Horror games can't kill you, so they have to scare you. Or shock you. Or make you feel uneasy enough to fail. Death is often an inevitability, especially in walking sim horror titles, where linearity normally undermines the tension if the dramatic escalation isn't subversive or surprising enough to keep the player engaged. P.T. is a well-regarded masterpiece because its vision was inspired by an absolute reversal of expectation. The creeping dread instilled in a singular L-shaped hallway, which forces them to turn and peek around the bend each time they pass it, matched with the limited gameplay positing the player to look closer at the haunted environs, forged an iconic, consistent experiment in game design and psychological terror.

Home Alone, the first chapter of Fears to Fathom, succeeds 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 of its linear design. It is an exception to the otherwise ideal norm; a tale of home invasion with an inevitable conclusion, which clearly and perturbedly maintains a player-character disconnect, even as they control the studious, unaware teen, narrated by a real Life victim, to further cement the notion of inescapable Fate. In other words, it may in fact be the closest videogame adaptation of Halloween, in thematic spirit, ever produced, even moreso than Puppet Combo's brilliant Babysitter Bloodbath.

That Fate comes in the shocking form of a hollowed man, holstering only a deep black facade and the intense wail of an inhuman subject. A monster taking the shape of a passing glance of a suspicious figure, as his feet slyly run up the stairs beyond the foyer, or when he can be seen standing at the front door in security footage the boy's Mom sends to him via text message.

Isolation devises uncanny visions of the obscure creeping around within the empty darkness of a room. Home Alone cleverly instills that same sense of impending doom, and the curiosity it manifests, with solemn audio-visual cadence and a suburban aesthetic which toes the line between artificial and realistic. Jumpscares can be easy copouts for developers and writers who don't understand how to accurately imbue fear; but here, as in Puppet Combo's incredible Power Drill Massacre, the shocks come with a forlorn sense of imminent, perhaps even necessary doom.

The fact that the story is inspired by a Reddit thread only further emphasizes its modernistic portrayal of atrocity exhibition. An author and a participant readily perform a ubiquitous scenario, to ponder habitual human inquiry into the fascinating and terrific unknown.