Some of my favorite horror games are set in familiar places: coastal towns, sleepy suburban streets, a quiet family home. Many classics pull on the American zeitgeist, which provides a level of stability and security before the horror kicks in. In recent years, I’ve been delving more into horror games set in different parts of the world, and I’ve fallen in love with these textured, detailed games that are all the more unsettling due to their distance.

Still Wakes the Deep begins on a crumbling Scottish oil rig, with protagonist Caz McLeary exchanging small talk with his colleagues. The Chinese Room, the game’s developer, ensured the accents and slang were on point. There were times I had to rely on subtitles to figure out exactly what these characters were talking about, but before long, I adapted. Just when I started feeling comfortable, the oil rig drilled a little too deep and unleashed some unknowable horror. It doesn’t matter how much I initially related to Caz; soon, I’m in his shoes, dealing with very primal fears like drowning, cosmic corruption, and death.

Mundaun is another........

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