For me it was Dead Space 2 when I was 12-ish. For reference, at this point the most gruesome/gorey/violent media I was exposed to was the Halo 3 Flood levels and the original 2 Alien movies.
I had way too much fun playing it to be traumatized by it at the time, although when i was old enough to understand the horror of the whole “your memories and experience becoming food for a god-like being that has absolutely zero respect for your existance”, that did inform my perspective of other media such as Evangelion or Childhood’s end when I watched them for the 1st time.
What was your equivalent to this? I’ve heard the Resident Evil games are quite common for this but I want to hear your perspective.
Thief 3’s Cradle level was formative in the way that I have never ever seen a better horror game. Overall I didn’t like the game as much as the previous two. But the Cradle is unsurpassed.
The demo for Alone in the Dark 1 also lives rent free in my head because it was one of the few games we had back then. Plus the graphics were absolutely astonishing. But I never knew how to finish it. I always died pretty quickly to some dog monster. I never played the full game.