2022 Horror Challenge Roundup

 

On October 1st 2022 I started a challenge that involved playing though 31 horror games within a month (outlined in this post http://identitygaming.blogspot.com/2022/09/31-game-horror-challenge-2022.html) and on October 30th 2022 I completed that challenge!  It was a stressful month, for sure, but it was an immensely fun challenge and I'm totally planning to do it all again next October.  For now I wanted to just go over a few of the games from the challenge that I thought stood out, so think of this post as a sort of "Halloween spooky game award post" 

Best Game

I did a horror game challenge about 2 years ago and failed it miserably because I'm an idiot that put some IMMENSELY long (and shitty, Days Gone) games and Yuppie Psycho was one of the ones I didn't get to back then, so better late than never I guess.  It's a game that's truly best experienced by knowing as little as possible about it but, let's be honest, is there anything more frightening that office work?  Pepper in a unique setting and some occult-type beats and you have a rather unique experience that is as charming as it is scary. 

That's all you're getting for this one, go play it

Worst Game

Dread X Collection is a collection of short horror games made by various developers that I played off stream and was deeply disappointed by.  Dread X Collection 2 I played on stream and it was probably one of the most miserable experiences I've had with a horror title in a very long time.  The ideas behind the games are bad, the games themselves are bad and there's this sort of air of smugness about the whole thing that makes it pretty unbearable to play.  It's a level of incompetancy that is rarely found anywhere within game development and I feel that most of the people involved should probably fuck off to some other medium.  Most of the games in this collection are barely playing, boring, try-hard messes that despite having an extremely short length feel like they drag on and on just because of how vile they are.

There are 2 exceptions to this though.  One game was called Squirrel Stapler which was really daft but sort of fun to play.  The other was called Sucker for Love which is a sort of joke dating-sim where you have to try and woo an Eldritch God which was pretty funny and also came with some decently creepy concepts and imagery.  However play Sucker for Love with the voices OFF because the voice acting was extremely cringe worthy.  

I own 3 or 4 more Dread X games since I got a bunch of them as a set and after playing these two I have 0 motivation to continue the Action52 of horror games.  

Biggest Surprise

After seeing the AVGN review and being told about it by various people I was expecting something truly awful, something akin to the level of quality of Dread X Collection 2.  However Countdown Vampires is a game that's actually pretty fun to play, at least on stream with a group of people to banter with and revel in its insanity.  It's just a shoddy clone of Resident Evil that has basically no vampires and like, 4 countdowns in it but there's something sort of endering about the whole thing.  The 3D FMV sequences are non-sensical but weirdly well produced and a decent amount of effort went into the pre-rendered backgrounds even if the actual render quality is sort of shoddy.  Also the game is really, REALLY funny between absolute batshit character design and voice acting that makes Resident Evil 1 sound like Shakespear; the whole thing, while not good, was highly entertaining and I'd happily play it again 

Scariest Game

I know that saying Silent Hill 2 is scary is like saying that the sky is blue, just obvious bullshit thus making this pick seem like a complete cop-out but the one "mistake" I made this year was that most of the games I picked almost completely failed on their horror fronts.  F.E.A.R gets a close second for, while not being scary in the slightest, at least TRYING to get an ambience down and Alien Isolation gets props for making me make silly noises when I messed up but I wasn't actually scared by any of the games this year except for maybe this one. Even then its more fear of a concept of my wife getting sick and dying before my eyes than it is of the actual game but it scared me pretty badly in my teenage years so it gets the scariest game spot for being creepy on multiple levels at least. 

Least Scary Game

I didn't know anything about Geist when I put it on the list.  I mean, it's called "Ghost" but in German so I was expecting something at least a little spooky but what I got was a sort of ghost-themed action game/puzzle game?  Not that I'm going to bash it too hard, it was fun to play and the ghost-based puzzles were equal parts interesting and funny but there was a bit too much just shooting dudes with guns in first person for me to really consider it a proper horror game.  Still, I feel like a lot of people haven't tried this one so if you get a chance, give it a go. 

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So that's it for this year!  There will be other horror games peppered into the stream here and there throughout the year, of course, but we wont be going full spooky again until next October.  Keep me informed of any cool horror games you find via Discord or twitch chat and maybe they'll get put on the list!