5 Terrifying Immersive Sims to Play After ‘Amnesia: The Bunker’
Jay Krieger
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The immersive sim genre has always prided itself on player choice. The genre’s bread and butter is giving players multiple solutions to overcome obstacles while lacking traditional handholding or overbearing tutorials. And with the recent release of Frictional Game’s fantastic Amnesia: The Bunker, the spotlight is again on immersive sims within the horror space. So I have highlighted five noteworthy indie immersive sims that may have flown under your radar.
Stay Out of the House
Anyone tangentially familiar with the indie horror space has heard of the PSX horror don Puppet Combo. And with Stay out of the House, Puppet Combo has crafted their most involving and terrifying title yet.
The ill-fated player has been kidnapped by The Butcher, a cannibalistic killer, and must now escape his house lest they wish to end up on the chopping block. Once escaping their cage, the player has complete freedom to explore the house in search of an escape. This is easier said than done as players must contend with numerous traps set around the property and even the Butcher’s family members who will alert him to the player’s location.
What separates Stay Out of the House from your average immersive sim (other than—no lie—vent-crawling babies) is the terror that ensues when being hunted. Being constantly stalked by a bag-head-wearing, hammer-wielding cannibalistic killer is unprecedented nightmare fuel. The Butcher’s howl when spotting the player is continuously nerve-fraying and encapsulates my favorite horror movie moments. A stellar blending of immersive sim gameplay and Puppet Combo’s sleazy horror sensibilities makes Stay Out of the House one of the most overlooked games of 2022.
Cruelty Squad
Did you ever want to use your guts to swing from the rafters of a corporate lobby while shooting lasers from your eye at a 22-foot-tall, machine-gun-wielding necro mech?
What?
No game is more visually repugnant while expertly embracing the immersive sim experience than Consumer Softproducts’s Cruelty Squad—a hallucinatory and unapologetically bizarre journey into futuristic corporate liquidations. And by liquidations, I mean murder.
Carry out assassinations across increasingly nightmarish environments filled with oddballs and weirdos. Cruelty Squad’s aesthetic can only be described as acid-infused Adult Swim humor, which seeps from every game aspect. From influencing stock prices of corporations due to targeted acts of violence to selling cop organs on the black market to truly unparalleled freedom in how to approach each assassination, the game simply walks the walk as few immersive sims do.
It would be one thing if Cruelty Squad’s garish look were all it had going for it. Yet, Consumer Softproduct is providing a world that begs to be explored (and repeatedly die within) is to be applauded. And while the learning curve is about as extreme as it gets, every death and fuck up rewards the player with either knowledge or a hilarious anecdote more ludicrous than the last.
Weird West
I am not a fan of Westerns. I hate the sun and lack the fortitude for rustling anything, let alone pissed-off livestock. But an exception can be made when a game’s world is as responsive to player choice and chock full of horror genre influences as Wolfeye Studios‘ Weird West is. As the studio is composed of immersive sim royalty behind games such as Dishonored and Prey (2017), it shouldn’t surprise that Weird West successfully demonstrates a unique approach to the genre.
While the game’s top-down isometric presentation is unconventional for an immersive sim, its dedication to player choice and immersing the player in a reactionary world is more than sound. Allowing a group of bandits to go unchecked in the West can result in entire towns being slaughtered. Don’t feel like gabbing your way through a disagreement? Gun them down in the street rather than using messy diplomacy. The choice is left to players, but know that every action has a reaction. And even when the ramifications of those actions become apparent, Weird West‘s world doesn’t stop moving. Decisions are final, and this experimentation has me continually returning to Weird West’s world.
Gloomwood
A game boasting its inspirations being the 90s and early aughts, immersive sims, and survival horror certainly captures my attention. Setting the game within a gothic Victorian town ravaged by an ancient curse filled with ghoulish monsters makes it my shit. With Gloomwood, New Blood Interactive tapped into what made immersive stealth sims such as Thief remarkable. Dark fantasy settings heavily emphasize stealth while allowing multiple play styles to be just as viable. The choice is the players:
- Silently slice and dice unsuspecting enemies with your cane sword.
- Lure enemies with throwable and breakable objects.
- Attack head-on with your trusty collapsable shotgun.
Above all else, Gloomwood’s world is its most stunning achievement. The city’s architecture could not be more intricate, with a world that feels not only lived in but with numerous secrets that require a keen eye to uncover. A lack of handholding in traversing the world captures the spark of adventure that many immersive sims claim to have but rarely have this level of follow-through. And for those still on the fence: Gloomwood has a Resident Evil 4-style item case. Boom. Sold you.
Pathologic
Nearly two decades after its release, Pathologic’s premise of attempting to save a town ravaged by a mysterious disease hits a little closer to home. Of all the entries on this list, Pathologic’s approach to player choice and the ramifications of those choices being reflected upon its world are the most staggering. Limiting the player to just 12 days to save, understand, or simply survive the town and the sand plague ravaging it gives the game a sense of urgency that few immersive sims have.
Urgency results in the player cautiously calculating their choices more than routine, “Should I choose route A or B?” Given the nature of the disease, the player must make difficult decisions. Do I give medicine to ease a suffering town folk’s pain, barter it, or horde medicine for myself? After all, the player is there to uncover the cause of the disease ravaging the town. The game’s psychological aspect stems from these decisions that sidestep typical good vs. evil morality, given that the foe they face is a bodiless disease. A disease that doesn’t abide by the town’s strange politics and denizens. An illness that simply kills. So, what are you going to do about it?
Have you played any of these immersive sims? Are there any you’re excited to try? Let us know on Twitter @DreadCentral.
Categorized:Editorials
