Cry of Fear follows the story of Simon Henriksson, a 19-year-old Swedish male suffering from depression and anxiety, exploring the city of Stockholm.

Combining elements of survival horror and first-person shooter mechanics, Cry of Fear challenges players to navigate through a haunting urban environment filled with monsters and unsettling occurrences.

[2] In Cry of Fear, the player controls Simon Henriksson, a 19‑year‑old who wakes up in an alley in Stockholm, Sweden shortly after being hit by a car.

Simon begins with a switchblade and mobile phone, and can obtain a variety of melee weapons, firearms, light sources, and various other useful items.

[4] Some days before Cry of Fear's anniversary, Valve released a Half-Life update for Linux compatibility, making changes in the folders and engine.

[6][7] The story begins in the dark and gloomy city of Stockholm, with the protagonist Simon waking up in an alley after a car strikes him as he is trying to help an injured man.

Progressing further, as the apartment building slowly grows more run-down (and eventually covered in blood), a chainsaw-wielding monster attacks him and decapitates itself upon defeat, prompting Simon to vomit and pass out.

Simon enters the previously chained-up apartment and, after a long hallway where he hears a doctor describing an encounter with his patient and being attacked yet again, finds the fuses.

Changing the renderer allowed the developers to bypass some older limits and add new engine effects such as texture bump mapping, specular reflection and 3D skyboxes.

[10] Team Psykskallar (Swedish for "psych heads"[11]) consisted of Andreas "ruMpel" Rönnberg (level designer, music, and team leader), James "Minuit" Marchant (programmer, modeler, animator, and team leader), Stig "DragonNOR" Sydtangen (QA tester and voice of Simon),[9] Lasse "BerZerk" Holmen (QA tester and voice of the Doctor), Jordy "Sporkeh" Boerema (weapons animator and modeler),[8] and Aina Hatlevik (voice of Sophie).

The concept for Cry of Fear started when Rönnberg, who was going through a difficult time in his life, wanted to make "something damn sick and scary" and asked his friend Marchant to join him.

Eric Sapp of IGN called the game "terrifying" and praised the addition of an inventory system with limited space similar to Resident Evil series for the decision making aspect.

[5] Antony Wright of SUPERJUMP named Cry of Fear "arguably the most disturbing and depraved horror title that I’ve ever played through" while also commending the game for sympathetically handling mature topics.

[17] Dennis Moiseyev and Destry Stutesman of The Gamer positively compared Cry of Fear to the Silent Hill series through its use of nightmare sequences, while employing a first-person perspective.

[18] Luke Plunkett of Kotaku opined that while the old engine made the game "a little janky" at times, the graphics and music in Cry of Fear were "genuinely tense".

[19] A review on Jeuxvideo.com praised the innovations to the GoldSrc engine, calling the improved the graphics and lighting in Cry of Fear unrecognized to Half-Life.

A remake was in development by Team Psykskallar, but production time and cost surpassed the original game and the project was abandoned.