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.