Creepy & eerie (adventure) games anyone?

It's been a long time since the last time I played an adventure game.
It's been a long time since I've played a game that scared the !!"#@£$!"# out of me.

I think my last adventure game was the longest journey. Everybody praised it and raved about it… but I thought it was pretty lame at best. Of course - I'm not counting all that survival-horror-chop-the-zombies/monsters-with-a-chainshaw
-crap as adventure games (or scary for that matter…).

The last game that really creeped me out was Thief Deadly Shadows with that Shalebridge cradle level. I had to actually stop playing and take a break and go eat some yoghurt. Not an adventure game, though.

So.. I thought it would be very interesting to have a thread about games with real dark & creepy atmosphere. Know any? Please post 'em here cause I'm feeling like playing something like that right now. I know there are some adventure experts here.

Please no action/shooter games. It should be something that does not have any fast real-time action or anything like that. Just a nice story, puzzles and helluva atmosphere.

We all know alone in the darks and phantasmagorias and gabriel knights so let's concentrate on the newer stuff. With high quality visuals and sounds to thicken the atmosphere. And the stuff that is still easy to come by in stores. Haven't really been following the adventure game world so any help would be really appreciated.

I just had a quick glance through a couple of review databases on some of the major PC game review sites and I was happily surprised to see how many adventure games are actually getting released nowadays! Is this genre going through some kinda revival or something? Fantastic, in any case.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth scared the willies out of me. It's a bit of a clumsy console port, though, and known to have significant compatibility problems, so buy at your own risk.

Edit: while DCotE is definitely an adventure rather than an FPS or RPG, it does have rather tense real-time sequences as well.

Another Cthulhoid adventure was Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. Some nice puzzles, a well-enough done story, but the shoestring budget shows in the graphics, which does detract from the atmosphere a fair bit. OTOH it's not very expensive, so it might well be worth a try.

That dark corners thing does look interesting. And yeah It seems that it features realtime combat and first-person weaponry.. but I got the impression that killing things and firing guns is pretty uncommon in the game. Not the main activity, at least.

Would you say it's scary in a cheap monsters-suddenly-popping-out way or in a nuanced deeply disturbing way that really… really creeps you out?

Stumbled upon something while browsing the net.

Anyone played this:
http://www.worthplaying.com/article….thread&order=0 ??

"Penumbra: Overture focuses on delivering immersive gameplay by providing an engaging storyline, a surreal atmosphere, and a very creepy playing experience. The way the developers incorporated the physics engine with the character interaction provides an interesting and unique touch. This is a rather original title that sets out with a specific goal and accomplishes it well."

That sounds great.

The adventure game revival started with the Spanish game Runaway in 2002 or so, which was very successful in Spain, the leading adventure market Germany and a couple of other European markets. It kickstarted a wave of low-budget adventures from small. specialized developers. At least a dozen of them are quite good, although the technology is outdated, of course.

The only good gritty adventure I remember is Black Mirror. It should be dirt cheap by now. A demo can also be found somewhere.

Some "scary" adventure games available on GamersGate:

Barrow Hill - Gameplay trailer
Darkness Within - Trailer
Pathologic - Trailer

I haven't played any of them, so I can't personally recommend them. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth I can recommend though. The first three chapters are really great, but afterwards it more or less turns into a shooter. Worth playing if only for the first three chapters.

There's a kinda-creepy indie game Ive played called Scratches.

I kinda liked it at first, and it was kinda scary, but after a while there's some things that you have to do/puzzles so vague that you'll end up just running around over and over again thru the same stuff. I started just feeling like I was running around some dirty, old house in the dark. I have never been an adventure gamer tho, I dont derive much pleasure from literally scanning every pixel on screen, just so that I can move to the next puzzle of scanning every pixel on screen.

Unlike what Gamespot says, I think they game looks great. It's just not very fun after a while. You might like it tho, if hunting pixels is your thing.

I knew that I had hit my brink when I heard the titular scary "scratches" and I just barked "aw shut up!"

AdventureTreff.de likes Penumbra. 83% and a positive review. Sounds like a weird, dark and interesting game.

Review at AdventureGamers.

Pathologic is an action-adventure, I think?

This is starting to look really promising! Way better than I dared to expect.
Lot's of sick disturbing s**t out there it seems. Very good. Very good.
This is exactly the kind of stuff that needs to be played alone at night, in a dark room, with headphones on and the volume turned up. Oh and it just gets better if you're a bit sleepy

I have always thought that games as a medium offer an excellent unequalled way to terrify and shock us consumers - tons and tons of potential that has not been exploited. I wish more people would see this.

Another interesting upcoming game may be Overclocked. Check the new interview on AdventureGamers.

Originally Posted by Zakhary
That dark corners thing does look interesting. And yeah It seems that it features realtime combat and first-person weaponry.. but I got the impression that killing things and firing guns is pretty uncommon in the game. Not the main activity, at least.

Would you say it's scary in a cheap monsters-suddenly-popping-out way or in a nuanced deeply disturbing way that really… really creeps you out?

Well, it certainly has no shortage of things leaping at you, but it's most definitely disturbing in a really really creepy way. It's dark, the sounds are very unsettling, and your mental and physical state is reflected on the screen and the sound effects; you can even get hallucinations and stuff. Very Shalebridge Cradle-esque.

Scratches was pretty creepy and generally well done, but some of the puzzles were ridiculously vague. Barrow Hill was pretty good as well. The best adventure game I've played in a long time (though not a horror adventure) was Return to Mysterious Island.

Penumbra sounds like what you're looking for; there's also a sequel - Penumbra: Black Plague.

I've also played Pathologic… it's a very interesting game. Sadly, the translation (from Russian) doesn't really do it justice, so I'd skip it and try something else first.

Good suggestions! I figured I could add something, but everything has been mentioned.

The "Silent Hill" games were pretty creepy, although I dont think they would be considered adventure games in the purest sense. They do have puzzles, dialog, etc though

Nocturne was really great. Hard to get it running on XP though.

Has Black Mirror been released in English, too ?

If you have the DOSBOX emulator, you could try it with The Dagger Of Amon Ra, too.
The precessor of this was The Colonel's Bequest.

Both were by Sierra, with Roberta Williams involved.

Wow! I tried the demo of "Penumbra; Overture". Found it here:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_18128.shtml

It's just a 115mb download an takes about 200megs installed.
Feels very promising! So many great ideas and just the atmosphere I was looking for. Has this nice high quality feel to it too. Try the demo, it's absolutely worth it.

The puzzles are light and they make sense. They almost always rely on the physics engine and they are very much fun and are never frustrating.

The graphics, music and sounds are fantastic. Remember to leave all those efects and filters on, this is the first game I've seen that actually uses all those visual things to accomplish some real atmosphere.
the game runs fine even on a bit older hardware too.

Need to get the full version. Need to get the entire series!

They just released the follow-up to Penumbra.

Black mirror is released in english yes - not very scary as such, but it does have a dark atmosphere. An excellent adventure if you ask me

Some other twisted adventure games (somewhat older though):

- Sanitarium (1998): Don't wanna spoil too much, but as the title suggests some wierd shit is going on in this one

- I have no mouth and I must scream (1995): This one is actually a bunch of smaller stories. Some are quite creepy.