I've made absolutely no secret that I think modern horror games are absolute jokes, mainly when it comes to independent developers. It seems like they cannot decide whether they want to make an action horror, survival horror, jumpscare horror, or just downright bad horror games. Gleam at the 'coverage' (I use that word lightly since that's another can of worms all in its own) of these games over on Youtube, and you'll find that a big majority of these games rely on frightening imagery (specifically horrifying imagery instead of being unsettling or confusing, harming the player's psyche rather than just scaring it by using a demonic face or some such), loud noises (the volume mixing being so poor that the sounds alone can startle the dickens out of you when the stinger is triggered) and having some monster chase the defenseless player character. Finding cases that break these trends is a challenge unlike no other, since wading through all the independently made games can be an exercise in cynical insanity, being taxing on your eardrums, heart rate and most importantly patience. Even big studios aren't exempt from this rule, as taken with the latest Silent Hill games; action horror that plays poorly, have laughably weak and predictable stories, and become utter gauntlets of combat after the level designers ran out of stingers to throw at the player. Silent Hills looked to be the hopeful change, but we all know how that's ended up recently. Even Dead Space one and two which I enjoyed very much end up forsaking its horror and throws all its chips on action in the later acts.

I'm back to harping on the subject all in thanks to Allison Road, one of the latest game-related Kickstarters to appear lately, and you may have noticed me not making any mention of PT - That's because Allison Road seems to be picking up the torch of spiritual succession to PT, despite the developer claiming surprise at his game reaching such a comparison. The developer claims that it will be a 'return to the roots of psychological horror', but the alpha gameplay video already has loud noises and a monster chasing the seemingly defenseless player character. We're not off to a great start. Now, let's be fair; a full version of PT seemed to be the thing hungered after by those who played the demo. It was the haunted house itself that had people downloading the demo and uploading poorly framed and badly lit facecam Let's Play videos in droves, and I would suspect that another Silent Hill game would be met with much less fanfare if it followed the design of the previous entries. It was the haunted house, Lisa's bad teeth and the chatty fetus that had people excited and frightened for Silent Hills. Allison Road so far is set entirely in a fully explorable house, though there will be much more to explore than just a hallway looping unto infinity with a bathroom in the side. The parallels however are a bit too obvious for me to think of Allison Road as its own thing, since it features a house with bizarre hauntings going on and a female antagonist who stalks the place. While she is a 'mortal threat', she also has a direct involvement with the plotline and shares the protagonist's fate and-

NOPE.

You just needed a monster to kill the player and act as scary set pieces. Write her off as a requirement to the gameplay and story all you want, something has to act as a catalyst to raise tension and force a chase of some kind, otherwise it's not a modern horror game, is it? Could Lily (the antagonist) simply be a ghost or apparition that causes crazy stuff to pop off around the house? Can a horror game not have a fail state by means of some horrible creature having the protagonist's face as dinner? And even if it does, does it have be via screamer? I'm being harsh on the game even before launch because it's going to have some mighty big shoes to fill in the wake of PT vanishing into the ether, and I suspect it will carry some big expectations from consumers. The loss of Silent Hills (rumors be damned that say otherwise) has been one of the biggest disappointments in the games industry this year, and that's left quite the void in a lot of players hoping to get a horror game that's in a league of its own. PT was creepy as absolute sin, and if Allison Road cannot replicate or improve upon the player's hair on the back of their neck being perpetually on end, no amount of story or gameplay will be able to salvage it. Now that the comparison has been made between the two games, Allison Road will never be able to escape being a spiritual successor, and many of its alpha components aren't making it a very strong case that it's its own entity. For as much flak as I give tropes in horror games, some of them have a lot of good ideas and creative concepts, just they become difficult to take seriously as both a reviewer and player; Five Nights at Freddie's may be a death march to cheap jumpscares, but being stuck in one room and having it be your first and last line of defense is terrifying. Silent Hill Downpour, despite all the poor controls and weak story angles, Murphy was the most relatable and sympathetic hero of the series so far since he becomes angry, confused and screams in alarm with what takes place. Candles was all about illuminating the player character's home in the blackness of night lest ugly gremlins get the better of them, even though the game was ridiculously dark to the point that monitor gamma had to be jacked through the roof. The mass of free indie games all have their own ideas, stories and even messages to get across regardless of their quality, length or price, but developers don't get their game downloaded if it isn't featured in a video, lest they just become another free game to float about the internet in obscurity. I know I come off as a hypocrite, but at some point the weaker games will be paved over with better, greater games that don't resort to pop-up scares and each become their own, unique gem that ends up scaring the pants off of us or making going to the bathroom at night the most terrifying challenge ever. We need the creativity, but we can drop the Slenderman clones.

What I'm saying is that I hope Allison Road proves me wrong and it ends up making me look like a colossal idiot, I really do. I hope it shows me that there's hope for horror games beyond Unity-made rushed projects designed solely to be played by a prominent Youtuber so they can get publicity. I hope that it sparks inspiration in other developers to not just jump out and yell boo while showing some horrifying demon face and instead use underlying terror to make the player paranoid as hell and whimper in defeat. I'm not going to back Allison Road on Kickstarter, but I hope it succeeds and proves me wrong.