Top 5 Free Indie Horror Games

Though many AAA companies in the video game industry have rejected horror games as a niche market, the indie community has really embraced the genre in recent years. Here are five of the best free-to-play horror titles available for Mac and PC.

1. SCP: Containment Breach

This first-person title was developed by a designer who goes by the name Regalis and it is inspired by the SCP Foundation website. The website is a collection of stories chronicling the work of The SCP, a fictional organization that captures and studies paranormal objects and entities.

You play as a test subject in an experiment with a particularly dangerous cryptid. SCP-173 is a hostile sentient statue that can only move when no one is looking at it. Much like the Weeping Angels from British television show “Doctor Who,” it can clear a long distance in the time it takes a person to blink.

Things quickly go wrong and SCP-173 escapes from its cell. Whenever you run into it, you have to maintain eye contact or die. The problem is you have to blink every ten seconds or so, making for some terrifying encounters with the living statue.

The game has a whole cast of nightmarish horrors to avoid. There’s The Shy Guy, an emaciated monster that kills anything that looks at it directly, and The Old Man, a teleporting humanoid that can melt flesh with its touch.

The developer frequently release updates and improvements for the game. The latest version, v.0.9.1, is the scariest yet. 

2. Paranoiac

“Paranoiac” comes to us from an Japanese game designer named Uri. It tells the story of Miki Takamura, a struggling novelist who moves into a large house left to her by her deceased aunt.

Bizarre things start happening around the house and you soon encounter a zombie-like creature. You have to run away from it and choose from one of fifteen hiding places in the building. One randomly chosen spot will keep you safe while the creature will find you in all the others. If you’re found, you have to run and hide again.

The creature moves fast and you don’t have much time to get away, so you have to plan ahead if you want to escape. The game has a high learning curve, which makes the chase sequences that much scarier.

While you’re in a hiding place, the screen goes black and you can hear the sounds of the creature just outside. Sitting there waiting to find out if you’re safe or not is one of the most tense experiences I have ever had with a video game.

I also played “The Crooked Man,” a similar game by Uri that has been translated into English. “The Crooked Man” has more build-up and story, but “Paranoiac” is ultimately the scarier game.

3. Slender: The Eight Pages

If you’re a fan of horror and you’ve ever been on the Internet, you probably know the story of Slenderman. This tall, faceless entity resides in wooded areas and has a habit of causing electrical interference.

“Slender: The Eight Pages” places you in a deserted park at night. You are tasked with collecting eight scraps of paper hidden throughout the area while being stalked by Slenderman. Static appears on your screen when he’s close by.

Since you’re armed with nothing but a flashlight, all you can do when you see Slenderman is run for your life. You can freeze him in place by looking at him, but doing this for too long will get you killed too. You need to keep on the move to survive.

The tension in this game is constant and you will be on edge the entire time.

4. Imscared – A Pixelated Nightmare

“Imscared – A Pixelated Nightmare” is an indie horror title by developer Ivan Zanotti. You start the game in a desolate, dream-like world that you must explore. You soon realize that you are not alone and you are being watched by something in the shadows.

While the gameplay and graphics have their limitations, “Imscared” makes up for it by changing the rules of what a video game is. The game messes with your mind and shatters the fourth wall in a number of clever, innovative ways.

“Imscared” plays with all of your expectations, delivering one strange twist after another. It is best experienced when you go in with no idea of what will happen, so I won’t go on. Download this game and see for yourself.

5. The Consuming Shadow Beta

“The Consuming Shadow” is a Lovecraftian survival horror game from Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame.

Rather than going for scares, this game focuses on atmosphere and narrative. You play as an occult investigator who must stop an ancient horror from being summoned into our world.

While keeping an eye on your health and limited supplies, you also have to keep your sanity meter up. When the sanity meter runs low, you will suffer from hallucinations and other detrimental effects.

All of the levels and encounters in the game are randomly generated, meaning no two adventures will be alike. The randomness, combined with a unique leveling system, make for a lot of replayability.

If you like other Lovecraftian games like “Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem” or “Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth,” this game is definitely for you.

Watch Dogs Preview

In a digital age where everything and everyone is connected, information is power. In the right hands, it is also a very dangerous weapon.

After four years of development, Ubisoft’s ambitious cyber-punk action game Watch Dogs will be out sometime this spring. Since its announcement at E3 2012, it’s been one of the most anticipated new IPs in the industry.

Though an official release date has not been confirmed by Ubisoft, the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine claims Watch Dogs will hit shelves in March.

Watch Dogs explores a future Chicago where all of the city’s technology has been linked into a single network. The Central Operating System (CtOS) is used by the powerful to oppress and control the populace.

You play as Aiden Pearce, a revenge-driven vigilante who can use the CtOS to hack into electronic devices throughout the city.

You are able to manipulate the environment around you in many different ways. All electronics from traffic lights and ATMs to fuse boxes and cell phones are under your control, giving you countless ways to approach problems. You can also access personal data on anyone you see.

In an interview with gaming site Console Creatures, Watch Dogs Senior Producer Dominic Guay said the future portrayed in the game may not be as far away as we think.

“There are cities right now that are networking all of their systems,” Guay said. “In Chicago, there is over 10,000 security cameras pointed at the population. We live in that world now.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPYgXvgS6Ww

Aside from Aiden’s smartphone, you will also be armed with a pistol and a tactical baton. The game is built to work with different play styles, so you can use any combination of stealth, hacking and direct combat to complete missions.

One feature that looks particularly useful is the ability to take control of CCTV cameras and webcams in order to see and hack objects from their viewpoint. Aiden can use this to survey an area from a safe distance and gain the upper hand in combat.

With themes of digital connectivity and the in-game smartphone, it only makes sense to incorporate mobile apps into the Watch Dogs experience. The player will be able to download a free companion app and use it to interact with the game world through a smartphone.

A seamless multiplayer option allows you to go online and join another player’s game. The other player won’t know that you’re there and you will appear as a non-player character to them. The goal of multiplayer is to hack the competition’s network and download their data.

The opponent is alerted when you try to hack them and the download takes time, so you have to low lay and stay in close proximity to the target to succeed. It’s up to the other player to search the area and profile people on the street to figure out where you are. The enemy can then prevent the hack by killing or chasing you away.

Watch Dogs was originally announced for release on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, but the game will now be on PS4 and Xbox One as well.

The difference between the current-gen and next-gen editions of the game will be entirely cosmetic with no major changes to gameplay, Creative Director Jonathan Morin said. The team chose to create and refine one experience rather than developing two different versions of the game.

“We don’t build a game for the tech,” Morin said. “We build it for an idea.”

Announcement Trailer for Alien: Isolation

Sega officially announced their upcoming game Alien: Isolation earlier today. They also released an announcement trailer, which says the game is scheduled to hit shelves in late 2014.

Set in the universe of the Alien franchise, this survival horror game  has been under development for three years by studio Creative Assembly. The gameplay revolves around navigating through an abandoned space station while being stalked by a massive Xenomorph alien.

Isolation follows on the heels of last year’s disappointing first-person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines. Whereas Gearbox’s FPS title drew its influences from the action-filled sequel Aliens, Isolation is more interested in capturing the look and feel of the first Alien movie.

In an interview with Access Gaming, lead programmer Clive Gratton said their goal with the game is “to communicate the classic film experience” of the 1979 sci-fi horror movie.

“We didn’t want a generic sci-fi setting, but something that spoke of the style of Ridley Scott’s original film,” Gratton said.

Isolation takes place fifteen years after Alien and it tells the story of Amanda Ripley, the daughter of the protagonist from the Alien movies. Her search for her missing mother brings her to the space station where she encounters the Xenomorph.

The player will be armed only with a motion tracker and whatever tools and weapons they can scavenge from the environment. Since fighting the deadly creature head-on is out of the question, you’ll have to evade, hide and outsmart the Xenomorph to stay alive.

Creative Assembly seems to be determined to make an authentic and faithful followup to the original Alien film. All of the technology featured in the game will be consistent with what was in the movie, such as the distorted VHS-quality video recording shown in the game’s trailer.

The newest installment in the Alien franchise will be released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC as well as Xbox 360 and PS3 later this year.