Seconding other’s comments for: Signalis and Soma

Some unorthodox / overlooked suggestions:

• Project Zomboid (PC).
  • Imagine the Sims 1, but it’s during a zombie apocalypse with a GTA sized massive map. The situation is so dire that the game outright tells when you start that your character dies, and the actual gameplay is just you finding out how your character died.
  • The survival: is needing to move to scavenge for resources and trying to build a safe place to sleep.
  • The horror: is trying to escape the literal hordes of zombies.
  • Sidenote: This is a great grindy multiplayer game.

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• Metroid Fusion (GBA).
  • It’s a platforming game, but it’s legitimately terrifying.
  • The survival: revolves being trapped on a space station going around fighting and fleeing difficult enemies
  • The horror: revolves around the antagonist: [redacted for story spoiler reasons]
  • Sidenote: This is a great game to show people who haven’t yet realized that you can make horror without being an FPS.

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• Frostpunk (PC).
  • It’s a city-builder game with survival resource management gameplay and with non-lovecraftian cosmic horror themes.
  • The survival: You are the last city on Earth. If you run out of resources: you die. There isn’t enough resources to save everyone and you have to make hard decisions. If the people lose hope from your decisions: you die.
  • The horror: The world’s climate dropped another 3 degrees today. There are 100 of us left. Only 5 people from yesterday’s expedition made it back with food. We need to send 20 survivors out to look for scrap metal to repair the heating system or everyone will freeze. We need to put our children to work in the coal mine, it doesn’t matter how many die, if they don’t mine, we all die. The next day: things get worse. The day after: things get worse. etc… Will you survive?
  • Sidenote: This has one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming. I’d put it up there with Halo, Skyrim, Homeworld.