I first played Puppet Combo’s Nun Massacre in, I think, 2019 or perhaps 2020. At the time, I believed it to be the scariest game I’d ever played. It’s hard to come to terms with games that don’t live up to the expectations produced by memory. There have been so many games that haven’t achieved that, that haven’t managed to bounce back from nostalgia or from glowing first experiences.

Fortunately, Nun Massacre is just as scary as I remembered it.

Nun Massacre‘s atmosphere is almost crushingly bleak. The game’s bones are violent. The derelict schoolhouse that you spend the majority of the game inside is preempted by a desolate cliffside climb. Jagged rocks pepper the path, and you wonder how anyone managed to get up here in the first place, let alone build an enormous Christian school complex up here.

The game gets worse the longer you play it. Nun Massacre structures itself as paranoia fuel. Dark, near-featureless hallways wind around and around, and either end where you don’t want them to, or contain far more doors than you want to open right now. Because behind each one could be lurking the Nun.

The eponymous Nun is just awful. She is abnormally tall, with her eyes gouged out, and, at first, perhaps strangely silent. Sometimes you just want her to appear in order to puncture the awful silence that permeates the rest of the game. Other, lesser horror games would use music and other sounds to make you extra paranoid. Nun Massacre‘s dark, soundless setup accentuates every other noise. You’ll note just how special the game is when you realize that the lightning flashes first, then the thunder arrives momentarily after. Even the flick of the lighter that you use is somewhat uncomfortable. The snap-hiss and the burst of light that accompanies it makes you feel totally vulnerable. What if she heard that?

The first warning you get that the Nun is near is a flicker of static across the screen. Sometimes, you aren’t even lucky enough to get that. She might be waiting in a featureless room, waiting for you to wander past the door, just in time for her to burst out and stab you to death. Sometimes she just rounds a corner and spots you. But regardless of how she finds you, she is accompanied by the most wretched noise in perhaps all of horror video gaming. Her scream, sampled from a real 911 call wherein a seventy year old woman was assaulted by a burglar at her home (fortunately the woman survived and went on to live another twenty years), is all manner of haunting. It is so loud that you can’t help but be thrown off your game basically every time.

The panic of the noise is accompanied by crucial seconds of delay as your muscles spasm, sending your character careening into a wall, and then the Nun is on top of you, her knife glinting in the firelight, and before you know it, you’re just another statistic in the confines of the abandoned schoolhouse.

The game is made better by the fact that there are puzzles that force you to wander through plenty of different rooms. The fantastic design that means you have to wander everywhere makes the Nun’s presence an inevitability rather than a question. And since this is a game, the Nun’s appearance is never scripted (barring a few bad endings where you fall into obvious traps). You only have three inventory slots, and one of them is taken up by the lighter, meaning you only have two, really. This makes things even worse, as every second you waste deliberating over what item to drop means she could be getting even closer. And, worse, if you drop the wrong item, you might have to backtrack all the way through the complex to retrieve something.

It’s a game that has to be played to be believed. Nun Massacre‘s true essence can only be obtained by playing the damn thing. While watching playthroughs can still be tense, there’s always something comforted about watching a YouTube horror video, because you can predict the scares ahead of time, control the experience. But Nun Massacre is not interested in letting you control anything. Much like the protagonist’s daughter, you are disempowered at every turn. You are in a school environment dedicated to hatred and abuse. The game does contain a backstory featuring child abuse (some of which is distinctly sexual in nature), and so may be hard for some players to experience. I certainly found that aspect of the game very, very difficult. Not to say it’s poorly written: it’s not. In fact, it’s a game that utilizes symbolism really well, and builds a story out of metaphor. But you don’t need the metaphor to know that Nun Massacre still tells a riveting, tragic, depressing story. And you don’t need the metaphor to know that Nun Massacre is absolutely terrifying.

It is no surprise that Nun Massacre was expanded upon and essentially re-adapted for Stay Out of the House. Puzzles and mechanics are lifted wholesale from Nun Massacre for use in that game. I wish I’d replayed it to remember its incredible influence on not just the other games, but the horror genre as a whole. It is a gorgeous, decrepit, miserable experience. You run, sprint, flee everywhere you go. Most horror games have cued you in to believe that the vents are safe – even Nun Massacre’s successors do this, for the most part. On seeing the Nun in the vents for the first time, I think my heart almost shut down. One of the best horror moments I have ever experienced – since when can horror enemies use vents?!? The Nun doesn’t give a damn about convention. She defies expectation and terrifies you at any conceivable opportunity. When she doesn’t appear, it’s only to draw out the chase, to make the pain of the next jumpscare even worse.

The game’s opening in the new Definitive Edition says the game should only be played once a day, and that you should play as though your own life is at stake. So while I followed those rules, you certainly don’t need to. The game is scary enough as it is. But it’s also immersive enough that you will still find yourself drawn into the dark bowels of the horrible schoolhouse, even when you don’t want to be. That’s when the knife flashes out of the stairwell cupboard and lodges itself delicately in your throat.

One of my favourite horror games ever. It can actually be sickeningly scary, nauseating and anxiety-inducing to the point of actually just wanting to turn it off. It’s delightful. I hope one day I can make something as well-made and designed as it is. Very highly recommended.