RPGs with Horror as the main theme?

[wishbonetail]

I definitely saw this premise used somewhere, but a bit differently. Instead of super powerful and a curse, it was just your average Joe becoming exhausted fighting these weird monsters.

It was used in Fear and Hunger. You start up in tip top shape and end up without arms and legs in a pool of shit.

 

[InSight]

horror definition

horror
(ˈhɒrə)
n
1. extreme fear; terror; dread
2. intense loathing; hatred
3. (often plural) a thing or person causing fear, loathing, etc
4. (modifier) having a frightening subject, esp a supernatural one: a horror film.
[C14: from Latin: a trembling with fear; compare hirsute]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Horror is a genre of storytelling intended to scare, shock, and thrill its audience.

horror genre definition

Horror is a genre of speculative fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust.

CRPG's which are mostly simple tactical/strategy with exploration are about control or offer more control and of multiply units. While horror games often provide less degree of it. Example:tank movement in Resident Evil(PlayStation). Control in games can be against the experience horror or horror themed games intended to stimulate.

Fallout (1997) is a horror themed game. Horrifying things are not limited to the dark and can exist under the sunlight.
Consider what it would be like to live in the world of fallout. The horror of post nuclear war, a wasteland. The lack of kindness, safety and comfort. The ugliness of death and savagery. The fear of losing home which the game shows there is no other like it(some buildings are made of garbage).
Ghouls and mutants would be horrifying to look at if it was not imagery. All these can be horrifying when the princples/values/ethics of good people is considered.

fallout game spoilers

In the game, descending into the glow or even other vaults can be a scary/dreadful experience. A place of high tech similar to the Player Character's home where people lived is desolated and in ruins and needing to descend further with the threat of radiation with no living in sight which can evoke the fear of loneliness.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 is a post/after world catastrophe and so is similar to Fallout in this regard.

 

[wishbonetail]

Fallout, even first, is more akin to Mad Max and Monty Pytons goofiness and absurdism. On the other hand, Stalker and This war of mine can convey an existential dread. But still, they are not Rpgs.
Oh, and i hear couple of mentions of the Soul Reaver but i think Blood Omen's atmosphere is unsurpassed.

 

[Abu Antar]

Sweet Home for the NES, developed by Capcom. No Sweet Home, no Resident Evil. Based on a Japanese horror film. No official English release, but there's a fan translation out there.

 

[CabbageHead]

Nobody here play Darkwood? Its RPG status is debatable, but it's the closest thing to a horror RPG that I know of.
And by horror, I mean the game actually got me spooked. An incredible feat for a top-down game.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Some trivia about the movie Sweet Home: FX makeup artist Dick Smith (The Exorcist, The Godfather) worked on it. He went by the pseudonym Dikku Sumisu, which sounds kind of dirty in that slightly Biggus Dickus kind of way.

 

[wishbonetail]

Nobody here play Darkwood? Its RPG status is debatable, but it's the closest thing to a horror RPG that I know of.
And by horror, I mean the game actually got me spooked. An incredible feat for a top-down game.

Darkwood is a fucking masterpiece but we already strayed far enough from general rpg discussion. It does have some C&C, though.

 

[plem]

NWN Ravenloft modules are horror-themed
Underrail has some creepy moments in dark corridors with stalker enemies
Sunless Sea has Lovecraftian horror
Dead State has zombies

it's funny that for movies we categorize anything with monsters in it as horror, so if that was the case for games most RPGs would count. almost all of them have giant insects, undead, eldritch abominations, etc. even oldschool D&D is as much pulp horror as it is high fantasy.

 

[Reinhardt]

it's funny that for movies we categorize anything with monsters in it as horror, so if that was the case for games most RPGs would count. almost all of them have giant insects, undead, eldritch abominations, etc. even oldschool D&D is as much pulp horror as it is high fantasy.

when you kill hundreds of monsters in the movie it's not pure horror anymore.

 

[Ninjerk]

Fallout, even first, is more akin to Mad Max and Monty Pytons goofiness and absurdism. On the other hand, Stalker and This war of mine can convey an existential dread. But still, they are not Rpgs.
Oh, and i hear couple of mentions of the Soul Reaver but i think Blood Omen's atmosphere is unsurpassed.

I probably need to replay Fallout since I haven't done a long play of it in awhile, but the goofiness and absurdism in the first game (when I think about what I consider to be goofy/absurd) seems limited to easter eggs (e.g., ray gun from the spaceship and the Elvis painting). It seems to take itself quite seriously, whereas that balance is shifted in the direction you indicated in FO2. We won't speak of other... "games".

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Fallout (1997) is a horror themed game. Horrifying things are not limited to the dark and can exist under the sunlight.

I feel like if we're going to take games that aren't really horror but have elements that could be considered horrific we're going to have a lot more games that are actually fantasy, but have some elements nobody really thinks about that would be horrifying if done correctly.
For instance...
Morrowind is set on an island slowly being corrupted by a mythical Satan. Partially spread by a disease that turns all men into zombies. One of the early symptoms? Insomnia, and you never see anyone sleeping...
Neverwinter Nights, the first chapter of the game is centered around a plague hitting the titular city. Bodies are being burned in the street, people can be heard crying in the distance, and outside of the center of town, madness reins under the thick smoke.
Oblivion involves demons entering the mortal plane, and is also quite terrifying to play from most accounts of the game I've read.

 

[anvi]

For me any story heavy game will be a brutal time of horror.

 

[mediocrepoet]

If you're a pussy arachnophobic nearly every RPG is a horror ackackackackack

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/67855

Similar mod for Codex

 

[Great Deceiver]

Strong potential for "what is an RPG" thread #8712432434

 

[wishbonetail]

probably need to replay Fallout since I haven't done a long play of it in awhile, but the goofiness and absurdism in the first game (when I think about what I consider to be goofy/absurd) seems limited to easter eggs (e.g., ray gun from the spaceship and the Elvis painting). It seems to take itself quite seriously, whereas that balance is shifted in the direction you indicated in FO2. We won't speak of other... "games".

Fallouts intro sets the mood right from the start, when troop in PA execute prisoner and then waves at the camera, while the jolly music playes at the background.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=geLiEiAiQJA

 

[Utfärd]

That's just like real life though.

 

[Bastardchops]

I wonder if there are RPGs that run a horror (including psychological horror) theme. I am thinking of something akin to Diablo 1, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1, Darkest Dungeon, The Consuming Shadow, etc.

Infra Arcana is a horror roguelike with a sanity system. It's got some interesting things going on.
https://sites.google.com/site/infraarcana/home

 

[Bastardchops]

It seems to me that RPGs are somewhat antithetical to horror, beacause they're usually power fantasies. They're mostly about getting stronger, crushing your enemies, and coming out a winner, with a bigger dick and a hot girl stroking it.

So you're usually only going to find action RPGs dealing with horror as an atmospheric thing, a horror you'll succeed in pushing back by fighting. Even Diablo 1 with its bittersweet ending is like that. Horror is limited to the setting flavor.

Stygian had potential; and other games focussing on psychological horrors and sanity are interesting, but I'm not sure they succeed that well as cRPGs. There's always this distinction between making you, the player, scared, versus making the character scared and you dealing with the consequences of his insanity. FPSes and other first person games do the scaring the player better, but it's often cheap. In RPGs, the distance between player and character kind of blunts the horror. Quality of writing is more important then, and sanity or coping mechanics.

I tend to agree because often the scary aspect of the horror genre is based partly on the fact that any protagonists are usually just attempting to survive whatever abomination or hellish scenario they're up against. Whereas the in rpg's the characters are usually slowly conquering the world.

 

[Bastardchops]

I have this https://store.steampowered.com/app/913740/WORLD_OF_HORROR/ on my Steam wishlist. It's apparently a roguelike, anyone tried it?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

RPG designation is debatable, but doesn’t the original Prey from 2006 qualify? I haven’t played it, I’m just generally aware of its existence and subsequent memory-hole’ing

I remembet it being a pure first person shooter.

 

[Great Deceiver]

The only game I can think of that really fits the profile without veering into "What is an RPG?" territory is The Legacy. It's clunky but definitely worth a playthrough.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

The Elvira crawlers on the Amiga made it seem easy to do a super enjoyable blobber RPG but nothing since has come close.

"Ravenloft : Strahd's Possession" tried but it just had no atmosphere in the 3D like Menzobarranzan.

I'd really like to do an Elvira-style crawler myself but if it doesn't have atmosphere it is just not worth it.

 

[Sarathiour]

RPG designation is debatable, but doesn’t the original Prey from 2006 qualify? I haven’t played it, I’m just generally aware of its existence and subsequent memory-hole’ing

How the fuck is it an rpg ?

Don't get me wrong, it's quite good horror shooter, but so is FEAR, and neither are rpg.

 

[Sarathiour]

Anyway, my pick would be darkwood.

 

[Bastardchops]

Not an rpg but Cry of Fear will give you a kick