So much horror is the horror you bring upon yourself. No amount of visual precision or storytelling can surpass the fear that exists in the gaps of your understanding. One of the secrets to creating truly terrifying multimedia is to leave enough to the imagination that your own brain fills in the blanks.
Analog Horror is here, a genre based on low-fidelity graphics reminiscent of the 90s. It relies on low-quality video, the liminal feel of older media, and a general sense of wrongness to create these gaps. When this aesthetic is combined with an interactive medium, you're in for a nightmare of the uncanny valley and screen tearing. There is a lot of it in these titles.
Updated October 3, 2024 by Alfredo Rabelais: The analog horror genre continues to evolve, and the indie scene is a master of the craft. With new games coming out all the time that expand the genre, we've updated this article to include even more great titles.
13 Closing shift
Not every job is worth paying for
Playing with a VHS-esque hustle and bustle of the genre, and set deep in the 1990s, The Convenience Store deals in two terrible things: the supernatural and a customer service job. You are in the shoes of a barista working the night shift alone in a small, brightly lit, outdoor coffee shop in the middle of a dark city.
Routine tasks give way to paranoia when your shift starts to get scary. You discover that a suspicious person is on the loose, and suddenly every customer starts to annoy you. Is it safe to turn away to make drinks? Will it be deadly to take out garbage bags? It's a stressful experience.
12 Maple County
Test your learning
Inspired by the stunning horror series The Mandela Catalogue, Maple County puts you in the shoes of an apparent police officer in the respective county. You are tasked with completing an interactive tutorial about a threat you should not disclose to your loved ones. To cope with the threat, it is necessary to learn to choose faces that look “wrong” in some way.
You'll go through the training by dealing with this disturbing material in relative isolation until the game suddenly throws you for a loop and makes things more practical. Be prepared for a surprise.
11 Anatomy
A house that embodies something
Anatomy is a slow, tense and creepy horror movie set in a house. Ribbons scattered around compare parts of the house to parts of the body. The paranoia gradually builds as you search the different rooms for the tapes, all the while wondering what they mean.
Where some horrors might scare you with scurrying monsters and moving shadows, Anatomy takes a much more carefully thought-out path, slowly filling you with dread and creating a place that never feels safe or welcoming. Some places seem like you shouldn't be there.
10 Discover the ocean
Find out why some things should be left alone
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Discover The Ocean is a short game that at first looks a lot like an educational CD-ROM from the 90s. You navigate an imaginary underwater research drone, approach the points and receive short video clips of ocean animals and related facts. Then things start to get weird.
Soon the camera begins to descend, the depth gauge drops dramatically, and you are given some cryptic clues to follow. They will lead you on the path of cracking ARG codes. It sounds almost like a warning.
9 Group 864 Training Program
Survival is not guaranteed
Have you ever read the articles of the SCP Foundation and wished you were one of the D-class operatives? Definitely not? It's still worth watching. The game is a dark comedy visual novel where you take on the role of a human who participates in computer training for the highly suspicious group 864. You are quickly informed that you are an employee of R3 – a death row inmate who has been offered a position in lieu of execution. Not a good sign.
The program presents you with situations and questions related to creepy supernatural entities, lets you interact with a ghost remotely, and threatens you with a “Room of Smiles” if you don't come to work with the right attitude.
8 Home invasion
Even houses are not safe
Home Invasion, a VHS-style game that originally masqueraded as an infomercial, quickly drags you down a disjointed, terrifying rabbit hole. Begins with a broad discussion of weapons, their safety, and the practice of their use. It soon becomes clear, however, that it is far more sinister.
The game is a wild, scary ride, switching between game modes that slowly unfold the events of the home invasion. This culminates in an impressive use of the camera's flash to illuminate the area.
7 Evaluation exam
Who evaluates whom?
Assessment Examination takes another dive into the macabre alternative universe of Mandela's catalog. You are a potential candidate for the AAD, or Department of Authenticity Assessment, and have to answer some pretty sinister questions as part of the exam.
It progresses to you looking at different photos and deciding whether to trust them or see them as a threat. However, the longer you play and the more recordings you hear about possible victims of this threat, the more you start to wonder who's behind the tape — and who you're helping.
6 Keep your eyes on the red refrigerator
Because it will eat you, obviously
The refrigerator wants to eat you. It already ate your daughter. You don't want to be eaten by a refrigerator. If you look away from the refrigerator, it will start to come closer. The only way to stop yourself from becoming food for the demon's refrigerator is to try to seal it with his name. Unfortunately, you can't move and the only things you have to work with are the items scattered across the floor.
Reading some of the notes on the floor may provide clues on how to proceed, but don't spend too long reading. If your eyes are on the clues, they're not on the fridge.
5 Iron lungs
There is something there
What could be more terrifying than being alone at the bottom of an ocean of blood, welded into a leaking, rusting, slowly disintegrating submarine that you suspect you won't survive? Don't be lonely.
Iron Lung is a small PS1-style experience that exploits the limitations of your own perception. Your ship has no openable windows and you must navigate using instruments and a camera that has a delayed development time. You don't need to see things outside to be scared because the sounds are enough.
4 A deadly omen
Your first step into the Rabbit Hole series.
On its own, Lethal Omen is a weird, disturbing shooter with a '90s aesthetic set in a campsite. You explore the area collecting keys and shooting people in camouflage. After all, it alarmingly declares your enemies dead in an area where you couldn't see the enemies, and it's only downhill from there.
The game itself is annoying, but it becomes an absolute goldmine of scary lore when you pair it with Gemini Home Entertainment's related series. Following other media in the series will reveal many in-game parallels, and knowing the context of this strange place makes things that much worse. There are several different endings, but none of them are right for you.
3 Home Security Hotline
Protection of people from bees and monsters
The world of Home Security Hotline represents a fantasy land where people can buy a home at a reasonable price. There's a catch, of course, and that's that most houses in this world are home to some sort of magical creature, from shape-shifting hobbits to moles you really don't want to mess with.
You'll take on the role of Home Safety Hotline's newest employee, instructing homeowners on how to best deal with their specific pests. Perform well enough and you'll be rewarded by those below ground, but they can just as easily punish you if you get the answer wrong too many times.
2 Paratopic
Disturbing VHS tapes
The term paratopic refers to a space outside of the story, so you spend a lot of time waiting for an elevator or driving somewhere; these are points that stories often miss. But it's in these rather disturbing moments that Paratopic's story takes place, leaving you to piece together the pieces of what's really going on.
However, there is a lot going on in the few bits of history we do see. It all seems to be related to the trade in VHS tapes, which contain recordings so fascinating that they can change a person's perception of time, as well as their own physical self, by warping so much that they seem to disappear.
1 Who is Leela?
The question is better left unanswered
The best kind of horror is the unknown, and if there's one thing we should never know, it's the answer to the title of this game: Who is Leela? The mystery is as deep or as shallow as you want it to be, but the creepiness of the questions it raises, as well as the imagery it offers alongside it, make it a must-read for all horror fans.
This is all without mentioning the main feature of the game, which is to move the face of the player character. They claim they can't make faces with ease, but as you play you'll find yourself struggling with the face to form the 'correct' answer as it smiles in dark moments and laughs when someone's in pain.
