Some horror is built around the unexpected, relying on jump scares and big-budget special effects. This is largely successful, of course—just look at massively popular horror franchises likeFive Nights at Freddy’sandNightmare on Elm Street.
There’s a different kind of horror, though, that shies away from sudden jolts and cheap thrills. It builds on a sense of dread to unsettle the audience. You can experience this kind of eerie horror through acompletely free hidden gemonSteam. Spend just 10 minutes exploringThe Children of Clayto unearth ahorror game more terrifying than many scary movies.
The Children Of Clay Creates Horror With A Minimalistic Setup
Uncover The Secrets Of The Artifact
The entirety ofThe Children of Clayplays out in just one room, sitting in front of a table. The 2024 game was created by Messier, a one-person studio made up of artist and developer Balazs Ronyai. In this short, free Steam game, you play as an archaeologistexamining a strange artifact that was uncovered at a dig in the Ural Mountains.
The artifact sits before you on the table, a clay slab with cutouts that resemble a face. A few other items lay scattered around the table: an unlit candle, a pen and paper, several large books in a stack, a box of matches, and a compass.
You canrotate the artifact to view it from different angles. A large magnifying candle can be pulled down from the top for closer examination, and the various items can be interacted with in different ways.
And that’s all. That’s the entire setup for this brief experience, and it’sall the game needs to create a sense of fear and dread. The beauty of this title is in its simplicity, achieving the same effect as a blockbusterhorror through much subtler means.
The Children Of Clay Will Haunt You Long After It’s Over
A Short Interactive Artwork On The Nature Of Fear
The Children of Clayis an interactive work of art, with every detail created with the purpose of unsettling its audience. It wascreated using stop-motion animation,with visual noise that makes it feel like you’re viewing everything through a grainy old film.
As you uncover more about the artifact, you may research its origins in the books to your left. Bit by bit, the secrets of the strange clay statue are uncovered through the detached encyclopedia entries you look up, revealinga curse rooted in Hungarian folklore.
The Children of Clayis awonderfully creepy interactive fiction that will linger in your mindlong after you’ve stepped away from it. Its Overwhelmingly Positive rating (out of about 2,000 reviews) is a testament to the way it manages tocraft an unsettling atmospherethrough a minimalistic setup.
The freeSteamgame feels like you’ve dug up something you were never meant to find. And once you’ve finished this 10-minute game, you’ll never be able to forget it again.
