaps. When this aesthetic is combined with an interactive medium, a nightmare of uncanny valley and screen tearing awaits. These titles have it in spades.
10/10 The lock shift
Played with a VHS-esque fuzz over the view, and well into the 1990s, The Convenience Store tackles two terrifying things: the supernatural and working in customer service. You are put in the shoes of a barista and work alone on the night shift in a small, brightly lit coffee shop in the middle of a dark city.
Everyday tasks give way to increasing paranoia as your shift starts to get scary. You notice that a suspicious person is walking around freely and suddenly every customer starts to make you nervous. Is it safe to turn away to make the potions? Will removing the garbage bags be lethal? It’s a tense experience.
9/10 Maple County
Inspired by the terrifying horror series ‘The Mandela Catalogue’, Maple County puts you in the shoes of an apparent police officer in the county in question. You will be tasked with completing an interactive training tape that addresses a threat that you must not reveal to your loved ones. To deal with the threat, you have to learn to distinguish faces that look “wrong” in some way.
You go through the training, viewing this disturbing material in a relatively distant way, until the game abruptly throws you for a loop and makes the whole thing more hands-on. Be prepared for a surprise.
8/10 Anatomy
Anatomy is a slowly building, suspenseful and terrifying horror experience all set in one house. Tapes scattered everywhere compare parts of the house to parts of the body. Paranoia builds slowly as you search different rooms for ties, wondering what they mean.
Where some horrors may rely on throwing monsters and moving shadows to scare you, Anatomy goes a much more carefully designed route by slowly filling you with fear, creating a place that never feels safe or welcoming. In some places it feels like you shouldn’t be there.
7/10 Discover the ocean
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=740&dpr=1.5)
Discover The Ocean is a short game that initially resembles an educational CD-ROM from the 90s. You move around in an apparent underwater exploration drone, approach points and are treated to short video clips of ocean animals and accompanying facts. Then it starts to get weird.
Soon the camera starts dropping, the depth gauge drops and you’re given some cryptic clues to follow. These lead you on a breadcrumb trail of breaking ARG codes. It almost plays like a warning.
6/10 Group-864 training program
Ever read the SCP Foundation articles and wished you were one of the D-Class employees? Certainly not? This is still worth a look. The game is a dark, comical visual novel, in which you play the role of a person who participates in computer training for the highly suspicious Group-864. You are quickly informed that you are an R3 employee – a death row inmate offered a position in lieu of execution. Not a good sign.
The program presents you with situations and questions involving terrible supernatural entities, lets you communicate with a ghost via an external uplink, and threatens you with the ‘Smile Room’ if you don’t come to work with the right attitude.
5/10 Home invasion
Home Invasion, a VHS-style game initially masquerading as an informational video, quickly pulls you down a disjointed, terrifying rabbit hole. It starts with extensive talk about weapons, their safety and practice using them. However, it soon becomes clear that this is much more sinister.
The game is a wild, terrifying ride, switching between game modes that slowly reveal the events of the title’s home invasion. It culminates in an impressively disturbing use of camera flash to illuminate an area.
4/10 Assessment Exam
Assessment Examination once again delves into the horrifying alternate universe of the Mandela catalog. You are a potential candidate for the AAD, or Authenticity Assessment Department, and must answer some rather ominous questions as part of your exam.
Then you look at different photos and decide whether they should be trusted or considered a threat. However, the longer you play and the more recordings are heard about possible victims of this threat, the more you start to wonder who is behind this band – and who is helping you.
3/10 Don’t look away from the red fridge
You want to eat a refrigerator. It already ate your daughter. You don’t want to be eaten by a fridge. If you look away from the refrigerator, it will come closer. The only way to avoid becoming food for the demon fridge is to try and seal it with his name. Unfortunately you can’t move, and all you have to work with are the objects scattered across the floor.
Reading some notes on the floor can provide some clues on how to proceed, but don’t spend too long reading it. If your eyes are on the clues, they’re not on the refrigerator.
2/10 Iron Lung
What could be more terrifying than being alone at the bottom of an ocean of blood, welded into a leaking, rusting, slowly collapsing junk submarine you suspect you won’t survive getting out of? Not being alone.
Iron Lung is a small PS1-style experience that takes advantage of the limitations of your own perception. Your small craft has no open windows and you must navigate with instruments and a camera with a delayed development time. You don’t have to see the things outside to be afraid, because the sounds are enough.
1/10 deadly omen
On its own, Lethal Omen is a strangely disturbing shooter with a 90s aesthetic, set on a campsite. You explore the area, collect keys and shoot what appear to be men in camouflage. In the end it explains disturbingly that your enemies are dead in an area where you couldn’t see any enemies, and from there it just goes downhill.
The game is unnerving in its own right and becomes an absolute gold mine of terrifying knowledge when you pair it with the adjacent series, Gemini Home Entertainment. Following the other media in the series will reveal many parallels in the game, and knowing the context of this strange location makes everything so much worse. There are several endings, but none of them go well for you.
0 Comments