I think it is pretty silly.

It reminds me of the oneupmanship on TVtropes on pages such as nightmare fuel, where there have been accusations of viewers being terrified witless by pony shows. Perhaps, if the viewer was 6 when they saw the show, but this is often writ from the view of deep adults on newer shows.

Oh, right. There's that stupid game where you ride around a trike as a literal toddler.

One of the characters in Resident Evil Revelations 2 is a child that can detect enemies, stun and throw bricks. But she can't attack in any meaningful way.

I've played through the game two times in co-op with different people, and both times I was assigned the role of the child while my friend had all the guns. What can I say? It was still a fun experience. It's a support role, and there's teamwork to be had.

This is one of the more horrory games of modern RE. There are some messed up things here, but mercifully you won't see the small child get eaten by the flying invisible bugs.

GYLT would be another one. It's not that scary, monsters are almost cute, but the theme is sad/depressing (bullying, loneliness).

Then there is American McGee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, which depict Wonderland in an (even more) twisted state after terrible things have happened in Alice's real life.

The Creepy Tales series has child protagonists as well.

And to some extent, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons might count, although it's rarely ever talked about as a horror game. There are some pretty disturbing scenes in it though and the landscapes the children travel through seem to be at least in part allegorical or reflecting their inner state.

If we're even more lenient with the definition of "horror game", maybe RÖKI? Or Lost in Random? But that's stretching it a bit. I guess these are all more like darker fairy tales.

I loved Limbo. While the game is just shadowy silhouettes, I found it more disturbing than a lot of explicit horror games. So I suppose in this one instance, I thought "frail and vulnerable protagonist in a big scary world" was an effective gimmick.

Inside didn't strike the same chord with me. I especially didn't like the story, after what I suspected was confirmed (no spoilers). It's a perfectly fine game though, and everybody else loved it.

I liked Bulb Boy. It was cute and weird rather than genuinely scary.

Nothing else in the genre appealed to me. Other games in my collection with child protagonists tend to be significantly cheerier metroidvanias or platformers, like Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom and Out of Line.

In INMOST you play a child in some of the scenes (maybe the most scary ones).

I have to say that I like the experience of playing a child in horror games. In most cases it adds the feeling of being help- and powerless. Something that is much more scary than monsters or cheap jump scares.

Bulb Boy!!!!!
You can't go wrong with this title.

Little Nightmares was a game that featured a kid protagonist and had a creepy atmosphere. It was like the movie Spirited Away but with darker themes and creepier environments.

Spoiler Warning: Crow Country - I guess its a spoiler on itself to place a spoiler warning and talk about it on a thread with this name.

I think the only horror games I've played which had children as protagonists were:
Limbo, American McGee's Alice, Alice Madness Returns and Crow Country, though this one is kinda a spoiler...
People had recommended to me Little Nightmares 1 & 2.

Resident Evil games also had a section you played with a child, can't remember her name, but she was not the protagonist.

Having children as protagonists on horror games is a win-win situation in my view because they are always physically weaker than whatever monster/enemy may be present, so if 'the cause of horror' is well written within the story, developers can use the vulnerability of the player's character in many ways to cause terror, create drama or write tense gameplay scenes.

Little Nightmares seems to use this trope, but also plays with the idea of kids also being psychologically weaker to traumas and horror, which seems to work when writing a good horror story.

Crow Country is also clearly a good example of this, as it deals with physical weaknesses and psychological traumas the protagonist goes through, which starts the events of the game, even if you just truly learn about them minutes before the end. You can still understand whats really going on when paying good attention to the notes, books, and photos around the map, but you only have true confirmation of whats going on at the end.

Hello drxenija!

If you liked "Among the Sleep", then
Baby Blues Nightmares - Toddler Horror Game seems to be similar.
However, I do not have first hand experience on either of these two. Hello Ice_Mage!

I was disappointed by "Inside", as well. Maybe, the hype and praise it got, raised the bar too high.
But another GOG-forum-member recommended me Orphan, which I liked a lot more, than "Inside"!

And what aspects of "Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom" did you enjoy the most?
I prefer the more classic platformer with charming animation that is Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap, although its mechanics are definitely more archaic.

Kind regards,
foxgog

[Edit:]
I forgot to mention that my favorite among the games where you play a child might be Eric Chahi's "Heart of Darkness".
It even fits somehow into the category, depending on how you interpret the game's ending.

Do these count (since the protagonist (6+) is the baddie)?: "Lucius", "Lucius II: The Prophecy" and "Lucius III".

Edit: I guess, "Lucius Demake" then also counts.

And do Teenagers under 18 count as children?
If so:

- "DreadOut" (17)
- "Rule of Rose" (19, yet still "pre-teen" at the events depicted in the game)
- "Clock Tower" (14/15)
- "Project Zero", aka:"Fatal Frame" (17)
- "Corpse Party" (tbh: not quite sure about the protagonists ages. Could be anything between 14 and 18?)

There are some great point & clicks with kid protagonists, though I guess those are more dark(ish) fairy tales than horror, lika Anna's Quest and Night of the Rabbit. Roki, somewhat annoying controls aside, is fantastic for something like the first 2/3 of the game. Unfortunately the last act really drags, there are no longer any characters to interact with, the puzzles which were great before get obscure and annoying. It's still well worth buying at the current super discount, but for that last act just find yourself a walkthrough and get through it as fast as possible, you'll have way more fun than I did.

My Memory of Us, which I think is a real gem, sits in a weird place, where the game itself isn't particularly dark or scary n the surface, and yet it also absolutely is because of what it's really about. There's one particular moment in that game that I won't spoil, that to me really felt like one of the saddest and most nightmare-ish things I've experienced in a video game, but I guess it's very subjective.

Personally I don't much like horror games, but I have a great fondness for the "kids on bikes" genre of movies, all the Goonies, Monster Squad and Super 8 and the like, and there are some games that go for something similar. There's Oxenfree, but while it builds a good atmosphere I mostly didn't like the characters, and was somewhat confused by the results of my choices (and the choices are pretty much the whole point of the game. It's also a bit annoying that apparently I'm supposed to replay it multiple times for the "real" ending, and I certainly didn't feel like doing that.

Crossing Souls starts pretty good, I was enjoying it quite a bit, butafter a while I really didn't like the way the narrative went, and the way it messed up the gameplay by removing the characters from your roseter one by one.

Jenny leClue on the other hand is fantastic, I loved it and the only problem (unfortuantely a big one) is that it ends on a cliffhanger and the sequel is still MIA. If it wasn't for that cliffhanger it would be one of my absolute favourites. The characters are great, the mystery, the puzzles are fun the choices feel like they actually matter.

Happy Tree Friends had some games right?

I think no one mentioned The Walking Dead (Telltale series) yet. One of the main characters is the young girl Clementine.

I’m not into that, so I could be wrong, but I always thought of them as comedy gore, not horror. Like, they’re just trying to be funny with super gratuitous, over-the-top violence, and that’s about it.