By: Logan Jacobs

Many distinct types of horror exist. Most hinge on the idea of not knowing what is going on around you: the absence of knowledge. Or they hinge on not being able to do anything about the things around you: the absence of action. 

This creates a duality where one coexists with yet is in an imbalance with the other. There is either an absence of knowledge or absence of action: when one is present, the other is lacking. This duality drives conflict. 

The problem with this style of horror is the fourth wall, the knowledge that everything is fiction and cannot cause any harm. Because of this fourth wall between the player and the game the absence of knowledge and action’s effects are lessened.  

This is where the idea of “meta horror” strives. Meta horror’s goal is to break down the fourth wall and any other boundaries between the player and the horror. Meta horror doesn’t outright abandon the formerly established ideas on how to scare but instead expands on it by breaking down the fourth wall. 

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was the first horror game of its kind, scaring players in avenues not previously thought of. Eternal Darkness was released in 2002 exclusively for the GameCube, both the time and the consoles limitations led to a less refined version of meta horror but one that still scared just as well. 

In Eternal Darkness a sanity system can affect how the game scares, the bar starts full and slowly empties as time goes on. Starting with minor changes such as noises with no source or even skewing the camera a tiny amount. As the player’s sanity bar gets lower more extreme effects happen such as faking deleting the player’s save file, abruptly ending the game claiming a sequel is in the works, or even having the player character die spontaneously. 

While Eternal Darkness got many things right, the game was limited by its hardware and development time. It created a great base for many other games to work off in the future.  

Imscared: a Pixelated Nightmare picked up where Eternal Darkness left off and is considered by most to be the most influential and notable meta horror game. Imscared was one of the first meta horror games to be released on pc and it makes use of that fact. Imscared holds no punches when trying to scare the player, using more traditional methods like jump scares to opening a YouTube video in the background without your knowledge. 

The horror of Imscared does not just leave the player frightened but leaves them questioning whether they are safe even after closing the game. Imscared achieves this effect by many means for example, faking that the game is closed only to jump scare the player, creating new files and images on the player’s desktop, and even faking that the player’s computer crashed. 

DDLC is the last game mentioned here because it strays away from the two other games preestablished ideas of horror. DDLC breaks down that fourth wall by deceiving the player from before they even start the game. It masks itself as a cute visual novel, a genre of game that focuses on player choices, interactions with the story, and less gameplay.

DDLC chooses not to scare the player with jumpscares but instead disturb the player. The first act of the game starts normal by all means but by the time of the second act the player starts to notice cracks in the game. Small instances of abnormalities not mentioned before. All of this culminates in the third act revealing all of horrific elements of the world that the player had come to love. 

The three games mentioned above are not the only meta horror games but they were pioneers of the genre and are each in their own way still affecting the meta horror genre today.