As Halloween draws ever nearer, people prepare for the holiday with scares and frights. Television channels play daily movies designed for cheap thrills. “The Walking Dead” is back in full swing after an almost six-month hiatus. The horror genre has been a mainstay in our society, tracing back from present day, to early cinema, to legends told in small villages.
Horror has been a facet of video gaming since its creation. In the early days of video games, franchises like “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill” were helmed to hone in on primal anxiety. Facing overwhelming enemies and wonky camera angles with few resources were sources of tension and frantic pulses.
Such franchises faltered moving into the current generation of video game consoles. “Silent Hill” remained stuck in the past with awkward camera angles and blocky graphics. Meanwhile, “Resident Evil” became a bloated mess with more emphasis on action than the horror element on which it was founded.
Taking a page from the film industry, many of today’s most terrifying games cannot be found with big publishers and industries. Independent developers have resurrected the horror genre, focusing on the quieter moments rather than giant set pieces that seem to accompany their bigger brethren.
A prime example of the success of indie gaming’s descent into the horror genre is a low-budget game called “Slender,” which offers minimalistic game-play highlighting eeriness and the often unseen boogieman, The Slender-Man, that stalks characters as they move through a forest.
Playing that game at night for the first time was a heart-thudding experience. Huddled near the computer monitor running away from a relentless predator with no way of defending myself, I recalled those ghostly superstitions told around fires.
Indie games are becoming more and more popular as the video game industry grows. Like low-budget horror movies, indie horror games allow for a sense of dread and terror, rather than trying to shoehorn those elements with the ever-popular action shooter franchise.
Indie developers, often one or two people, are able to take the time to craft well-meaning experiences when not restricted by deadlines and too many ideas being bounced around.
One of the problems plaguing big-budget horror games is that the protagonist often feels superhuman in nature when fighting off swarms of monsters. Such games lack that every-man vulnerability necessary for the horror genre.
When playing indie horror games, you’re not an invincible soldier massacring zombies; you’re a defenseless ordinary human being stalked by supernatural forces beyond your ability to ward off.
If, on Halloween, you’re in the mood to be frightened, I recommend you skip “Resident Evil 6” and instead play “Amnesia” or “Slender.”
