Looking for a good scare, but don’t have the funds to spend on the latest PC or console splatterfest? Help yourself to this generous list of 100% FREE horror games to spook yourself silly (please note–these games are not listed in any particular order, and your mileage may vary when it comes to how entertaining you find them). This list also includes a few creepy interactive websites for added amusement.
WARNING: Some of these games/sites contain jump scares (I will try to tag as many as I can that contain startling moments–sorry if I miss any!), flashing lights, loud noises/music, blood and gore, and other mature content (on the flip side, many of the games containing a few jump scares aren’t entirely reliant on them, so don’t immediately disregard all games featuring these warnings, either. Said warnings are there to protect those with legitimate conditions that may be put in physical distress from such material). In any case, PLAYER DISCRETION IS ADVISED (and don’t be afraid to look up further info before jumping into a game).
Insanidade (jumpscare warning! However, the majority of the game relies on atmosphere, so don’t let this put you off too much. This one’s a gem)
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School (while not originally intended to be freeware, it is classified as abandonware, and is now free to play. Please note–it may be difficult to install/run) (jumpscare warning!)
Coulrophobia (jumpscare warning! Also, obviously avoid this if you have coulrophobia, as this game literally exists because the creator wanted to troll a friend)
Grey (as it is a mod, this game requires Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, but is still worth mentioning here for those that qualify) (jumpscare warning!)
Dreaming Mary (serious developer warning about content–not for the faint of heart)
Luna Game (Yes, I am including this one, because I goddamn feel like it. Also, I feel that it’s noteworthy due to its notoriety. If you don’t know what it is, you may want to read about it first. The link to read about it also contains links to the game’s numerous sequels) (jumpscare warning!)
Sad Satan (CLEAN VERSION. This contains no viruses, and no
illegal content. This is NOT the game played by Obscure Horror
Corner–that version is not available anywhere, and was likely created
by OHC himself. There is almost certainly no such thing as the “real” Sad
Satan. See info and links regarding this here)
Hotel 626 (I WISH I could give you a legitimate, working link to this game, but I still felt it was worth mentioning here, and I recommend watching any playthrough videos you can find for it. The game itself was wiped off the face of the internet, so you’re not likely to find it to play anywhere. If you DO somehow find it–which is doubtful–you play at your own risk)
Superbad.com (Click all over the place. It’s just very strange)
Anasomnia (incorporates your webcam, if you have one)
Staggering Beauty (MAJOR SEIZURE WARNING. Do NOT click if you are at all bothered by flashing lights and colors. I’m not entirely sure why I’m putting this one here, but feel free to use it to startle the ever-lovin’ fuck out of your unsuspecting friends and family) (jumpscare warning!)
I’m sure I may have forgotten a few great games or sites, so feel free to add to this list.
One of my fav next gen headcanons/plot bunnies is that Draco plays professional quidditch and all the Potter kids are massive fans of his and have huge posters of him in their rooms which only get more and more suggestive the older the kids get and Harry’s eyes linger on them longer and longer every time
Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.
Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.
Isaac Asimov.
yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point
If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole – oft credited as one of the first scifi novels
Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms)was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it
even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?
PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame
And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.
Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:
Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.
Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.
You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905.
The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.
Got that?
Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it
I have literally been telling people this for over a year.
the first extended prose piece – ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman
The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).
The day may come when I find this post and do not reblog it, but it is not this day.
Remember in 1993 when Jurassic Park was like…the end all, be all of special effects?
not gonna lie that still looks intimately real
I’m still somewhat convinced that someone sold their soul to create the special effects in Jurassic Park because that shit is over 20 years old and it still really, really holds up, better than the stuff in a lot of current movies, even.
Fucking witchcraft, man.
fucking look at this shit though
Literally see this post flying around with a few different responses added to the bottom each time so I’ll say it for this one myself:
THEY ACTUALLY BUILT A GIANT MASSIVELY DETAILED FUCKING ANIMATRONIC T-REX FOR ALL OF THIS THAT’S WHY THE EFFECTS ARE SO GOOD. CAUSE IT AIN’T CGI. AND IT AIN’T GUY IN A COSTUME. IT’S A BIG FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR. AND EVERY PART IS DESIGNED TO MOVE. IT COST LIKE HALF THE BUDGET OF THE FILM.
amazing
And they had the film it in small increments, especially in the outdoor scenes, because the rain fall kept soaking into the ‘skin’ of the rex and would slow down and mess up its movements. So they would stop filming and have a crew out there drying off this massive, fake dinosaur, and then they’d start filming again until it was too wet. Repeat until the end of the scene.
They used animatronics and detailed costumes for most if not all of the dinosaurs in the first movie.
The triceratops for instance, was also animatronic.
One of my favorite anecdotes I’ve read on tumblr is how the t-rex robot from Jurassic park would malfunction while it was drying out. How did it malfunction, you might wonder?
Motherfucker randomly started moving.
So apparently if you were on the jp set you would sometimes hear people screaming bloody murder even though they were all well aware that it was a giant animatronic puppet and wouldn’t actually, you know, eat them.
Did not know this, had to reblog for awesome movie history insights.
So, I knew about the animatronics bit but I did not know the raptors were guys in suits and the malfunctioning t-rex sounds terrifying.
And i just googled malfunctioning t-rexand was not disappointed. Apparently in order to put the skin on over the steel frame a guy had to crawl inside thet-rex while it was turned on and glue the skin down. And if somebody turned the t-rex off or the power went out the guy in the t-rex stood a very real chance of getting mangled and killed by the hydraulics.
So of course, the power goes out.
And this guy is still in there gluing the skin down.
Apparently the way to survive getting sheered to death by huge sheets of metal while you’re inside a giant t-rex robot is to curl into a ball and hope for the best.
And this guy hoped for the best and got it.
Some other people on stage pried open the t-rex jaws and glue guy crawled out of its mouth and was totally okay.
This is getting better and better.
I think they only had like 6 minutes of CGI
I’m just waiting for the T-Rex to come to life and leave its stand.
The thing about this that gets my special effects nerd going is the fact that EVERY single dinosaur was sculpted by artists based on the current existent archeological evidence of the time.
Even better than that, this movie ADVANCED our best understanding of dinosaurs at the time. They were blowing out a budget bigger than anything Hollywood had ever seen, and along with employing almost the last hurrah of incredible physical FX, they had a bank of those newfangled digital SFX computers. Nobody’d ever really created convincing dinosaurs in a movie before. It’d all been stop-motion animation, and even when the models were exquisitely crafted, you could just tell there was something OFF about them. Spielberg wanted THE BEST DINOSAURS EVER, and he figured on using the cutting edge of digital modeling and animation technology to build them for him.
So they got hold of some of the best paleontologists they could find and said, “We want you guys to take this tech that your labs could pretty much never afford and use it to build us the most realistic, accurate dinosaur models the world has ever seen.”
The paleontologists knew an opportunity when it bit them in the ass. They plugged in everything they knew about dinosaurs, all the skeletons and their best guesses about soft tissue and all that. And when they’d created those dinosaur models, they had the computer start moving them as they realistically would with anatomy like that. One guy took a look at those walking t-rexes and velociraptors (really utahraptors, but whatevs, fam), and he said, “Wait a minute, I’ve seen movement like that before.”
He called up film of a chicken walking. Everyone in the room said, “Holy shit.”
Prior to 1989, the idea that birds were descended from dinosaurs existed–we knew about archaeopteryx, we knew there was some minor connection there–but the idea that DINOSAURS LIVE IN THE MODERN WORLD AND THEY ARE CALLED BIRDS was not pre-eminent. Jurassic Park changed our scientific understanding of dinosaurs.
That paleontologists’d be Kevin Padian. Who is awesome.
Random Toughts 