Is every game a horror game?

I very rarely do deep research on the games I play anymore. There’s just too many things available these days that I’m more likely to be surprised by something excellent than let down by mediocrity. Oftentimes, I find my new favorite thing by taking a chance, but something I’ve found myself struggling with is picking up on a game’s vibe.

I don’t know if it’s just the state of the world or where I’m at mentally, but every time I boot something up, I’m waiting for the first act turn that takes an otherwise delightful or relaxing game and makes dreadful. I can’t quite pinpoint when the feeling started hitting me in earnest, but a string of recent releases that are otherwise quaint or not outright a horror game has me checking my corners.

The granddaddy of this phenomenon is Blue Prince. In Blue Prince, you play as Simon, a 13 year old boy who inherited his Grand Uncle’s haunted rearranging mansion and, if only you could make it to the room that doesn’t exist, you could own the haunted manor house too. Okay, maybe the dread is hinted at a bit. Early on in the game, you start dropping rooms and come across the Dark Room, a photography-focused room that, upon entering the lights flicker, then go out.

You’re going to bring your own baggage into these games, so your relationship with the dark will probably inform how much this event tilts the game into horror, but dear reader, the first time it happened, I got spooked. You walk around this empty, almost silent house reading messages that span the mundane to the menacing and here it was, the jumpscare and pivot to spooky game I had expected.

What I’m saying is, Blue Prince has that PT energy. The whole gist of Blue Prince is that you approach a closed door, then lay down one of three rooms. Sometimes that room is an aquarium, sometimes it’s a bedroom, and sometimes it’s a security room lit by green glow of too many security monitors. What could possibly be happening in this house that there needs to be a creepy surveillance room, you ask yourself. Murder, probably.

Blue Prince is mysterious from the beginning and the chatter about the game didn’t help: the game has mysteries you won’t discover until you need to and even more mysteries you probably never will. Every day you enter the same too shiny foyer and approach closed doors, repeating yourself ad nauseum until you discover the next mystery. And then the lights go out.

After 49 days in the manor house, I haven’t found any actual ghosts yet, but every empty hallway I enter or obituary I read makes that possibility all the more likely. It wouldn’t even need to be monumental either: a phone that rings, a distant ethereal voice, or a Dark Room that doesn’t go dark. I’d say that when Mr. X shows up and slowly pursues me through the house I’ll be ready, but I’d be lying. The repetition of the game and your hyper-attention to any minor change to a room builds a tension that only lives in your brain.

There are all these bedrooms and no one to sleep in them, items are spread throughout the house by someone, a hot meal cooked by someone appears in the Dining Room, and somehow the house resets everyday. Blue Prince is a game filled with mysteries in need of solving, whether it’s the political structure of the world, what happened to Simon’s mom, or how to unlock those safes, but the biggest mystery for me is why am I feeling this dread constantly?