Oct 022017
Welcome back to another October’s worth of celebrating all things spooky! For its fifth year, we have new stories to look at, more horror games to discuss, and a new horror game giveaway!
I recently announced the reprint of my Lovecraft-inspired The Book at Dernier, available now in print from Amazon with an ebook version coming soon.
This year also saw the release of It Came Back my horror novelette (another story inspired by H.P. Lovecraft) published by The Book Smugglers this summer. It is available as an ebook.
Final Masquerade, which includes my horror story “The Artist,” has a fantastic new cover this year, and you can also pick up copies of “Sand” (in The Mad Scientist Journal) and “Rokurokubi” (in Wicked Words Quarterly).
And if you prefer something on the lighter end of the spectrum, my zombie comedy The Zombie Mishap, published by Griffin Publishers, is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
All of my stories available in print will be available at my book signings later this month, as well. You can find full information on all my stories here.
A Horrific Giveaway
Now, let’s move on to the giveaway! This year, I have a selection of horror games to give away, all Steam copies:
- Dead Age
- Lakeview Cabin Collection
- Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location
- Dead By Daylight
As with last year’s contest, this one isn’t random. Instead, it will be based on your participation in discussions on these blog posts. When October ends, I will tally the scores to determine the winner.
Rules
- No purchase is necessary.
- Only comments made between October 2, 2017 at 1:00 PM EST and November 1, 2017 at 12:00 AM EST will be counted.
- Comments can be made on any post on this blog, not just Celebrating All Things Spooky posts.
- 1 non-spam, non-anonymous comment = 1 point.
- You must use an email address or website URL (or include another way of contacting you) in your comment so I can contact you if you win.
- You must have at least 10 points at the end of the month to win.
- The person with the most points will get their first pick of the four games. The person with the second most points will pick second, and so on, until all four games have been given out.
- The winner will be contacted on November 2, 2017.
If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll clarify the rules. Enjoy your spooky October!
“You must have at least 10 points at the end of the month to win. ”
Ooh, look at you, changing the rules based on what happened last year.
Since Five Nights at Freddy’s is a prize, I’ve always been curious on your thoughts/analysis on it and if you think it’s helped or hurt the horror genre.
Yep. 🙂
I’ve never actually played the Five Nights at Freddy’s games, because from the videos I saw and impressions I got, it seems like they’re mostly focused on jump scares. So I wouldn’t say they’ve helped traditional survival horror (I’ll always give Alien: Isolation credit there), but I wouldn’t say they’ve hurt anything except maybe popularizing jump scare horror more.
Could popularising jump scare horror — with FNAF being the most popular horror series in years and being the face of modern horror — negatively impact the genre in terms of other horror games coming out in the future wanting to imitate FNAF’s formula to get a part of its success?
Hmm… it’s possible (just like the success of Amnesia popularized horror with a defenseless protagonist), but I feel like Resident Evil 7 is more likely to influence future horror games. Resident Evil is still a huge name, and since RE7 seems to have truly returned to horror, that’s more likely to have an impact than FNAF.
Okay, how about for the indie game dev scene?
…Who would populate the horror genre with a lot more quantity than the AAA devs.
Indie games I can see leaning more toward jump scares to try to imitate FNAF, but that probably already started with Slender.
Looking at upcoming horror games, I think the defenseless-protagonist-hiding-from-enemies style popularized by Amnesia/Outlast is still the one being used the most.
hey just found your page & in joy seeing horror games that I did not know about. I have steam .
Great! 😀 If you haven’t already, check out my recent post on Yomawari: Night Alone, an easily-overlooked horror game on Steam: http://www.samanthalienhard.com/2017/10/celebrating-things-spooky-yomawari-night-alone.html
Hi, I’m new here too. I found the page via Twitter. I always enjoyed horror films, but it was the first Silent Hill game that really got me into horror games. I find it hard to keep up with the interesting Indie games that sneak by, so there’s a few mentioned by you on your blog which are new to me too (like Moons of Madness). The only indie horrors I really know of/about are the really well known ones like Amnesia and Outlast.
Thanks for keeping us informed.
Silent Hill got me into horror too! I’m actually not a big fan of most horror movies, so I always believed I wouldn’t like horror games… until a friend convinced me to watch her Let’s Play of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. From there, I got into the rest of the series, and it opened up an entire genre of games for me.
Moons of Madness really looks interesting. Another good indie horror game I played recently was Stories Untold, although it’s a horror adventure game, not survival horror. I also loved Conarium (another horror adventure game), which came out this June.
That’s awesome Silent Hill got you into horror games too. I’m surprised you don’t like horror films much but you do like horror games.
Cool, I’ll look into those. 🙂 I love horror games partly just because of the strong sense of atmosphere they tend to have, so all kinds of horror can be nice. I should check that out, the only other horror adventure I can think of from recent times is Little Nightmares. Gotta check the ones you mentioned out.
Haha, yes, I’m a very unusual horror fan in that way.
I played Little Nightmares. It was enjoyable, but I liked the two I mentioned better. Conarium is especially good if you’re a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, because it’s set after the events of At the Mountains of Madness.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen my blog post about it, I definitely recommend Yomawari.
I looked into Conarium, it kind of looks like a darker version of Bioshock which would be fantastic.
I saw your post, it does look too cute for a horror. Maybe it’s the cutest horror ever? It’s nice to see NIS do something different. It’s in the Steam sale which is tempting.
Hmm, doesn’t Bioshock have more action? Conarium is an adventure game, mainly exploring and puzzles, no combat.
Hahaha, Yomawari does have a cute appearance, but it’s filled with monsters that can easily kill you. xD
Yeah, Bioshock is action leaning, but the look of the game graphically reminded me of Bioshock a bit.
I watched a review which complained it was too easy but they loved it other than that, so it’s nice to hear you can die easy. I’m tempted to get it for Vita since it must look gorgeous on Vita but it’s so much more expensive.
Ah, I see what you mean.
The digital version of Yomawari: Night Alone is on sale on PSN. The physical copy is bundled with another game, which is probably why it’s getting to be so much more expensive.
Ah right! Silly me didn’t look at the digital price, just the physical. I heard something about a sequel coming though so maybe it will be better to wait for the two as a bundle.
Oh yeah, the sequel just came out last week!