Why indie horror is so effective

Where do you go when the mainstream just doesn't kick anymore?

A lot my personal thoughts and feelings come out on this blog simply because I feel it serves best to be some form of honest when I write these, as such I don't always cover as wide a range of games as I feel that I should. This is something that I've sought to work on, simply so that I'll have more material to draw from, and that's allowed me to really get a lot closer with some of the weirder side of gaming that I was mostly ignorant to before. And let me be clear that when I say 'weird', what I really mean to say is 'non mainstream', because gaming is such a hard to pin-down form of entertainment that anything outside of the mainstream has a good chance to be wild in all manner of ways; some of which might have you confronting exactly what 'entertainment' is even supposed to be. Just look at Frog Fractions. (No seriously; look at Frog Fractions. Nothing I could say will do that thing justice.) And this retrospective of indie titles all across the land has drawn back two conclusions to me; one: that a lot of Indie games are horror titles, and two: that they usually end up being way scarier then AAA horror games.

Now don't get me wrong, I still think that horror has a place in the mainstream market; just look at Resident Evil and my rather transparent love and respect for those games and that franchise. I think the original Outlast is one of the most terrifying experiences I've ever gone through, nearly sticking me with emergency heart bypass surgery; and recently I even got around to a playthrough of 'Amnesia: The Dark Decent', which was a masterclass on atmosphere that I honestly wasn't quiet expecting. But those last two examples I offered, whilst undeniable horror classics, were not AAA games. In fact they were both Indie. AAA games tend not to go after the horror market too often, but instead prefer to make games that are horror adjacent. The only real exceptions I can think of from the modern age would be 'The Evil Within' (Which I like but a lot of people don't) and 'The Medium' which seemed to be pretty lukewarm from most reviews I picked through. (A real shame too. I had faith in Medium) 

So what is it about independent horror games that hit differently from their AAA departments? And why is it that the only active horror series from a big studio in today's day and age is Resident Evil, and there's a franchise that specialises in Action Horror, not pure horror. I don't claim to be any great psychologist with his finger on the trigger of societal opinion, but I personally think that a hint might lie in an example from the entertainment industry in the past. Only a different platform for entertainment. In fact, I have an example from my very own home country of England, and the sort of hysteria that fuelled the video horror market over here in the 1980's. What I of course refer to is the phenomenon known at the time as 'video nasties'.

Now 'Video nasties' is a term popularised by the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (Now known as Mediawatch-UK) and was used as a flag under which to hunt down and prosecute video media that was considered to be 'immoral'. There's some extra details around here about how some of these videos couldn't be properly rated in order to keep them out of impressionable hands due to workarounds regarding early video rights ownership laws, but that was about the high and low of it. And in the manner of all things like this, once these sorts of films were given the red stamp and told to be frowned upon, that merely sparked the early video watching audience to seek these films out to discover what they were missing. As you can imagine when we're talking about the hitlist of a morality toting activism group, a lot of the movies they targeted were explicit horror movies, and so these were the sorts of films that became in demand during this time. Eventually people went around sharing poorly ripped and overplayed versions of these low-budget gorefests, the shoddiness of which almost fed into the allure, the illusion if-you-will, that these horrific affairs could be real. And of course they weren't, everyone knew that; but seeing films existing outside the accepted constraints of the mainstream helped conjure up a false verisimilitude, even when the actual quality of what you were watching would be obviously limited thanks to the scope of the budget.

Now I think the way we look at horror in the gaming market isn't exactly one-to-one with that so to speak, but you can see the resemblance. A genre of storytelling that relies on being shocking and unpredictable, constrained by a set of rules and stipulations that some can interpret as holding back the art form. In terms of 80's movies there was a certain level of visual gore that the ratings board wouldn't touch, and in terms of modern gaming it's more that there's just a whole level of obscure directions and arthouse twists that just wouldn't be appealing to enough people to warrant the investment. And when the mainstream can't cut it, that leaves a primed stage for the indie scene to step up and take the glory. Of course, that's just one connection, I think there's another.

Just as with the illusion and mystery of swapping under-the-counter banned movies, there's a certain thrilling sense of danger that comes in seeking out these sorts of games where you wouldn't normally find them, and what these sorts of titles might contain. It's a bit silly to think of Itch.Io as some wild frontier full of the unknown, but to someone who only ever gets their games off of Steam or storefronts like that, it can feed into this question of 'what am I really installing on my computer?'. This is something that can really be exploited by a certain breed of horror which is almost unique to the indie market; meta horror. Now I've mentioned Doki Doki Literature Club before in this vein, but if we're really going back to the roots then maybe a more apt game might be IMSCARED. That was a rather straightforward horror game that managed to do the impossible and send it's atmosphere outside of the 'magic box' of the game world and into the real world. How? Simple; it just created files. Simple text files. But the sort of thing you were encouraged to find on your computer in order to unravel more of the mystery. Think of how crazy of a forth-wall break that is! That transcends anything that the movie market could possibly pull off and anything that the AAA game market would have the nerve to pull off; it made the danger feel real.

And then there's the other aspect about the unregulated market: actual danger. Now I know that a lot of this is melodramatic and drummed up for effect, and no one gets excited about the prospect of downloading a virus instead of their game, but I'm talking about the sorts of legendary games for their depravity. (So when I say 'danger', I more mean 'mental danger') Whether I talk about a game that touches on topics too uncomfortable for the main stream (like actually playing as a man who murders his entire family) or even a mythical game that goes beyond any limit of taste and apparently features actual snuff. (Something which I'm absolutely not in support of, and thus I refuse to even name the rumoured software) Where there's the thrill of actually screwing oneself up by seeing something scarring, they'll be an audience for it. Just look at me; I actively seek out the most evocative games I can, even when it's gut-wrenching, just so that I'll feel anything. It's a real addiction.

The best thing about indie Horror in the light of everything I just discussed; is that it doesn't need to cross any of the lines that I laid in the sand at all. Great indie horror can go just as far as normal mainstream horror, but still come away hitting harder all because it could have gone further. I mentioned it in other blogs, but Horror is fuelled more by your imagination about what's around the corner rather than what actually is, thus Indie horror benefits most by reputation above all else. All this I say despite, bizarrely, not actually liking horror all that much. I think it's telling to see the ways in which modern horror has started taking cues from the indie market, rather in contrast to almost every other genre out there, and just goes to show you where the real scary experiences can be found. So if you ever find you becoming bored by the mundane same-old-same-old horror stories; maybe it's time you angled yourself away from the established, and further towards the whacky world of the lawless. That's indie developers, I should clarify, not bank robbers. 

The Outlast Trials

At last?

Huh? No this doesn't make any sense. Forgive me, I see to have messed up my schedule of games and included a title from years back, only this couldn't be that Outlast, could it? The game that literally made me cry in terror the first time I played it, then cry in boredom when I played the sequel? (Seriously, why did Outlast 2 suck so bad? I don't get it.) This couldn't be the same series, could it? The only reason I find myself incredulous, reader person, is because there's no way on this green earth that the folk in charge would make their next game within that universe, a celebrated actually-scary horror universe, a multiplayer game. That would just be crazy talk, right? Someone tell me I'm right. I NEED TO BE RIGHT! Ugh, this is going to take some explaining I think, let's wrap.

First off, 2013's Outlast was important for horror, and I mean really important. Sure, the first serious budget-backed first person horror title of the modern age likely goes to 'Amnesia: The Dark Decent', a seriously influential game, but Outlast was the game that seemingly perfected that formula. Whilst 'Amnesia' laid the framework, Red Barrels took that and painted their own freakin' Mona Lisa, they rocked the first person Horror scene like no other. (Just to be clear, I'm talking about figurative framework. I'm not accusing Red Barrels of absconding with Amnesia's resources.) Amnesia was scary for the time, it was, but Outlast hit different, it felt sharper. Whereas Amnesia used it's slightly janky presentation to it's advantage, earning this allure of an unburnished out-of-the-mainstream game where anything could happen, Outlast wore a sleek sheen of a quality product and still managed to terrify people. So Amnesia was definitely the grandfather of this game style, but Outlast felt like the next generational step forward, one that played homage to it's routes, but was ready to blaze it's own trail.

Now I wouldn't go so far as to say that every great game to follow out of the horror world owed it's routes to Outlast, I mean who could say if PT and Resident Evil VII would have happened the same way that they did, but Outlast served as ample example to everyone how to make a horror game right. They erred towards the 'helpless protagonist' angle, wherein the only acts the player could go through to survive was run and hide; (simple, but effective) they based the action in a traditionally spooky environment that could conjure most of the unnerve without the team's active attempts; (Abandoned Asylum, classic) and kept the gameplay cramped and claustrophobic in order to play off that feeling of there being 'no escape'. Basically they went down the playbook and ticked all the boxes, but they did it with such style that it didn't feel generic and derivative. The sequel, on the otherhand, tried to be more adventurous and sort of lost track of what it wanted to be, which why I'm understandably dubious whenever I hear talk about a return to Outlast that is as wildly out of left field as this appears to be.

The Outlast Trials purposes to take the most overused trope in Horror franchises to date and go back to a prequel story. (Sorry, sorry. I promised myself I'd give a little room before I got unbearably jaded.) We're being thrown back to the happy-go-lucky years of the Cold War, wherein Red Barrels' 'Umbrella Corporation' analogue, The Murkoff Corporation, were conducting highly unethical experiments on people with no clear motive. (As of yet.) Judging from the incredibly limited information at our disposal I can only assume that they nicked the 'Resident Evil Resistance' model of "Stick a bunch of teens in a ratmaze with monsters in it and see how they do." Which to me seems like freeform experimentation utterly lacking in any remote controls or measures that would make the resultant data even remotely usable. (But that's just me.) Then again, given Outcast's penchant for the macabre and sometimes even down-right gore, perhaps this direction has more in common with the later Saw movies. (Who knows, maybe this will accidentally turn into the first decent Saw game.)

So far so average, you may be thinking. It's cold-war era experimentation; that sounds distant, yet cautionary, enough to serve as a decent horror setting. What's my gripe? Well, it all comes down to the mechanics behind that setting because, according to Steam, this is going to a cooperative horror experience with up to four friends. (Sort of robs the 'helplessness' and 'loneliness' angles from the premise right away, doesn't it?) Now I will commend the team's restraint, my first terrified thought was that this would turn into another bloody asymmetric multiplayer mode, but it seems that might not be the case right away. (I mean, they've told us so little that they literally could reveal that down the line and shock us all in the worst possible manner, but I'm willing to believe that's not the case. Please don't be the case.)

Instead the game is said to feature up to four players as the try to survive the, likely sick and twisted, experiments put on by their captors. So think less 'Friday the 13th the game' and more... Okay, I'm struggling here... 'Killing Floor'? Only without the guns and instead more running and hiding? So actually nothing like 'Killing Floor' then? It's an odd concept that the team haven't really done the best job of conveying, you know with their entirely cinematic reveal trailer which reveals nothing but the game's most basic premise. (There's a time and a place for cinematics, team, this wasn't it.) So right now we're sitting at a period in time where we don't even know if this is going to be a 'multiplayer match' kind of thing, like I've been operating under the assumption of, or if there's going to be a linear narrative that the players are expected to follow. Personally, I find that second option more intriguing whilst acknowledging that it would be worlds more taxing for the Devs. (So I'll put that under the 'unlikely' pile of possibilities.)

So with as little as we have to go on, what do I expect for this game? Well all I have to base my opinion on is my limited experience with the Devs on the Outlast franchise, and that's the reason why I have to settle on a distinct lack of optimism for this title to be anything good, let alone worthy of dragging the Outlast name back into the spotlight. It's a potentially bold concept that I can see some great developers doing great things with, but I just don't trust these guys to step too far out of their comfort zone, they've failed that test before. Now, as I understand it this is a smaller project that's being developed alongside of Outlast 3 (Which simply must be VR compatible, guys! You're shooting yourselves in the foot if it's not.) so I'm willing to give them this learning experience. Maybe they'll blow all us stupid doubters away.

Overall, I'd be lying if I said I was happy to hear the Outlast name is back in this particular usage. In fact, perhaps I'd have preferred if this game didn't exist and all effort was being put into making Outlast 3 as good as it can be, but making do with what we have sometimes means given a try to thinks we don't necessarily love. Admittedly, you could probably trace a big part of my reticence back to my plain lack-of-a-use for co-op games, but that's still where I'm at and I'm willing to bet that once we see an actual gameplay trailer my beliefs will only be cemented. Good luck to anyone brave enough to given an adventurous game a shot, because I don't have that sort of disposable income. Yet despite all I've said, in the Interest of being fair, I do hope the game is good and get's an audience. Any indie title deserves that at least.