Horror games to play during October

Apparently SOMA got a patch last week on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/282140/view/542243094205040852?l=english

Game:
- Fixed faulty spam filters on Simon’s PC

Users may still receive suspicious correspondence due to treemail 0.1 filtering process issues.

Misc:
- Bug Fixes

▔░▕▄ ▋▕▛▕░▜ ▀▚▀█//////////▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▒▒▒▒▒▒

▀ ▒█▍▂▄░▄ ▔▇▀▍▊ ▜▎ ▕ ▅░▎ ▌ ▅░█▂▔█▎ ▍▀▋ ▆▀▌▌▌▄▄▄▄▄▒▒▒/////▒▒▒▒▒

Unfortunately doesn't look like it's on sale though: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/soma/info/
[Edit: Now on sale for $2.99 until October 6.]

It was also released on Switch this July.

Thanks to @PancakeCats post in the weekly topic I've recently been hooked on Voices of the Void. So far I'm enjoying the spookiness very much.

You seem like a survival horror enjoyer, so I am going to propose Alan Wake 2. Its a very good survival horror game with an amazing narrative and sense of style and uniqueness you don't often see in a high budget production. It helps that you dont really need to have played the first game to jump in, because the first game and the time gap between the release of the first and second are part of the story. Its good at catching you up to speed on any of the important stuff you should know from the first game. Unsure of your platform, but its getting added to PS plus on October 1st, and is available on Xbox and PC as well, but be warned on PC its requirements are mighty indeed. Also, criminally, its digital only on all platforms, so take that into account if thats something you care about.

Another reccomendation in a similar vein but on the opposite end of the spectrum, I have also been enjoying Look Outside. Its a 10$ indie survival horror game on steam, that plays in the top down rpg maker style. The basic premise is that an unprecedented cosmological event is effecting the planet, causing anyone who looks outside and observes it to be changed physically and mentally. Its told to you that it will last for fifteen days, and so for fifteen days you have to pass time in your apartment and explore the building. Its got unsettling encounters galore, limited resource management, crunchy but evocative art, and a truly amazing soundtrack. Highly recommend if you have a pc or steam capable device.

Additionally, for whats it worth, I found Silent Hill 2 to be worth the 70$ in my eyes, a very good experience that has only minor issues with pacing in some sections. I enjoyed the original but never finished it, but i was pretty hooked on the remake till the end.

A lot of people watched a playthrough of Iron Lung (a decent chunk from Markiplier), which sort of makes playing the game a moot point when you know what's going to happen.

For those that have been spoiled on IL, I recommend Voyager-19. It is a spiritual successor to IL made by the youtuber Miziziziz. It's a quick playthrough (about 1-2 hours), and I was really glad I got to experience a similar existential crisis with a slightly different theme!

I played Night Manor from UFO 50 this month to kick off spooky season, it's a lot of fun! It's a simple point and click adventure game. Relatively short and the survival element gets a bit repetitive pretty quickly, but I enjoy the atmosphere.

I just started Alien Isolation (and, in parallel, Alien Earth which I rather like so far). I meant to play this for ages and ultimately went with the Switch version because it's also a fascinating technical feat (IMO the best looking game on the system, no idea how they pulled this off). I'm maybe 3 hours in and so far it's great! I'm not 100% convinced about the mix of typical space-survival-horror tropes (collecting scrap, crafting, audio logs) and the extreme focus on stealth and more "cinematic" moments (I love System Shock and whatnot but it seems the scavenging mechanics seem to mostly be used to drag it out into a much longer game than it had to be?).

All the new Resident Evil games are amazing, wholly recommended!

As for more obscure indie horror recommendations, I always bring up Lone Survivor. It's an ultra-low-res pixel art horror game with amazing music, survival mechanics and David Lynch logic. The true horror is that it came out 13 years ago and I thought it's like 5, lol. Fuck time.

I'm not a fan of horror games (I like the mood but not the stressful situations), but I bought Mouthwashing on Steam. I'll probably try it this weekend.

I also plan to buy Crow Country and/or Fear the Spotlight on Switch if they go on sale. I tried both demos and they looked good enough for me.

I am quite fond of the vibes in Withering rooms. I bought it on a whim during last year's spooky season and it definitely hit the mark. To quote myself:

Withering Rooms is technically a side-scroller horror roguelite, but I think roguelite might be a misleading description. Roguelites tend to be grindy affairs that relegate the story to the background. In Withering Rooms, however, the story is the hook: you are trapped in a dream, set in the grounds of a Victorian manor. The dream is based on the real world, yet magic and monsters run amok -- why? In atmosphere, characters, and quests the game drips aesthetic.

Beyond the first five or so hours, the game isn't that difficult, which is why I again resist labeling Withering Rooms a roguelite despite it technically being one. Instead, it quickly evolves into a sort of power fantasy, allowing you to equip spells and guns that will make short work of most enemies and bosses. Moreover, most items tend to be unique rather than mere stat upgrades (in the spirit of Dark Souls), which makes exploration feel meaningful. And there is a great deal to explore, with new areas of the manor grounds revealing themselves in each new chapter.

Unfortunately first impressions are probably the worse, as you start rather squishy and have to hide from most enemies, making the game feel much slower and grinder than it ends up being. But on the flip side, this means that once you've cleared the first chapter, the game only gets better.

Outlast is fun and genuinely scary. There is no shooting, it's purely stealth and exploration with a little resource management (batteries so you can use your camera's night vision to see).

I quite like Stalker Call of Chernobyl. I thought the underground labs were amazingly done.

I suggest The Drifter. It‘s a point-and-click adventure that leans heavily into the mystery and horror themes. It‘s fun, brilliant, and relatively short. It took me 10 hours. It was just perfect. It plays especially well on the Steam Deck, featuring an innovative control scheme.

The Quarry really had me going last year as my annual October horror game, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a more narrative horror game. I'm not big on really scary stuff, so this one was a good choice for me as it's more atmosphere and story than jump scares, but it does have those occasionally.

If you like suspense and tension Visage is usually a solid choice. It's still 50% off for another 48h.

Those are some big games you listed, but if you're looking for a quick indie game that will make you shit your pants, I would suggest The Mortuary Assistant. I hadn't been that freaked out by a video game since I played Resident Evil 2 on my N64. The game pairs nicely with the 2016 film The Autopsy of Jane Doe, so you can knock both out in an evening and then spend the next day praying that you'll never encounter a cadaver.

Night in the Woods is a classic around these times. Not exactly horror through and through, but there's a lot of dread and melancholy and a couple spikes of weird here and there.

RE7 scared the shit out of me.

I thought the first act of inscryption was incredible, but I really struggled with act 2 and thought 3 was only fine.

I've watched a handful of Let's Play videos of the I'm on Observation Duty games. I'm not a big horror fan, but these are fun. You're trying to identify any changes ("anomalies") in various rooms that you're monitoring with CCTV cameras.

If you haven't seen them, you'll enjoy it more going in blind. These games have always been priced very low. Looks like the bundle of all 7 of them is ~$30 on Steam currently. If you don't want to commit to buying them all, the first 3 are less than $3 each.