About hoGAMEGATA
hoGAMEGATA (also known as hGG) was built by aurostron, a solo developer. It is a fast, open database indexing over 107K+ horror titles and 68,000+ developers with detailed metadata, release dates, and store pricing.
The Philosophy
Horror is built around tension, atmosphere, and sound design. Standard game databases treat horror as a generic filter tag, mixing genuinely terrifying games with unrelated titles.
hoGAMEGATA focuses entirely on horror. Our catalog organizes games by sub-genres, platforms, scare factors, and developer histories to make finding your next game straightforward.
Preservation & Privacy
hoGAMEGATA is non-commercial. We do not display ads, sell user data, or hide features behind subscriptions.
We preserve horror gaming history—from classic DOS titles and retro PlayStation releases to experimental itch.io projects and upcoming releases. No account is required to browse or search.
The Creator & Origin Story
hoGAMEGATA was built by aurostron, a solo developer, as a summer break project while learning web development and databases. What started as a personal learning experiment grew into an open metadata registry dedicated exclusively to horror video games.
hoGAMEGATA is aurostron's first public web release. It was made out of a passion for game preservation, ad-free access, and clean interfaces for horror fans worldwide.
How We Curate: The 5-Point Test
Storefront tags often fail. On major storefronts, comedy titles, asset flips, and meme games frequently carry the "horror" tag as a joke. hoGAMEGATA uses a strict 3-tier classification to keep discovery reliable while preserving zero-data-loss integrity.
Games explicitly designed around fear, dread, revulsion, or survival tension.
Games with dark themes, psychological unease, or liminal dread that aren't strictly survival horror.
Joke titles, asset flips, and accidental tags. They remain in the database but are hidden from horror search queries.
The 5-Point Curatorial Test
Did the creator intentionally build the experience to provoke fear, paranoia, grief, or dread?
Does the player face disempowerment, fragile health, scarce tools, or unkillable threats?
Do the soundscapes, lighting, and camera perspectives work to limit awareness and build unease?
Are hazards treated as dangerous threats rather than lighthearted jokes or comedy gags?
Does the playing community genuinely describe the atmosphere as unsettling, eerie, or terrifying?
The Science of Fear in Games
Why do players pay money to be terrified? In psychology, this is known as recreational fear. Your primitive brain signals danger, while your rational mind knows you are holding a plastic controller on a couch. That safety allows the adrenaline rush to resolve into relief and dopamine.
1. Terror (Anticipation)
The mind at work. The lights cut out and you hear something breathing behind you, but you have not turned around yet. Audio cues and shadows build dread before anything happens.
2. Horror (Encounter)
The shock of reality. You turn around and see the threat directly. It defies nature, it shouldn't exist, and you are forced to run, fight, or hide immediately.
3. Revulsion (Visceral)
The biological gag reflex. Rotten flesh, mutations, parasites, and somatic violations. It triggers ancient survival mechanisms against disease, contamination, and death.
Agency & The Dominance Curve
In a horror film, closing your eyes lets the story move past you. In a horror game, nothing happens until you push the joystick forward. You are an active participant in your own distress.
The difference between an action game and a horror game comes down to player dominance. In an action game, you have high mobility and firepower; the enemies fear you. In a horror game, your ammo is almost gone, turning is sluggish, and a single creature blocks the hallway.
7D Scare Profile
Interactive Archetype MatrixNote: Horror is subjective. These scores are editorial estimates based on the game's design and commonly observed player experiences. Different players may reasonably rate the same game differently.
Different games build fear in completely different ways. Select a title below to see how its scare profile is measured across hoGAMEGATA's seven dimensions.
Trapped in a crumbling WWI bunker with a creature that responds to every sound. The generator is constantly running out of fuel.
Minimal cheap stingers; scares come from real encounters.
Agonizing dread knowing the monster can emerge anywhere.
WWI trench gore and rotting corpses.
Suffocating, pitch-black underground tunnels.
Finite fuel, scarce revolver bullets, noisy wind-up flashlight.
Grounded physical monster with unnatural speed.
Every creak, rat, and distant rumble is a potential alert.
The 21 Sub-Feelings of Horror
Affective IndexHorror is not just one emotion. A submarine explorer feels dread; an unarmed survivor feels panic. We classify horror into six emotional realms and twenty-one distinct registers:
1. Spatial & Atmospheric Dread
Fear triggered by the geometry of your environment—darkness, endless voids, tight spaces, and confusing acoustics.
The heavy certainty that something terrible is coming, combined with zero idea when or where it will strike.
The unease of being trapped in transitional spaces that should have people (hallways, offices, transit hubs), but are dead empty.
The suffocating fear of being trapped in a tight, narrow space where movement is restricted and air is running out.
The dread of deep, murky open water—realizing an endless black void exists beneath your feet with things swimming in it.
When your brain mistakes harmless background sounds (wind, pipes creaking, wood settling) for footsteps, breathing, or voices.
Rating System
We combine ratings from multiple platforms (IGDB, Steam, Metacritic, and RAWG) into a single score. To keep smaller, less popular games with a single high review from dominating the top lists, we use a weighted Bayesian rating model that accounts for the total number of reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is hoGAMEGATA?
hoGAMEGATA (also known as hGG) is an ad-free database and discovery tool for horror games. It catalogs over 107K+ titles and 68,000+ developers, spanning survival horror, psychological terror, and indie releases.
Who created hoGAMEGATA?
hoGAMEGATA was built entirely by aurostron, a solo developer. It began as a casual summer break project while learning web development and database management, and grew into an open database dedicated to horror games. It is aurostron's first public web release.
Why focus only on horror games?
Horror is a distinct genre that relies heavily on sound, lighting, and tension. General game databases often dump horror titles into generic action or indie buckets. hoGAMEGATA organizes games specifically around horror sub-genres, platforms, and scare factors.
Is hoGAMEGATA free to use?
Yes. hoGAMEGATA is completely free and non-commercial. There are no ads, paywalls, or tracking scripts. You can search and browse the entire catalog without creating an account.
How are ratings calculated?
Ratings combine review scores from IGDB, Steam, Metacritic, and RAWG. We use a weighted Bayesian average so that niche games with a single high review do not unfairly dominate the top lists.
How do you decide what counts as a horror game?
We evaluate games using a 5-point test: creator intent, gameplay vulnerability, audio-visual design, hazard stakes, and player consensus. Games that pass are classified as Pure Horror or Horror-Adjacent. Irrelevant titles tagged as a joke are soft-hidden.
Data Sources & Attribution
Data provided by IGDB.
Reviews taken from Steam.
Indie game catalog and feeds provided by itch.io.
Linux compatibility data by ProtonDB.
Search index and edge catalog distributed globally via jsDelivr CDN.
Database architecture powered by Turso and libSQL.
This platform is built using Astro, React, Drizzle ORM, and deployed on Cloudflare.
Proudly powered by Open Source.