When shopping for horror games, there are a number of things to consider. Does the game in question operate a first or third-person perspective? Are we fighting/pegging it from zombies, cultists, government soldiers, supernatural beings or all of the above? Does it let us walk across a charred baby pit—hang on, what? 

For me, Outlast 2's tone will be forever captured by Tim's striking post-E3 2016 preview headline, no matter how it dials back its difficulty and/or introduces less hostile story modes. If you fancy taking on the cult-battling, camcorder-flashing, hide-in-lockers horror venture yourself—you brave thing, you—know that it's on sale on the Humble Store for £7.81/your regional equivalent off until tomorrow.    

Here's an excerpt from James' 85-scored review, which speaks to the game's rather extreme ending: 

Long after the final minutes of Outlast 2, I felt queasy, uncertain that what I saw had actually happened. It’s one of the most bizarre ending sequences I’ve witnessed, tapping into a fear I’ve known since my first week at Sunday school. It's not a fear about being hunted, artistic viscera spills, or neatly arranged corpses on spikes (though there’s plenty of that stuff). It’s fear of the drastic measures people will take to ensure their salvation, the burden of guilt, and whether or not the big guy up top exists and gives a damn.

Huge spoilers within, obviously, but James explores the above in greater detail over here. 

Humble's Outlast 2 sale runs now through tomorrow, April 6 at 10am PST/6pm BST. For extra reading, here's what horror game creators think about jump scares.

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Outlast 2, aka the horror game which features a "charred baby pit", was notoriously hard at launch. Studio Red Barrels did end up dialing back the difficulty a few months after its early 2017 release date, and having played it since then, I can confirm it's not as bloody frustrating as it was at first. But for those who prefer story to nail-biting monstrosity evasion and, uh, dying, there's a Story Mode now.

But unlike Soma's recent non-lethal playthrough option, you'll still be able to die in Outlast 2's story mode, and there will still be monsters. "It is still possible to die," the notes read, "but we’ve decreased the number of enemies and have lowered their speed, damage and perception."

Changes have also been made to the pacing of the game, allowing more passive players to poke around the game's sinister environments. But more importantly, the update has also lead to the introduction of more grimness.

"Also, we’ve taken the opportunity to reinsert some of the things we had to remove from the original game in order to get an M rating. These changes are not drastic in our opinion and do not impact gameplay, but they had to be made to avoid an Adult Only rating."

Could this removed material be the reason Australia's classification board initially refused to classify the game?

Jump scares are often considered cheap scares, and to some extent that reputation is justified. I've played games and seen films where the scares are exhausting rather than exciting, and they're not much more sophisticated than someone jumping out of a cupboard and shouting 'boo'. Context is everything, though—jump scares can be a valid device in horror if it doesn't feel like the only thing the creators are throwing at you.

"If you don’t do the suspense correctly," said James Wan, director of movies like The Conjuring and Saw, back in 2016, "then your jump scares are not going to work." The same principle applies to games.

Fear tactics

"They definitely have a place," says Dion Lay, who was lead writer on Alien: Isolation at Creative Assembly, when I ask about jump scares. "One of the reasons I love horror is because the genre is wide enough to be so many different things—slasher, ghost story, even comedy—and there are so many tools to use. Jump scares are one of the minor tools—more like a bit of spice you add to the main course—but used correctly they can help maintain pace and tension without exhausting the player. You can even use a dummy jump scare or fake out to signal to the player that they can relax a little—'you’ve had your scare for now, we'll let you take a breather.' They're good to contrast with the prolonged terror of the main threat, or the slow burn of the dread cultivated by the location and soundtrack."

In 2014, we voted Alien: Isolation our game of the year. It's a sophisticated survival horror game where you're pursued by an unpredictable alien foe for most of the story's 20-hour lifespan. There's no shortage of what I would call jump scares, as the alien and android foes try to kill you, but they don't feel cheap because you have a lot of information about what's going on. If the alien is in the vent above, you'll see drool spilling out of it. The motion tracker gives you an idea of where enemies are at all times. And if an android's eyes are lit up, it'll probably come to life and grab you. You'll jump a lot, but the quality of the space station setting creates a consistent tension, and these peaks effectively break up a long game. 

"Jump scares are an ingredient," says Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin, developer of both Outlast games. "Throughout the development of Outlast 2, we’ve had people telling us the game doesn’t have enough jump scares and others who felt there were too many.  Horror is incredibly subjective and good jump scares aren’t easy to do well because it’s all about what leads up to the big scream. You need to stretch the tension for the right amount of time, to the point that the player almost wants the jump scare to happen because they can’t take the stress anymore." When they hit, they have to hit hard. "Good jump scares should stay with you, putting you in a state of discomfort for the whole game."

"In my opinion, the most important aspect of jump scares is the threat of them," says Thomas Grip, creative director of Frictional Games, developer of Soma and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. "They act in a similar manner to fail states—they're something that the player is afraid of, or at least anxious about. Once you get the players to realise that jump scares will be a thing, they will start to anticipate them, adding to the fear factor in different scenes. So, when a player enters a new room, they're worried that something might pop out and give them a spook, and that puts them in an anxious state—even if the scare never comes."

Unlike fail states, Grip says, jump scares offer consequences to the player without disrupting the flow of the game. "If you use them too much, however, players will get used to them and the effect will wear off. What you're looking for is using just the right amount of jump scares to keep players on their toes."

Jordan Thomas, who worked on all three BioShock games and is now making co-op horror game The Blackout Club, says that easy access to game engines has played a key role in the rise of jump scare-driven games. "I think the intersection between the rise of streamers, the rise of torture porn in other media (not so much games) and the cheapness of indie game engines has made the horror genre—which used to be rare to the point of being actively depressing—flooded with the lowest rent, C and D-movie versions of videogames where you're walking around with a badly-rendered flashlight texture and things pop out of closets at you. That is not the horror that I was hoping would be born around the 2000s."

Let's plays and reaction videos

Earlier this decade, the Let's Play and reaction videos that sprung up around games like Slender: The Eight Pages, Amnesia, Outlast and PT suggested that the way people were consuming horror games was changing.

"When we launched the very first trailer of Outlast in October 2012, we kept seeing comments about some dude named PewDiePie," says Morin. A 2013 video of PewDiePie playing Outlast, embedded above, has been viewed over 18 million times.  "People were saying how they couldn’t wait for him to play the game and how he would freak out because of the name of our studio, Red Barrels. In finding out who this guy was, we discovered the YouTuber phenomenon. The timing of Outlast was good, so we decided to roll with it."

Reaction videos have become synonymous with the horror genre, which has benefits in terms of exposure, but also rumbles the all-important surprises of a horror game to a potentially massive audience. "It is a bit of a weird relationship, because you don’t want your horror game to be spoiled but then as a new studio with a new IP, you need the visibility," Morin says.

"In the end, you just hope those who intend on playing the game won’t watch the full playthroughs. You can’t know for sure if sales will be lost due to people watching full playthroughs. As far as I know, no one has this type of data. Since the first Outlast has been downloaded by 15 million people, I’m guessing there are two different groups, and those who watch YouTubers play singleplayer horror games wouldn’t consider buying them anyway."

"I think one of the first examples I watched of those was actually Alien: Isolation just after it was released," says Creative Assembly's Dion Lay when I ask if reaction videos have influenced the direction of horror games. "I was surprised how much I enjoyed watching someone else play a game. It’s like being in a cinema where everyone in it jumps, then laughs with relief, and the shared experience enhances the feeling. I can imagine developers having a ‘What is our Let’s Play moment?’ question when making a game, but I don’t think they would influence the direction beyond wanting the game to give players talking points, or making it a cinematic experience."

Frictional's Thomas Grip, however, thinks the rise of YouTube reaction videos have affected the direction of horror games "quite a bit". "When a YouTuber plays a game, it's in their best interest to put on a show that will entertain their audience. They go into a game being much more mindful of their own reactions compared to your average player. For some games, horror being a prime example, this means that their behaviour is close to the intended experience. 

"For instance, I want my players to pay close attention to different sounds, to peek around corners and so forth. When playing horror games, YouTubers tend to gravitate towards this sort of behaviour, meaning they present the game in a good light. When people watch these videos, they learn how to approach the game, which they can later apply to their own playthrough." Grip believes the benefit is that  audiences are more open to the idea of inhabiting their character's narrative role in a horror game. This means developers can lean more on storytelling and mood more than traditionally gamey elements like crafting systems or combat—indeed, Andy praised Frictional's Soma for its minimalism. 

The state of horror

Big budget horror had a good year in 2017, with both Resident Evil 7 and The Evil Within 2 impressing. Each brought their own inventive angles to well-worn templates of the genre, with Resi 7's videotapes presenting Saw-style fragments of thrilling horror scenarios and The Evil Within 2 experimenting with more open environments. Besides those, the likes of Detention, Darkwood, Little Nightmares and Prey each blend horror with different genres in refreshing ways—even if I will call out Prey's mimic enemies for offering so many jump scares that it tested my tolerance a bit. You don't have to dig particularly deep to find cheap jump scare-driven games on Steam, but the most interesting voices in horror are surfacing regardless. 

"I think we've come through the era of the jump scare to an extent, although there are still thousands of them being produced, and we're beginning to see horror creep into simulations and games I would actually enjoy," Thomas says. He cites survival game The Forest as an example of an open-ended scary game where players can figure out solutions themselves. "There's no right way to play that game—you're constructing any success that you have." Thomas likes the idea of jump scares generated by systems, rather than scripted events—he wants his next game to allow four players, in co-op, to create the kind of scary moments you'd only usually see in cutscenes. 

"If jump scares happened in The Blackout Club, they happened out of the rules and out of your decisions, as opposed to because we ambushed you with scripting. Like [2014 movie] It Follows, which is my touchstone in a lot of ways, what I'm hoping you're feeling is that something is hunting me, and it's getting closer. And yes, maybe it's eventually going to jump out, but I'm much more interested in that curve towards the unknown. That curve towards a crisis of faith."

My interviewees all agree that jump scares have some place in horror games—whether they're generated by the combination of the player and the game's systems, or used as peaks in games with long stretches of tension. They're easy to use cheaply, but if the player is captivated by the game's setting or story, they're likely to go along with them. 

"I'm not a fan of horror games that just feel like a random collection of scares," says Grip when I ask what makes a great scary game. "Instead I want a cohesive experience where you're trying to replicate a certain kind of scenario. I want the game to feel like a unfolding narrative, and not just a theme park attraction. In order to do this the player needs to know what sort of character they're playing as, and what this character is trying to achieve. This might sound pretty basic, but it's something I find lacking in many horror games."

The player's imagination is arguably the most powerful tool in making a great horror game. "The environmental clues, background lore, sounds and so forth should give the player vivid mental imagery of the horrors that await," Grip says. "The hard part is keeping the threats vague enough to keep the player's imagination running, but still clear enough for the player to feel like they are, indeed, playing a game. This is really, really hard and achieving that balance is often what makes or breaks a horror game."

"I walked across a charred baby pit in Outlast 2 and didn’t like it much," is an unusual headline but one that captures the grim tone of Red Barrels Studio's combat-less, duck-and-cover horror sequel. Those were Tim's words from E3 last year, which James affirmed in his review back in April. 

From now through Thursday November 16 at 10am PT/6pm GMT, Outlast 2 is half price on Steam, should you wish to experience its scares for yourself. 

Here's James' spoiler-free take on the game's ending in relation to the above:

Long after the final minutes of Outlast 2, I felt queasy, uncertain that what I saw had actually happened. It’s one of the most bizarre ending sequences I’ve witnessed, tapping into a fear I’ve known since my first week at Sunday school. It's not a fear about being hunted, artistic viscera spills, or neatly arranged corpses on spikes (though there’s plenty of that stuff). It’s fear of the drastic measures people will take to ensure their salvation, the burden of guilt, and whether or not the big guy up top exists and gives a damn.

And here's its launch trailer:

At half price, Outlast 2 costs £11.49/$14.99. If you fancy spending a few quid more, the Outlast Trinity Bundle is also subject to a 68 percent discount—netting you the first game, its Whistleblower DLC, and Outlast 2 for £14.10/$18.69. 

While set in the same universe, both games are unrelated. Besides, you know, all that gut-churning horror.

Outlast 2 is, by all reports, a very good horror game. We scored it an 85 in our review, calling it "a beautiful, brutal journey through extreme spiritual anxieties," while a friend of mine who's playing it expresses his appreciation in a somewhat more raw fashion, through long outbursts of frightened, "Gotta-get-away" obscenities. Some players are apparently struggling with it, however, and so today developer Red Barrels released an update that dials things back a bit for players who want the horror experience without the punishing gameplay.

"Today's patch introduces some minor adjustments to the game’s difficulty in key areas and moments," the studio said on Steam. "On Normal difficulty this will offer players a more appropriately balanced experience while still maintaining higher levels of challenge on Hard and Nightmare difficulties." 

The update also makes "a number of bug fixes and small improvements" to the game, although the Simplified Chinese translation is still in the works and won't be ready until (hopefully) next week. The full patch notes are below—and for a little more help with the horror, be sure to catch James' list of seven things he wishes he'd known before he started playing, right here.

• Global rebalancing of the game difficulty.
• Microphone no longer uses extra batteries.
• Increased the size of subtitles.
• Fixed an issue on Intel HD 4000 cards where most dynamic lights were missing.
• Fixed an issue where flickering black squares appear in the center of the screen at some specific resolutions.
• Fixed an issue with alternate controller mappings and the camcorder UI.
• Fixed an issue with double doors where one of them is locked.
• Fixed an issue causing lost save games when Steam somehow fails to initialize.
• Fixed some heretic sound effects.
• Fixed multiple minor gameplay issues (collisions, crawling, tutorials, etc.)
• Fixed multiple rare crashes.
• Added a "-refreshrate 60" command-line parameter to specify a preferred refresh rate (replace 60 by the desired refresh rate).
• Added a "-notexturelimit" command-line parameter to remove texture size limits based on VRAM amount.
• Added a "-borderless" command-line parameter to use borderless fullscreen and not have to edit INI files.

With thousands of games releasing each year, there's more head-bopping, heart-squeezing videogame music than we can keep track of. But we tried anyway, scraping through our libraries (and beyond) to find what we consider the best tunes of the year so far. Headphones and/or the subwoofers in your kid's car are definitely recommended. 

If you like the music, be sure to let the artist know—maybe buy a few records on vinyl, invite some friends and family over, get a cheeseboard way above your budget going, and let a track like Intentional Death and Dismemberment Plan direct the evening.  

Tooth and Tail

Austin WintoryListen hereTango and latin dance music may not strike you as the best fit for a game about feudal gangs of small animals at war, but Tooth and Tail manages to pull it off. Every song is played with 20th century Russian instruments that blend the dance tunes into something a bit more pastoral, and once the drunken barroom singing comes in, you'll want to start dancing again—just with a battle axe in the hand that isn't busy with beer.  

Destiny 2's Hive theme

Michael Salvatori, Skye Lewin, C Paul JohnsonListen hereMost of Destiny 2's music is fine. It's just fine. You get nice orchestral swells that imply drama and hope and a story much bigger than yourself. It's typical Big Game Stuff. But tucked away on Titan, a planet you aren't required to spend much time on, you'll find the creepy-crawly Hive enemies, and accompanying them is the best music in the game by far. With one foot in Quake's Nine Inch Nails lo-fi industrial noise and the other in the punched up, blown out orchestral sounds of a Marvel movie fight scene, the Hive themes in Destiny 2 narrate the action as much as they drive it, providing a stylish soundscape of scraped guitars steady percussion to pop alien heads to. Shame it's hidden away.

Ruiner

Various ArtistsListen hereRuiner's somber synth beats feel like a direct response to Hotline Miami's retro club boomers. They're just as loud, have just as much bass, and the melodies are just as catchy, but Ruiner's soundtrack brings a sinister sadness right to the fore rather than bury it as subtext. In Ruiner's dystopian cyberpunk world, everything is awful and everyone knows it, but swaying and lazily bobbing your head is still a reliable way to tread the existential waters.  

Sonic Mania

Tee LopesListen hereOK, so Sonic is good again (let's not talk about Forces), but what would we think of Sonic Mania if it didn't get such an excellent soundtrack? It's a surprising return to great level design for the series, but the biggest contributor to what makes Mania so endearing is its flashy, confident style—and the vibrant, energetic, and diverse soundtrack is largely to thank for that. If you weren't in control of the blue blur of a hedgehog zipping across the screen, the temptation to play air piano to the Studiopolis themes would be impossible to resist.  

Nidhogg 2

Various ArtistsListen hereThe trend of games with excellent compilation soundtracks continues. Hotline Miami popularized the practice, pulling from a handful of artists to cure an aural identity, but now Nidhogg 2 is the new champ. With a catchy, danceable tracklist, every track supports the physical comedy of its prolonged fights and the wacky new artstyle, but stays just as listenable on the dance floor or on a long commute home. Turn it up.  

Cuphead

Kristofer MaddiganListen hereOf course Cuphead was going to make the list. To fit with its Fleischer Studios animation style, Studio MDHR enlisted a big band, a live big band for its recording sessions. The result is a massive soundtrack of toe-tapping hits, each with the ability to get a room up and moving. It might be the most surprising and instantly likable of all the soundtracks released this year.  

Prey

Mick GordonListen hereMick Gordon of Doom (2016) fame is back on Prey, but with the fuzz and feedback on his electric guitars (how do guitars work?) turned down, and the reverb on his synths and acoustic guitars turned up. Prey's soundtrack melds the computerized rhythms of '70s sci-fi with the homespun sounds of solo country music, planting a grassroots vibe at the center of its digital sound, firmly anchoring the cerebral story in the realm of possibility. 

Dream Daddy

Will WiesenfeldListen here OK, so most of the Dream Daddy soundtrack is pretty simple, but the theme song will bore itself into your subconscious and never leave. Written and performed by Will Wiesenfeld, who also performs as Baths, the theme song channels the exaggerated romance and humor of one of 2017's most playful dating sims. It's also just a damn good song.  

On the next page, we list the best PC game music from the first half of 2017. 

Oikospiel

David KanagaListen hereOikospiel’s soundtrack is 100 percent intertwined with the game. Watch Kanaga’s GDC talk from a few years back to see what I mean—and no, you probably won’t understand, but that doesn’t really matter. Just know that Kanaga is a genius composer, treating 3D models and game mechanics exactly like he does music, because really, they’re all the same. Also, hell, Celine Dion has never sounded this good.  —James Davenport 

Night in the Woods

Alec HolowkaListen hereFor the sheer breadth of the soundtrack alone, Night in the Woods is worthy of praise. Individual characters and locations all have their own motif, and that’s just Volume 1. In Volume 2, things get dark. Motifs change with the in-game seasons where things get super sad and hazy for Mae, our favorite protagonist cat. Over the first two volumes, the soundtrack ranges from quiet and sweet to dark and mysterious with music for parties in the woods and city hall theater. But the real kicker comes in Volume 3, which is the soundtrack from Demontower, a whole game within the game. It’s a rad old school throwback that inspires headbanging of the metal and head-against-keyboard variety. —James Davenport

Nier: Automata

Keiichi Okabe, Keigo HoashiListen hereThe first time I entered the resistance camp in Nier: Automata, nestled among some felled skyscrapers in the game’s ruined city, I stayed for more than an hour. And it wasn’t because it looked good, or because there were lots of NPCs to talk to and items to purchase. It was because of the music. Nier: Automata is widely praised for its score—and count me among the people who think it’s among the best I’ve ever heard—but ‘Peaceful Sleep’ is something else. Its prettiness belies an overwhelming sensation of grief, which only properly sets in after you’ve left and returned to the camp a couple of times. The rest of the soundtrack is sublime too, especially this and this, demonstrating that even the most barren, unremarkable video game landscapes (because let’s be honest: Nier isn’t a looker) can be rendered otherworldly by the right music. —Shaun Prescott 

Thimbleweed Park

Steve KirkListen hereThe opening tune to Thimbleweed Park tells you exactly what kind of game it’s going to be. A cheesy, mysterious guitar hook invites you in and the elevator music convinces you to stay. Every character and location has a distinct theme, recalling everything from synth pop to a pixelated Hans Zimmer. There’s drama and jokes abound in Thimbleweed Park, but they would feel hollow with such a diverse, playful score. —James Davenport  

Tumbleseed

Joel CorelitzListen here Tumbleseed is a brutally hard roguelike with a deceptively adorable appearance and a soundtrack that’s shockingly good. Every track exudes the 80’s, sounding closer to the soundtrack for Drive than you’d expect out of a brightly colored marble maze game. Frankly, it’s one of the few things that kept me from throwing my controller across the room while playing. —Tom Marks 

Crypt of the Necrodancer - Aria Awakened

FamilyJules Listen here Holy shit. The most prolific game music guitarist on YouTube (FamilyJules) teams up with one of our favorite composers (Danny Baranowsky, of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac) for this tsunami of guitar solos. There are a bunch of official, album-length covers of Crypt, including this killer chiptune remix, but Aria Awakened is the only one that will melt your headset. Start with Trial of Thunder. —Evan Lahti

C:\Windows\Media

Austin GreenListen here We loved Austin's rock covers of Windows 3.1 midi songs so much we interviewed him about making this short album earlier this year. They're wonderfully peppy. It's hard to listen to these songs without cracking a smile and tapping a foot. And they're also deeply nostalgic for anyone who remembers the early days of PC midi music. Hear Canyon.mid and be transported back 20 years. — Wes Fenlon

Yooka-Laylee

David Wise, Grant KirkhopeListen here As a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie Yooka-Laylee left a lot to be desired, but in terms of music Playtonic knocked it out of the park. Veteran Rare composers David Wise and Grant Kirkhope both contributed to a score that sometimes outshines the game’s own inspiration. Not every song is a masterpiece, but there’s a lot of nostalgia to love in this game’s soundtrack. Plus, it gave us this gem. —Tom Marks

Outlast 2

Samuel LaflammeListen hereMost of Outlast 2 consists of running and hiding, and Laflamme’s score has the percussive highs and lows to keep your heart rate steady whether you’re chilling in a barrel or a god-fearing murderer is nipping at your heels. But underscoring it all are light, sometimes hopeful string accompaniments. There’s a pathos in Outlast 2’s score that speaks to the humanity at the center of the conflict. After all, the bad guys are just looking for salvation. They’re scared too.  —James Davenport  

Hollow Knight

Christopher LarkinListen here This soundtrack meets Hollow Knight’s gorgeous animated art and silently assembled mythos right at the top. It’s epic, if I’m able to reclaim the word, and whimsical, the perfect accompaniment to an intense boss battle or quiet, solemn exploration. Give Crystal Peak a meditative listen, then go loud with Dung Defender. —James Davenport  

Flinthook

Patrice BourgeaultListen hereI hesitate to call Flinthook’s soundtrack simple, but it knows exactly what kind of game it’s playing for. Flinthook’s OST is swashbuckling chiptune majesty, an onslaught of fast, fun, victorious bleeps and bloops. It plays like a cheerleading squad combined with a wholesome, but slightly too competitive, dad screaming at you from the sidelines that hell yes, you got this, that’s my hook-swinger right there.  —James Davenport  

I really don’t want to die. Someday I will, though, and it will probably suck. I worry about drowning, being burned alive, bears having me for dinner (it happens where I’m from), or tripping and bashing my head open on a gumball machine—and most popular horror games are good at turning those fears, other than the gumball one, into palpable threats. But in focusing so much on depicting the act of dying, they ignore why I’m scared of dying. 

Games are good at delivering terror. They specialize in the apprehension that precedes an awful revelation. But once you’ve died, which is the horrific revelation part, suddenly there’s no longer anything to anticipate, and therefore nothing to be terrified of. Death becomes a certainty, and in traditional try-again games, it’s making the experience far less scary than it could be. 

In my review of Outlast 2, I said that its “commitment to building such a disorienting horror simulation is as admirable as it is annoying.” Most scenes take about five deaths to figure out. Five deaths is enough to see a monster, learn its simple AI routine, and memorize your escape route as well as your walk home from work. Since you know that finishing the game requires staying alive until the end, the overarching narrative tension also loses strength. And because you can die and restart at the last checkpoint, those spooky punches lose more of their sting with each attempt. Sure, sometimes you’ll get a grisly animation, and if getting your dick split in half over and over can sustain your interest here into oblivion, great. But even Resident Evil 7, which starts off with some of the best innovations in horror game history, falls into the same shoot or hide or die death trap over time. 

Popular horror games in the same style know how to tap into fleeting dick-splitting fears and often confront deeper psychological fears in their overarching themes, but the threat of death and repetition is still the dull captain steering the tension. It’s about time they stop trying so hard to kill us.  

Death to death

Death has always been games' most popular punishment. You can fail to perform a task and in the fiction of the world, die. Bummer! Back to the last checkpoint. Threatening the player with lost time through death is an easy way to build tension, but the tension is entirely detached from the fiction. There’s no time to focus on the monsters chasing us. 

During my second playthrough of Frictional Games' SOMA, I installed a mod called “Wuss Mode” that turns off predatory enemy AI. Instead of sneaking around the monsters, I got to know them—and yeah, I know what it sounds like. I watched them lumber around each environment like blind dogs. I didn’t feel physically threatened, but in observing the creatures, I started to sympathize with them. Like Frankenstein's monster, they were only dangerous in appearance, fearsome only in their most recognizable human qualities. What were they thinking? Why were they thinking? I had time to consider SOMA’s headier themes on what it means to be alive, to be a human. I was fine the first time I played it, but without obligatory videogame baddies shoving me through the experience, I soaked it in like a good novel, pausing on moving passages at will.

I still felt scared, not because I was being bludgeoned with a biomechanical arm, but because because I was confronted with some awful, scary truths about the nature of life. There’s terror in the build up towards a horrific revelation in finding out what the monsters represent, and uninterrupted time to reflect those ideas back onto myself. Consciousness, man. What even is that stuff? Hell if I know. And that’s scary enough. Some of the best horror games are built around the same idea, of producing horror without death as a system.

But some just want to be schlocky fun, a ride through some spooks and gore and dim hallways. That’s all good and wholesome, but the issue remains: death and repetition are still a tedious, emotional dead end. If they’re a necessary part of the experience, how can games sustain interest and scares five attempts in?  

Systems make great painkillers

What games like Outlast 2 and Amnesia get wrong is often cited as their boldest design choice: putting limitations on or completely removing combat. I don’t mean to say that I want to kill every enemy in those games, but restricting players to a tiny set of interactions is also a good way to stunt their creativity. If the enemies are on full alert and I’m stuck hiding, I only have two primary options: sneak or run. Chances are I’ll die doing both, and I’ll need to make several attempts to learn patrol routes or where to sprint next to trigger a checkpoint. 

I can’t pick up an errant plank and bash a cultist over the head with it or grab a torch and light an oil drum on fire as a distraction—there’s no incentive to being clever and terror only works if you don’t know where the boogeyman is hiding. But as opposed to one right way and one wrong way to navigate an area, taking a more systems-driven approach to horror game design can give you a dozen ways to get through with style, 10 ways to barely scrape by, and countless ways to screw up and die.

In Dishonored 2, if I’m backed into a corner, I can still improvise an escape plan. Maybe I toss a bucket to distract and then swan dive into my doppleganger from six stories up. Or possess a guard, hop to a rat, and scurry away. It’s not the perfect example because it turns the player into a clever god, but still makes me wonder what a horror version of such a system-focused game would look like.

Imagine one that has the kind of player freedom that enables this astounding Dishonored 2 run, but instead of killing dozens of guards, you knock over a stack of books in the library to throw the monster off your tail. Then you sneak up and stab it with a broken broomstick, which permanently slows the monster down, giving you time to cover yourself in mud to hide your scent or build construct some combustible traps out of found objects in the workshop.  

With that kind of systemic variety, something like Resident Evil 7 could feel like an unsanctioned Home Alone sequel where the burglars want to eat your face. I’d love nothing more than to see Jack react to a barrage of swinging paint cans to the mug.

The more options a player has to evade a threat, then the more deaths can be justifiably blamed on the lack of player ingenuity rather than narrow level design or failing to do the prescribed sprint-and-stealth dance. To be clear, the kind of systems I’m suggesting should not make the player feel more powerful than their pursuer. They just need to provide more exit routes and the chance to think creatively in desperate moments. I just want to run through a few more options before going with ‘die and try again.’ I want to feel solely responsible for my survival and I want surviving to be a new process every time. 

Still, the problem of the horrific revelation remains. When the player dies and gets to try again, smart systems can make terror renewable, but what about the comedown after you see the monster? And what if it backs you into a corner, helpless? Should that be game over? If terror can be a renewable resource, then so can horror. 

Variety is the spice of death

While I don’t consider it to be the second coming of survival horror so many do, Resident Evil 7’s first few hours house some of the best ideas for dealing with death I’ve seen in popular horror games. All videogames have the death problem, convinced that as soon as a bad guy gets you, they’ll just kill you and call it a day. A villain that just murders as quickly and efficiently as possible is a boring one.

Jack Baker, the first monster you meet in Resident Evil 7, is a more complex, charismatic dude than a tag-‘em-and-bag-‘em killer looking to just clock out for the day. He’s the kind of guy who wants to take his time. He calls out your name like a schoolyard bully, compares you to a pig and summons you for dinner, grins and laughs and stares directly at you from across the room. And he never outright sprints for you, opting for a steady, brisk walk as if your end is already assured. 

When Jack does catch you, the majority of deaths end with a gruesome animation and a game over screen—the terror falls off and diminishes as we start again. But during a few specific instances, death is not the end.  

Early on, Jack can corner you in a room behind the kitchen and knock you to the floor after which he chops off your leg with a shovel. You can pick up your leg and add it to your inventory, which you’ll need to do if you want to survive. And that’s the surprise, that you can survive the whole ordeal. In any other game, I’d expect to just bleed out (and you can), but Jack crosses the room, crouches, and taunts you with a bottle of healing medicine.

If you manage to crawl over and grab the bottle, you can put your leg back in place, pour some magic medicine on it, and watch it fuse back together. You put your goddamn leg back on. And then Jack slams his shovel down, let’s you know daddy’s coming, and the chase is back on. 

These scenes, rare as they are, all teach the player that Jack is a true madman. They also inform you about the state of the world (and strange regenerative state of Ethan, the main character), as well as delivering a punchy horror scene. When I watched my leg fuse mend and then heard Jack coming for me again, I was terrified of him as a person and horrified of what he might be capable of. He was no longer strictly a walking game over state. 

Death, like horror tropes in film, can and should be subverted in order to maintain tension before and after scares take place. Players shouldn’t be able to predict what happens before or after they shake hands with a threat, be it a monster or a man or a bunny with vampire teeth. Horror games are best when they strive to stay unfamiliar, and in adopting a familiar die-and-try-again videogame death system, they’re knocking the wind out of their scares already before anyone presses start.  

For more on horror, check out list of the best horror games on PC, our list of the horror game clichés that need to stop, and our hands-on impressions of Serious Metal Detecting, which isn't a horror game but playing it is like staring into a dark mirror and feeling nothing, forever and always. 

On the off-chance you've been hiding behind the couch since watching the duo of Outlast 2 trailers that landed last week, let me remind you that Red Barrels' latest survival horror offering is out today. You might've caught James' review yesterday, or his words on how it has one of the most intense endings of any horror game ever. Then again, you might have avoided all that as you're yet to play the first game. 

If that's you, let me tell you the Humble Store is giving away a copy of the original Outlast free-of-charge with every purchase of Outlast 2 for as long as stocks last. As it stands, Miles Upshur's venture into the Mount Massive asylum costs £14.99/$19.99 via the retailer, so by parting with £22.99/$29.99 for its sequel, you stand to make a decent saving. 

For the sake of recapping, here's an extract from Chris' 2013 review:  

"With no weapons to fight off the lunatics, you can hide – inside lockers or under beds – and watch as your pursuers either stalk slowly past to look for you elsewhere, or suddenly spot you, drag you from your hiding place, and tear you to pieces. Or you can run: vault over obstacles, leap across broken staircases, pull yourself into vents, squeeze between obstructions, and yank doors open and then barricade them behind you, all which feels fluid and natural, like a nightmare version of Mirror's Edge. When you're not running or hiding, you'll be scouring the building for spare batteries for your camera, for keys to unlock doors, or for the nearest exit." 

And here's another look at Outlast's launch trailer:

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First up, big spoiler warning. If you plan on playing Outlast 2 at any point in the future (and I think you should), then don't watch this video. You’re going to "enjoy" the ending for yourself anyway. However, if you really don’t think you’ll play Outlast 2, then you might be interested to know that the ending, which we've captured in the video above, is absolutely bonkers. 

Secondly, if you don’t like blood or gore, here's another caveat. The final stretch of Outlast 2 features some scenes—a big one in particular—that are pretty extreme, even by horror game standards. Consider your eyes and/or stomach warned. 

Still here? Okay, here’s the context for what you're about to see. You play as a journalist who sets out with his wife, who's also a journalist, to investigate a missing person case in rural Arizona. Things go wrong, as expected, and the wife gets kidnapped by an extreme Christian cult. From there, well, let’s just say the cult was onto something...

If you really want to play Outlast 2 (and you should want to), but can’t handle the anxiety from chase scenes or dying repeatedly and just want to partake in a apocalyptic Christian horror house, then we can help. 

First, you’ll need to locate the folder where your Outlast 2 configuration files are stored. The easiest way to do this is to go into Steam, right click on Outlast 2, and select ‘Properties’. In the window that pops up, click on the ‘Local Files’ tab and then on the ‘Browse Local Files’ button.

This brings up the Outlast 2 installation folder, but you can also browse to it manually. From here, head into the ‘OLGame’ folder followed by the ‘Config’ folder. Open ‘DefaultGame.ini’ with any compatible text editor. Notepad works just fine.

To enable the console in game you need to change ‘bCheatsEnabled=false’ to ‘bCheatsEnabled=true’. The value shouldn’t be hard to find since it’s located right at the beginning of the document. It might be worth saving a copy of the original .ini in case things go south, but either way, once you’ve changed the value, save the file, close the document, and boot up Outlast 2.

Load up your game and then press the tilde key (~) to bring up the console.Type ‘god’ into the console and press enter to become unkillable. You should get a small text notification that god mode is indeed on, but you’ll know either way soon enough.

If things get to be a bit overwhelming, type ‘ghost’ into the console, which makes you turn invisible, turns of collision, and lets you fly freely through the map. It’s a last ditch effort for more fearful players, but it’s also a great tool for game photographers and Outlast 2 is one of the most photogenic horror games out there.

I haven’t tested any of the cheats extensively, so don’t expect smooth sailing throughout. Chances are you’ll fall into a pit or get ambushed by some cultists in scenes that typically kill you. If it happens, try disabling the cheats in the console by entering them again or reloading the last checkpoint.

For more tips on playing Outlast 2, check out our guide right here.