10 Video Games That Made You Face Your Own Worst Nightmares

Being lost is a fear that we all have. I’m not talking ‘packing my bags and going on a post-uni wander across whichever continent is fashionable in order to find myself’ lost (in 2008 it as America, and I had a grand time, thanks), I’m talking ‘Oh my goodness, I’m four years old, I’ve wandered off and now I can’t find my grandma in the women’s department of Marks & Spencer’ lost.

Being lost is also something that happens quite regularly in videogames, but it is often a result of not knowing what to do or where to go next as opposed to a deliberate design choice. It more often insights irritation than fear, and you’ll probably be reaching for your phone to google a route to the end instead of your face in an effort to hide your terror-widened eyes.

Yes, creating a space for your player to get lost in is easy to do, but hard to do particularly well. Blair Witch, however, does it beautifully. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going, but you do know that you have to keep moving. As time bends around you and the thick Maryland wilderness stretches out in all directions, the silent dread that you don’t have a single clue as to how to get out woods infiltrates you your every thought.

It’s a horrifying experience, and one that everybody who ever got banned from the PlayStation by their mums for a week for screaming in frustration and smashing their controller off their desk because they’d been lost for three and a half hours in St. Francis’ Folly in the original Tomb Raider should play.