The objective of the horror narrative is to transmit anguish and fear to whoever reads, watches, listens or plays it . It uses elements such as rhythm, sounds, colors and the distribution of objects in the plane to create an atmosphere that manages to isolate, so that one is only aware of a succession of events that they do not handle and that are precisely thought to generate tension until it suddenly breaks in a fright. If horror literature takes advantage of the power of the word and the cinema adds image and sound, video games add the direct involvement of the public in the story.
When you are concentrating on a game, the images that pass before your eyes and the sounds that you hear multiply their intensity . If the game is also known, the handling of the controls is unconscious and the player’s mind only responds to the stimuli of the game. This makes getting scared with a game (even a little bit) relatively easy and therefore a very suitable medium for this type of content . To this must be added the interest that everything dark, diabolical and monstrous generates in popular culture, perhaps as a legacy of those great horror books. Precisely because of how much they like it, there are games that prefer to take advantage of the pull they have, separate themselves from the typical and caricature the Gothic aesthetic .
Exploration and investigation are two elements that horror games know how to exploit, as well as close- ups, small spaces, hordes of enemies and first people . There are sagas like Resident Evil or Silent Hill that, due to their longevity and the good quality of many of their installments, are considered defining of the genre and authentic references. And, let’s face it, these games have the ability to make our hearts race, cold sweats begin, and our hands shake as we search for the place where the next scare will come from .
By logical similarities, many of these games can become perfect candidates to spend a Halloween day of those that make us scream more than once. But the truth is that any moment is the right moment (especially those moonless and stormy nights when we are alone and helpless at home) to immerse yourself in a story that will give us a hard time and that we will enjoy at the same time .
