Settings are one of the most essential ingredients in game design. They can help set the tone for the entire game, or even be used for environmental storytelling. All goodhorror gamesmake excellent use of their settings, creating a sense of dread and terror about what may lie around the next dark corner.
Most horror games are set firmly on Earth in the eeriest and most dilapidated buildings, but there are a few that are far less grounded,taking place in the final frontier: space. Old space stations, alien planets, and the vast, empty vacuum all serve to create horror sci-fi excellence.
8Moons Of Madness
Lovecraft Meets Sci-Fi Horror
In thisLovecraft-inspiredsci-fi title, humanity has received signs that intelligent life may be hiding on Mars after all. A scientist is sent to the station located on the Red Planet with no knowledge of the signal that was heard, tasked only with keeping everything running smoothly.
The isolation and silence of the station is more eerie than tranquil, but soon the player will learn they are not as alone as they think when peculiar occurrences keep happening that will throw the sanity of protagonist Shane Neweheart into question. Are these strange creatures and events real, or is life on the empty planet taking its toll? Even with the question that everything could be overwrought imaginings, it does not make this game any less terrifying.
A Small Indie Title Packed With Horror And Mystery
Signalis
Awaken from slumber and explore a surreal retrotech world as Elster, a technician Replika searching for her lost partner and her lost dreams. Discover terrifying secrets, challenging puzzles, and nightmarish creatures in a tense and melancholic experience of cosmic dread and classic psychological survival horror.SIGNALIS is set in a dystopian future where humanity has colonized the solar system, and the totalitarian regime of Eusan maintains an iron grip through aggressive surveillance and propaganda. Humanoid androids known as Replikas live among the populace, acting as workers, civil servants, and Protektors alongside the citizens they are designed to resemble.The story of SIGNALIS begins as a Replika named Elster awakens from cryostasis in a wrecked vessel. Now stranded on a cold planet, she sets out on a journey into depths unknown. Experience fear and apprehension as you encounter strange horrors, carefully manage scarce resources, and seek solutions to challenging riddles. Explore the dim corners of a derelict spaceship, delve into the mysterious fate of the inhabitants of a doomed facility, and seek what lies beneath.
InSignalis,advanced technology sees humanity taking off into space and successfully creating androids, known as Replikas, which are used for labor and military purposes. One of these replikas awakens on an alien planet, her partner missing, leaving only cryptic clues to “find her” and “wake up”.
While on the hunt for Ariadne, players encounter countless mindless replikas that have fallen into states of hostility, forcing the player to gun down these terrifying lifeforms before they are torn apart by them. Even with its block pixel artwork and lower budget compared to AAA titles,Signalisdelivers a frightening and immersive experience with a surprising amount of depth. Players need to pay close attention to their resources, solve puzzles, and use precise actions throughout to determine which ending they will achieve out of themultiple possible conclusions.
Though many gamers might not think this simple multiplayer game has the potential to be terrifying, they would be in for one scary surprise. Players take on the roles of grunts working for The Company, traveling to alien planets to recover items to sell to meet their quota. This sounds like a simple enough premise, but there are plenty of threats that could easily cut any player’s run short.
Environmental threats such as weather and long falls, alogn with horrificmonsters, pose dangersto the players, and they will need to sneak or flee whenever a monster draws near to their position. It’s a tough task to avoid panicking and fleeing for the nearest exit, even if that is not ever a smart move.
Witness Horror Through The Lens Of An AI
Observation
Developer No Code and publisher Devolver Digital bring you their latest indie adventure sci-fi horror game in space for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.Observation is a sci-fi thriller uncovering what happened to Dr. Emma Fisher, and the crew of her mission, through the lens of the station’s artificial intelligence S.A.M. Players assume the role of S.A.M. by operating the station’s control systems, cameras, and tools to assist Emma in discovering what is happening to the station, the vanished crew, and S.A.M. himself. You’re not on the station, you are the station!By manipulating SAM, the player can control various elements of the station, such as opening or closing hatches, activating safety systems and choose to complete tasks as instructed by the crew.Blending narrative adventure, puzzles, exploration, and cosmic existential horror, uncover the true nature of yourself, your crew, and the mysterious always-present hexagon on Saturn…What’s going to happen to Dr. Fisher and her crew?
As the name suggests, players will mostly be acting as an observer through this sci-fi horror experience. Rather than taking on the role of a human protagonist, they will instead act as S.A.M., the AI onboard a spaceship trying to uncover what happened to the crew that once was onboard.
Players can cycle through the various cameras to observe different parts of the station, and guide Emma through it all to aid her in lifting the veil on the mystery here.Observationis vastly different from other games in the genre, but it’s this uniqueness that makes this one of the best sci-fi horror games out there.
In an alternate timeline, humanity has advanced in space travel more quickly, resulting in the creation of Talos I, a space station orbiting around the moon. As is quite common in sci-fi stories, mankind has been dabbling with things that should be left well alone, in this case, a shapeshifting alien life-form called Typhon.
Preyfeatures some RPG elements, as players can unlock attributes for Morgan Yu, the player character, but make no mistake: this game is terrifying. Trapped aboard a spaceship with a creature that canassume the form of anything, even something unassuming as a coffee mug, makes every object suspicious, and every second of exploration rife with tension. This isProp HuntmeetsAlien: Isolation.
Based on the popular movie franchise created by Ridely Scott,Alien: Isolationtakes place between the first and second movies, following the journey of Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda. After being told the flight recorder of the Nostromo has been located, Amanda sets off in hopes of finding out for herself what exactly happened to her mother, coming face to face with the same alien species that almost killed her.
Throughout her journey in Sevastopol Station, Amanda will be pushed to her limits, as she not only learns to survive against thehostile humansand androids onboard, but the Xenomorph that presents the largest threat, and this threat looms heavy throughout the entire game. With very sophisticated AI at the time of its release, the Xenomorph remains one of the most terrifying stalker enemies in any horror game, and with players unable to truly escape because of the space station setting, the fear that it strikes is only amplified.
Set in the not-so-distant future,System Shockfollows a nameless hacker is caught while trying to gain access to files about a space station known as Citadel Station. He is then taken to that very station, and offered a clean slate in exchange for a small favor: hack into SHODAN, the AI that controls the station. The hacker sees further opportunities for himself, along with his freedom, and agrees, but after the events that follow, he probably wishes he had just served time instead.
After SHODAN is freed from its ethical constraints, it commandeers control of Citadel Station. The protagonist awakens after a six-month long coma to see the station has completely fallen under SHODAN’s control, and everyone who was once alive is now dead, or mutated into murderous monsters, turning the station into a living nightmare.
There likely isn’t a gamer alive who hasn’t heard the nameDead Space, and even those who have not played it know all about the terrifying Necromorphs that infest the mining ship USGIshimura. Players are forced to confront these creatures while investigating a distress signal, and must use whatever tools are at their disposal in the hopes they cansurvive these terrors.
TheIshimurais an appropirately eerie setting, with its vacant corridors, ransacked rooms, and lack of living beings other than the terrifying creatures made of mutated corpses.Dead Spaceset the bar for sci-fi horror video games, and any developer hoping to create the next space-faring horror hit should look to this game for the boundless inspiration it can offer.
