In a rural house, an alarming knock on the door at midnight is terrifying. Are FEMA agents actually the monsters here? In an Irish mansion, a bony ghost leers for a moment. Is this the missing woman you seek?
This Halloween season, these five horror video games can play ghastly, psychological tricks with your head, chilling you more than any jump scare.
No I’m Not a Human
No, I’m Not a Human is deeply affecting because of its searing political terror, its climate-change horror and an unstable community obsessed with the world’s end. I’ll certainly return for the game’s distorted, funhouse-mirror faces and tense, grinding music.
Here you remain in your modest home during the day. The sun is so blazing, it can kill you. You can’t even peer outside for fear of going blind. At night, you see flames and burned corpses from the window. Panicked and manipulative townies bang on your door, desperately seeking a safe place to stay.
The enemies are Visitors, of which little is known except that they are killers. They may even be short-fused FEMA agents who seem to be eliminating citizens randomly. Cloaked cultists spout their own twisted version of the rapture.
On an old TV in the spartan bedroom, a sinister newscaster explains how to identify a Visitor: bright white teeth, bloodshot eyes, growths under their arms. Some of the people I had invited in featured at least one of those tells. I just didn’t have the heart to deny any of them entry, so many reasonable or harrowing stories did they share, including one of sexual assault. I let most in.
At the end, a ranting man with a rifle came to my door, threatening to shoot me. He was certain that I was a Visitor or that I harbored them. So I shot him. And that was just one of the disquieting game’s 10 endings. Perhaps I should have admitted no one.
Bye Sweet Carole
Lana, the apple-cheeked protagonist of Bye Sweet Carole, is haunted by the death of Carole, her young friend. As she begins her journey of shocking discovery, it’s hard to imagine that this lush garden environment of blooming roses, plump birds and nosy rabbits will lead to a path of fear.
Minutes later, an evil man with a stovepipe hat made of ash pursues you through a pond in this 2-D environment. Suddenly you’re in a Victorian schoolroom, the headmistress so strict that she throws you down the stairs and locks you into a basement where a red-eyed owl constantly knocks you down. After a number of puzzles, I found the key to escape.
In this mildly scary setting, slightly ghoulish characters abound. Animations here are more like the Dragon’s Lair game by Don Bluth than the exquisite, busy scenes from 1940s-era Disney films. But with thoughtful set pieces that evoke tension along with expert musical orchestration, the production seems fuller than it is.
Bye Sweet Carole is influenced by the basics of “A Christmas Carol” with some “Alice in Wonderland” thrown in. While the strange story surrounding Carole’s demise can be moving, the whole feels like an interactive novel with moments of gaming. Nonetheless, the warmth of Lana’s and Carole’s fondly remembered friendship is poignant.
The Séance of Blake Manor
With its woodcut-style graphics and expansive, lonely environs, this Agatha Christie-style mystery sets its dark tone quickly. You’re the investigator Declan Ward, riding to the hinterlands in a lantern-lit horse and buggy, like those in the “Dracula” movies. Outside Blake Manor, you pass a massive fountain. Did a person lingering by the water just transmogrify into a murder of crows?
Inside, the manager reminds me of a serious Stephen Colbert. He has little time for questions surrounding the disappearance of a young woman, preoccupied with readying the venue for a séance. Arriving soon will be the well-heeled elite who yearn to be entertained by an apparition in all its otherworldly glory.
Glimpsing a ghost or a macabre skeleton after leaving the telegraph room would be the scariest thing I saw for some time. While the search for clues is fairly standard fare (e.g. finding fuses) the substantial amount of lore intrigues. One such folk tale involved Ireland’s Stingy Jack, who drank with the devil all night long and may have inspired the jack-o’-lantern.
In adventure games, I prefer to examine every nook and cranny. But here, there’s a weirdly placed time element. I have to find every clue in the manager’s office by midnight, leaving me one minute to locate the final item. A bell tolls, and the game ends. I’d have to restart and be quicker about amassing clues.
It’s very much worth the effort. Beyond the apparitions in The Séance of Blake Manor, there are deeper stories about the rich stepping on the poor, dreadful bigotry and sad burial grounds.
Eclipsium
In a dirty hospital room, an IV is attached to your hand with a long needle. After some painful trauma from real-life anesthesia, Eclipsium’s start was more terrorizing than expected. Worse, leaving this infirmary means cutting off a piece of an organ and placing it on a scale. A quivering bit of my heart is used as a key to the next room.
In this first-person game, which has original PlayStation-style graphics and no talking, the busy, pixelated art style adds to the atmosphere. Outside, the sun looks alive, like an evil orange eye. A precarious climb on scaffolding is creakier than something in Uncharted. Falling to depths below seems farther than from the Grand Canyon’s rim to the Colorado River. Even if you don’t fear heights, you’ll be rattled.
My hand had the ability to cut as sharply as a hatchet, but it became distressingly bloody when cutting through barriers. Later, what looked like giant capillaries undulated threateningly in a mine.
Eclipsium works best when it’s this psychedelic invasive species of the mind. The experience becomes more demented once you enter and explore the eye of a giant, looming woman. Though the ending can be considered optimistic in that love prevails (maybe), few pieces of art have given me the feeling of moving through such a grim, fraught hell.
Concierge
By the time I grabbed a mouse to play the point-and-click adventure Concierge, I had already been overcome by fear, repulsed by visual indignities and tainted by claustrophobia. How much more could I take?
As Concierge commences, a blizzard’s snow tapped the windowpane, forming black drops that move like nimble cockroaches. My chamber is in a ramshackle hotel with grease-stained kitchen walls and a rundown washing machine.
I played the character of a sunglasses-wearing graybeard. Without a motive, I left my bed, discovered keys and began searching the rooms of other residents. In a space with a Buster Keaton movie poster, I stole a camcorder that revealed clues the naked eye couldn’t see. Scrawled writing on a wall read “Don’t stray from my path.”
While smudgy artwork gives Concierge a dreamy quality, the puzzles and minigames aren’t always logical. I found myself dialing a pay phone, the only way to acquire hints.
In this sometimes disconcerting tale of one artist’s life, there’s an unsettling ghost-in-the-machine future and a lengthy noninteractive ending. While Concierge isn’t well balanced, there’s charm in its odd eeriness.
Each game was reviewed on the PC and the ROG Xbox Ally X. Bye Sweet Carole is also available on the PlayStation 5, Switch and Xbox Series X|S.
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