I love the original Five Nights at Freddy’s (or FNAF as it’s affectionately known) largely because of its simplicity. One location, one week, one screen – you get a terrific sense of where you are and why, and it makes the whole game really sing. Mix that with the ‘80s retro-tech flair of Stranger Things – floppy-discs, CRT monitors, pixelscript – and some bloody, first-person combat a la Resident Evil Village, and the result is Suffer The Night, a new Steam horror game with a smart, metatextual (a-thank you) twist.
It’s 1989. You’re in an isolated, wooden cabin during a stormy night. Suddenly, a knock on the door – someone’s left you a parcel. You remove the contents, a single, black plastic diskette. Slotting it into your chunky Eldrixon PC, you’re greeted by a seemingly benign text-based adventure game. But then things go wrong. Like, seriously wrong.
Turns out the videogame is actually a living, thinking, malevolent entity, and the more you play, the stronger it becomes. As the game world – and its many, many monsters – leak into your reality, your job is to survive the night against the encroaching, Eldritch horrors. And so, Suffer The Night becomes a videogame where you’re being attacked by a videogame. Check it out in the trailer below:
There are also a few dashes here of indie games like Gone Home and Stories Untold, period horrors that use their respective, contemporary tech as the bases for a spooky, lo-fi aesthetic. Think you can survive against a monstrous and bloodthirsty BBC Micro game? Personally, I’m not sure – I get freaked out enough when Steam updates. Speaking of which, you can get Suffer The Night from the Valve shop right now.
Check out some of the best story games if you like a horror with a good yarn. You might also want to try all the best new games currently available for your beloved PC, or maybe all the upcoming games making their way to you in 2023.