For me it was minesweeper clones. I got frustrated one day and decided to learn how to be good at minesweeper. After beating the medium and large boards a couple times I looked on Steam for minesweeper versions, and turns out there’s a whole genre of clones. Some of them are direct clones of the game, while others are very heavily inspired by minesweeper. The two best I played were Hexcells and Tametsi. Hexcells is stylish and is only hexagons (as opposed to the minesweeper squares), while Tametsi has squares, rectangles, and hexagons and is a lot more barebones. However I found Tametsi to be much harder. There were some levels on there that took me an entire day, and I think there’s like 500 levels. 150 levels
I’ve always been convinced that I’m too wimpy to play scary games, even though I got a decent way through Alien: Isolation.
After hearing rave reviews for the Resident Evil 4 remake, I thought I’d give it a try, and I’m super glad I did. It’s probably one of my top 5 games of all time. I immediately beat it in New Game+, then played the Dead Space remake, and am currently working through RE Village. I’m having an amazing time.
I too, am too scared for Alien Isolation. May check out the other ones you listed though
I definitely think Alien: Isolation is the scariest of them all. Resident Evil 4 is more of an action/adventure game with some scary bits sprinkled in. Only one section really got me spooked, and by that point you’ve sort of developed some calluses.
I would recommend that RE4 demo. It’s a great place to start IMO.