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Fears to Fathom

You're home alone when you hear a knock at your door. You see a person on your front step, and your heart starts pounding.

You open the door. No one is there. You're safe.

But you keep hearing noises and knocking. You go to your room and hide under your bed, knowing that if you come out, you will die. You don't know when they will come in. All you know is that they will.

You want to wake up, go back to a life without fear. But it's too late. It's already here.

Sounds scary, right? Frightening situations like the one described above and more are depicted in the episodic video game Fears to Fathom. The game comes from the developer Rayll, a one-man team with the idea to create short games based around supposedly true events and universally common fears. Their first title, Home Alone, kickstarted the series, depicted a teen home alone while their parents are on a work trip, then has an encounter with a shadowed individual.

The series has since evolved, and has branched out to include two other episodes that reference even darker or unsettling fears in our day-to-day lives. I was hooked on this series from Home Alone - Fears to Fathom utilizes lo-fi aesthetics to create a work of horror that fits in perfectly with today's horror gaming climate. By preying on your own nostalgia and memories, the game makes you realize just how much you still harbor those fears from long ago and brings you back to your child-like imagination with surprising scares.

Part of what makes this series interesting is the fact that the scares are so built up through tension and suspense; in each of the horror game's episodes you never quite know when or where the next scare will be. When you're at the beginning of the episode, the complacent normalcy of everything that's going on feels like it's not that bad. But the closer you get to the actual scare, the more a sense of dread spreads throughout your mind and everything around you. In any given episode, Fears to Fathom transforms itself from ordinary life to a surrealist, ethereal nightmare at a pace that is perfectly paced to highlight the tension of just how scared you probably are at that point in the game.

Another intriguing part of Fears to Fathom is the attention to detail the developer paid to the gameplay and general design. They have a very minimalist aesthetic to everything that they do, but the world is highly interactable - you can cook & eat food, drive vehicles, shop, watch TV, play on the computer, etc. This added layer of realism, along with a sense of familiarity to your own experiences, really helps to deepen the game's horror. The game world feels tactile while still mixing in with these atypical architectures found in a bad dream.

If I had to pick the most stand-out episode so far, it would be Norwood Hitchhike, which plays on so many creepy fears and improves the gameplay found in the original episode. You're a 19-year old woman driving back home from a gaming convention; in one particular section, your car break downs in the middle of nowhere. As your car remains stationary, another truck rolls up, and you're unsure if it's help or simply a looming presence that wants to get the jump on you. It's these types of situations that Fears to Fathom gets so much mileage out of - there's so much to unpack behind the scenes; your vulnerability as a young woman, the motives of a stranger, the thought of leaving your car behind, fear of unknown dangers, and how it all comes together - there's so much potential there in that snapshot alone. It's disturbing, stressful, and certainly a sharp departure from the usual psychological thriller horror games that are becoming more and more prevalent today. The fact the game makes you get over your own fears and use your own intuition is what makes it so damn scary.

Fears to Fathom slowly but surely gained traction in the internet gaming community and it's clear that the developer has delivered on their ideas in a spectacular way. The entire series makes for a good gateway to newer horror games, and it's also a great example of how frightening the modern world can be. With unique character perspectives that put you in the viewpoint of actual teens and young adults, with absent parents and shady stalkers, Fears to Fathom is a solid entry into a genre that has grown up to be a booming trend in the indie space.

Give it a try for yourself as the first episode is free and only takes about 20 minutes to finish!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1671340/Fears_to_Fathom__Home_Alone/