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[Schoq]

I want a horror game where at the start you input your personal phobiasand the game adapts to be maximally traumatizing

[s0]

I wanna explore a creepy house with a nonsense over-elaborate layout and find guns and shoot increasingly more goofy monsters with tense, gauche combat, and then I'm running out of bullets so I need to be more careful, and theres some dumb puzzles and spooky text files and theres a kinda dumb but still interesting plot going on and I find a magnum and I cant use it yet because what if a bigger spokey appears later and I ran out? And at the end everythings gonna blow up time is running out, I shoot the big goofo monster with a rocket launcher, kabom, but did I really win? evil shadow still lingers, creepo ending, here is your score, you did it, try not to use too many first aid sprays next time fuckre!!!

fffff squeeze that shit right into my gatdam blood stream
thats the games I want
it doesnt need to be zombies, it can be demons, cultists, dinosaurs, frog-men I dont even care.

Thats what I want to see making a real come-back. This weird offshoot of point and click adventure games with awkward but tense shooting, resource management, dumb plot, good level design where you explore a single interconnected maze-like space, and a horror theme.

But its gonna be tough. Just like Grim Fandango did to actual point and click adventure games before it, Resident Evil REmake ruined everything by being the best game of that genre yet being a commercial flop...

Lone Survivor was real solid tho. Its the only recent-ish game I would consider being part of that genre that I can think of.

we're living in an age where every videogame genre gets a revival, so im sure the new zombie zelda with akward controls* kickstarter is just around the corner.

*i dont mean this disparagingly, thats just what these games ARE

[mks]

I want a horror game where at the start you input your personal phobiasand the game adapts to be maximally traumatizing

Afaik Silent Hill: Shattered Memories does something like that, but I've never played it and can't comment on that.

From Wikipedia:

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories divides its gameplay between two different settings. The first section is set in a psychotherapist's office and the second in a town called Silent Hill.[3] In the first section, the player interacts with Dr. Michael Kaufmann, a therapist[4] who is a non-player character, from a first-person perspective. The player responds to Kaufmann's questions and completes a psychological test, fills in a questionnaire or colors pictures.[3][5] The player's responses to these tests alters aspects of gameplay in the second setting, including the available areas, the physical appearance and behavior of characters encountered, and the physical appearance of the monsters.[6] Shattered Memories returns to Kaufmann's office periodically throughout the game.[3]

[gimymblert]

until dawn stole that mechanic too

[FrankieSmileShow]

Shattered memories was pretty good overall, but don't expect too much from that warning. The game kinda changes some of its bits, details and cinematics based on some arbitrary things, and it gives you some psychoanalysis-like tests throughout the game, but its really just kind of a gimmick. It doesn't really deliver on "getting into your head". Its stuff like, there is a sexy poster on a wall inside a garage, and staring at it is one of a few things the game marks you as a pervert for, along with maybe a few psych test results too. Later in the game, one character is more flirty than she would be otherwise based on those results. Some other things affect what the enemies look like, too, but its not really big changes, the game really just has one enemy with a bunch of different model variants. There is probably a sexy variant of the enemies if you got a lot of perv points?
Maybe the idea was that the THREAT it would get into your head would make you overthink what's going on and make you pay more attention? Because that might have worked...

until dawn stole that mechanic too

I didn't see this all the way through yet, I wonder if they will do more with that gimmick than shattered memories did. That game is a lot more shameless with its scares, that might mean they'll be willing to take that further too. Shattered memories really didn't go for "scary" at all, more for the oppressive feeling of being lost in a maze, so all they could really do was dress the story and these mazes up a bit with customized visuals to fit your "psych profile".

[s0]

i thought the psychology stuff in shattered memories was a respectable effort for what it is.

but honestly a game that really pushes the player's buttons is probably not really feasible for ethical reasons.

[Armageddon]

I want a horror game where at the start you input your personal phobiasand the game adapts to be maximally traumatizing

Afaik Silent Hill: Shattered Memories does something like that, but I've never played it and can't comment on that.

From Wikipedia:

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories divides its gameplay between two different settings. The first section is set in a psychotherapist's office and the second in a town called Silent Hill.[3] In the first section, the player interacts with Dr. Michael Kaufmann, a therapist[4] who is a non-player character, from a first-person perspective. The player responds to Kaufmann's questions and completes a psychological test, fills in a questionnaire or colors pictures.[3][5] The player's responses to these tests alters aspects of gameplay in the second setting, including the available areas, the physical appearance and behavior of characters encountered, and the physical appearance of the monsters.[6] Shattered Memories returns to Kaufmann's office periodically throughout the game.[3]

It was really cool, the problem was that they told you they were doing it. So when you marked something and it showed up later in the chapter you knew why it was there. It felt too forced and obvious.

[Torchkas]

I just played Outlast for about 40 minutes and stopped because I was really bored. Like I knew where to go and stuff but the game wasn't really challenging me even in a psychological sense.

so can you guys tell me about those good recent horror games that are making a comeback? shattered memories isn't very recent

[jbohlken]

I'll be interested in seeing how Frictional Games' SOMA will do.