horror interests

in case anyone is interested in looking into the games i'm about to discuss:

immediate warning for the fact both of these games are 18+ horror. they are intended for mature audiences. especially fear & hunger which has like every content warning under the sun, so make sure to take care of yourself

very specifically two days ago, i started playing this game called fear & hunger and quickly became obsessed with it.

i got introduced to it through a video essay that focuses on the game mechanics, though i didn't watch anything beyond the intro as i was incredibly interested in the premise described. i honestly don't have the decent enough words to describe it myself, so here's an excerpt from the game's page:

"Fear & Hunger is a horror dungeon crawler set in the dark and hopeless dungeons of fear and hunger. Four misfortuned adventurers dwell deeper and deeper to the darkness and uncover the secrets this ancient fortress holds inside. The fortress works as an ancient nexus for different planes of existence. The depths are in an eternal turmoil as both old and new gods struggle for power, it’s up to the players to choose their position and stance in all of this."

it's actually quite gameplay oriented despite the description, but the story and lore are of course deeply woven into that. i've read a lot of complaints about the gameplay because it is quite brutal and difficult, but it ties well into everything. usually i don't like when games rely unnecessarily on realism like limited stamina that seemingly serves no actual purpose besides to show the developers aren't aliens who are unaware humans need to breathe, but for a game like this it's quite necessary. (not stamina, i mean. there's no stamina in this game, you actually can't even run. fear & hunger utilizes different means of expressing realism, not necessarily realistic to real life rather the setting.)

i think it contributes to the horror and the desperation to survive that the game wants to convey. if something like saving was as convenient as it is in regular rpg games, the sense of pressure that you're supposed to feel from how utterly horrific and ruthless this dungeon you're trapped in is, would hardly be there i feel like. everything would lose its threatening nature, like plenty of other horror rpgs. as much as i love them they hardly scare me because of how well you can control the situation and their repetitive nature. fear & hunger rips both of these things away with most things being entirely dependent on rng and trying to save being a potential threat to your run, hardly anything is guaranteed.

still, i can definitely understand how it might be frustrating to some people.

a certain aspect to the gameplay that interested me before i played it was the inclusion of dismemberment as an important part of battle. i think this was actually big factor into me wanting to play this game for myself as it reminds me of a different horror rpg that i've been obsessed with for a while since it also includes dismemberment as a part of battle, though implemented a bit differently.

it's actually a table top game like dnd, it's called nechronica, though admittedly i've never actually played it i'm still really into it. i hope i can play it one day! i'm not experienced with table top games in general so i'm not sure how i'd host a game of it even if i had interested parties... but moving on.

nechronica takes place in a post apocalyptic world. honestly it's sort of the premise of "i have no mouth and i must scream" but without the supercomputers. a devastating global war, later nuclear war, happens that leaves everything in ruins and the human species has seemed to have died out, aside from necromancers, dolls (zombies, essentially) and some leftovers. it's more complicated, but that's the short of it.

it has an equally grim energy that fear & hunger has and the appeal of nechronica is basically as a going insane simulator which is again, a part of fear & hunger. though the games aren't functionally similar, one being played in real life with a group, but i adore the sort of things that they do share.

the gameplay aspects to it are quite easy and forgiving. combat mostly just serves further into the psychological torment that everything is centered around in nechronica, this part is so stressed that it's included in the rules that there shouldn't be more than a single fight in one session.

fear & hunger is also like this in a sense, the best strategy is to avoid battle as much as you possibly can, but nechronica leans into it more as the players don't have a strict condition where they die anyways. that's where they largely differ, in nechronica the body horror is more of a decoration than a horror aspect and the prospect of dying and being injured matters less as you play as a zombie. i think the contrast is best reflected in the dismemberment part to both games

fear & hunger makes dismemberment an incredibly grave situation for the player. you lose your legs, you can't walk. you lose your arms, you can't defend yourself. you lose your head, you're dead. pretty straightforward. in nechronica, you can literally create your character to specifically have no limbs at all, so you can imagine they're not that important. the dismemberment system mostly has to do with "parts" which damaging/losing them only inhibits the specific abilities that they grant you, though if all of them are, you can no longer fight. they can recover their parts without much issue, though fear & hunger will have you googling if there is a way to get limbs back

i think this illustrates a lot about where the horror is based. as i said before, nechronica is a going insane simulator essentially and the combat is a set piece for it. the focus is how the players maintain their grip on their sanity in the disturbing world they have to live in. fear & hunger does a lot to do with psychological horror as well, but it's based in a lot of primal fear. the body is treated as something very fragile that needs to be taken care of lest you suffer an incredibly gruesome fate. you can probably die a thousand different ways in this game, i have a new death to describe every time i play

i have no reason to be comparing these two games considering they're quite different outside of basically tone but i like them! and i like talking about them, simple as that