This Found-Footage Horror Is The Best Jumpscare Sim I've Played In Ages (2024)

This isn't the first time I find myself dropped into a dark forest, with nothing but a flashlight to light my way. My screen is overlapped in a grainy 90s filter. There is no story or text wall explaining why I'm here. I only know I must go deeper into the woods.

The sun starts to set, it's getting darker, and the only advice the game bestows upon me is to 'activate my microphone and don't scream.' I don't even talk while gaming, yet I make sure my voice is a whisper. I enter a building and inspect a control panel. I turn around, and a ghastly figure hurls itself at me. I shriek out, and the Game Over screen flashes.

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Shades of Slender

In new found-footage horror game Don't Scream, you are dropped into a dark forest, there are things prowling around to jumpscare and kill you, and... that's it. It harkens back to 2012 when Slender: The Eight Pages took the internet by storm, when the unanimated figure of Slender Man stalked you through a basic forest environment as you tried to collect the titular Eight Pages. Once he got close enough, a loud musical sting would blare out, heightening the sense of danger The more pages you collect, the more speedily he'd stalk you.

Looking back, I realize The Eight Pages was the perfect playground for horror. When playing horror games, I always make sure to check behind me for potential threats. Slender Man's preferred method of killing is making his victims look at him, which causes the screen to crackle with static before it cuts to his blank, featureless face. You can imagine the absolute paranoia I, and many other players, felt when checking behind us, only to be greeted by Slender Man just inches away from us. I felt this exact same tension while playing Don't Scream, even though there is no central entity stalking us. Don't Scream is a masterclass in building tension, and the eventual jumpscare is a monumental payoff.

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Jumpscares have become a polarizing aspect in horror media, but Don't Scream masters them. The more frequently jumpscares are thrown at a viewer, the less effective they become, eventually numbing us to the experience. This might be effective with streamers, whose exaggerated reactions are the prime reason people watch them, but on an individual level, it stops being compelling after a while. I want to be immersed in this game's atmopshere, to truly feel the mounting tension, to dread every corner I peer around. I need to survive for 18 minutes, and those minutes only pass when I keep moving, adding extra tension to the experience. The jumpscares are dubbed 'scares' here, and they will appear randomly and test your endurance to be quiet. My eyes focus on that timer ticking down as I move, and sometimes, a scare appears and I audibly gasp, resulting in a game over. It's one hell of a rush.

That being said, Don't Scream is not without it's flaws. The microphone is a key feature of the experience, and luckily there is a microphone sensitivity meter at the start of the game. At the beginning, there is a volume threshold bar that informs you of how loud your voice is, and it's present in the bottom right corner as you play. If the bar becomes red, that means you are too loud and it counts as a scream. As I've found out, making a loud noise registers as a game over, and sometimes, the loud noise doesn't even need to come from me, as just my dog barking downstairs, or the loud ping of a glass is enough to trigger a game over. Even when I set my microphone to a relatively lower setting, I still have to keep any additional noise minimum lest the noise-counter trigger the end of my playthrough. On the other hand, it means the game can register jolts and jumps when at a sensitive enough setting, so even if you're not a 'screamer' like me, the Game Overs can still trigger if the game makes you twitch.

I love it when a game does away with the usual objectives like finding pieces of paper or a key, and instead prioritizes its environment and atmosphere. I firmly believe that horror games are at their best when stripped down to their most basic element. That's not to say that Don't Scream is lesser for its simpler approach. The graphics beyond the 90s filter are fantastic, and the sound design is immaculate, perfectly capturing the sense of something stalking you in the woods.