Top 5 VR Games & VR Apps That Will Haunt Your Nightmares
Let’s talk about VR Games & Apps folks. Virtual Reality is here and as we saw in yesterdays’s Google IO event (here summarised in two minutes for you, courtesy of Bloomberg) the next generation of Virtual Reality looks promising indeed! Google announced that the upcoming DayDream framework will blend VR software and hardware together in a fashion that will challenge the status quo of the industry. We’re excited to hear about this, and look forward to any future developments.
Loving The Jump-Scares
While we wait for DayDream to get here, we will be reporting in on other interesting subjects, and today we will take a look at some content and fill you in on our Top 5 VR-based Horror Games and apps as we see them here at VR Today Magazine.
Horror is an interesting genre and it’s a unique kind of thinking that leads to appreciate it if you think about it. To voluntarily allow yourself to be shocked, jump-scared and terrified if only for a brief moment. Here at VR Today, we love horror games and we have caught the Frictional Games Fever, the Markiplier Measles, and we’re terribly ill ridden in that regard.
If you are a fan of horror, virtual reality or simply just a good old ghost story, carry on dear reader, but the faint of heart might want to skip the videos.
Catatonic
Catatonic (http://catatonic.co) is an immersive VR experience that’s available for the Samsung GearVR. The controls assume you’re strapped to a wheelchair once you hit start, as the journey takes you through a a harrowing insane asylum in the 1940’s. Experience the perfect balance between comfort, paralysis and anguish as you’re dragged through hell and back with no means of defending yourself. Instead of showing you a gameplay video or trailer, we thought we’d like to show you some of the reactions of the people who have actually been using it. Enjoy!
Dreadhalls
Dreadhalls was one of the first horror games to appear on the Oculus Rift SDK years back, and a large number of brave YouTubers went to the internet and took at trip to the murderious corridors of Dreadhalls. Two noticable and interesting players were Markiplier and jacksepticeye. Dreadhalls is available on Samsung GearVR, and the developers recently added in support for the Oculus Rift. If you would like to try out an actual, interactive VR-game in the genre, this would be a great place to start.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Yes, That’s Right)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (https://www.amnesiagame.com/) is a classic, and one that has to be mentioned in any top-list such as this.
While it’s follow-up title “A Machine for Pigs” never amounted to much acclaim, this first game in the Amnesia franchise is the King of Horror, and has a 6-year track record of highly viral content. One only has to take a quick stroll through YouTube to see it’s proud history. Amnesia: The Dark Descent has received a lot of fame with consistent praise given for the ominous atmosphere and horror elements. John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun even went as far as to say that “I think it is safe to say that Amnesia is the most successfully frightening game to have been made”.
With more than 1 million copies sold less than three years after it’s release, it’s the highest grossing indie game in the genre.
Amnesia is available on the Oculus Rift with some tweaking. If you’re looking to give it a spin in Virtual Reality, head over to VRFIX and learn how to set it up for your rig. http://vrfix.wikia.com/wiki/Amnesia.
11.57
11.57 (http://1157.pm/) is a VR-film made by Sid Lee in 2014. Once you have found a seat, made yourself comfortable and hit play, you’re in for a crazy ride. It’s saying “You can scream but you can’t look away” is pretty much accurate. 11.57 is available on any VR headset or device. All you have to do is head over to their website and download the content. 11.57 received a highly positive reception. Take a look at the trailer below, and after that, go straight for the app: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wemersive.player1157.
Night Terrors
Night Terrors (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/night-terrors-augmented-reality-survival-horror) is an interesting one, and the creators cannot be accused for lack of ambition. The founders of Night Terrors boasts that it is actually an Augmented Reality experience, able to scan your environment and in doing so, creating a customised horror-immersion that reacts to your surroundings. According to the creators, this is that Night Terrors is all about:
• Our aim is to create the scariest game ever made. It’s a highly immersive, photorealistic, binaural, AUGMENTED REALITY survival horror game for mobile devices. Gameplay takes place at home, after dark, with the lights off and your headphones on.
• Think about a system that understands where you are in your environment, and is able to exploit that information in order to create an unbelievable augmented reality experience.
• The game controls what you see, what you hear, and where you go. Your device’s LED is all the light you get. The camera and microphone feeds are analyzed and processed in real time. Photorealistic elements are added to the camera feed. Audio is spatialized, mixed with the microphone feed, and then routed to the headphones delivering an immersive binaural audio experience.
These are all very bold claims and it’s sure going to be interesting once this project goes live. Here’s the first trailer for the experience, explained by it’s founder, Bryan Mitchel. Should you want more of this, you can head over to their IndieGoGo page and learn more.
That’s all from us this time around. What do you think about Virtual Reality and the horror genre, and what would your top 5 look like? Stay tuned as we will keep posting about the latest and greatest in Virtual Reality horror further down the line.
