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Games may be made up from clever, scientific things like polygons and thousands of lines of code, but they’re also worryingly good at zoning in on our primal fear centres. Long before the survival horror genre was a thing, fear was a vital part of game design. 18 Look again at Space Invaders, and the aliens’ slow, zombie- like advance toward the hopelessly outnumbered player; in its own, rudimentary way, it’s pretty nightmarish.

As Lottie Bevan points out in her column on page 26, technology is allowing developers to create ever more vivid scenes of terror and gore – Konami’s intense Resident Evil 2 remake is certainly a testament to that. But at the same time, it’s often the games that generate suspense without gore or violence that disturb us the most. In Alien Isolation, it was the build-up to the appearance of the title monster (or those pesky androids) that 59 50 sticks in my mind. Similarly, the Contents 6 eerie stillness of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was oddly flesh-crawling, even though there wasn’t a monster in sight.

Attract mode Interface Toolbox Rated It’s why we’re so intrigued by Someday You’ll Return: it aims to create a psychological horror 06. Someday You’ll Return 18. Plasticine not pixels 28. Design Principles 56. Resident Evil 2 with no weapons or combat. The tiny dev team making an Devs making games with bits of wire, How economy and theatre make A horror classic is revived in Of course, we don’t know if the ambitious horror game clay, and wool better games spectacular style team behind it will achieve their goal of making a great scary game without jump scares, but 10. Hoa 24. Interactive: Notemon 30. CityCraft 58. Dusk as Gone Home proved, it’s often Sumptuous, Studio Ghibli-inspired The monster-catching RPG steeped Why a game city is only as good as Nineties-style shooting worthy the quieter, more low-key games animation from Singapore in New Zealand’s culture its surroundings of the mighty Quake that provide the most suspense.

12. Call of Saregnar 44. Dream on 32. Source Code 59. A Fisherman’s Tale Ryan Lambie Slovenia’s homage to nineties fantasy Exploring the Dreamcast’s vibrant Recreate the jumping physics from Puts your virtual reality headset Editor role-playing games indie dev scene Super Mario Bros. to mind-bending use

16. Incoming 50. Tokuro Fujiwara 34. Finalising your Unity FPS 60. Pikuniku Soviet robots, low-level crime, and The mind behind Ghouls ‘n Ghosts Add menus, special effects, and more Puzzling, with humour and 44 cyberpunk detectives and Resident Evil profiled in the final part of our guide charm to spare

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