“Horror” is easy. Dim lighting, spooky creature, feelings of powerlessness(such as limited view, limited to no combat capabilities, restrictions like a stamina meter, the like).
GOOD horror is hard. Good horror is the kind that sticks around with you, leaves you feeling uneasy even after the end. That takes talent, creativity, and genuinely, a bit of bravery. It takes understanding what makes us feel afraid. Facing your own fears, making them a reality, distorting that reality into how it makes you feel.
Silent Hill, at least the first three, are exemplary for this, in my opinion. They explore the fear, but also the sadness, the anger, the confusion. Everything fear brings with it. It molds itself around the characters, letting us experience those emotions as they do. They can be genuinely visually unsettling, then swing the psychological side of things right at you.
Hell, you can even have that and hit a bit of a power fantasy. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth manages to have early moments where the tension keeps rising because you are basically powerless to stand and fight, to manning the guns later on.
Not everyone has the spark for good horror. It’s not a bad thing, just means it’s not your strength.
My first round of Tetris was on an old DMG my late stepfather owned. It was my first time even handling one of those old bricks, but I cherished it. I don’t know what in my young brain it hit, but something just felt right. That thing got lost somewhere in packing up the house after his passing, probably still had that exact cart slotted.
I don’t think I played it for years after that, until I got my OG Xbox, with the double pack Clone Wars/Tetris Worlds. If I wasn’t running around being a squeaker on Counter-Strike or MechWarrior, I was playing Tetris. Weekends spent gripping the Duke, trying to get as far as I could.
The soundtrack, art direction, color palette, and gameplay all come together in a relaxing loop. I have spent hours just drifting along spot to spot, taking care of the spirits in my care until their times came to depart, and still go back to it when I just want to have some time to relax.
As a warning, the game does deal with some emotional tones, so there’s a bit of melancholy mixed in. My wife and I both had times where we teared up because it felt like saying goodbye to someone again. It’s handled well, though. Really gives the feeling of everything being put to rest, and there’s still everything they taught you right there as a reminder of the effect they had.
Kingdom Hearts main menu theme. It’s absolutely a nostalgia hit for me. That game was one of my “get-away” games while in a rough situation. Hearing that music always makes me feel a little safer, like I’m just one step away from a completely different life.
Crash land near/in the main colony? Eh. I’d be thrown into prison to be beaten or put into Boris’ chair until I was compliant, but after, there’s a chance at a decent life with only some risk of death. At worst, they might decide I’m worth tossing in a Warcasket and joining the Dead watching the walls.
Outside of them? Ehh. Might be able to throw in with a tribe and keep my head down until we’re all slaughtered in a raid. Some of the Empires seem somewhat friendly, could try to offer services cleaning and hauling for a bed in a servant barracks. Completely fucked if I’m caught out by Raiders, Pirates, Insectoids, or Mechanoids.
Rimworld, in a fucked up way, has become my comfort game, so it’s taken up a good chunk of my playtime recently.
Got a nice little colony going, nestled in some mountains. Working on clearing out our “home” area, and then I want to start coring out the others to keep this look of a quiet, sleepy village nestled among the rocks until you step into our killbox and realize we’re actually a highly militarized group of escaped slaves with Spacer-grade gear, a GlitterNet set-up running our defenses, and no plans of going back.
At least, that’s the plan. Now that I have the first wing of a permanent hospital down, I’m planning on getting the colony gym up and running, hopefully not have a meltdown happen when Partridge realizes his husband, Dog, is now psychically bonded with, and boning, the new Highmate, Sarai, and hopefully remember to actually finish building the prisons hospital wing and the bones for the Ripper and Hema wings so we’re prepared for when we need subcores and blood.
I might put the organ harvesting wing near the beach. Let the bastards have one last look at the ocean before a sawbones rips their liver out.