Stories with dynamic characters

So for me I always found that the better stories where the ones about the people and made the people the center point of horror. Borasca and LR game are arguably not as scary as Pen Pal but I don't enjoy pen pal as much because I never got invested in MC and Josh the way I did Kyle, Kimber, and Sam. So my question is are there any more stories which focus more on world building and making us fall in love with the characters rather than pure horror.