Horror games often feel like one-on-one experiences, whether you're hiding from a specific Baker in Resident Evil 7 or the titular serpent in Alien: Isolation. Multiplayer horror game Hide and Shriek takes this idea a little more literally: it's PvP horror where your goal is to out-scare your opponent in a 10-minute match. Oh, and find them, because you're both invisible. It's like somebody played Screencheat and thought, "you know, this could just more jump scares," and it's now free to try.
"Hide and Shriek is a one vs. one multiplayer game where players collect points and scare the other player using spells, traps and jump scares," developer and publisher Funcom said in a press release. "Players can summon dark demons, set up elaborate traps, and jump out of clever hiding places to scare each other senseless."
Hide and Shriek is aptly named, then. You can earn points by successfully determining your opponent's position and triggering jump scares and other traps once they're in place, or you can avoid them entirely and focus on concealing your position and completing challenges hidden around the environment. Fittingly enough, that environment is an empty school, which Resident Evil 7 taught us is top-tier terror territory. If you're feeling political, you can also break out Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton masks which, depending on who you're playing with, could well instill true horror.
Developer and publisher Funcom released Hide and Shriek last Halloween as "an experimental game" and one of their first forays into the Unreal Engine. They've removed the price this year in the hopes of reinvigorating the player base, but Hide and Shriek still seems like the kind of game you'd want to play with a friend—and even then probably only for a few rounds. That being said, Hide and Shriek does command a respectable 78 percent positive rating on Steam, and you can't beat free.
