I’m convinced horror games are the best medium for horror. I love reading horror fiction and watching horror movies too. I just feel like when playing a good horror game, the player is “in the drivers seat”. I’m open to hearing other opinions though!
Ok I have a bone to pick with horror games.
Most horror games are not actually horror games.
Most horror games are actually puzzle games with action sequences between puzzles. They may be thrilling and starting, but how many horror games just involve you solving a puzzle, which can be figuring out something in the environment to proceed or sometimes, like in resident evil, literal puzzles for no reason, and then OH NO OOGA BOOGA SCARY and you either have a fight or do a run and hide. And if you can fight the horror, it’s immediately not horror. It’s action.
Then you have horror games which are just another video game but with a horror twist oh no! I’ve seen these for fishing games and platformers and dating sims.
I’m not saying horror games are bad. If you like them, you’re totally allowed to like them. But there always seems to be a disconnect in horror games.
The problem always boils down to the inherent nature of games and mechanics. Because, by their nature, at their core, video games give you agency. You, using the controller, can control what happens on screen. You are in control.
Horror always must have an element of a lack of control and a lack of agency.
This is why horror games always give you a different feel than other media in horror. This is why there’s usually puzzles, which can slow pacing and have you have something to do, and while they start with a feeling of loss of control, you eventually get control over your environment. Which then the game has to take away, either by a chase scene, which gives you the least control, but mechanically it’s a puzzle or a quick time event, or an action part of the game, which is fun, but it’s action. Thrilling isn’t the same as horror, even if both have adrenaline pumping.
Some games do have clever ways of dealing with this. Perception took away agency by having your character be blind, and made it hard to see anything. The original FNAF was genius. Each action you took to ward off a monster put you in a position of vulnerability to another monster. It’s a timed resource management game sure, but there’s no loopholes, no exploits, and every action, even inaction, makes you vulnerable. That’s really hard to do in a game, and brilliant in it’s simplicity.
And to answer your question, in my opinion the best way to consume horror is being told a story, as a child, and having you think that sorry could very much happen to you.