Holy Night Horror Thread

Because everyone knows family-based horror is best horror

In truth, all you need to make Christmas creepy is to accept that Santa Claus actually is a multidimensional eldritch abomination (hence him being capable of bringing presents to children around the world). Then turn up the requirements needed to make him consider you a good kid, as well as the severity of the consequences if you aren't.

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There's only so much you can do with snowy terrain if it's the focus of setting, imo. Everything is bleached with snow, making color variety sort of limited unless there is major architectural change in the game area. Guess you could also say that outer space does the same thing in a sci-fi setting.

Could freezing to death be effectively implemented as a scare factor without becoming tedious?
Games that have shown freezing to death as a mechanic didn't add much to the overall experience; most prominent implementation has been a status bar that increases over time while outside or in something cold. When it fills up or drops to 0, your character just dies. It just gives your game a timer where you're constantly forced to rush from point A to B without looking at or exploring anything for fear of turning into an ice cube.

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I dont know why more games dont have wintery settings. I think there's at least a few, D2 on Dreamcast, I hear Dead Space 3 had a snowy section but killed the franchise, you can use that as an excuse to not render so much at once and have a snowstorm as an excuse for a low draw distance.

Here's one I thought was pretty good for the Wii.

Dead space 3 had a shitty temperature gimmick in place of air while space walking.
i still pirated it but felt disgusted, solid crafting system at least, minus the kikery

Cryostasis is a great cold themed horror shooter, but it was released during the console era and it suffers from some technical annoyances because of that.

Check out The Long Dark op. Post apocalyptic winter in the Canadian wilderness thats really cozy when your not freezing to death cuz no fire or waiting in an abandoned car for the wolves to leave.

The body temperature and calorie system is fun and genuinely makes freezing to death a scary shitty way to die.

I think Freezing mechanics would be more interesting if there was more than a bar going to zero, i.e., the character getting slower and slower, the fov decreasing bit by bit, gamma going down etc. Skyrim with cold weather survival mods actually could be pretty scary if you'd slip into water and would have to scramble in order to get a campfire up.

So any good horror recommendations for the Steam/GoG Christmas sale? Or for pirates?

I somehow feel as if I've already have all the got stuff (barring the Silent Hill series, but I'll get those in due time).

Its biggest issues are stability and performance, even on modern systems. I never finished it because the closer I got to the end, the more frequently it crashed. I abandoned the playthrough just after the polar bear, because the game would CTD 20 seconds after loading any save.

Should I play REHD 1, 0 or RE5 DLC first?

Have you played the Penumbra games? They did a good job with freezing mechanics, IIRC.

REHD 1 first. Also make sure to play it in 4:3 mode

Didn't have much crashing on my end but the performance was utter shit, just disabled Physx altogether at some point and tweaked shadows and stuff.

Just got Environmental Station Alpha after seeing the trailer and a couple bits of playthrough. It's pixel indieshit metroid fusion as robot in a suit on an artificial habitat, but it's pretty good/difficult and there's a puzzle postgame that may require searching out new additions to the map but can be completely solved on your own. Other than ambient horror just by solving the main problem, really I'd put most of the scares in the endgame/postgame, especially when (do not view this spoiler if you intend to play the game) you're doing the mantras from La Mulana in order to usurp the place of an eldritch alien god while a giant white instakill face embodying that aforementioned deity constantly follows you.

I almost bought it back in the day but saw unfavorable reviews. What did you like about it ?

Body temperature as a mechanic sounds cool, reminds me of Lost Planet 1.

I just bought cry of fear.

Haven't installed it yet but I think its on a frozen ship

That's cold fear.

What? Also, it takes place on the streets of sweden.

That sounds neat, but I'm still wary of all the pixel horror games. I'm not exactly a graphicwhore, but the sheer number of them now flooding the market means there's bound to be lots of trash.

Body temperature was never actually a mechanic in Lost Planet 1. It was thermal energy, and despite everything about it suggesting it be used to keep your character warm, it's actually to keep his equipment powered

Surprisingly few polar bears, angry Mohammedans and feminists though.

Wow that really is pixelshit, it looks worse than the original metroid.
And here I was thinking that Axiom Verge didn't look good.