The timeline of the horror gaming genre as a whole has had its ups and downs, with the modern age showinga clear revolution in the industry. It’s appalling, especially as someone who grew up thinking the golden age of horror gaming was long gone.
There’s been a small, slowly growing trend in some of the horror games released this past decade, and it’s their particularly unique approach to incorporating fear. Specifically, anordinary approach.
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Some of these newer games have mastered the art of weaving fear through mundane activities and domesticity, heightening the horror experience beyond what players imagined could be possible.
Simply put, this quiet, almost “boring” horror is able to create an atmosphere unlike anything previous games have demonstrated.
It’s not too commonplace, however, for AAA games to choose a more traditional tension-and-release style of horror, with jumpscares, disturbing imagery, and the like. We need more games that hold onto that tension, manifesting anxiety from something plain.
How Is Horror Made Through Domesticity?
Some Developers Have This Mastered
Picture this: you come home after a long day at work, only to realise that the trash needs to be taken out. The bin is outside in the dark, which doesn’t seem to be an issue until you close the door behind you, face to face with the sudden realisation that you’re alone in the dark.
From there, your hair stands on end with rising goosebumps, and now you find yourself walking at a quicker pace to finish sooner, and constantly glancing over your shoulder. There’s a knot in your stomach, a sinking fear that doesn’t begin to subside until you’ve run back home and locked yourself inside.
While the act of taking out the trash in and of itself isn’t scary, it was the circumstances of the environment, the lack of any relief in the scenario, the simple domesticity of it all, that suddenly made the situation more frightening.
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You found yourself afraid during this brief, mundane moment in your life – and that’s what these games are taking full advantage of.
Chilla’s Artis a Japanese game developer that is essentially a masterclass in embracing the ordinary in horror. With terrifying games such asThe Convenience StoreandThe Closing Shift, Chilla’s Art not only embraces the mundane, but works theirJ-horror gamesentirely around these concepts.
The Closing Shift in particular amplifies this tenfold. While their other titles tend to focus on paranormal horror in mundane settings and situations, The Closing Shift is grounded in a far more terrifying fear: stalking.
Playing (and literally working) as a barista, you go through the events of the game being a victim of a stalker, with each night more tense and paranoia-inducing than the last. You make coffee for each customer, not knowing which one wants to do something terrible to you, and it makes each shift all the more nerve-wracking.
Stalking is a very real fear that many people have, a fear that we see manifested through news stations and true crime documentaries – the last place players expected to encounter it was a video game. Yet, Chilla’s Art not only brought it in, but made it a fully grounded focus, putting the players in a very real setting through an incredibly slow burn.
That’s what these games do.They take something ordinary and attempt to exploit the fear that could be extracted, creating a horror experience that’s genuinely unique – and just as genuinely horrifying.
Which Type of Horror is Scarier?
There’s Something About Quiet Horror That Lingers
On the bright side, more AAA horror games are starting to understand and implement this tactic, with theSilent Hill 2 Remakebeing a prime example. It’s most prominent at the start of the game when establishing the atmosphere, but it was genuinely horrifying.
Silent Hill’satmosphere remains one of the most iconic in gaming, with a thick fog permeating the air, even seeping into the buildings. Whilethe fog has always been the scariest part of Silent Hill for an entirely different reason, it’s in this fog that the remake found mundane horror to exploit.
It didn’t last long, of course, having gone into full-blown horror by the time players get intoBlue Creek Apartments, but that first section of the game sticks with you. It lingers.
It begs the question: what type of horror is better? While that’s reasonable to ask, the answer is actually just as reasonable and far more exciting:both.
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Several other horror games implement the mundane in their horror, and it always works in their favour (No One Lives Under the Lighthouse,Devotion, andThe Mortuary Assistant, to name a few). Unlike Chilla’s Art, though, more traditional horror elements are brought in, a marriage of loud and quiet horror that works wonders.
Devotion, for example, has players stepping into the shoes ofFeng Yu, the husband and father of theDufamily, in his apartment. At the start of the game, the apartment is normal, while the horror just teeters on uncanny with several moments of domesticity (such as reading a bedtime story to your daughter, for example).
However, as the game progresses, the apartment degrades and deteriorates while the truth is uncovered, and the scares begin to intensify to being outright aggressive and grotesque. It’s intense, and has one of the most disturbing moments any indie horror game could have.
The thing is, the game works because it balances the loud and the quiet, having both ordinary and traditional components, strengthening the horror in the game overall. The argument shouldn’t be about which type of horror is better, but thathorror should have more types altogether.
We Need More Mundane Horror in Video Games
Through the Mundane, Fear is Heightened Tenfold
Horror is an experience, not a simple collection of tropes, and it takes multiple elements to create a wholly horrifying experience. A lot of games, unfortunately, tend to take a one-type horror approach or treat the genre as a collection of tropes.
Rather,more developers should be trying to think of how they can incorporate ordinary scenarios, moments, and even dialogue into the game. Bringing Chilla’s Art back into the topic (I told you they’re a masterclass), many of their games are a blend of these experiences.
The Convenience Store, for example, one of the most poignant examples of ordinary, mundane horror, is aghost story.It’s a haunted convenience store, complete with a haunted videotape and everything – but the game is remembered for the fear interwoven with simply stocking shelves or checking cameras.
Paranormal, supernatural, sci-fi, psychological, whatever other horror types you can think of, literally all of them could benefit from implementing casual, domestic horror.
Even if it’s in small doses, it still elevates fear; it still creates an irreplaceable experience of horror that can only be replicated in the real world.
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