Welcome! I am your (g)host, Craig FEARSOME, beckoning you in to this eldritch gathering of... LOOK BEHIND YOU! Yes, there is NOTHING there. The very absence of fear is perhaps the greatest fear of all. No? But I used Caps Lock and italics! WhAt aBOut NOwWow? Fine, you are unafraid of typography. How about a list of the scariBOOest PC games? Hah. I saw you flinch! Now you are atmospherically prepared, ensure there are neither babies nor pets between yourself and the nearest toilet, lest your bowels react unfavourably to this mildly cursed list of possibly evil games, aka The five Scariest PC Games of alllllllll timmmmmme*.

*What? No AvP? No FEAR? No Hidden: Source? Where's Pathologic? Why not Cryostasis: Sleep of
Reason instead of Amnesia? All fine questions... that I can answer by pointing out that you might find things scarier than I do. Even though it does make you less of a man than I am, I'm contractually obliged to let you know that it's all okay, and that you're allowed to be a big baby in face of those games that I consider as scary as a kitten's hug. But please do let us know what you do find scary, and what your list would be, because fear is best shared in a big group.

System Shock 2


You awaken on a broken, quiet space ship. You're one of the few people still alive. The walls are covered in bloody graffiti and the ship's crawling with crew possessed by aliens. It's a standard set-up, but the fact that it wrings out scares from a murk of tropes is truly impressive. System Shock 2's genius lies in plain sight. If you want ink black shadows and scary violin screeches, you have come to the wrong game. This not the canned scariness of Dead Space. There are no closets with monsters. There are long sections of space corridors, punctuated by terrifying fights where you always seem on the back foot. Your weapons break. Your mind gets invaded by the ghosts of those that perished. The incongruous details really put it over the edge. Did that man just apologise for attacking me? Yup. Is that the sound of a screeching monkey? Holy fuck it is. All the while you're being guided by the voice of the ship's captain, who leads you on to one of the most guts-wrenching twists in gaming. It's a trick that worked so well that the developers pulled it off again years later, in BioShock.

Day Z


If there is one thing more terrifying than a game world that barely acknowledges your existence, it's one that's also filled with zombies and humans. The multiplayer post-apocalyptic DayZ welcomes you to its 225sqkm of zombie infested world with disdainful silence. You spawn on a beach miles from anywhere. You need supplies and weaponry. This is where most games would start telling you where you go and what you need to do to, but here all you get is a sneer and a challenge to figure it all out on your own. You are not the star of DayZ; you are meat for the beast. The elements can kill you. The zombies can kill you. But the worst thing is the players. You just don't know if someone's friendly or not. The first friend I made in-game shot me in the back. The second I had to kill because he was acting so strangely I was convinced he was leading me into an ambush. I don't like not trusting people. For weeks afterwards I'd spawn at night, avoid human contact, and pick my way across the pitch black land looking for the glow of light on the horizon, then change direction. People suck, and the guy in the video above, Surviving Solo, understands that.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.


Stalker is set in the real post-disaster area of Chernobyl and Pripyat, the perfect setting to unsettle. Layered on top of the harrowing, beautiful open-world of a post-nuclear disaster is an ecosystem of mutant animals and wandering scavengers. Day and night tumbles along as you try to survive out in a world of grim Russian fable, picking at the scabs of the story and searching for artefacts. The AI isn't out to get you, it's just trying to exist in a barren land where everything is in pain and hungry. When you're walking in the dark, in the rain and on your own, there's no telling just what will unpeel from the shadows and decide to take you on. It might be a scruffy hound, which is easy to kill but not worth the bullets, or it might be an invisible, blood-sucking hell beast. It might just be your imagination, fuelled by the pitch of night and a soundtrack that sounds like Aphex Twin making music with rust and orgasms.

Thief: Deadly Shadows


Almost any Thief game could appear on this list. They have a thin, low-tone of terror quietly running through that spikes you're inches from a patrolling guard, close enough to hear a quiet a cough and a mumble, nothing but a quirk of lighting keeping you from being spotted. You are always vulnerable, a fact your bladder keeps reminding you of. But then Thief 3 unleashes the Cradle on you. The Cradle is a place where the history is as important as the present horrors. An ancient orphanage and mental asylum (at the same time), the classic haunted house level that subverts the format of Thief and plunges you into a dark story of its own. As you stalk deeper into the place the history is revealed, coming off in chunks rather than a slow reveal of text, and when you put it together the place takes on a twisted life of its own. This is one that should be experienced first hand. If you have played it, Kieron Gillen's amazing dissection is an essential read that'll give you deeper understanding of the themes and backstory. If you haven't, you can grab the full game cheaply enough on Steam or GOG.com. Or just watch this and be glad you didn't.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent


You can see flashes of Amnesia in Penumbra and its sequel: a first-person adventure game where the world is a reactive, physical space to be poked and prodded. Penumbra nearly made it in here, but there's something about Amnesia that raises it above the others. The story is ridiculously hokey, and the setting is closer to a cheesy Hammer horror story than something you'd expect to give you sweaty palms. But in Amnesia you're not a typical game hero: when bad things happen, you don't have the power to confront it, you don't have a buff bar full of counters, and you don't have a gun in your hand. You have a lamp. You have to run and hide and hope whatever it is goes away. Your character's fear is palpable: the screen shakes and warps as the terror builds, and the monsters seem to wait for the perfect moment to strike at you, delivering the sort of scare that has you hyperventilating along with your character. Just keep telling yourself that it isn't real.

Thomas Grip, head of Amnesia: the Dark Descent creators Frictional games, thinks games need to be pushing open more ominous doors to explore new corners of the dilapidated mansion that is the human psyche. "Take just about any big game release and the core concepts of that game is something that a ten-year old can enjoy," he said in an interview with Beefjack. "This means that just about any games that I can enjoy today would also have been enjoyed by my ten-year-old self.

"But when you look at film, movies, music, etc. there are tons of stuff which I like today that my ten-year-old self would not. Sure, there might be some stuff in games that I can enjoy more now that I am older, but this is almost always a minor part of the experience."

Amnesia is not a game for ten-year-olds. But what Grip seems to be arguing for is not that games be made so mature as to scar children for life. Rather, he'd like to see elements in games and their stories that could only be appreciated by a more mature player. The kind of thing that would bore your 12-year-old, Call of Duty addict cousin, rather than just scare him off.

"Actually, this goal to be 'mature' is a problem in many games where you add gore, curse words and a palette of grey, thinking that makes the experience more adult," Grip went on. "But they just end up making it even more childish."

We already know Frictional is currently working on a non-Amnesia horror game (while The Dark Descent's follow-up, A Machine for Pigs, is being crafted by thechineseroom). What plans do they have to make this secret project different, you might ask?

"For our next game, we want to have more thought behind everything that happens, and tie things together so if the player thinks some more about it, it will take things a step further," Grip said. "So we want these extra layers to the gameplay that will really get below the skin of the player. It is also about bringing up certain subjects that make the player think about things they normally would not."

We might not be seeing any new Amnesia/Frictional horror goodness in time for Halloween this year, but give a listen to the most recent PC Gamer US podcast to hear some suggestions from among our favorite horror games of yesteryear.

Join Evan, Omri, and T.J. for a descent into the frightening (and sometimes disappointingly not-so-frightening) world of horror games on this minimally-gimmicky, holiday-themed epsiode. Featuring SPOOKY news, SPOOKY discussion of upcoming DLC for some of our favorite games, and SPOOKY musing on whether Minecraft is still relevant. Listeners beware, you're in for... PC Gamer Podcast 334: Burger Commando

Have a SPOOKY question, comment, complaint, or observation? Leave a SPOOKY voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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Epic Games frontman Cliff Bleszinski conducted a crowdsourced interview with Reddit over the weekend in the popular "Ask Me Anything" subreddit. A number of noteworthy responses cropped up regarding Bleszinski's thoughts on revisiting older IPs, modding's explosive popularity, and (though very definitely not announcing this) an open-world reboot of Unreal, among other answers. Check out a few choice quotes below:

On the potential for a Jazz Jackrabbit reboot:

"Not any time soon. We're (fortunate) slaves to our success here at Epic with great franchises like Gears of War and Infinity Blade. It seems like a risky bet: Could we see a 2D platform game return and really move that many units, or would it just be a cult hit?

"We make games as a labor of love, but we also try to weigh the choice of what we build based upon a solid understanding of the business. How could Jazz exist and flourish in this market? I don't know, honestly. One idea that George Broussard and I discussed years ago was to bring back Jazz as an FPS, Jumping Flash style. But yeah, we'll do that in our 'spare' time."

When are we getting a return to the PC FPS glory that was Unreal?

"It seems as if you're asking about two entirely different games. The first Unreal was more of a single player exploratory experience whereas Unreal Tournament was a multiplayer focused game with a 'ladder' for the single player. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

"I was quoted recently on a Fortnite panel about the first Unreal and what a reboot might look like. Having really grown into a big Bethesda fan lately (Skyrim rocked my world), I couldn't help but wonder what a reboot of Unreal would be like if it was more 'SciFi-Rim.' Sure, there would be shooting involved, but exploration would almost be more important. Get back to that sense of wonder that the first game had. (Caves and castles and crashed ships are basically your dungeon instances, whereas the 'overworld' is less intense.) Put it on a high-end PC, and prepare yourself for amazing visuals never before seen in real time.

"As far as a new UT, it's hard to say. Shooters and their sequels are a tricky beast. Often you wind up upsetting your core whenever you make a sequel because sometimes you change things the users didn't want changed, or the users are so very in love with their memory of the original game that there's nothing you can do to live up to the first game. This happened with Counter-Strike: Source, Quake 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, and heck, even Halo 2. All that said, I do personally believe that Unreal Tournament 3 suffered a bit from an identity crisis in regards to whether or not it was a PC or console game.

"So if, when? I don't know, honestly. We're understaffed right now for all of the projects we've got going on, so I can't say if or when it may happen. I do love that IP, and I do hope to return to Na Pali some day.

"P.S.: The delta between the current crop of consoles and a high end PC is incredibly obvious now. Looking at Hawken at PAX versus the other console games and this difference is startling. FYI, Fortnite is a PC-first game."



If there's one current trend (DLC, pre-order exclusives, etc.) you could change in the game industry, what would it be and why?

"I'd make sure there's still a place for survival-horror games to exist and floursh. There have been a few that have come back (Amnesia comes to mind), but by and large the genre has almost vanished. Fatal Frame 2 and Silent Hill 2 are two of my favorite games of all time.

"I believe that one of the main factors for this is the blockbuster-hit driven nature of the business that we have in a disc-based market. You're either Call of Duty, Skyrim, or Gears, or it seems like you're a 'campaign rental' or a used game. When we get to a digitally delivered world, I'd wager that there will be room for, say, a 20 dollar short and fun and scary experience to emerge."

What do you think of DayZ, and as a successful game designer, do you consider the success of games like DayZ, Minecraft, and Kerbal Space Program changing the way you think about gamers and how to design for them?

"I haven't had a chance to play DayZ myself, but I've seen the viral videos. That mod is a prime example of my theory stating, 'Bugs notwithstanding, there's a direct correlation between how cool your game is and how many interesting YouTube videos it can yield.' I loved the 'Never trust anyone in DayZ, especially if they have a helicopter' video. Pure gold.

"So, put the survival and social aspects aside for a second and step back and consider that we're in a world where a mod like that can blow up thanks to the connected nature of the world in which we live. A handful of guys can now have a great idea for the next big thing and put it out and it can explode seemingly overnight! We had seen this before with mods like Counter-Strike, but it's only become more and more frequent lately.

"My wife and I were very hooked on Minecraft for months. It's brilliant, and I have a lot of respect for Notch and the crew at Mojang, and I find it thrilling that unique games like the aforementioned can flourish now."

You have unlimited funds and processing power. What film/novel/comic book would you make into a game?

"Firefly."

Frictional Games posted a two-year postmortem on its bravery-busting hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent today, discussing its success at carving a niche in the PC horror scene and the longevity created by a dedicated modding community. But when the topic of piracy reared its ugly, eyepatched head, the developer's stance was a simple "screw it."

"It's been over a year since we even thought about piracy," Frictional Lead Programmer Thomas Grip wrote. "With sales as good as they are, we cannot really see this as an issue worth more than two lines in this post, so screw it."

Grip also disclosed the exact cost of Amnesia's three-year development was $360,000 and that it made "more than ten times" its budget from sales. He estimated nearly 1.4 million units sold so far from a combination of indie and Steam bundles and standalone purchases. Grip claimed monthly sales "lie at over 10,000 units" and translated it as a purchase made worldwide every five minutes.

"That a game can still be going this good two years after releasing is truly remarkable," Grip explained. "This success is due to many factors, some of which are the uniqueness of the game (horror games without combat do not really exist on PC), the large modding community, and the steady flood of YouTube clips (which is in turn fueled by the modding community's output)."

Frictional's endorsement of modding flexibility in Amnesia certainly contributed heavily to its staying power - it currently holds second place in popularity at Mod DB - and Grip keeps modding's importance in mind moving forward. "It's quite clear allowing users to create content is a feature worth putting time into," he wrote. "I also think that we managed to have a pretty good balance between having simple tools and still allowing a lot of possibilities."

The countdown on nextfrictionalgame.com has ended, treating us to an unsurprisingly eerie first trailer for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Check it out below, if you dare.


A Machine for Pigs is the follow-up to 2011's Amnesia: the Dark Descent—which is, for my money, the scariest horror game ever released on the PC. The trailer shows off a similar art style to Dark Descent, but in a notably different setting. We get a glimpse of some outdoor areas, for example, which were all but absent from the claustrophobic Castle Brennenburg.

"Initially we planned to do a teaser release if we reached a certain total payments goal," Frictional Games says on their YouTube page, in reference to the Humble Indie Bundle V. "But before we had everything in place to do the event, any goal we had in mind was long passed!"

A Machine for Pigs is slated for a Q4 2012 release. That should give all of us plenty of time to prepare the dankest and darkest possible place to play it in. For now, skip to 0:29 in the trailer for maximum NOPE.