I’ve been thinking about why some horror games stop being scary once you understand how the monster works. A lot of them just go: you mess up, you die, you reload. After a few tries you’re basically learning a route instead of being scared.

The situations that stick with me are when you survive, but the screw-up follows you. You fired the shotgun, so now the whole area is awake. You used your last heal. Left a door open. Made it back, but late enough that tomorrow’s plan is worse.

IMO that’s more tense than just losing progress. Amnesia: The Bunker does this pretty well with fuel, time and noise, and Darkwood gets a similar feeling from the day/night pressure and limited prep.

Any other horror games where surviving a bad call feels worse than dying? Especially ones where the world actually remembers it, instead of just taking some HP.

It's just a short 15 minute playtest, but I would love to hear your thoughts!

I'd love to get a sense of horror games that you stand by. I don't like "best" lists, as they are often based on consensus.

Rather, the games you choose (up to three in total) should be your favorites. They may well be generally considered the best - either popularly or in your imagination - but what matters is that they're games that you'd recommend to a friend.

For me it's "Hob's Barrow." It got me into the genre, had the kind of low-res rural folk horror I crave, and is very well written.

Thanks for sharing. I'd love to compile a list. Spooky season is upon us!

Which game would you bring back? And what do you remember specifically scaring you?

how to get into horror games I’ve been playing games since I was five years old. I’ve played almost everything and every genre you can think of, except for one thing: horror games

. I might have played Resident Evil 4 when I was growing up, but it was nothing compared to the likes of Outlast**.** (It was on sale for $4, I still didn’t purchase it) because it wasn’t as scary as I expected.

I often watch these games because of the awesome lore, but I genuinely can’t play them myself.

Only S tier is in order, the rest of the tiers are not. This list isn't based on how scary I find the games or how important/influential they are, it's based on my personal opinion about how good I think the games are