Cast your eyes upon this spooky list of macarbe titles of… fuck it, my people don’t do Halloween. Halloween is a holiday about dressing up, having fun, and cathartically talking about fake things to scare one another, three things I am bad at. Nonetheless, it’s an arbitary reason for Steam to throw their prices down into the basement on a flimsy rationale, so let’s really quickly run through them – there is some stuff here that is worth your time and money, even if spooooky things aren’t your flavour.
Indie games, ie, cheap games, ie, games I have played, absolutely abound with horror titles, and while I will normally take this particular proposition and beat it with sticks as hard as I can, it means this time we have a host of great titles sitting in the bargain basement. Particularly of note in this are the two indie greats Lone Survivor and They Bleed Pixels. Now, I’m not going to lie to you, I haven’t played They Bleed Pixels yet – the game looks great, reviews often talk about it in ways that convince me I’ll like it, and the developer seems a really neat person.
During a sale that is, ostensibly, about videogames focused on themes of horror, fear and deprivation, we have standout examples of people who are only here because they have a paper mask. They’re good, though, so don’t miss your chance, if you were after them: Monaco and Fallout: New Vegas (Ultimate Edition). These games serve two distinct audiences; New Vegas is for the loner who wants to spend a huge amount of time with only a tiny shard of money spent and lots of bleak landscapes to stare at until your eyes bleed, and Monaco for someone who likes friends and chaos and Frenchness. The games are almost polar opposite in their rewards, but they are both totally great.
Now, it would be remiss to run through this list and ridicule games for things they can’t really help. There are a bunch of games here where I don’t think they’re good, or I don’t think they’re interesting enough to consider getting, and I don’t feel it right to poke fun at them. On the other hand, hubris is remarkable a flavour, and I think Dark, a game whose good ideas seem to run out with the title, still being priced at forty dollars dived head-first into ambitious and came out the other side.
The final note is that for all of you people who are sick of hearing me talk about Darkness, Dark Things, Lovecraft, you know, all those stupid things, I have to recommend to you, ten times over, Costume Quest. It’s charming, it’s genuinely funny, it’s totally G-rated in its horror, and, like it’s protaganist, it’s short and easily stolen.