My son loves the adrenaline rush of getting scared, particularly with jump scares, however, I have a lot of difficulty finding a game or show which is appropriate for him. He is prone to nightmares, and more adult-oriented “kid horror” is too much (Poppy’s Playtime, Cartoon Cat?) And others like Siren Head. His peers exposed him to those things and made my own nights pretty sleepless for a while.
It’s a tough plate to fill, but surely there’s gotta be something. He’s played Luigi’s Mansion and got a kick out of that. That game would be a good example I suppose.
Thanks for any suggestions!
OK hear me out: Minecraft in survival. For real. Nothing jump scares like a creeper going “psshht” in your back, telegraphing that you’re about to die in a destructive explosion. As you walk a narrow path over a chasm of lava in the Nether, the wail of the Ghast might make you fall out of sheer panic before it even shoots at you. The Warden is a special kind of scary too, as it’s nearly unkillable and will detect you by the noise you make. It sounds kind of silly but there’s plenty of players making the remark that Minecraft survival is basically horror.
And it’s all in a child friendly, non gory, voxel style.
Yeah that shit scared me when I played it at 40 years old. It kind of wears you down when you walk around in dark caves for hours on end.
Another alternative might be Subnautica. It has some jump scares but mostly it’s just the Deep Unknown that gives you chills. Few things in that game are actually dangerous.
+1 to this, when I was like 11-12 playing Minecraft, it took me a solid year or so to overcome my fear of going into caves.
While we’re at it with non-horror games: the level that introduced the flood in Halo CE really gave me a scare. I don’t know what it says about me, but I invited a friend over to play that level with me, lol. It’s a bit of a reach not being a horror game, but a great game with some tension here and there.
