How 7 Days to Die made me feel scared again

I love horror. It's one of my favourite genres and aesthetics, but there's not many games that make me feel scared - I might get spooked by a jump scare or get little bit tense by the good atmosphere, but it's never something that really makes me feel nervous. It's more like just ''this looks and sounds good but why should I be scared of it? It's fiction!''

Truly the last game (or in fact a demo) which made me really uneasy was one of the first ones I ever played: Half-Life: Uplink. I remember playing it in mid 2000s in a small room with an old computer, and the first encounter with headcrab zombie was enough to give 12-year old me nightmares. And to this day I think that Half-Life games, especially the first one, are masterfully crafted horror experiences. But as I got older, the spookiness didn't work on me anymore.

And then I played 7 Days to Die. This game makes me seriously uneasy - and I love that. There's something special about the game's crusty graphics and clumsy gameplay which makes it truly scary at some times. It feels that you're never safe, even after you have locked yourself in the highest spot of your base, because zombies will tear everything apart if you give them a chance. And the fact that you may just hurt yourself deadly by accidentally bumping on your own spike traps just makes me nervous - I need to be on my toes all of the time.

I like that. It's fun to try to keep yourself alive in a hopeless situation - because if you do it makes you feel like you can achieve anything in life. And if you die, you can always try again (unlike in real life).