10 Video Games That Were Sold On Stupid Gameplay Gimmicks
10. Manual Blinking - SCP Containment Breach
Indie first-person horror games are a dime a dozen across both Steam and the big consoles, so it can be difficult for a budding developer to break away from the pack and prove that their scary haunted house ride is worth picking up.
The open-source title SCP - Containment Breach faced this problem when it released a few years ago, but it managed to avoid being buried with one simple mechanic: blinking. The enemies are pretty much the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, in that they only move any time you're not looking at them, which means even a single blink can be the difference between life and death.
It's long since been a joke in FPS games that your characters never blink, but Containment Breach flips this on its head entirely and makes the mere concept of closing your eyes completely terrifying. Having to keep your eyes open for as long as possible, made more difficult in rooms with bright lights that deplete your eye meter faster than darker areas, can lead to some ridiculously stressful moments when you're face to face with the title's ghouls.
A horror game about blinking could have gone so terribly wrong, but somehow Containment Breach manages to twist it into some surprisingly great horror sequences.