10 Horror Video Games That Broke All The Rules

Visuals are of course very important in horror. In lots of cases, body-horror and aesthetically repulsive villains are used as the main selling point. Think of the unnerving, cartoonish gore in Fran Bow or the all-too-real-looking mutilations in Outlast: your eyes drink it all in and tell your brain to be very, very afraid.

This is where Stifled took a hard left turn, deciding that instead of scaring us with visceral images they would build tension relying on another sense: hearing. The game is at its best when you are navigating the darkness, the simplistic graphics revealing the outline of your setting only when sound occurs.

In this context, you can see your enemies only in linework. There’s none of the gross-out factor, not even the subtle horror of the uncanny valley, but the game works regardless of this.

The story and the slowly unfurling mystery work well enough with the minimalist appearance that we don’t miss the cheap scares. Alternating between linework and 3D, none of the environments are fear-inducing by nature and work well nonetheless.