10 Cruel Tricks Horror Video Games Played On Players

Until Dawn is a dew-eyed homage to the classic, schlocky horror romps of decades past, proving just self-aware enough of the genre's moldy tropes even while lovingly indulging in many of them.

When players are controlling Ashley in the game's ninth chapter, they fall into a series of tunnels and are given a choice - investigate the voice of what appears to be a scared woman, or rejoin the group.

Conventional wisdom would say that rejoining the group is the right call, but doesn't it seem a bit too obvious? It feels like Supermassive is laying a trap, and that the actual right thing to do is the least-intuitive - to follow the voice.

And so if you do that, you'll come to a trap door, which you're then given the option of opening. Again, one suspects that betraying horror movie instincts is actually what the game wants you to do - it's just too obvious that this will cause Ashley's death otherwise, right?

But alas, if you open the door Ashley will be brutally attacked by a Wendigo, which leaps out of the door and tears her head clean off. Oops.

The beauty of Until Dawn is that it both faithfully recreates classic horror scenarios and subverts them, yet you never know from moment to moment precisely which mode the game is in. In this case, players who thought they were too smart to be fooled ended up getting tricked themselves.