OK, The Beast Inside is Actually Pretty Scary

If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’ll know that games hardly scare me. I don’t say that as a complaint, but usually as a challenge. I want games to scare me. After playing so many horror titles over the years — and running two horror gaming sites over the last decade and then some — I’ve grown a bit desensitized. So when something genuinely makes me grimace and not want to play anymore just so I can relax, I know I’ve encountered something special.

The Beast Inside is a “photorealistic” horror game currently on Kickstarter with (as of writing) eleven days to go. The game is fully funded, and even at this early stage it’s pretty darn impressive. The presentation is top notch, with high-quality lighting ensuring scenes look realistic and foreboding. The framing of spooky imagery, whether its a man in the distance or a jump scare involving an entity scurrying past your screen, is cleverly done. The actual entities themselves aren’t especially scary in their design, looking amusingly similar to the ghosts in Deadly Premonition. But these ghostly figures are used very well, and I found myself on edge throughout the demo.

The demo features two chapters, one set in modern day and the other in the 19th century. Both characters live in the same secluded house in the woods. The game introduces the present day scenario with a look at the protagonist’s wife in captivity, about to be killed by an unknown man. This dynamic suggests a nicely woven mystery, and I look forward to seeing how the two timelines connect.

If you want to hear me slowly become more and more unnerved (or just get stuck on an easy puzzle like some dummy), check out the playthrough video below. The Beast Inside can be yours on Kickstarter for a $25 pledge.