Detention

Detention is an astonishingly well-put together game that understands how brooding horror is more effective than mere jump-scares. And four hours long, it never outstays its welcome, delivering a perfectly pitched dose of horror with a sprinkling of historical insight. All in all, it’s one of the most chilling and disturbing games you’re likely to encounter, rivalling even the much-vaunted Silent Hill 2 in the survival horror stakes. Fear done properly, Detention is a fantastic reason to go back to school.

It sadly loses its way in the final act, with the game’s systems being forgotten about in favour of a more linear telling of the narrating, along with diminished puzzle-solving. But even with that, Detention is a very interesting game that uses the real-world events of mid-1900s Taiwan and wraps them up in this engrossing tale of fantastical terror.

A horror game based on 20th century Taiwanese history may not sound appealing to the average Western gamer but the hell it presents is one based primarily on reality, not fantasy. It’s one that could happen to any country and any person, and which forces you to think about what you’d do if faced with a similar situation in real life. And that alone is a great achievement.