It seems like every indie game thinks it can be the next Silent Hill 2. Torment is the name of the game, and everyone thinks they can do it right. Every protagonist has a big sin to deal with, trapped in their own personal purgatory, everything has symbolic meaning – but it doesn’t matter just how well a game captures symbolism and all that other stuff. If the game doesn’t frighten – if the game doesn’t get an emotional reaction out of you – then it’s a bit of a letdown. An indie horror game can be as clever as it likes, but if it doesn’t nail that horror game design, it feels like there’s something very important missing.

Love, Sam is a rare exception to the rule. It indeed emulates Silent Hill 2‘s feelings of obtuse dread, a creeping sense of “wrong” that permeates basically every second of the experience. It does this in a play space even smaller than Silent Hill 4’s titular room, using only careful sound design, a few neat puzzles and a fascinating object at the center of it all – a journal – to frighten the player.

The journal is the perfect pacing device. With each page you turn, you become more and more aware of something quite insidious going on. The best moments are ones where you know that continuing to turn the page means something bad is going to happen. A sketched shadow growing larger on each consecutive page. An image of a door (your door..?), with the words knock knock written next to them. A drawing of your phone… ring, ring.

As Mike Drucker says in his book on Silent Hill 2, “we’re screaming at [them] not to go in there, but it’s our job to make [them] go in there.” That’s the beautiful terror of video game horror at its best. The knowledge that by going forwards, bad things are going to happen – but Love, Sam makes sure you can’t put the damn thing down by being so well written, so interesting, and so creepy.

Love, Sam isn’t long, but it’s very cheap. It puts countless indie horror titles to shame by being confident enough to use a small space and use it to its max, even while giving the horror space to breathe – and letting the player pace the terror at their own speed. Perhaps most importantly, it actually has a story to tell. Love, Sam isn’t necessarily revolutionary, but it does shine a light on how video games can frighten, how they should go about it, and maybe indicates where indie horror games can go from here.

You can buy Love, Sam from Steam.