Been playing the "safe" version of Soma
I recently started playing Soma, by Frictional. I tried once, when it came out, and was completely unable to make any progress at all. I'm not a huge horror game player and I find jumpscares physically uncomfortable. So now I'm playing the "safe" mode!
I remember being told multiple times, by different people, that Soma had "a developer patch which removed the monsters." When I picked "Safe" mode, I expected that it would be, basically, that - a version of the game with no monsters. But the mode description in-game makes it very clear that it still does, actually, have monsters. They are just less aggressive.
Then I played the actual game, and boy howdy, does Safe Mode still have monsters! Safe mode still preserves most of the game's scares - including some jumpscares, performed in some cases by monsters. Puzzles about evading monsters are still puzzles, with the monster portion of the puzzle intact. They're still patrolling, making creepy noises, etc. The one thing they don't easily do is kill you.
The Frictional update which added Safe Mode was based on this mod, "Wuss Mode," which was wildly popular. Frictional's blog post about why they chose to add Safe Mode and what they thought of the mod is still readable here.
This obviously depends on what scares you, but the short answer is: yes, the game is still a horror game. However, since you can explore without a constant fear of failure, you will no longer have that type of tension. For people who aren’t great at handling that aspect of horror gameplay, their journey through SOMA will be a lot easier in Safe Mode.
About the puzzles:
All of the puzzles, events, and so forth are still there. The big difference is that you’ll no longer have to sneak past enemies. You don’t need stealth in order to complete the game. Monsters might sound and act more threatening if they spot you, so there is still an incentive to being careful, but it’s no longer mandatory to keep hidden. This will also allow you to explore some of environments more carefully.
What this post doesn't make completely clear is that some monsters do actually still chase you. I highly recommend this Reddit post detailing the exact behavior of each monster in Safe Mode.
I found all this very interesting, because I'm not sure it's making the game THAT much easier for me to play. I suppose what I'm realizing about the game is that "fear of failure" actually isn't the thing that makes me stop playing horror games. Knowing that the monsters generally can't or won't kill me doesn't make me more eager to rush down a darkened hallway. The jumpscares are still pretty unpleasant for me!
I'm not a massive horror fan - I only really got into horror movies about a decade ago, when I started watching "psychological" horror movies with less gore and less sustained terror. I find the anticipation of a shock pretty unpleasant. I rarely play horror games and don't particularly enjoy most of them. When I first got to Ravenholm in Half Life 2, I quit playing the game for an entire year. I eventually just forced myself to play it in the sunniest possible room on the shittiest possible laptop to get enough distance between myself and the material. I'm not sure that the fear of failure was ever really part of what I was scared of in horror games at all!
That said, it definitely has some psychological impact on me to know that I "can't die" in a monster encounter in this game. I still haven't quite sussed out what the extent of that impact is. I have been able to force myself to play a lot more of this game with Safe Mode turned on than I was able to without it. But I'm still stopping sessions short, pausing the game and walking away, etc. during all the moments I usually would.
I'm really enjoying it! But it's possible that I simply hate jumpscares more than anything... and Safe Mode does retain some of these!