Hello, Neighbor! - Pre-Alpha Demo Impressions

"Hello, Neighbor!" isn't something I say often, or ever, since I don't speak to my neighbours, but since it's the name of Dynamic Pixels and tinyBuild's upcoming stealth horror, it's something I'm happy to add to my vocabulary. Even in such mysterious circumstances as this: 

Across the street is a man. There's something strange about him. Something shines from behind his basement door, which is padlocked and boarded up. Just what is he hiding back there? Well, in Hello, Neighbor!'s pre-alpha demo, that's what I aimed to find out.

Here he is. Looking out the window like he doesn't have some terrifying secret hidden in his basement. Douche.

At its core, Hello, Neighbor! is a game which has players exploring the house of the man across the street, whether he likes it or not. And he really doesn't. The ultimate goal is to find out what is locked away in his basement. The only way to do this, however, is to sneak into his house and gradually work your way through using items you find, such as keys to unlock doors, hammer to pry off boards, and codes to enter into keypads. 

In order to get enough time to do actually do this, or to explore a room that the neighbour is currently in, distractions are key. For example, do you want to go into the living room where he's watching TV? If you smash a window, turn on a radio, or open the garage door, to pick out a few examples, he'll get up to find out what it was. While he's up and about, it's time to move. Be quick, though, because you never know when he might be back.

If he comes back to find you snooping about, you'll know about it. The music becomes almost deafening as he chases you down, and if he catches you, you wake up back in your bedroom across the street. Only next time you go back to the neighbour's house, things will have changed.

You see, Hello, Neighbor! features procedural AI that can, and will, adapt. During one of my many short playthroughs (I wasn't very good at snooping), I got my foot caught in a bear trap. Shortly afterwards, he appeared, and I found myself back across the street. Then, knowing my weakness for this method of capture, I found that he'd put another bear trap right outside the front door. Clever bastard. 

While Hello, Neighbor!'s premise and procedural AI definitely have promise, the early build that I played through felt like just that. I was able to somehow glitch through a wall and hide under a bed without ever stepping foot inside, and the neighbour himself would often get stuck inside objects. Though this seemed like an invitation to explore the rest of the house in my own time, it actually meant that he was sometimes stuck inside the very room that I wanted to be in. If he then spotted me, he'd break free from his glitch-trap and catch me. It almost always made me jump...

In addition, I had to guess what the controls were, as the escape button closed the entire demo rather than bringing up a menu, like I'd thought it would. In a demo as tense as this, it would have been nice to know the controls from the get-go. The latter issue is obviously very minor, but adds up to the unpolished feel that can be expected at this stage in development.

Regardless of the few bugs mentioned above, which really aren't that surprising inside a pre-alpha build, Hello, Neighbor! has my attention. From the very first trailer, I've been captivated by the game's unique style, making the world and its characters seem surreal and larger than life, much like the world of Albino Lullaby, another one-of-a-kind horror that I reviewed in 2015. Everything is extremely colourful and hides a much darker tone behind its cheerful exterior. I can't wait to peep through its curtains, explore its rooms, and, ultimately, find out what's hidden in the depths of its basement.

You can find out more about the upcoming horror game on its website, sign up to play the pre-alpha demo for yourself here, or even purchase the game on Steam, as it's just enter Early Access release with an updated demo known as Alpha 1 (featuring more items and a two-story house). Happy hunting.

Outlast 2 - Demo impressions

Outlast 2 has been making its way through the dark for a while now, but it's finally getting much closer. The sequel to Outlast, which was set inside a dark, corrupted asylum, will be released in 2017 across PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. No price has been revealed. Never mind all that, though. Grab your night-vision camera and a handful of batteries, because we're exploring the Outlast 2 demo.

The demo starts with a little context, wrapping the scares up in an investigative package that is similar to that of the original game:

"You are Blake Langermann, a cameraman working with your wife, Lynn. The two of you are investigative journalists willing to take risks and dig deep to uncover the stories no one else will dare touch. You’re following a trail of clues that started with the seemingly impossible murder of a pregnant woman known only as Jane Doe. The investigation has lead you miles into the Arizona desert, to a darkness so deep that no one could shed light upon it, and a corruption so profound that going mad may be the only sane thing to do."

With that in mind, Blake is thrown down a cliff, clearly separated from his beloved Lynn, and re-unites with the other love of his life; his camera. As soon as he picks it up, I'm in control, and immediately as spooked as ever. It's an almost pitch-black night, though the moon lights my way at first, and I'm heading towards a small gathering of huts. When I get there, I turn on my night-vision camera for the first time and see eyes shining in the darkness. All around me. They don't move, but I decide to duck into one of the huts through an open window. An errant crow flies through and I wonder why I even like horror so much in the first place. 

By this point, I very much feel like I'm back in the universe of Outlast, despite the fact that everything so far has been much more open. Each new scare, whether scripted imaginary, nothing more than a gust of wind blowing through an open door, keeps me on edge. This is definitely Outlast.

I'm being as vague as possible in order to leave the 5-10 minute demo unspoiled, but there's a lot packed into it. It appears as if there's multiple facets to the narrative of Outlast 2, with the little town or farm feeling somewhat cult-ish, containing a number of different spirit-like entities, and a hell of a lot of dead bodies. Naturally, it's all very creepy, if a little disconnected.

My initial concern with the Outlast 2 demo is that this small glimpse into the sequel felt like it had too many different layers. While this isn't necessary a bad thing for the full experience, these layers were added with an increase of the spiritual element that only really appeared towards the end of the first game.

Within the demo I was shown a number of different entities, locations and trippy sequences in a short space of time. Though each delivered their own scares well, they lacked the brutal realism of the first title, which felt very much like You vs Them in an abandoned asylum. Clean. Simple. Scary. Outlast 2 has clearly been messing with a Ouija board since then.

The demo was also much more open than I'd expected, and I lost my way a few times towards the end of the demo when being chased through a cornfield. It could have just been fear, but the way out - which turned out to be jumping a fence using a stack of pallets - wasn't clear to me. All very minor things, and I'm not surprised to find myself with some concerns. Outlast raised the bar so high for indie horror games. It's a hard one to live up to. I know that I've been spoiled...

Don't get me wrong, I completely trust Red Barrels to deliver a sequel that's as terrifying as the original. I just hope that the scares aren't wrapped up in a story that I'll neither understand nor remember when the final credits roll. Until we find out for sure, go forth, find out more about the game on Red Barrels' website, and try the demo on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam. It'll scare the night-vision right off of your camera.

If you'd prefer to watch someone else be terrified by it, watch Markiplier play through below:

Stifled - Preview

In case you haven't been listening to the eerie echoes of the indie horror scene, Stifled is the first commercial game in the works from Gattai Games, a Singapore-based studio already on many radars after their student project, Lurking, won 'Best Student Game' (among other awards) at China's Independent Games Festival in 2014. Stifled is considered the spiritual successor to this award-winning game, which had players using echo-location to explore and survive in a world of blackness, and so I was understandably excited when I was offered the chance to preview the game. Here's what I thought.

The demo opens on a car crash — your own, in fact. You take control inside a flipped car and crawl your way out into a pitch-black forest. The only reason the darkness hasn't consumed you already is that your car is on fire. Silver linings, eh? Without any other option, you head off into the true darkness of the forest.

Once inside the blackness, the game's most important feature comes into play; echo-location. After making a noise — by throwing an object, holding down space, or even speaking into the mic — the environment around you is reflected back at you in clean, white lines. It's still pretty easy to see what everything is, and it works well enough for bats, right?

Soon enough you stumble across a metal door leading down into some sort of sewage system. It's the only option. Of course, that's also where horrors await you... After sending out one of many echo-location scans, which has become second nature by this point, something answers your call. Something in the darkness screams out and the black is splashed with angry red. It sounds pained and almost child-like.

Exploring becomes tense from this point onwards. There's a constant balance of wanting to be hidden from the unknown creature, yet wanting, and needing, to see the world around you.

In this respect, Stifled feels almost like a spiritual successor to Dark Echo, which uses a similar method of echo-location (from a top-down perspective) and has entertained and terrified me on many a train journey. However, you don't to actually see the reason for your fear in Dark Echo, and this adds an entirely new layer to Stifled.

Seeing the creature — a writhing, disturbed, humanoid being — evokes memories of The Last of Us and SOMA, which is a massive compliment, if you ask me. In both, you are in danger of being killed by a creature, yet you also wish you could get just a little closer to understand exactly what it is. In both cases, it is not something that was born to kill. It began as human, and was infected. Perhaps this creature is the same. It didn't seem like it wanted to kill, exactly. Maybe it's own human instincts are just "stifled" by some overriding need to murder. That's not just a great pun, I swear. There's something deeper within this creature's aggression and anguish, which I hope to uncover later in the game.

In order to get far enough to uncover this, though, you'll need to make sure that you're playing in a quiet room. With the mic feature on — a great, unique feature — any noise can give away your position and get you killed. All it takes is a friendly "How was your day?" and... dead. If you're expecting other people to be in the same room while playing, I'd highly recommend turning this feature off. You can always switch it on later for the full Stifled experience. What an experience it can be, too. 

At its core are extremely tense cat and mouse scenarios with the creature, throwing rocks and cans as far away as possible to distract it from finding you in the corner you accidentally backed yourself into. This sends it screeching after whatever made the sound. It's an awful, bone-chilling scream, but it's fine as long as it's heading in the opposite direction. 

I had an unbearably tense few minutes of this exact cat and mouse gameplay towards the end of the demo, but then, in the darkness, a light. A welcome one. "Exit." It took a lot of willpower not to go into a full-on sprint to escape, but I managed it... 

A door came into sight, and as it grew nearer, it opened. Inside it, some kind of office. Small, well-kept, full of dark wooden furniture and books. On the desk, a map and a leaflet. My inferior knowledge of geography meant that the map was useless, but the leaflet offered a little more in the way of information. The leaflet was for an orphanage. What could this mean for the full game? Based on previous trailers for Stifled, I think we'll get to explore this orphanage upon release, no doubt long abandoned by everything but creep factors.

Admittedly, within all of this silhouetted tension, there are still a few outlined bugs to squash. The main issue I found, and the only one to actually affect gameplay, was that I would occasionally get stuck in objects or walls. Though I was able to free myself every time, the problem came with the fact that getting stuck caused the protagonist to bounce up and down on the spot. It was as if I'd picked up a megaphone and started broadcasting my location to anything that might have been listening. Uhoh.

My only other feedback was entirely subjective and had no influence on the rest of the demo. Firstly, I thought that the opening scene - as one of the only areas to be shown in the light - could have been been more visually pleasing. Everything looked notably average with muddy textures, and I was glad to head into the clean lines of the darkness. This wasn't reflected in the office, though, which looked much more polished.

Also, there are times when you'll occasionally hear static throughout the demo, and while it's jarring as desired, it sometimes reached volumes that made me feel as if I was being plunged underwater. Too much more and I'd have wanted to switch to speakers for a while, thereby stepping back slightly from the immersive sound design that comes with good horror.

Sure, there's still a little work to do, most notably around getting stuck in objects in the loudest way possible, but there's a lot of potential here for something special. In just a short demo, Stifled combined things I love about a few different games, and created something new of its own. The echo-location I loved from Dark Echo is here, as is the stealth from The Last of Us and SOMA, in addition to the unshakeable feeling that the creature hunting me down is unmistakably human and in pain. That won't stop it from tearing me limb from limb, I'm sure, but it adds another level to the fear. That's what good horror is able to do, and it just may be something that Stifled does extremely well. 

If you have been listening, you may have heard that Stifled was recently Greenlit. Not only that, but the game will be coming to Playstation 4 as a Playstation VR game. It seems like a horrifying match made in heaven, so that only adds to my excitement. While I await Stifled's full release, I'll be bouncing off the walls in more ways than one, hoping that nothing else is listening in. 

Resident Evil 7 [Beginning Hour Demo] - Preview

It was a Tuesday morning (in the UK). The E3 2016 Sony conference was well underway. Then, out of nowhere, a game that many had forsaken fought its way back up to the surface by tooth and nail. This re-animated corpse was, of course, Resident Evil 7. 

With a much darker, P.T.-esque reveal trailer, Capcom had gamers feeling optimistic for a series that has been hard to root for since Resident Evil 4, all the way back in 2005. Here is the trailer that showed us all that Resident Evil 7 might finally be shambling along a different, but ultimately much-needed path:

What's more is that Capcom revealed there was going to be a Resident Evil 7 demo called 'Beginning Hour' made available on the PlayStation Store immediately. Resident Evil was well and truly back to its rightful place at the forefront of horror-loving minds. But, does it deserve to be there? 

Well, I played the demo and here's what I thought...

Resident Evil 7 - Preview

The first thing that's impossible not to mention is that fact that the series, which has always been third-person – with the exception of the Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, an FPS game for the Wii – could now be an entirely first-person affair. This is likely to divide long-time fans of the series. Some will see it as yet another step away from what made the classics so great, whereas others – like myself – feel that this makes horror feel incredibly immediate, and that a change, even such a drastic departure as this, was needed in order for the franchise to remain relevant. 

Some of the most terrifying games (and demos) of recent years have been first-person, such as Outlast or P.T., and it's nice to see Capcom taking inspiration from acclaimed horror games rather than acclaimed action games. Anyway, there's more to the demo than how you view the horror, and for once, there actually is some to view.

When the demo started, I found myself lying on old wooden floorboards. As I clambered up, I was greeted by one message:

"Get out of the house."

Then nothing. No tutorial. No hints. Just an unlit room, two old sofas, a dirty table, a fuse box, a dusty stone fireplace, and a TV on a table in the corner, playing static. On the table in-between the two sofas there was a note, which said "I will dash them against the stones." Curiosity and the thought of freedom drove me forward into the darkness.

The TV needed a video tape, and the fuse box was missing a fuse. Of course, I had neither. What I did have, however, was an inventory. Though I had nothing to fill it with, the inventory seemed limited in space, and items could be mapped to the four directions on the d-pad. Good to know.

I found a door, and was prompted to press X to open. As in all RE games, I expected a door animation to take over. It didn't. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the game actually has you manually open a door by pushing the analogue stick forward. It's a small feature, but one that keeps you firmly in control, making something as simple as opening a door more tense than the entirety of RE5 or RE6 combined. 

Through the door was a hallway. It was still extremely dark, and the house itself looked worn and abandoned. I crept along the hallway, only able to see a few feet in front of the unknown protagonist I was controlling. What I found in a small room to my left unnerved me further: a locked door that had been barricaded haphazardly from the outside, and a ceiling of doll babies, swinging from rope tied around their necks. I can never keep up with the latest trends in home design...

With nothing much else to see, I moved on. To my right there was a cabinet. I opened a drawer and found what appeared to be a dummy's finger. It seemed useless to me at this point in time so I placed it into my inventory and continued. In front of me, a crossroads. I could either go upstairs, where a dark room and a flashing light beckoned me, or I could go into the kitchen, looking a little worse for wear, but much more open and lighter. I chose the kitchen (obviously).

I opened the fridge and found nothing but mouldy food, followed by the microwave, which contained a long-dead crow. I'll probably never know why it was there, and I'm okay with that. Next, I opened a large pot sitting on the kitchen table, only to find more rotten food and a few cockroaches. There was little else to explore in the kitchen, except for a drawer with nothing in and another that was locked.

Thinking the key wouldn't be anywhere nearby, I headed through a door on the other side of the kitchen. It led down yet another worn corridor, but it was the small room at the end that caught my eye. Flesh. Covering the floor. Just, flesh. It may have been animal carcasses, though it was hard to tell, and I wasn't about to get any closer. 

Stabbed into one of these piles of flesh was a pair of bolt cutters, which I yanked free before trying the door. Through it I could see the bright light of day, and the door itself seemed in better condition than the rest of the house. Was this the way out? I tried the handle. Locked. I headed back.

At the end of the corridor was a wardrobe that I hadn't seen on the way past, and its doors were locked by a thick chain. I selected the bolt cutters from my inventory and cut through. Inside the wardrobe was a video tape, and I had just the place for it. I made my way back, expecting something to jump out at me at any moment. It didn't, but that didn't change the fact that I was internally cheering for the level of tension the demo was delivering. Instead of punching a massive boulder, it was like Chris Redfield was punching my heart. Much better. 

Back in the room I had woken in, I played the video - as it turned out, quite literally.

As the video began to play, I realised that I was in control of the person with the camera, filming some sort of haunted house show called 'Sewer Gators'. This feature shows some real growth in Capcom's mindset towards horror, as they're leaving the control, and therefore the fear, in the hands of the player. As they (I) continued filming the show, I realised that they were actually walking through the very house I was now watching the tape in. Naturally, before long, a member of the team went missing. 

During the search, we ended up in the same room that I was watching the tape inside, and the egotistical presenter of the show found a hidden switch in the fireplace. When activated, it opened a small square door in the wall, which led to a space under the house - maybe a second basement used in Prohibition times. 

For a while I was pointing the camera up at the ladder I had just climbed down for a "hero shot" that the presenter wanted. After he didn't follow me down, I started to look around. I quickly stepped back and my breath caught in my throat. Directly behind me was the missing member of the team. 

He was facing the wall, not moving. After building the courage, I grabbed his shoulder. In doing so, I pulled him from a hook that was lodged into his jaw and we both fell to the floor. Blood seeped from his eyes and his head lolled backwards in my lap. He was almost certainly dead. There wasn't much time to think before someone else stepped out from the darkness, into the basement with me, and the video cut out.

On the table in front of me... the note from before, but changed. It now said "I will dash YOU against the stones," with the "YOU" written in blood. Great. I needed to get out of this house.

The first thing I had to do was trying the fireplace switch from the video. Yes, it was there alright, and it opened the same hole in the wall. Before going through, though, I had to check upstairs. If I were going to find something in this basement that ended the demo, I wanted to have explored the entire house. I cautiously made my back to the bottom of the stairs and tiptoed up. At the top was a flashing button marked 'Stairs' which didn't seem to do anything when I pushed it. 

Aware that there was a missing fuse, I gave up hoping that this would do anything and instead kept a watchful eye on three mannequins that stood by the wall to my left. I hate mannequins so much. I found the courage to try and use the dummy's finger, but it didn't seem to work. Happy to leave the plastic nightmares behind, I headed back to the hole in the wall in search of the door key.

As luck would have it, the key to the back door awaited me at the opening to the basement. The ladder was missing, which was fine by me, and it was definitely time to go. I headed back into the room, but something had changed again. The door leading back into the corridor was wide open. I crept towards it and the soundtrack spiked as something tall and deformed walked past. I backed into the room and waited, hoping it hadn't seen me. 

Silence. 

Whatever it was, it didn't appear again, though the thought of seeing it up close and personal made the walk to the back door seem much longer than it had before.

By the time I reached the room of rotting flesh, I was squinting, convinced that the thing was hiding within the corpses. Again, nothing but my own fears. I walked up to the back door without any issues, used the key I'd found to unlock it, and pushed the door open. Outside I could bright blue skies and a lush green garden. Freedom. 

Then a voice: 

"Hehehe... Welcome to the family, son." 

I turned and an old man in a yellow jacket knocked me out with a punch to the face. The demo was over. Or at least, that's how it ended for me.

Similarly to the P.T. demo, there are actually multiple items and secrets hidden throughout, many of which can actually lead to different endings. It's possible to find the missing fuse, go into the attic, answer a phone call (with at least three different conversations), see the mannequins come to life, find an axe, and even to spot a ghostly apparition of an unexplained woman (whom I didn't see even once). However, no-one is yet to figure out what the dummy finger does... if anything at all. 

Was the demo on the same level of fear that games like Outlast or P.T. produced? Not quite. Did I, for the first time in years, actually experience fear in a Resident Evil game? YES. Hell, I even jumped a couple of times. For me, that's a step in the right direction, and it means that I can finally be excited for a Resident Evil game without the feelings of shame that came with my blind excitement for Resident Evil 6.

If you have a PS4, you can now download the demo and try for yourself. I'm hoping that you'll find the same sense of fear and excitement that I found. In fact, I'm hoping the demo sinks its rediscovered, infectious bite just as far into you.

WhiteWall

I saw a game called Inner Space on Twitter and remarked that it was beautiful (which it is), and Steve Zapata, a developer at PolyKnight Games, shared a gallery of InnerSpace images to look through if I was interested (which I was). He also let me know about WhiteWall, a short monochrome horror made in a gamejam a few years back, by the very same team. It just made sense to play it and then write about it here. It’s kind of what I do, right?

WhiteWall is creepy, but it is more of an ongoing sense of unease than it is all-out horror. You find yourself in maze of inter-connected rooms, each very similar to the last, with some variations in furniture. The walls and doors are completely white, and an endless droning - like a continual air raid siren - drives you forward. Only when this changes to a jarring tangle of noise are you getting somewhere. Even then, what you find is unnerving, as you're not quite sure whether it is safe to approach or not. (I won't ruin this, as I feel the surprise is part of the overall experience.)

If you do build the courage to approach, you'll find yourself back at the start of another maze of rooms. Though, they're different now. The white walls are peeling, revealing a strange under-layer that is somewhere between television static and infinite space. It is strangely hypnotic, to say the least. In fact, the whole experience could be described in the same way. To leave the full experience with you, the player, I won't go any further and ruin it, but it is definitely worth playing if you're looking for a short, strange and free game to play today. Find out everything you need to know about WhiteWall on itch.io, where you can download the game for yourself.

Plus, if you like the look of what this team can do, check out what they're working on as PolyKnight Games on Twitter. As aforementioned, the studio’s current game is InnerSpace, "an exploration flying game set within an inverted planet," where players will "explore a unique world, encounter its gods, and discover its secrets." It looks stunning, so check out the successful Kickstarter page for all of the information you need to know, along with a few eye-pleasing GIFs.

Fallout 4 - The Devil's Due

Did you know that there was a horror side-quest in the open-world RPG sensation that is Fallout 4? No, neither did I. You just know I hauled ass over to it as soon as I found out, though, low level be damned. 

Fallout 4 is set in Boston, which is close to the town of Salem, well-known as the location of many an execution back in the times of suspected witches. It is also home to the Museum of Witchcraft, which Bethesda have kindly included in the game, and is where you'll need to go if you want to bring some fear into your Fallout 4. The side-quest is called "The Devil's Due," and whether you hear about it in Diamond City, or go in search of it in the North-East of the Commonwealth like I did, it will completely change the genre of the game for a moment.

When you get to the museum, which I did just as dusk was setting in (for atmospheric effect more than anything else), you’ll find a dismembered corpse. It belongs to Private Hart, and if you listen to a holotape on her body, you'll discover that the rest of her team ran inside the museum. Something was chasing them. Naturally, you’ll want to go inside via an entrance to the basement. 

Once you're inside, you're in a horror game. It is dark, blood drips from the ceiling, and mannequins make you jump thanks to a well-timed shriek in the soundtrack. Oh, and there's some growling coming from upstairs, too. Damn you, Bethesda.

That’s all I’m going to tell you. The reason I loved this side-quest so much, even if I was nowhere near powerful enough to complete it, was the complete and utter surprise that it existed in the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 4. Mutants and giant mosquitoes, sure, but horror? Surely not. If you love horror, and own this game, check it out. Hint: Take a big gun.

Dark Fear - Preview

Speaking to developers on Twitter is great. I learn about new games from people that are genuinely passionate about what they do, and really talented at doing it. Then, occasionally, a generous studio will send over a free copy of their game for little ol' me. In this case, the generous studio was Arif Games, and the game was Dark Fear, a pixel horror RPG adventure that's pretty damn addictive.

Worried that I might not have time to play much of Dark Fear before writing about it, I let the studio know that I wouldn't be able to guarantee a full review. Little did I know that only two days later I'd get 29% through the game in one sitting... Granted, I only played for about an hour, but I'd still say that's an impressive feat for playing on my mobile. Unless I'm travelling, a mobile game has to be good to keep my attention. Dark Fear is. 

Yes, some mobile games are incredibly simple, aiming to latch onto the success of games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush, but Dark Fear is an adventure of variety and tension. It just so happens to be squeezed into a portable device.

It is the variety of Dark Fear that I believe captivated me so during my hour of gaming. One moment the game was a point-and-click puzzle solver, and the next it was a turn-based RPG where I was fighting off wolves, tree demons and a possessed child (with the added bonus of NPCs, shops, weapons, armour, potions and even a little bit of grinding for money). If you hadn't guessed from "possessed child", the game is also sometimes tense and downright scary. I'm not just talking about when a little girl scuttles across a wall, or runs towards the player shrieking like a banshee, because even the title screen made me jump. It uses a painful screech to announce itself, similar to the opening of the Insidious films, and it really sets the tone of the game.

The game is also quite open, especially after making a little progress, and the player is able to choose between a few different locations at their own leisure. Sometimes they'll want to progress by using something they've found to solve a puzzle, or by talking to an NPC about something they’ve done, but other times they might just go hunting in the woods, catching rabbits, deer and badgers for their fur, and then sell that fur to afford new gear. Carrying out these tasks to upgrade your character is fun, addictive and also makes the moments of tension and horror that much more effective.

If you ask me, that should be enough for you to want to look into Dark Fear. What I have played so far was fun enough for me to ignore everything else in my life and home for an hour, playing on my phone in the darkness, and I’m looking forward to playing more. Since you don’t even need to be online to play it (hallelujah!), this could become your new piece of travelling horror. From what I’ve played so far, Dark Fear definitely deserves a place on your phone.

Find out more on iTunes or GooglePlay, and get in touch with Arif Games on Facebook or Twitter, even if it is just to tell them that they are awesome.

The Walking Dead: Road to Survival

I seem to have been bitten by the zombie bug after writing about Overkill’s The Walking Dead, because lately I’ve been playing The Walking Dead: Road to Survival, a mobile game set in the same gritty universe. I’ve actually had the game on my phone for a few weeks, but considering you need internet access to even play the game (which I hate in a mobile game), I was waiting until I had a bit of spare time at home before trying it out. I shouldn’t have waited so long.

Road to Survival bleeds The Walking Dead from its comic book style visuals, to its gripping soundtrack, and even contains a few beloved characters from the series. Just like most mobile RPGs, you build a settlement from the ground up, creating and upgrading buildings, complete story and limited time only missions, and can join factions to work together. And, exactly like most mobile RPGs of this calibre, it is insanely addictive. I haven’t yet reached the point where I have to wait hours for buildings and upgrades to be ready, though, which, if I’m honest, is normally where I get bored.

Until then, I’ve been absolutely loving building my own little settlement in Robert Kirkman’s unforgiving world, and fighting the battles that take place in it, both against the undead and hostile survivors. In that respect, the narrative feels very much like the comic books or the television series; no-one can be trusted. Between fights, which use a similar strength and weakness system to that of Pokemon (e.g. fast characters are effective against tough characters, but weak against strong characters), players get to make choices. Just as you’d expect, these choices make you question the world around you, and the line between survival and humanity.

I made the choice to trust someone, and they sliced a young boy’s throat open in front of me. The next time I have to make a choice, I’ll have to weigh up the options. Do I let the world harden my humanity until I’ll stop at nothing to protect the few people I know I can trust? Or do I try to remain as the person I was before, and take a chance on the morality of survivors I meet? Either way, people could die. That’s on me.

It is these kind of choices, supported by the fitting visuals and soundtrack, which elevate Road to Survival from a simply mobile cash cow, to a game that is very much deserving to be part of The Walking Dead. Though I may not be in it for the long haul, mainly because I don’t always have time to be playing on my phone in a place where I have access to the internet, I have really enjoyed what I’ve played so far.

If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead, I’d definitely recommend this free iOS and Android game. Step into the undead-filled universe, build a settlement, make tough choices, and see if you can bring down The Governor in your own way.

Slender: The Arrival

The Slender man games kind of took the horror community by storm. They may not have the highest production values, or the deepest narrative, but what they do have is stellar sound design and a terrifying antagonist that crawled from the darkest corners of creepypasta. I've played the original Eight Pages, and had a few recommendations to try Slender: The Arrival, the game where Blue Isle Studios brought the nightmarish myth to PC and consoles.

I’m not very far into the game yet, mainly because it’s so tense that I can’t play it for too long before needing a break. From what I’ve played, though, you control someone that is attempting to visit a friend. This friend is trying to sell their house for a fresh start, because things have been getting a little too strange for their liking lately. You’ve been sharing the same visions. Visions of a tall, thin man with no face. Of course, when you arrive, in complete darkness, their house is empty.

The only thing to greet you as you walk into the house is a scribbled picture on the wall. A picture of a man, standing in some trees. It is extremely unnerving, and you explore the house knowing that Slenderman may do what he does best and show up at any moment. Did I mention that it is also really dark? Without a torch, you really can’t see anything, and with it, every time you aim the beam of light, you’re scared that this will be the time in falls on a smooth, well-dressed face.

Essentially, that’s all you could ever need to know about a Slenderman game. It extremely simple, with no real need for narrative, but it is terrifying knowing the simple fact that Slenderman could show up anywhere. He’s an evil, teleporting bastard. Apparently he also comes with a little hooded companion in The Arrival, though I’m yet to meet them. Part of me hopes that they both decide to leave me alone soon, because Slenderman makes me shake in my damn boots.

Think you can do better? You probably can… Check out Slender: The Arrival on the website, or by following on Facebook or Twitter. While you do that, I’ll be doing my best to avoid the Slenderman, who fits into horror as well as he fits into designer suits.