Different from slashers, survival horror, and action-horror FPS games, first-person psychological horror games that focus on exploration and survival found their audience in the early 2000s with System Shock and later with the Amnesia saga. A golden age that even reached the mid-2010s with titles like Outlast, SOMA, Subnautica and Alien: Isolation. Enough to make a list of five games to play if you like putting your gamer soul in danger.
#5 Amnesia: The Bunker (2023)
Since the 2010s, Frictional Games has been establishing the Amnesia brand: a first-person psychological horror game where the player must explore and progress in a compartmentalized and oppressive environment. In the latest release, The Bunker, you play a World War I soldier who has taken refuge in an underground bunker. But very quickly, we realize that we are not alone. A creature with highly developed senses is stalking us. The monster is at the center of the game since it is the only inhabitant of the bunker (along with us). The objective: escape from the structure by progressing from room to room littered with traps, but also filled with secrets. Unfortunately, the creature is never far away and a possible face-to-face is synonymous with instant death. But don't panic, if the player has to start all over again, each game is different, whether in the layout of the rooms, the codes to find to unlock this or that area, or the location of the resources essential to survival (fuel, light, revolver bullets). Since the creature is our main threat, the developers have used an immersive and disturbing sound design (creaking, the beast's breath, footsteps) to reinforce the feeling of helplessness. In addition, it reacts to the use of light, noise, and our movements, in an unscripted way. In short, a permanent hunt.
#4 SOMA (2013)
After Amnesia, Frictional Games returns to the recipe for the first-person psychological horror game with SOMA. This time, the player embodies Simon, a man prone to anxiety attacks who serves as a guinea pig for a multinational corporation to conduct transhumanist experiments. Mysteriously locked in an underwater laboratory, the player must navigate a hostile environment inhabited by malfunctioning robots and menacing creatures, without being able to confront them.
With its complex story that explores the theme of transhumanism, and that pushes reflection on human identity, SOMA offers a very interesting adventure for science fiction fans. Without imposing a moral on the player, Frictional Games opens the reflection within a disturbing universe that can be compared to that of Rapture in Bioshock, while integrating all the ingredients of the genre: feeling of isolation in an abandoned environment, subjective view, investigation phase (via documents to read), creatures to flee, absence of weapons...
#3 The Forest (2014)
We leave the underwater laboratories and the Sci-fi atmosphere for the deserted and isolated island. In The Forest, the player survives a plane crash and ends up on a mysterious island isolated from the world. The narrative thread: the search for his son, who disappeared in strange circumstances. This then leads us to explore the area, littered with airplane debris, food supplies, and survival kits. But we quickly discover that a pack of mutant cannibals has taken up residence there, whose behavior is disturbing. They don't attack directly and seem to observe our character's behavior. A welcome choice that reinforces the concern and questions surrounding these strange creatures.
The strength of The Forest lies in its blend of mechanics. As a good survival game, you need to craft and manage your resources to advance, and build structures for protection. The Canadian team at Endnight Games hasn't forgotten about exploration, with immense forests, eerie caves, and beaches to explore, all brimming with secrets. If horror, survival, and exploration are the key words of the game released in 2018, the discreet but intriguing narrative (the search for our son) is gradually revealed, as a reward for in-depth exploration (documents, artifacts, corpses, children's drawings).#2 Alien Isolation (2014)
A gigantic game of hide-and-seek with the terrifying Alien in a ship, with the backdrop of the atmosphere of Ridley Scott's first Alien. This is the ambitious proposition of Alien: Isolation. The game even makes subtle references to the feature film and the franchise that was renewed last year with Alien: Romulus. Furthermore, the plot fits perfectly into the film franchise, as we play as the daughter of the main protagonist Ellen Ripley, who is trying to find clues about her mother's disappearance, 15 years after the events of the first film. She then explores a disturbing space station that is far from deserted. Humanoid robots and a few paranoid humans still inhabit the structure. But the main threat is the Alien (it's all in the title).
Creative Assembly did a lot of work in 2014 on the nightmarish entity's AI. A stealth game, you have to feel your way around and use the elements of the scenery to avoid attracting the monster's attention and getting caught. Particularly sensitive to noise, the beast is never far away when navigating the sprawling base. To help him survive, the player has a sound emitter, which will display the creature's location, and will hear the sound of its footsteps in the ducts scattered throughout. It is then necessary to quickly hide when the intensity of its footsteps becomes too strong. Lockers and cupboards are then excellent options to wait while the Alien makes its rounds. But its AI is not scripted, but adaptive, it adopts the player's behavior and will open the lockers if the latter tends to abuse it. This is one of the game's strong points, allowing to avoid boredom (over the 20 hours of life) and to maintain a constant challenge and fear.
#1 Subnautica (2014)
Never has an underwater exploration game been so scary. Unplayable even, for thalassophobes. Murky seabed, strange noises, hostile fauna, feeling of vulnerability, Subnautica synthesizes the fear of the seabed by exploring a mysterious underwater planet after the crash of our ship. While the game initially focuses on survival and resource gathering to repair your escape pod and then gradually build exploration vehicles, it takes on a new dimension as you explore the planet more fully. At the same time, the game requires you to retrieve beacons abandoned by other explorers in increasingly difficult-to-access locations. By exploring ever further and deeper, the player discovers gigantic and very hostile sea creatures. Pressure and oxygen management, varied biomes (kelp forests, dizzying reefs, underwater volcanoes, sandy expanses), the feelings of vulnerability and oppression are constant, while also driving curiosity. All magnified by an ultra-immersive soundscape made of creature cries, aquatic noises, and a sometimes paralyzing silence of the depths.
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