Alpha Beta Gamer

Seek is an impressive first person survival horror puzzle adventure game inspired by Amnesia, Outlast and Cry of Fear, that’s set in the 18th century and doesn’t just lock you in a gloomy house, but allows you to explore vast and beautifully rendered expanses of it’s massive game world.

The huge open world of Seek is something you don’t see often in a horror game, with large open expanses that are more reminiscent of an open world RPG. These open areas highlight how alone you are in the world and also serve to amplify the feeling of claustrophobia when the walls do close in as you enter buildings and tunnel networks. Scares are pretty few and far between at the moment, but there is a wonderfully eerie atmosphere, a few glimpses of unknown oddities and some rather nasty Lost-style malicious black clouds later on in the Alpha.

Seek features physics based puzzles, such as using objects to bash a door down or building bridges out of planks of wood. These puzzles are fairly rudimentary at the moment, but they allow for a less formulaic approach than the standard keycards and levers approach, and no doubt they will get trickier as the game progresses.

The game size and graphical polish in Seek’s Alpha alone puts most full horror game releases to shame. It looks set to be an epic horror adventure once it’s fully fleshed out – you’re going to need some seriously sturdy walking boots to traverse it’s expanses!

Download the Alpha, Free

Nosgoth - the Square Enix online multiplayer action game set in the Legacy of Kain universe, is having an Open Beta weekend on Steam this weekend (7th Aug to 10th Aug). The full Open Beta will be starting this Winter, so this weekend will be a taster of things to come. Everyone that plays during the Free Open Beta weekend will be rewarded with Double XP as well as an exclusive in-game badge.

Nosgoth is set after the events of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and takes place during a war between vampires and mankind. Each faction has different skill sets, humans focus on ranged attacks and traps, while vampires have greater mobility and wall climbing skills to help them sneak up on their victim for a melee kill.

There’s also a wide range of character customisation, equipment and weapons to spec out your human/vampire with. It’s a fun game, with fast, varied and violent combat. In Nosgoth there are plenty of ways to kill or be killed, all of them delightfully brutal.

Watch the Trailer & find out more

alpha-beta-gamer:

Phantasmal is a genuinely terrifying roguelike first person horror game inspired by Dead Space, Silent Hill, Metro and Resident Evil, set in an old abandoned, procedurally generated mansion.
The prevailing darkness makes for a very claustrophobic feeling game, and both the character design and audio are both particularly freaky, but the single most terrifying aspect of it is that the levels are all procedurally generated. This procedural generation means that every playthrough is different and just as pant-wettingly horrifying as the last. You never know what’s going to come at you next, although it’s a safe bet it doesn’t want to be friends.
The goal of the game is to escape the mansion, by making your way through levels full off all manner of creepy ghouls, trying to reach the level exit portal. This is no easy task, resources are sparse and you’re pretty fragile. You have a mixture of traditional weapons and makeshift weapons but a lot of the time, sneaking is your best option, especially with the most common enemy, blind humanoid creatures that hunt through sound.
As if things weren’t stacked against you enough, you’re also prone to hallucinations, looking directly at some creatures with your torchlight turned on will cause you to slowly lose your sanity. Make no mistake, you’ll die a lot in this game, you’ll learn how to take on different enemies, but you can forget about learning level layouts. You never know what’s behind those corners, and most of the time it’s something very bad.
Download the Pre-Alpha, Free
UPDATE: Phantasmal has just recieved a significant update which makes the game EVEN HARDER! You can download it now, Free.

alpha-beta-gamer:

Dark Deception may look like a horror game, but it’s actually Pac-Man, the creepiest, freakiest Pac-Man game you’re likely to play.
You’re tasked with roaming the corridors of the maps, collecting all the shards (Pac-Mans dots) to complete the level. This is easier said than done though as it’s much harder to do from a first person perspective than a top-down view. Not knowing where the enemies are means there are some real jump scares as enemies pop out from behind corners just in-front of you.
There is a story to the game, that’s something to do with you playing a cop on the run, but it doesn’t really matter, all you need to know about this game is that it is freaky first person Pac-Man and it’s great.
Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde were never this scary.
Play the Alpha Demo, Free
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UPDATE:
Dark Deception has now launched it’s Kickstarter campaign. The team have now been liscenced by Sony, so they’re pretty keen to bring it out on PS4 (and Project Morpheus) and Vita as well as PC. They’ve enlisted one of the main character artists from Bioshock Infinite to overhaul their characters, making them even more creepy. They’ve also employed the voice talent of Carolyn Seymour, who’s appeared on-screen in Congo and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, but is probably best known as Queen Mirrah (Gears of War) and Dr Chakwas (Mass Effect).
As well as a wide range of tweaks, upgrades and improvements, some of the stretch goals include procedurally generated levels, new monsters, multiplayer, Mod support and an Xbox One version. With all the graphical and sound improvements, as well as the promise of new monsters with every level, the scariest Pac-Man you’ve ever played is set to get a whole lot scarier…
Back the Kickstarter!

UPDATE:

Dark Deception has now launched it’s Kickstarter campaign - the scariest Pac-Man you've ever played is set to get a whole lot scarier…

Wooden Floor is a creepy first person horror game full of visual trickery, where whole rooms can change while you’re not looking.

There are no full on jump scares (at least in the demo), instead the game builds a tense and eerie atmosphere where you constantly question what’s real. Close a door and open it again, and it may reveal a totally different room or even the same room flipped upside down. The only thing that is constant is the wooden floor under your feet.

It’s an interesting take on the horror genre, where you question everything, including your sanity. In a lot of ways it feels like a bad dream – but in a good way.

Download the Alpha Demo, Free

FEAR Online, the team focused horror-themed FPS staring everyones favourite psychopathic psionic child, is now entering Beta.

The Beta will feature a whole bunch of redesigns, upgrades and improvements from the Alpha builds, and looks like it’s ramping up the terror in the process. FEAR Online boasts a co-operative campaign that takes place within the same timeframe as FEAR 2: Project Origin, fast-paced multiplayer versus modes, plenty of blood and gore, and the ability to play as the Soul King - a ghost with limitless potential.

The Beta begins on May the 26th, so if you want to take on Alma again, you’d better sign up soon. If it gets too scary, at least you’ll have some friends online who can hold your hand!

Sign-Up for the Beta

Phantasmal is a genuinely terrifying roguelike first person horror game inspired by Dead Space, Silent Hill, Metro and Resident Evil, set in an old abandoned, procedurally generated mansion.

The prevailing darkness makes for a very claustrophobic feeling game, and both the character design and audio are both particularly freaky, but the single most terrifying aspect of it is that the levels are all procedurally generated. This procedural generation means that every playthrough is different and just as pant-wettingly horrifying as the last. You never know what’s going to come at you next, although it’s a safe bet it doesn’t want to be friends.

The goal of the game is to escape the mansion, by making your way through levels full off all manner of creepy ghouls, trying to reach the level exit portal. This is no easy task, resources are sparse and you’re pretty fragile. You have a mixture of traditional weapons and makeshift weapons but a lot of the time, sneaking is your best option, especially with the most common enemy, blind humanoid creatures that hunt through sound.

As if things weren’t stacked against you enough, you’re also prone to hallucinations, looking directly at some creatures with your torchlight turned on will cause you to slowly lose your sanity. Make no mistake, you’ll die a lot in this game, you’ll learn how to take on different enemies, but you can forget about learning level layouts. You never know what’s behind those corners, and most of the time it’s something very bad.

Download the Pre-Alpha, Free

Grave is a surreal, open-world, procedural survival horror game, with day & night cycles playing a big roll. During the day, you search for anything to help you survive, and explore to find new areas, during the night, you try to survive using light sources you’ve scavenged, and explore if you’re brave enough.

In Grave, you don’t have guns or knifes to survive but you use light as a way to defend and eliminate the creatures that’s out to get you. This was done in Alan Wake previously, but here the light-as-a-weapon theme is far superior, with no need for guns to finish off enemies and you can use various different light sources – like putting oil on the ground and setting fire to it with matches.

It’s an atmospheric horror game with a lots of inventive ways to play, the game is scariest in the beginning, more so than later on when hordes of monsters show up, but that’s where the survival gameplay comes into play – a little less frightening, but just as fun. With Oculus Rift Support, you can play the game in full VR if you really want to freak yourself out though!

Download the Alpha, Free

Caffiene is an interesting new Sci-Fi horror game that casts you as a young boy who wakes up all alone in a seemingly derelict caffeine mining space station. Confused and alone, you have to explore the space station, finding crypitc notes and voice recordings which will unlock the mystery of what transpired there.

This Pre-Release Demo is just a very short taster and is lacking any real action, but it does give a great sense of atmosphere and tension. As you travel gown the long dark corridors of the station. It’s so reminiscent of the Nostromo that you keep on expecting an Alien to jump out at you from an air duct. Graphically it’s excellent too (although still needs some optimisation), currently running on Unreal Engine 3, the dev plans to use Unreal Engine 4 for the full game.

Download the Pre-Release Demo, Free

Glitchhikers is a surreal new game about that meditative place you go when you’re driving alone at night, listening to the radio. The game explores “that liminal space, that journey, that infinity, our place in the universe, the gothic sublime, love, death, and the adventure that lies between.” Throughout the game you’ll find yourself driving along the road, listening to the radio, picking up some very strange hitch-hikers and having some even stranger conversations.

It’s a fantastically surreal concept, created by Silverstring Media (story-writers of the excellent Krypt of the Necrodancer) and due for release in early 2014. We’d highly recommend checking out the trailer as it’s rather freaky.

Watch the trailer and sign up for the Beta

Posts tagged horror game