cobysev

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a comedic survival game, where you are stuck on a collection of small islands. You need to gather up fragments of an artifact and bring it back to a circle of runestones to create an escape portal.

You are being hunted by British robot gentlemen, though. So you need to be aware of your surroundings and keep quiet. Stealth is the key to survival in this game.

You will lose vitality over time and need to replenish it with food and/or drink. You can hunt game and cook it for fresh meat, or you can scavenge the abandoned villages for resources. Most options in the houses are dubious at best, though, and you need to decide just how important your survival is.

The robots are pretty intelligent, and they only get better as you raise the difficulty. They're actively hunting you, so they will continue to pursue you forever. Your only hope of survival is to avoid them and, if caught, lose them or destroy them. If you are caught and killed, you will get a nice little screen showing off your survival stats for that game.

The five islands are randomly generated, so you never play the same map twice. You can pick between five biomes for each island: castle, industrial, rural, mountainous, and fenland. So you get a variety of terrain to run, hide and scavenge on.

The game is officially called Sir, You Are Being Hunted. But if you're not a sir, there is an option on the main screen to switch to Madam, You Are Being Hunted. The disembodied voice of Walter, your butler, will refer to you by your chosen pronoun throughout the gameplay.

This is a silly, extremely British survival game, and it's loads of fun to play, even for someone like me who hates survival games. Happy hunting!

Dagon is originally a short story by the creator of the eldritch horror genre, H.P. Lovecraft. This version is a free game on Steam that converts his short story into a visual novel. A narrator reads through the tale while you experience the visuals and landscapes described in the story. You can look around you (and it supports VR too!) but you can't walk and explore. You're stuck in place and only move on as you advance the story.

Throughout the game, you can find hidden bits of trivia, which dive deeper into topics surrounding H.P. Lovecraft's life, the story itself, or other bits of background lore to help you understand the time period in which this story was written.

H.P. Lovecraft himself was terrified of the ocean and all aquatic life, ever since he was two years old; although he has no idea what event may have instilled that fear within him. However, he took that fear and translated it into a new genre of unknowable and incomprehensible horror that defied the rules for standard storytelling of the time. As someone who is also afraid of any body of water in which I can't see the bottom, I totally get it.

Dagon is a tale about a sailor who escapes from enemy capture on the high seas by slipping out in a small rowboat in the night. But when he awakes the next morning, he is no longer on the ocean, as a muddy land mass has risen above the ocean level, stranding him along with all sorts of hidden creatures from the deep.

He sees a peak in the distance and spends the next day and night journeying toward it, only to discover on the other side, a giant monolith illuminated in the moonlight, engraved with pictograms of horrifying creatures. But then a creature stirs from deep within a pool at its base...

As a narrative short story, this game will only take you maybe 30 mins or less to play through. But it's fun to search through each area for trivia to collect. There are 20 bits of trivia to find scattered throughout the core game.

The base game is free on Steam, but there are two separate short story DLCs you can buy for a few bucks each. The first is The Little Glass Bottle, a short story H.P. Lovecraft wrote when he was seven years old! It's a cute tale about treasure hunting in the ocean that has no horror elements in it.

The second story is The Railway Horror, which was a nightmare H.P. Lovecraft experienced and wrote about to a friend of his. Both stories have eight bits of trivia each, giving you further background into Lovecraft's life and works.

Bendy and the Ink Machine is a game about an animation studio that tried to bring their classic cartoon characters to life... with horrifying consequences.

You play a man named Henry who was invited back to the old animation studio he used to work at, by Joey Drew, the head of Joey Drew Studios (which is also this game's developer).

When you arrive, you find the place empty(?), but you also find a giant ink machine that you've never seen before. Through cassette recordings, you learn how to power it up and... before you know it, there's an ink demon running amok through the halls!

You try to run for the exit, but find yourself falling deep into the bowels of the studio. From there, you're solving puzzles and fighting off ink monsters, while also hiding from Bendy himself as he awkwardly staggers around the floors randomly.

You also run into Sammy Lawrence, the former studio's music director, who accidentally ingested some of the ink and partially turned into an ink monster himself. He offers you up as a sacrifice for Bendy, hoping to be rewarded with his humanity.

At one point, you get a choice to head toward either The Demon or The Angel. I chose the angel and found myself at the mercy of a disfigured and insane Alice Angel from the Bendy cartoon series. I'm not sure what's on the demon side; perhaps I should replay it and try that route.

Eventually, you receive a sort of handmade black light that lets you see hidden messages on the walls that guide you. Once you beat the game, it will let you start the game with the black light. I'm excited to play this game over and see what messages I can find in the various rooms and hallways.

I first played this game when it was releasing in 5 separate chapters and I was hooked! Unfortunately, I never beat it. The instructions weren't clear back in the early versions of the game and I found myself wandering aimlessly around several floors, not sure what I needed to do. I don't think I ever finished chapter 3.

Then I picked it up again last night and ended up beating the whole thing in a single sitting. It was much clearer with the full version of the game, and I powered through the whole thing in about 5 hours.

There is a spin-off called Boris and the Dark Survival, which is a top-down survival game where you play as Boris the Wolf. You collect supplies while trying to avoid Bendy as he roams around. According to its Steam page, the game will soon be renamed to Bendy: Lone Wolf, add a bunch of improvements and add-ons to the game, and increase its price. It's only $3 right now, so might as well snatch it up before it gets more expensive!

Then there was a sequel to the main game called Bendy and the Dark Revival. You play as Audrey, an animator who found herself trapped in the dark studio at the mercy of Bendy and his ink monsters.

There is also a free Steam game that came out this year called Bendy: Secrets of the Machine, which doesn't really give a description and its trailer is just a tease without explaining anything. I need to play that and see what it's all about.

Finally, there's a upcoming game called Bendy: The Cage, which takes place during Bendy and the Dark Revival. It sounds like it will follow our original protagonist, Henry, during that game.

This Zombie Army franchise is actually a spin-off of the Sniper Elite video game franchise, which portrayed fictional Allied missions carried out by the series' main hero, Karl Fairburne, during World War II.

The Zombie Army story takes place in a separate alternate history where Hitler, upon losing WWII, decided to enact "Plan Z" and resurrect all of the Wehrmacht's soldiers as zombies.

The first two Zombie Army games were compacted into a trilogy release with the third game. This trilogy had Hitler raising his undead army, being killed off, and then resurrected as a sentient zombie leader before being tossed in hell.

This fourth and latest game has millions of zombies running rampant across Europe. It's discovered that Zombie Hitler is still leading the hordes from hell and is now amassing a new zombie army with which to invade Earth.

You play as the hero from the Sniper Elite games, Karl Fairburne. Or, if you prefer, you can play as various other characters from the franchise (and even some from the Left 4 Dead franchise). I personally prefer to play as Jun, an original Chinese character for this game. Each character has different stats, so it's not just choosing a skin for your character; you have to be mindful of their abilities too.

Like the Sniper Elite games, one of the core mechanics of this game is to snipe zombies from afar. Thankfully, these are the clumsy, shambling, slow zombies, so you have time to line up shots, even in a short and narrow area. If you get a perfect aim on a vital organ, it rewards you with a slow-motion cutscene of your bullet firing, zipping across the map, and an x-ray view of the enemy's skeleton shattered or vital organs exploded by your bullet. With rotting zombies, though, there's not much difference between the x-ray view and their normal appearance.

These are supernatural zombies, raised with occult magic, so they don't stay dead. If you don't get a headshot on them, don't be surprised if their body suddenly glows with occult magic and comes back to life. A good way to ensure they don't get back up is to stomp on their corpse until it disintegrates in a gory mess. It'll sometimes release ammo and other beneficial items too!

I love the attention to detail in this game. All across the map, you can find zombie rats and crows with glowing red eyes. They leave you alone, but it's still super creepy how they just linger in the shadows, silently watching you. It's truly a world-building detail, which makes me think about how The Black Plague was spread through rats. I wonder if these rats would turn people into zombies if they got bit...

There are also other signs of the occult in the background, like a zombie hand running around each level that you can snipe for bonus points. Or these creepy china dolls that pop up in various places. Sometimes they're just dolls, sitting there unmoving in dark corners. Other times, they talk or move slightly. And sometimes you have mere seconds to shoot them before they just straight-up vanish into thin air after taunting you. Creepy dolls, man...

You can also find these random zombie heads that are technically alive, but unable to do anything. This one in particular, you could turn on the stove and cook it until it melts into the soup. I like the sign someone wrote on the wall behind the stove. Very important detail to remember!

I find it interesting that this game takes place in mid-1940s Europe, but the music in the game is reminiscent of '80s horror flicks, including posters for each mission that look like worn B-movie horror films from that generation. Also, when you pick up equipment and ammo during a mission, it makes a sound like an old-fashioned mechanical pinball machine from the '80s.

It's like they kept the WWII setting from the Sniper Elite games, but wanted an '80s horror vibe for this game. Classic horror films from the '80s have been pretty popular in the past decade; I feel like Stranger Things helped to bring back that nostalgia for us millennials who grew up in the '80s and '90s, so they were probably trying to cash in on that nostalgia trip while it's hot.

Don't let the colorful kiddie-friendly graphics fool you; Pumpkin Jack is a game about literal hell on Earth. It takes place in a world where everything was so happy and peaceful, the devil himself got bored and decided to shake things up a bit by releasing monsters across the world.

Humans didn't like having their peaceful lives interrupted like that, so they hired a wizard to protect them against the invading hordes of demons. In response, the devil summoned an infamous trickster known as Jack to take out the wizard. He granted Jack a jack-o-lantern body and offered to free his soul if Jack did this one task for him.

You play as Jack, roaming the lands and fighting various monsters who prevent you from tracking down the wizard. You recruit a crow, who helps you with ranged fighting while you engage in close-quarters combat.

Some places require you to explore and solve a simple puzzle in a place your body can't reach. In those situations, Jack will detach his head and let it crawl around on vine-like tentacles.

Despite releasing in 2020, this game feels like a classic Xbox 360 game from 20 years ago. From the graphic style to the gameplay, this feels like something you'd find in a bargain bin at the game store. It's entertaining, silly, and filled with mechanics that feel like they were designed for a controller.

Not to mention, each level is essentially a single path through various obstacles and enemies. If you do explore, it's only slightly to one side or another, looking for collectibles. If you find crow skull collectibles, you can exchange them for skins for Jack at a vendor who randomly pops up in each of the levels.

You can also find gramophones. I believe the only purpose of collecting them is to get an achievement, but Jack does a little dance number every time you find one, which is mildly amusing.

The game itself is relatively short. There are 6 main levels, but various checkpoints and stages throughout each one. So it should only take you a few hours to beat the whole game. Plus, there are 20 crow skulls and one gramophone per level, so 120 skulls and 6 gramophones in total. Honestly, that's the most early-2000s game vibe I get from this - searching for pointless hidden collectibles that aren't remotely connected to the story.

It's not a bad game, but as old-fashioned as the gameplay is, I definitely wouldn't pay more than $20 max for it. And hey! It's 88% off on Steam until October 20th, so you can get it for only $3.59 right now. Not a bad Halloween deal.

Vampire Survivors is a top-down survival game where you essentially just try to stay alive as long as possible while endless waves of monsters come at you from all sides.

Your weapons and abilities are all automatic; you just need to worry about moving around the map and staying alive. Some of your abilities only fire in the direction you're facing, while others target the nearest enemy, and still others just randomly fire off and hit anything in their path.

Extra strong enemies will drop treasure chests when they die, which will give you gold and a random ability to enhance your character.

As you gain XP and level up from killing monsters, you'll get an option to pick your next ability. Choose wisely; you're given three random abilities and you can only choose one. Make sure you pick something that will help you survive long enough to level up again.

You fight until you're eventually overwhelmed. Then you pick a new character (or the same character if you like) and start over again. The more gold you earn, the more core stats you can boost from the main menu, which will give you a starting advantage in your next playthrough.

There's a timer on the top of the screen that shows how long you're surviving. If you start to do really well, you'll unlock more levels to play. And honestly... that's pretty much it. It's just a fun game to see how long you can overcome insane odds against hordes of monsters. Pretty simple, yet rather addicting. A great way to pass the time.

The Fabled Woods is a short narrative "walking simulator" that explores the lives of several strangers in the woods and how they're connected. While enjoying picturesque scenery and a short jaunt down a forested path, you're treated to the short tales of Larry, Sara, and Todd.

Larry suspects there's someone watching him in the woods, while Sara is investigating a crime scene in the woods.

As you listen to their individual stories, you'll get an option to "remember," which will turn everything dark red except for a glowing-red blood path pointing you toward an object. Taking hold of the object will take you to this dark floating path in a red sky, where you'll hear darker and more intimate details behind each person's life.

Todd's story will tie all the others together, explaining how each person is connected to each other. It's a pretty short game. While taking my time and exploring the beautiful imagery of the forest, it took me about an hour to complete. Most people say they're done in about 40 mins.

There were complaints on Steam that this game was way overpriced for its short and simple gameplay. The developers responded by permanently reducing the price. And it just so happens that it's currently 90% off right now, so if this sounds even remotely intriguing, you can get it for less than a buck until October 27th.

I always buy my Steam games on sale (which is how I could afford to buy over 3,500 of them over the years!) so I like to point out good deals if I find them. The story was mildly interesting at best, so it's definitely worth a buck. I probably wouldn't pay more than that, personally.

Little Nightmares is a wordless, side-scrolling game about a tiny girl in a yellow raincoat named Six, stowed away on a massive ship called The Maw. She journeys from room to room across the ship, trying to escape.

She finds herself surrounded by giant, terrifying, warped versions of adults, who will stop at nothing to capture her. Like this blind guy with stubby legs and horrifyingly long and stretchy spider-like arms. When we meet him, he's packaging up living children in paper and twine like they were hocks of meat. He's very sensitive to sounds; don't let him hear you walking on the creaky floorboards!

Or this chef who is preparing a grisly feast for the grotesque guests aboard the ship.

Six herself is crippled with hunger several times throughout the game. To the point where she starts considering some awful food choices...

Fortunately, she's able to find sustenance around the ship. Next to a cafeteria of sorts, a small child drops a piece of bread for her to eat. She also runs into these little gnome-like creatures scurrying around the ship. After eventually befriending one of them, he offers her food when he sees her struggling.

Little Nightmares is a side-scrolling stealth/puzzle game. You're trying to silently find your way across this massive ship without being caught by the giant adults, but you occasionally find yourself stuck and need to find a lever to turn or pull, or a button to press, or a key to unlock a door. They're simple puzzles, but the atmosphere is dark and spooky, making any hesitation in the open a frightening ordeal. Not to mention, the creepy details in the background, like how this bed has straps across it to hold someone down:

The scariest part of the game for me is when you're trying to walk across the dining tables of all the grotesque guests who are shoveling food into their fat faces as fast as they can. If you're not quick enough, you'll get snatched up and crammed into one of their maws. It's such an anxiety-ridden scene, I almost didn't take any screenshots. I was too focused on trying to stay alive!

Not to mention, the creepy subtle music throughout this game. I especially like Six's Theme Part I and Hunger II (for those of you who bought the soundtrack). That haunting child's hum set to a spooky background theme makes for some terrifying mood-setting music.

This game has a sequel, Little Nightmares II, which I believe might be a prequel story. You play as a tiny boy named Mono, who discovers a fading Six and attempts to save her, while also searching for a signal tower that's corrupting everyone through horrifying broadcasts. I daresay it's even more terrifying than the first game, with a horrifyingly dark end to its story.

Also, a new game, Little Nightmares III, has been announced for release next year. It follows two new children, Low and Alone, trying to find their way out of Nowhere. I'm excited to see what that game will be like! And I hope Six shows up at some point. I'm fascinated with her story and hope we get some more expanded lore on her.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an incredible game dealing with psychosis and mental trauma. It's about a Celtic girl named Senua who is journeying to the Viking Hel to bargain with Hela for the life of her lost love. She literally carries his head in a cloth tied to her belt.

Throughout her journey, Senua is plagued by visions and voices, some helpful and some harmful. A narrator of sorts guides her, while a bunch of chatty voices in the background express her fears, desires, anxieties, etc.

Senua finds herself fighting monsters who spawn from thin air, intent on stopping her from her goals. Each time she dies, rot spreads from her limbs. If it spreads to her head, it's game over.

Along the journey, you can find runestones that will explain some ancient Viking mythology and help you understand Senua's intents. You don't need to track them down to beat the game, but it's a welcome world-building tool for us modern-day folks who may not know anything about ancient Viking mythology, geography, and traditions.

This game is beautifully designed and gorgeous to look at. The way cinematic cutscenes blend right into gameplay is amazing! I highly recommend playing with surround sound headphones because the voices in Senua's head whisper from all different angles and distances from her. It's incredibly immersive and gives you a sense of what it's like to deal with psychosis.

I debated whether I should include this in my Halloween gaming marathon because I wouldn't necessarily consider it a horror game. But exploring the mental trauma of a young girl who lost her love and has to battle invisible demons while trying to come to terms with that loss... it's a haunting tale. Definitely on par with some modern day horror plots.

There's a sequel that just released this year called Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, which further explores Senua's struggles as she attempts to save both herself and others. I own it, but it's been so long since I played through Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice that I need to replay the original before I check out the sequel.

Continuing my Halloween-themed screenshot posts, today we'll be looking at a different kind of game. Slay the Princess is a game about, well... slaying a princess. There's a narrator who guides you through the woods and up to a cabin where a princess is chained in the basement, and in order to save the world, you need to slay her. Seems pretty straightforward, right?

But the narrator isn't the only voice who reasons with you. Your voice (Voice of the Hero) will discuss with the narrator and try to make more sense of the situation. It's not like you're given much information to go on. Who can you really trust?

This is a visual novel type game, where you are given conversation and action options, and you choose the path of the story. You can play "20 questions" with the narrator, slay the princess, save the princess, or just walk away from the whole affair. But your actions have consequences...

Depending on your actions, you might find yourself conversing with more inner voices centered around the actions you chose, like a Voice of the Stubborn, or a Voice of the Smitten.

Regardless, there's a deeper, darker story going on underneath your seemingly simple choices, and you'll just have to play this game to discover it for yourself.

I especially like that, despite the fact that you're the supposed hero, every shot of your hand shows what appears to be a scaly monster's hand. It makes you wonder who - or what - you really are...

On October 24th, a day after its one-year anniversary, Slay the Princess is getting a free update called The Pristine Cut. According to the developers, it will add about 35% more content to the game, including thousands of new voice lines and illustrations, 17 new music tracks, improved background artwork, and a new ending to the game.

Also, they'll be porting the game to consoles with this update. I'm a strictly PC gamer, so this doesn't interest me, but if you like console gaming, you'll be able to play this game later this month on PS4/5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox.

I'm excited to re-play this game later this month. Maybe I might post some new screenshots to compare it to this original version of the game.

Today we're diving back into the world of psychological horror with the Japanese game The Exit 8. This game is a walking simulator, except the purpose is to escape a single underground passageway that you're stuck in. Every time you round the corner, you find yourself back in the same hallway you just left.

The rules are simple. You start at Exit 0 and walk down the hall. If you notice something changed or abnormal in the hallway, turn around and go back the way you came. If you don't notice anything out of the ordinary, keep going.

Once you round that corner, if your exit sign on the wall has moved up a digit, then you're one step closer to finding Exit 8 and escaping. If it has reset back to Exit 0, then you made a mistake and will be starting your journey over.

You need to pay attention to details in this game, because some changes can be extremely subtle. Like the guy in the hallway smiling as he walks:

Or perhaps more obvious, like the eyes of this poster darting back and forth instead of staring straight ahead.

Or they'll be glaringly obvious, like walking into the hall to find it covered in no smoking posters:

Some of the abnormalities are sounds, like the vents clicking noise will be slightly different. Or there will be a banging noise coming from one of the doors on the right. Sometimes it will just be a slight change to a poster on the wall, and if you haven't studied the posters, you might miss it.

There are 32 anomalies, and you might be exposed to a random one every time you go down the hallway. If you can successfully avoid all anomalies, you'll find yourself at Exit 8, which is a stairway back to the surface. I won't give away too many of the anomalies, but here are a few others to look out for:

That last one is the closest to a game over you get. A rushing river of red water comes at you quick, and if you don't turn around and run, it will overtake you and the screen will go black, before you find yourself back at Exit 0.

The Japanese developer (KOTAKE CREATE) also made a sequel game of sorts, called Platform 8. It's the exact same premise, except this time you're stuck on a subway line, trying to find your way to the front train car.

And if you enjoy these kind of games, there's yet another game called Shinkansen 0, made by Chilla's Art, a small 2-person indie development team who makes Japanese horror games. As you may know, the Shinkansen is what we English-speakers call the bullet train. This is a very similar game to Platform 8, except for a few more horror twists in it.

Here's another fun Halloween-related game: Witch It!, a sort of hide-and-seek between witches and hunters.

This little game starts with random team assignments. You'll either be a witch or a hunter. The witches get 30 seconds to hide somewhere on the map before the hunters are let loose.

There are many different abilities and defenses you can set, but by default, witches get to shape-shift into an object they can see in front of them. So they hide by literally becoming part of the environment. Below, I've become a cute little edible gnome house. You can tell what you're shapeshifted as by looking at the text in the top left corner of the screen:

The hunters find witches by throwing potatoes at everything, until something flashes purple and cries out in pain. The hunters also get a range of abilities, but the potato is your main attack. I personally like the chicken, which alerts you when there's a witch nearby.

Once you've damaged a witch enough, they lose. If all the witches are destroyed, the hunters win the match. But if they can't find them all, then the witches win. Here's me winning a match as a tiny broccoli resting at the base of a giant beanstalk:

The below screenshot shows another easy win. I shape-shifted into a "doge firework" and hid on top of a tower next to the map border. No one even came close to me all match long!

You earn all sorts of different outfits and appearances, which you can use to dress up your witch or hunter. Here's my current witch:

Here's another one of me hiding as a red candle pressed up against a wall in a stairwell. I didn't last long in this match; not enough stuff around me to blend in!

My only complaint about this game is that it's online multiplayer, so you need to play with other people. As much fun as it is, it doesn't have a very large following, so there's usually only a few matches going at any given time, and I usually just jump into the largest group I can find.

But if you get a bunch of your friends into this game, you can set up your own private match and play whenever!