Marcus Alcock

With Halloween just around the corner, it’s a great time to be checking out some of the indie horror games available for the PC. But which ones are worth spending time on? We take a look at three potentially terrifying ways to scare yourself…

Hotel Remorse

The free download for Hotel Remorse is an intriguing and promising recent début from Irish developer Charlie Behan. Despite clocking in at barely 15 minutes, the game provides an assured lesson in how to slowly and methodically build suspense. With a few scares along the way, of course.

The storyline is intriguingly bare. It’s primarily told through scraps of notes which you find throughout the game. Thankfully, there’s a dream-scape setting to make sense of the diaries, rather than the tired cliché of audio logs. Besides the note collecting, the remainder of Hotel Remorse revolves around a handful of rudimentary puzzles and the odd moment of scripted drama as the game builds to a climax.

Hotel:Remorse obviously went to the same carpet warehouse as the owners of the Overlook Hotel

[Potential Spoiler Alert]
Without wanting to spoil the game too much, let’s just say the conclusion wouldn’t be out of place in a 2004 Flash game. It also leaves the still threadbare story unresolved, including the important question of why on earth you’re stuck in the titular hotel in the first place. The Shining has a lot to answer for, it appears.
[/Potential Spoiler Alert]

As a free 15-minute game, Hotel Remorse is a mostly clever and memorable experience. If you don’t expect too much from the plot and ending, then you’ll enjoy the journey, if not the Final Destination.

Strangers

In contrast to the youthful energy of Hotel Remorse, Rinat Mirzasalikhov`s Strangers is a leaden, dispiriting trudge through a number of tired horror tropes. The tale of a city slicker terrorised in a country house by a gang of marauding clowns, Strangers is nowhere near as entertaining as that synopsis sounds. Perhaps a tongue-in-cheek approach could have saved such an inherently ridiculous premise, but the game remains defiantly humourless and po-faced throughout. This is just the start of its problems however.

When you’re told to beware of Strangers, it might have meant this game

Despite clocking in at well under an hour, Strangers is a tedious enough journey to feel much longer. Confined to a minuscule house and forced to complete mundane tasks in a strict order, the player soon finds themselves yearning for some autonomy. Although played from a first person perspective, gameplay is essentially a glorified point and click adventure. This influence even extends to the objects scattered around the house not springing into interactive life until a story beat dictates it.

The glacial pace of the game is only rendered worse by how flat and dull its few, belated attempts at scares are. Multiple endings are available to encourage repeat play-throughs, but with the prior hour so laboured this feature seems an optimistic punt at best.

Coma:Mortuary

In many ways, Strangers has much to learn from perennial Steam sale member Coma:Mortuary. Not least in how, gleaming in all its Unreal Engine glory, Coma comfortably eclipses the former’s scrappy indie aesthetic.

However, despite the shiny presentation, similar gameplay concerns remain. A linear, slow-paced experience, Coma:Mortuary offers an intriguing, if not necessarily enthralling, experience. Following the death of the lead character’s girlfriend, the game tells the tale of his suicide and subsequent trek through the unravelling afterlife.

Coma: Mortuary looks great, and has an intriguing plot

How much the player can relate to this when trudging down identikit sewer pipes is another issue though.The gameplay consists mainly of throwing switches and the occasional signposted dash from pursuing foes. It makes arbitrary deaths and repeating corridors more of a chore than a scare.

Ending on an as-yet unresolved cliffhanger, Coma:Mortuary as a whole is in many ways the reflection of its unfinished conclusion. Slick graphically and with a hint of engaging plot, but lacking where it matters most: gameplay. An interesting but not highly recommendable experiment.

It’s well worth checking out Hotel Remorse, perhaps taking a peek at Coma: Mortuary and reflecting on how good a game it could have been, and probably best to give Strangers a miss. Which seems a reasonable lesson for life in general in some ways.

Given the need for more gameplay scares, why not leave a comment with your pick of the best frights and scares in video games below?

Creators FSS Software touted Steam indie title Glass Wing as a conscious homage to classic Nintendo 64 mainstays like Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie. And on first impressions, the game certainly lives up to that billing.

As with many of the N64 adventures, the player finds themselves inhabiting a peaceful, forested fantasy land. Controlling a fairy named Mayfly, it only takes a few minutes of leaping around the green pastures before a demon arrives, kidnaps Mayfly and makes off with her special powers. And so begins the quest to regain her abilities and defeat the bad guy. So far, so Nintendo. With its colourful mix of fairies, monsters and magic, Glass Wing certainly calls to mind the Japanese giant’s more fantastical output of the mid-to-late 1990s.

There’s even the usual 3D platformer pick n’ mix of stage backdrops; stereotypical forest, desert and snow levels are all present and correct. Coupled with familiar visual elements (e.g. warp pipes and Zelda hearts for health), the Nintendo vibe has been well and truly homaged.

Visually, the game sits somewhere between its cited N64 influence and early Dreamcast titles, while a surprisingly adept audio performance rounds out the package. Music-wise it’s a fitting mix of well-produced piano melodies and intense action beats, while the ambient audio cues (those of the enemies in particular) are genuinely effective.

The game itself mostly alternates between Super Mario Sunshine-style platforming void levels and more cerebral Zelda-like environmental puzzling involving item or ability usage. In fact, some of these tasks prove to be quietly ingenious in their implementation, especially for such a no-frills Indie release. The Metroid series also quickly proves to be another clear Nintendo influence with the slow drip feed of accumulated upgrades and abilities.

The game is not without some problems. Camera and control scheme issues plague much of the platforming, a deficiency not helped by the inclusion of an auto-jump feature. Unlike Nintendo’s smooth implementation in Zelda, Mayfly is only too happy to automatically throw herself off ledges and into the void below. Graphics and general presentation are also lacking, although that’s to be somewhat expected for an indie project.

Just like many N64 titles of the era, Glass Wing can be frugal in its dispensing of checkpoints. A possibly deliberate old school design decision, but one that means death often hurtles the player back numerous stages. This, coupled with the clunky controls and aforementioned auto-jump, quickly renders later levels a harsh lesson in abject frustration. A hand-holding modern blockbuster this is not, yet for all the exasperation it’s almost refreshing to return to the challenges of a bygone era. Indeed, the sense of reward upon clearing a particularly white knuckle section almost, almost justifies the preceding frustration.

That’s Glass Wing in a nutshell then; a charming and ambitious indie effort that can infuriate in its idiosyncrasies, but an experience that ultimately leaves a positive impression. Certainly one well worth considering next time it’s spotted in a Steam sale.

Available on Steam, the game’s standard price is £3.99/$4.99/€4.99 and a demo is available.

Glass Wing can be bought through ITCH.IO, where a 125MB free trial can be downloaded and the full-game price is $5.00 (USD).

Indie Horror Games Roundup for Halloween (PC)

Hotel Remorse

Strangers

Coma:Mortuary

Glass Wing Review (PC)

Hotel Remorse

Strangers

Coma:Mortuary

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