Pushing Buttons: Freaky games form some of my most vivid childhood memories

A new wave of indie horror games and remakes of haunting classics such as Silent Hill are getting more creative at trying to mess with your head

Halloween might be over, but the scary memories last a lifetime, at least for me. I do not like horror. I am one of the world's biggest wusses, and feeding my imagination with nightmare fuel will keep me up at night for weeks. I was recently so disturbed by a simple bus advert for the movie Smile that I read the Wikipedia summary of the plot, and just that was enough to screw with my sleep. My partner, meanwhile, cannot get enough of disgusting films and terrifying games, so he's delighted to be living through something of a golden age for video game horror. Not only are haunting classics such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil getting endless remakes, there's also an ongoing new wave of indie horror games that do ever more creative things with this medium's ability to get inside your head.

These days, I actively try to avoid horrible things, but the games that freaked me out formed some of my most vivid childhood memories. Zelda: Ocarina of Time had the Gibdos, desiccated corpses that lived in graveyards and dungeons. They could freeze Link in his tracks with a shriek, then walk towards him with horrible slowness, then speed up at the last second to leap atop his shoulders and try to suffocate him. And at the bottom of a well, there was an amorphous, eyeless, white monster whose many hands protruded from the Earth, ready to grab and ensnare. I had to play the entirety of the Shadow Temple, with its bloodstains and discordant choral music, through half-closed eyes and with a guide in hand.

Simon Parkin interviewed Hideo Kojima for us in Tokyo. Kojima still won't talk about exactly what happened during his infamous split with Konami, but gaming's most famous director did discuss plenty of other interesting stuff, including how he feels about his past work and his conflicting relationship with social media.

CD Projekt Red's original Witcher game is going to be remade. I would love to revisit this game and I'm super-interested to see whether they will preserve the collectible sex cards" Geralt collected by sleeping with every available female character. Those were gross at the time, but the idea has aged particularly badly over the past 15 years.

Ikea is throwing a fit over a horror game set in an obvious satirical stand-in for its stores, which would be quite funny if it wasn't also forcing the developer to revamp the entire thing for fear of getting sued.

This greatly entertaining feature chronicles how players have come together over the years to translate Splatoon's various in-game languages - only to discover that the dude who runs the clothing shop wears a T-shirt on Tuesdays that says Fuck You".

The manager of an Amsterdam hotel is dismayed that the building features in the new Call of Duty game. We have taken note of the fact that the Conservatorium Hotel is undesirably the scene of the new Call of Duty ... More generally, we don't support games that seem to encourage the use of violence. The game in no way reflects our core values and we regret our apparent and unwanted involvement."