OK hear me out: Minecraft in survival. For real. Nothing jump scares like a creeper going “psshht” in your back, telegraphing that you’re about to die in a destructive explosion. As you walk a narrow path over a chasm of lava in the Nether, the wail of the Ghast might make you fall out of sheer panic before it even shoots at you. The Warden is a special kind of scary too, as it’s nearly unkillable and will detect you by the noise you make. It sounds kind of silly but there’s plenty of players making the remark that Minecraft survival is basically horror.
And it’s all in a child friendly, non gory, voxel style.
Yeah that shit scared me when I played it at 40 years old. It kind of wears you down when you walk around in dark caves for hours on end.
Another alternative might be Subnautica. It has some jump scares but mostly it’s just the Deep Unknown that gives you chills. Few things in that game are actually dangerous.
Aw man, preparing for the nether and writing down my coordinates, terrified of ghasts and facing blazes for as long as I could stand it. I still prepare for any excursion from my base like a packrat.
While we’re at it with non-horror games: the level that introduced the flood in Halo CE really gave me a scare. I don’t know what it says about me, but I invited a friend over to play that level with me, lol. It’s a bit of a reach not being a horror game, but a great game with some tension here and there.
Might still be a little too intense if Luigi’s Mansion is your starting point, but Bendy and the Ink Machine is basically a mix of Bioshock and Amnesia but for kids. It has a great 1930s cartoon aesthetic.
are there any good scooby doo games out there? i remember playing one on the PS2 as a kid, good balance of “creepy” stuff like zombies and just goofball humor
Dont Starve is pretty dark… i wouldnt call it horror exactly but it has a spooky vibe. Its officially 12+ but I think a horror-loving kid would probably be fine with it.
No and I think it’s kind of silly that people find the mention of the term so upsetting. Content aside, I like multiplayer games. I’ve been playing them for years. The idea of a multiplayer game that gets content updates is nothing new. CoD (just one example) has been doing it since 2008 and I’m supposed to be upset with that now that the big chunks of content they release are free and it has a different term describing it?
Like I said, just one example, but that’s generally how it goes. And you’re free to buy whatever cosmetics you want. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been one for microtransactions and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything because skins I’ll probably never use are up for sale. Which is the flip side to more complete content packs being sold.
Also, the idea that games are unfinished simply because they’re offering more content is weird to me.
Multiplayer games are great. I think the upsetting part is that from the word Go, whether it warrants being a Live Service Game or not, it implies an expiration date and an online-only requirement. When I bought Overwatch, I never heard them describe it as a LSG. Maybe they did and it just didn’t register. What I know though is that having bought 2 copies, one for PC and the other for PS4, I cannot play those games now and in their place is a reportedly substandard product (one I didn’t pay for or ask for).
So now I have this game which I loved and still played occasionally is gone because the publisher made a decision to expire it arbitrarily (read: to get people to pay them more money).
Overwatch could’ve run on player driven servers. Much of this stuff can. That might only serve a few thousand or few hundred people 10 years after launch, but that’s the right thing to do.
For automation I can recommend the pack “Create: Above and beyond” as it teaches you the best tech mod aviable for modern versions. There is a colony builder mod called MineColonies that you can just add to any recent modpack.
I second Create: Above and Beyond!! I’ve been playing it with a friend, it’s got a fun progression with plenty of processing. Early game is rough— I recommend exploring natural generated structures for iron and stuff before really diving into the automation.
Note that it’s still a fairly “kitchen sink” modpack. The magic mods feel especially slapped on there. It also has computercraft and tinker’s construct, which aren’t really integrated with the main progression. If you’re looking for a consistent style with less complexity to start, it might be worth playing Create 1.20.1 on its own or with a few “vanilla+” mods. Create has a “ponder” feature that can teach you how to use basically every part of the mod.
I’ve had success with playing scary games while they watch and when it gets too much I have the characters react in silly ways. Courage the Cowardly Dog, Are you Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps, etc. You could also try meta horror like Cabin in the Woods, Tucker and Dale. Or something with laugh breaks to defuse the tension like Army of Darkness or Monster Squad.
Take a look at Dredge! It’s a creepy horror-ish game where you play as a fishing boat. There are some creepy elements at night but it’s fairly causal overall. I really loved the atmosphere and light story elements as well as the fun fishing games that is the majority of the gameplay.
If he’s a precocious reader, Sunless Sea is a horror game with a similar sort of theme. The content is much weirder and more horrifying than Dredge, but it’s 99.9% delivered via text, so the impact may feel more tolerable regardless.
But again it’s very text-heavy, possibly too much so depending on the kid. Probably too difficult, too.
Here’s a whole bunch of modpack on Curseforge. There’s some more on FeedTheBeast, Modrinth and ATLauncher (I think). The scene is alive and well, although many of the old mods (like buildcraft and industrial craft) have long been replaced by newer mods.
Your best bet on jumping back in is a quest-based pack on a fairly recent version of the game. The last one I played was FTBSkies, which was pretty cool and included questlines for all major mods to guide you.
It’s on the tip of my tongue; there was a whole series of ghost pirate themed “hidden object” point and click puzzle games. I’ll update the post when it comes back.
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