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After listening to the recent Spoopcast, I'm curious to know what fellow Let's Nope fans believe makes for effective/good horror games.

For those who haven't listened to the podcast, the criticisms of horror video games will be familiar to anyone who's watched Let's Nope. For example, that horror games suffer from the fact that you can't die, technically. You can reload and try again until, after so many times, the scares are no longer scary. Then there are the puzzles and over-relying on done-to-death tropes. (Get it? Horror tropes, done to death? Nevermind.) Or simply arbitrary, unbelievable, or ineffective reasons for why your character simply can't or won't leave the scary place they're in. (The first Resident Evil as well as the Fatal Frame series were mentioned as examples of good horror games, for what that's worth.)

Another point brought up was that many games which could be called horror could easily be called something else. So they aren't unarguably just horror. I don't know if that really matters too much? Well, I suppose it does, if you want to talk about "pure" horror games versus games that're horror, but also a bunch of other genres and styles (e.g. Five Night at Freddy's as opposed to System Shock 2). Or to differentiate from a game that can incorporate horror elements here and there, without being just a horror game (like Fallout 3*).

For me, it's easy for games to be creepy, spooky, disturbing, or suspenseful. All of which I think is fine. Games can be brilliant at keeping the adrenaline pumping. Or they can be less about scares than about doing horror aesthetics/immersion really well (e.g. The Secret World and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines). But to be consistently scary, horrifying, or terrifying? How is that effectively accomplished? And accomplished on more than one playthrough?

I don't know if this is the appropriate thread in which to ask these questions. I did some digging and found a horror game thread in Video Games, but it was 5 years old. And I'm curious to know what other Let's Nope fans think.

*Horror is deeply personal, of course. What's scary for you might not be for me and vice versa. I'm deeply unnerved by cockroaches. Especially giant, very realistic looking ones. That I have to fight. In tight corridors. The sensation of "I have to open the door, but I don't want to" is strongly felt by me during the intro vault 101 fight. No, 10mm ammunition is not wasted on radroaches...

Oh, hey, a certain someones's got DLC out now.

I saw the Two Best Friends play that and... it feels like it lost a lot of the charm of the original. The graphics are there, and Spooky is kooky, but it's basically one level in which you need to go get keys and do a lot of back tracking.

I can easily see Alex not liking this at all.

Found another one which may be worth considering called Rusty Lake Hotel. It's a point & click adventure that's on Steam greenlight.

I haven't read this entire thread but I wanted to recommend Amnesia: Justine if it's not on here already. It's only about an hour long but it's much better than the games from the latest Let's Nope.

I would like to recommend a game by the name of "Home."

http://store.steampowered.com/app/215670/

I played it on PS4 and had a great time with it. Easily playable in less than a session. Awesome pixelated art style. I would recommend playing it on console because of the excellent use of vibration in controllers.

Would love to hear Alex's critique of this game!

Anatomy seems to be something Alex would like.

https://kittyhorrorshow.itch.io/anatomy

"Every house is haunted.

Explore a suburban house, collect cassette tapes, study the physiology of domestic architecture."

"Whereas a lot of videogame horror lets you walk into a room and then have a monster spring out on you unexpectedly—a cheap scare—ANATOMY whispers in your ear that there's probably a monster in a room before you enter it, letting your own expectations grind you down to a tense wreck of a person. That it does this again and again draws the debilitating effect out, masterfully building up the terror but constantly denying you the begging release of a scream."

FYI Alex, if he hasn't seen this already: Corpse Party was released on Steam

I saw the first half hour or so of Albino Lullaby yesterday and it seemed sweet, so I added it to my Steam wishlist. Now, however, I'm seeing Alex's tweets from last night that indicate he really didn't like the game later on. While trying to remain as spoilerless as possible, can anyone tell me what the kind of thing that burned him out on the game was?

It was quite good, up until one section where the player has to hunt for some hidden switches. A combination of some perma-aggro'd enemies, really unintuitive switch-hiding (two of 'em were fine, one was a bit "really?" and one was "how was anyone supposed to ever find this?"), and a game-breaking bug ended up ruining it.

It's a shame, too, since two simple changes would've made it much better (having a reload, at least, clear aggro, and moving the one really poorly-placed switch), and a little bit more work on hinting where to go would've pretty much solved the problems. Well, except for the bug, no level design changes would've helped there.

Sorry for being mister negative here, but I just have to vent abit here. It is incredibly frustrating when Let's Nope aires a good hour before it is written in the calender.
Getting up in middle of the night to watch a show I really like live is one thing, doing the same but not knowing if "ups the RnG wasn't with you" lose the first hour of the show is very much not fun.
This is the second time this have happende, please please be consistent.

If you "lost" the first hour, then you really didn't miss much at all, game-wise. Most of that hour was taken up by watching a loading bar, with Graham and Alex talking. Did you want to do that? The rest was intro cut-scene, character customization, and the first (have to lose) boss fight. If you came at the scheduled time, you got in right as Alex started the actual gameplay of the game.

Granted, I understand your frustration regarding the time, but I'm not sure you'd like to watch 50 minutes of download bar. Yeah, maybe you might've wanted those other 10 minutes, sure. That's understandable.

It's not just watching a download bare Memo, and as LRR veteran you abselutely should know that. There's the banter with chat and amongst LRR them self and amongst chat it self, the mood of the whole stream is usally set during the very start of the stream, and this is not the first time this have happende as I said.

Yes I'm frustrated, but I feel it's a valid point I bring up. When asked for advise for starting streaming/podcasting LRR alway answer with: Be consistent.

Lastly they might not have been meant as such, but I have to tell your "" around lost comes of as incredibly patronising, and entirely unnecessary.

I'm sorry if you were offended by my post. I did not mean to cause offense.

I did say that "I understand your frustration regarding the time" and I guess I didn't make it clear that I agree with you, for the most part. Starting on-time is something I'd like too. And LRR in general is usually pretty good about never starting early. However, this is Alex, and Alex is an aberration, when it comes to LRR. (This is usually a good thing, as it helps give a diversity of viewpoints.) He's a bit of a free spirit, and he'll do what he wants, sometimes out of an idea, sometimes out of spite, sometimes just because he feels like it.

Note: Being termed a "LRR Veteran" seems so weird to me... I only got into them in 2010... Less than half their time online has had me as a fan.

Nothing to be sorry about Memo, re-reading your last post I think I let a bit of my original frustration seep into my reading of your post.
All in all looking back I really should have remembered the internet rule #1, never post when you're upset.

Heh, Six years of servis in LRR trenches is not nothing!

Random thought, but with how successful the DOOM cast was last night, what if people made up a bunch of levels to play via SNAPMAP! and submitted them to play for a stream ala Mario Maker?

I mean, Cori's a professional game maker, bet she could make something mean.

Has anyone suggested Little Nightmares for an upcoming Let's Nope? It seems to share some aesthetics with Inside and Little Big Planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y27KjX_FRk4

It isn't out yet, so it could even end up as a New Day Tewsday.

Just found out about this from the Steam Summer Sale, but an FYI to Alex that there's DLC out now for The Final Station

Just an FYI, but a Remake of White Day just came out http://store.steampowered.com/app/46613 ... ed_School/