The first horror games I ever played were Japanese RPG horror games (and when I say played, I mean I watched Pewdiepie playthroughs.) My favourites were, and still are, Mad father, Misao and Corpse Party. I liked the pixel art style and the combination of story and puzzles. They were very dark in their narratives, which contrasted the cute visual style. Even when violent things happened in the games, the simpleness of the graphics left a lot to the imagination; I think this actually made things scarier.
I also liked the storytelling in these games. They were long games with a lot of suspense; I liked the mystery of trying to figure out what was going on. In Corpse Party being able to get to know the other characters meant that it was horrible when those characters died. It added to the suspense as one by one, they all died.
I like environmental storytelling and how discovery is also relevant in these games. If you'd never explored properly, you'd never have found that creepy detail. I think it was Corpse Party where the player enters an area that has holes in the floorboards with pairs of shoes next to them. When you went to investigate the shoes there was a description that explained that sometimes people take off their shoes before they commit suicide. Even though the player didn't get to see it happen it added to the scary atmosphere of the new level. Similarly, in Mad Father, if you check in the little girl's chest of drawers there's a dead animal in there which suggests she may have already been becoming like her father before the events of the game.
A newer game that I like, that reminds me of these older games, is House. It's a pixel game where you need to protect your family from monsters and other dangers before your father comes home. The player needs to find items and interact with objects to figure out how to survive. I like how there are several different endings for this game depending on who you save.
There's a lot less story than the older horror RPGs, but I like that because the game is shorter its easier to replay to get the different endings. However, due to that lack of narrative build-up, the game is a lot less scary. I think a game of this scope is probably closer to what would be possible for my own game.
