5 frightening indie games
This has been a banner year for big-budget horror games: Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima's widely acclaimed Silent Hills P.T. Demo, Resident Evil veteran Shinji Mikami's The Evil Within, Ridley Scott's Alien: Isolation. But indie shops are on the scream team, too -- check out our picks for the top 5 most terrifying of 2014.
Lurking (Windows, Mac)
In Lurking, you must escape an asylum and avoid capture by the twisted residents, using only your hearing and wits. You must rely on echolocation, each sound you make revealing more of the world you're moving through -- the louder the noise, the farther you'll see. But you're not the only one seeing by sound. The game requires a microphone to play but uses it to great effect. Lurking is available for both Windows and Mac, and if you're a lucky owner of the Oculus Rift, you can get support for the virtual-reality headset.
Vanish (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Thrown into a dark underground labyrinth, you must find clues, solve puzzles, navigate the maze, and avoid being eaten by the terrifying monster that dwells there. On the surface, Vanish isn't revolutionary, but the game offers superb sound engineering and a well-executed atmosphere of spine-tingling suspense. The impressive audio frights and the Matrix-like green visuals make running around the darkened maze almost as horrifying as the monster.
The Burning Room (Web)
The Burning Room is an old-school Flash game that is both eerie to watch and even scarier to play. Through photographs, carefully filmed videos, and animation sequences, The Burning Room creates an intense atmosphere to tell its short ghost story. The game delivers the fright and is a great test of nerve.
Five Nights at Freddy's (Windows demo, iOS, Android)
In this point-and-click game, you're an underpaid, late-night security guard for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a Chuck E. Cheese-like establishment that happens to be filled with murderous robots. Use your cameras and lights to predict movement and close the door to your office. You must be strategic with every action-consuming energy lest you become defenseless. Can you survive until morning? One of most popular titles on the indie scene, Five Nights at Freddy's uses a basic premise in such a creative way that it has won a cult following among gamers and was greenlit on Steam, but you can still check out the Windows demo. If you can play only one game on this list, make it Freddy's.
The Cursed Forest (Windows)
Picture Slender as a full-blown game powered by the CryEngine, which runs underneath triple-A titles like Crysis and Far Cry. Add a bit of imaginative storytelling, and that's The Cursed Forest. You play a man traveling home to tend to his sick mother and taking a shortcut through an area that is "known to be cursed." You lose control of your car, only to wake up in a haunted forest full of shadowy figures lurking behind trees. The rest of the game is a scavenger hunt that will have you exploring the dark woods, finding clues that provide some narrative, and seeking objects to perform rituals so you can escape the forest. Play the full version for free.
Hungry for more? Check out last year's edition for more indie scares.
