Beside Myself for Windows

Premium first-person psychological horror

Beside Myself is a demo adventure game developed by ASK_GAMES. This first-person psychological horror game puts you in the shoes of a historian-journalist who must investigate an abandoned hospital. Find out the shocking truth about this facility and make sure you survive to tell your story.

It has a short playthrough and a story that is both common and grounded in reality. However, Beside Myself redeems itself by taking pages out of the best in terms of delivering fright to the players. It can be compared to Araha: Curse of Yieun Island or Until Dawn: Rush of Blood.

Test your investigative mettle

Playing Beside Myself really puts you in character in terms of how it presents the game challenges. There are puzzles that can be solved through logic alone, while others will require you to pay close attention to hints dropped along the way. None of these puzzles are too difficult, though. Another gameplay highlight is that it uses jump scares effectively. Not too scary but will definitely take you by surprise.

Like most indie horror games, expect a short playthrough from this one. It only gets longer if you lose your direction. The game will require you to backtrack at certain points, and not remembering parts of the hospital will get you exploring in no time. As you progress, you get what you came for—the truth that your character is investigating—and leads to a good story once it comes full circle.

Also, people with sensitivity issues to light or sound might want to reconsider. Aside from drastic flashes of bright light, there are also sharp piercing sounds that can cause discomfort for some people. It gets overbearing for some players although these elements fit in with the game, together with mature themes of abuse, violence, and mental struggles. Lastly, it could use additional optimization as it runs poorly on most systems.

A quick horror fix

With the wide range and availability of horror games, from indie projects to triple AAA titles, Beside Myself isn’t particularly exceptional—but it’s still worth a try. It has an intriguing premise that lures you in and keeps you engaged with bits and pieces as you proceed. The entire game, short as it may be, is dotted with a generous amount of horror, most of them are jump scares though.