Okay, so start with The Secret History. Students at an elite college who pretty much form their own secret society in service to a secret that must be kept at all costs. In this case, they're playing a game: a game in which the losers of each round need to perform consequences. The consequences range from minor embarrassments to socially and/or professionally ruining, but each consequence is targeted to mortify that particular person: deepest insecurities, biggest fears, most severe humiliations. Each of the six players are free to quit any time--but if they quit while they owe consequences, they forfeit their thousand-pound deposit, and any chance of winning the 10,000 pound prize. Each game is monitored by a member of Game Soc: the rich kids who put up the prize money as part of their own unidentified game. We--the reader--get the story as one of the players has written it down, but fourteen years have passed and he's in a pretty bad way. 
 At no point do you NOT know that this game is not going to end well. That nothing is going to end well. That these six friends are unlikely to remain friends if they all play this game. That guilt weighs heavily on Jolyon, and has damaged him in myriad ways. 
 Dark and compelling, creepy in a way that any extended look at the ways people hurt each other will be.