Wow, look at me. Only three days since my last post, and I have actually followed up on my promise and returned for more game blogging. I'm going to focus on last Halloween only for this one.

On Steam I played four games:

1. Dagon is essentially just a walking simulator based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. I'm almost certain I've read it before, but I must say, playing it as a "game" really brought things home in a way the text never did. Actually getting to visit the strange island dredged up from the bowels of the Pacific Ocean, and seeing the strange creatures, was pretty cool. And the ending was definitely scarier, since I was the guy who was writing the journal entries. And it was free, so big ups all around.
2. Forgive Me Father is a comic-book styled FPS, which I thought might be fun, but ended up being annoying and nauseating. There seemed to be lore in the game, but I never felt like I had time to read it before more zombies were attacking me. And the combat was frenetic but unsatisfying. I barely played it before losing interest completely. I left a negative review, and the game developer replied, saying there are cut scenes between levels that give the main story and hit the Lovecraftian elements a lot more, but meh, the gameplay itself wasn't fun, so I probably won't go back to it any time soon, if ever.
3. Lust for Darkness was another Lovecraftian game, but this was more of a first-person puzzler: not quite at Myst-levels of difficulty, but no walking simulator either. The basic story is that you're a man whose wife disappeared a year ago suddenly, and who then sends you a message saying she's been abducted by a freaky sex/death cult. You're supposed to go and save her. It has a lot of creepy creatures, but also a lot of weird orgies and such. It had a goofy twist at the end too, but I overall enjoyed it. There was some side-quest type content, but I never got around to playing that stuff. Maybe this October.
4. The Norwood Suite - This one was more weird than scary, but I'm counting surreal and psychedelic stuff as fitting content for my horror theme. It was a relatively short sort of adventure game that mostly revolved around fetch quests, but the characters and setting were pretty interesting, and the music was good too, so I liked it. The ending was total wtf nonsense, but the game was all about the journey as opposed to getting anywhere in particular.

On GOG, I played Strangeland, a point-and-click adventure game that has horror elements but also hits the surreal angle pretty hard. It wasn't too difficult; I only got really stuck once I think. The story was decently interesting, but it was pretty short, and it was possible to get all the different endings by changing just the final choice. The environment, a busted up old carnival, was nicely creepy and bizarre, and there were a good number of disgusting things I had to do to progress. The game in general was reminiscent of the late 90s point-and-click adventure Sanitarium.

I also tried Kona on Amazon Gaming, and it was very meh. I only played a little before getting annoyed with not being able to find something and getting confusing prompts from the game, and then found out the ending basically sucks, so I skipped out on it.

On Epic, I played In Sound Mind, a kind of first-person puzzle/shooter horror hybrid. It was pretty good, though not perfect. The shooter aspects actually got annoying in some places, as it became something of a hassle to defeat enemies, especially since I never found the shotgun, so was a bit underpowered in places. Luckily, there was a way to despawn enemies by running to certain locations, and the story and settings (a variety of dream worlds based on the fears of the protagonist mental patients) were pretty cool. In fact, it was probably my favorite game of the event. I also tried Saturnalia, a weirdly animated game set in a small town where some kind of nightmarish monster comes out of a hole or cave and hunts down the people in the town. Apparently you get to control multiple characters, and are pretty much guaranteed to lose them all to the monster eventually. Bizarrely, the game is something of a roguelike, where you get to play again after everyone dies, but the city rearranges itself each time, which sounds like a pain in the ass, since it's a mazelike place to start with. It spent a ton of time setting up the backstories of the characters and tasking you with mundane activities, and then when the creature appeared it was pretty jolting. But overall, I couldn't get into it, and didn't spend much time on it.

It was a decent assortment of games overall, and I also watched the TV shows and movies to stay on theme, but those aren't for this journal. Next update will be about Extra Life 2022 and Christmas! And this ended up being four days after the last post, because it took me an entire day to write it lol.