Scary Games

Scary Games

By Dan Benge
October 21, 1998

This article is inspired by a conversation I’ve had on a newsgroup.

Quite a few years ago, I was paid to house-sit for my aunt and uncle while they took their vacation. It was a huge house that didn’t have any curtains; they had just moved in a month prior and were still having them custom-made. It was over 30 minutes away from home on a new subdivision where there weren’t very many neighbors yet.

That weekend, I brought along my trusty Commodore 64 and a brand-new Infocom text adventure called The Lurking Horror. The box said that The Lurking Horror was just like a Stephen King novel. “Great, ” I thought, “this will keep me entertained throughout the entire weekend!” Except I forgot one thing. I was going to be sitting in a big house, alone for three days and two nights, without curtains on the windows and in a neighborhood that was virtually empty …

The Lurking Horror was a game about a college student who doesn’t go home for Christmas vacation. He ends up finding out some things about his college campus that he shouldn’t have gotten too curious about and the horror was in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft.

I suddenly started hearing noises upstairs but was too scared to investigate. Suddenly I just needed to turn on a few more lights in the house and make sure nobody was standing around the corner. I grabbed the cat for company and slept with the lights on that night.

This is a great example of how terrifying an adventure game can be. Not only that, this game didn’t even have any graphics! The monsters were 40 percent the author and 60 percent my imagination.

Horror has existed within the adventure game genre ever since I can remember playing Voodoo Castle on my ancient Vic-20.

So in the spirit of Halloween, let’s revisit some of the most terrifying adventure games that have haunted our hard drives.

Maniac Mansion may not have been so terrifying, but it certainly was bizarre in a “Rocky Horror” kind of way. If we didn’t have the ultra-kinky Frankenfurter, well there certainly was Evil Edna with her fascination with obscene phone calls (“You aren’t breathing right!”) and a mirror over her bed. But the macabre humored game didn’t stop there … you could also nuke a hamster and play around with nuclear waste and got to make friends with living tentacles. All the game needed was a few musical numbers and you’d have yourself your own midnight adventure game.

Alone in the Dark is really the first adventure game to actually make me jump out of my seat. You play Carnby, an aging detective during Victorian times who is hired to search out an old piano in a house called Decerto. Of course you don’t believe in the supernatural, and before you can say, “Don’t go in the house!” you are trapped inside Decerto looking for a way out. The only way out is through the mansion’s history, oh, and a few zombies too. AITD has been crowned as the first “action/adventure game” since you have to use weapons as well as your fists to battle the undead, and a few summoned monsters. Even better is when you get to the library and get to read the history (or if you have the CD version, you get to hear them read it to you) which sets the story up and fills you in on the mansion’s previous owners. This game certainly has a jump factor too; you may close a door, and then open it again just to find something waiting for you on the other side. AITD gives you the creeps as you walk into a room with a single specter just sitting quietly in her chair, bumping into her is an invitation for possession, so stay clear. The game features multiple solutions to a few puzzles, and an ending straight out of your favorite horror film. If you want something to leave you exhausted at the end, then AITD is your ticket.

The 7th Guest is the pioneer of the “puzzle game,” which is a story that advances as you solve a seemingly unconnected series of chess, number and word puzzles. The 7th Guest is the recounting of a tale about an old man named Stauf who went from rags to riches when his dreams inspired him to make toys and puzzles that children fell in love with. Unfortunately these toys had a peculiar side effect and children started dying of a strange disease. Then one day he disappeared into his mansion for several years and nobody heard from him again, until he sent out seven invitations to a few well-known aristocrats. He promised riches to the first person who could solve all his puzzles strewn throughout the house. Only six people showed up, so who is the seventh guest, and more importantly, what happened to the other six who never came out?

As you walk around the pre-rendered 3D mansion, you will uncover cut scenes as you solve one brain-teaser after another. The puzzles are addicting, and this game gives you plenty of atmosphere. Since you are doing what the other six guests had to do, these puzzles seem to integrate themselves better than any other puzzle game I can remember. The cut scenes are really creepy, and the story about horrible sacrifices seems inspired by Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Just wait until you feel the goosebumps when you finally get into the doll room. Virgin recently released this title under their White Label brand for under $14, and it’s been optimized for Windows 95.

Phantasmagoria

What happens when sweet little Roberta Williams, the one who gave us the cute-as-a-button King’s Quest games that the entire family could play, suddenly shows us her dark side? Phantasmagoria, Sierra’s first full-motion-video adventure game, that’s what. When I bought this game, I was not prepared for the kinds of gruesome scenes it was going to show me. Women getting their heads twisted 180 degrees clockwise and getting dirt shoveled into their mouths was the furthest thing from my mind (not that I could have even thought of any of that stuff). But little Roberta Williams seems to have harbored some nasty thoughts, and I wouldn’t doubt that Ken had a little trouble sleeping next to her at night during the making of this game.

In Phantasmagoria you play a woman in a newlywed couple that just bought a huge estate. This Cape Cod-like estate (which is really an island) comes complete with its own castle-sized mansion. Of course, snooping around and doing something like inadvertently releasing evil spirits out of books is not a good idea. Before you can say “Evil Dead II” this spirit has manifested itself in Don, your “loving boyfriend,” who’s converting the bathroom into a darkroom upstairs. Slowly but surely, Don doesn’t become so loving anymore, unless you consider one of this game’s most controversial scenes “love” (it’s done with their clothes on, but it’s still unsettling).

The plot unfolds as you learn about the history of the mansion, and about a certain “overzealous” magician who used to own it. Through flashbacks you get to see how this man made his various wives disappear, and this is a warning folks: they don’t leave much to your imagination.

The history is brought to you by the friendly antique lady in the local town. However, she has a very bad short-term memory as she always seems to think that you’ve “just walked in” whenever you engage in conversation with her. This leads me to Phantasmagoria’s camp factor. If you like a good cheesy, but scary, horror film, Phantasmagoria’s quirks, dialogue and bad acting will be right up your alley. The over-the-top ending had me chuckling more times than cringing. Let’s just say that Jack Torrence of “The Shining” would be particularly proud of Don’s performance at the end. However campy, this game still provides enough chills that you may want to play the game with the lights on.

Amber: Journeys Beyond

In Amber, you are an employee of a company that makes equipment designed to help track the supernatural. Having just created a couple of prototypes of a machine called Amber, a device that can link your consciousness to any ghosts, your over-enthusiastic friend Roxy (who just bought a haunted house) decides to give it a test-run without any help. You are sent to make sure she’s okay. Of course, when you get to her house, you have the bad luck of dodging a specter and driving your car into the lake. Even worse, you find your friend lying unconscious, wired to a machine in the garage with bits of her mind scattered throughout three separate plains of reality. You must figure out how to use Amber and get her consciousness back. The game is truly a spookfest as you see things move around the house by themselves and get a particularly strange phone call from Roxy herself. To free Roxy, you must learn about the three spirits trapped on the estate and lead them to their final resting place, which means donning your own Amber device. Each spirit has its own story ranging from bittersweet to truly hair-raising. The game was created by a couple who took a vacation in Louisiana. They stayed at an inn that was supposed to be haunted and a lot of strange things happened during their stay; this inspired them to write an adventure game. The theories presented about the afterlife are real theories from experts in the field, which give Amber a very realistic quality that makes it even more creepy. The game is a Myst-clone with FMV, but don’t let that dissuade you from giving it a try. This truly is a classic that will give you goosebumps from beginning to end.

Realms of the Haunting

Another sleeper hit by Interplay and Gremlin Interactive. A hybrid of first-person shooter and adventure game, Realms takes you in search of your father who was a parish priest who died from mysterious causes and whose soul needs to be laid to rest. This hybrid adventure game, 3D shooter has a great story, some well-done full motion video and lots of monsters that go bump in the night. This is another one of those cult favorites that no adventure gamer should be without.