Since horror and holidays go perfectly together, for today’s best of list, it’s my favorite horror games of 2022.
Honorable Mentions: Stay Out of the House
Stay out of the House is Puppet Combo’s first major release on Steam of one of their most popular games. One part stealth, and one-part immsim, this is not a horror game for beginners. The variety of tactics that both you and the killer can use are quite interesting. What keeps it from scoring higher is that I’m not a fan of games that make lighting and light a valuable commodity, and it’s focused on trial and error when you’re trying to learn it.
3: Nightmare of Decay
Sometimes we have horror games that are truly unique; other times, just a well-executed take on a classic can work. With Nightmare of Decay, we have a little bit of both — a first-person survival horror that pays homage to almost every big-name survival horror game that came before it.
This is by no means the hardest or the scariest game to come out this year, but it’s a solid concept that works far better than you might think from looking at screenshots. The gameplay is just challenging enough without going too far, and there are multiple modes and ways of playing. I feel like this is a good foundation to try and build more on, and I hope we see it from the developer.
2: Faith the Unholy Trinity
A game that survival horror games have been waiting a long time for, Faith the Unholy Trinity is the perfect example of why you don’t need ultra-realistic graphics to tell a scary story. Faith features one of the best uses of a text-to-speech generator and rotoscoping for cutscenes. Over the three chapters, you will be treated to a disturbing story, with secrets to uncover. If you’re looking for some low-fi horror to give you nightmares, then this is a great game to play.
1: Signalis
Signalis came out with very little fanfare, but the game quickly blew up as both an original take on survival horror, and for its impressive aesthetics and design. Unlike other horror games, this is not a “spooky” game: the horror comes more from the existential questions that the game is asking and learning about the world. Like the movie “Alien”, so much of the world around this game that sets the events in motion are rarely explained. It feels like we’re given a peak into something far more disturbing than the sights and horrors that we fight in Signalis.
Like Faith, Signalis also has a unique style all its own, and I love the use of first-person and the style of the cutscenes. Of the games on the list this year, these are by far the hardest puzzles from a horror game in sometime — returning to the days of the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
If you’re a fan of horror and you have somehow missed this game, this is easily a must-play and I hope we see more from the developers in the future.
