Horror games, much like their movie counterparts, have a strange allure that entices into keep watching a certain scene unfold, knowing too well something really scary will come around soon enough and force us to make a run for our drawers for a change of underwear.
But much like there are good and bad scary movies, there is a certain science for scary gaming. A development studio that masters the art of storytelling to the point where mere text can put you on edge is certainly something to praise highly about, but when that fails, people tend to resort to cheap tricks, like jump scares and gratuitous gore.
Not these babies: join us as we put on our big boy pants and brave the virtual hallways and sceneries of their incredibly intelligent horror games. Make sure to read with your lights on…
Table of Contents: “Shhh… Did you hear that?”
- Our main picks
- Honorable mentions
- Final Thoughts: “Watch out. The gap in the door… it’s a separate reality. The only me is me”
Our main picks
Yup. Horror games from large studios are dime a dozen these days, but not many of them turn out great. These entries, however, manage to mix all the hallmarks of a good, scary medium, tugging at your fear bones and making you cold sweat at the slightest provocation. The psychological dread and the sense of uneasiness are a constant, and you will think about them long after you set down the controller
Alan Wake 2
October 2023 | Remedy Entertainment
This survival horror game weaves a complex and disturbing narrative, blending elements of investigation with a dense atmosphere. And from start, when you play as an unknown, naked male, confusingly running around narrow woodlands, to the finish, when you…well, you’ll see… The thing is, Alan Wake helped usher in an era of horror games that challenge you with intelligence, and Allan Wake 2 jacked all that up to 11.
Alien: Isolation
October 2014 | Creative Assembly
Since its inception as a movie in the 80s, the Alien franchise always had us thinking: “What if it was me there, with this big, heady, toothy, spear-tailed monster stalking every corner of a space ship I cannot leave?” Alien: Isolation came around to answer that doubt and, well, thankfully, the Xenomorph is not a real being (r…right??).
There’s something about being in a constant state of vulnerability against this thing, that even though this game has a bunch of jump-scare moments, they’re just the cherry on top of a very terrifying cake, making the oppressive atmosphere of the Sevastopol station, where the game takes place, feel like one, long moment of tension.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
September 2010 | Frictional Games
There’s no easy way to say this: you cannot defend yourself. In any way an enemy gets to you, that’s it. And trust us when we tell you this: this is the easy part. You see, Amnesia comes with the “Sanity” gameplay mechanic, in which the protagonists slowly lose their grip on reality and start feeling very horrific effects, like hallucinating enemies that may or may not be there, for instance. Thing is, the sanity meter is so fickle that staying in the dark too long or looking at an enemy will drain it.
Combine this with an overall glooming, night time setting and almost no light source (which make it easier for enemies to spot you by the way), and Amnesia: The Dark Descent quickly becomes a downright unsettling experience.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
November 2003 | Tecmo
If Amnesia forced you to flee and hide, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly did the opposite, making you face enemies head on…with a camera. Yup, your only means of defense is to point a camera at ghosts and apparitions to defeat them.
The eerie atmosphere of this classic Japanese horror sees you taking on monsters based on Asian folklore—and if you know Japan, then you’re aware of how…unsettling some of those things can be. Oh, and there is no “good” ending on this. As a lesson about sacrifice, even the best finishing sequence sees you give something up.
Observer
August 2017 | Bloober Team
While some gamers only came to known Bloober team recently (due to the following entry), the Polish studio has a grand resume on psychological horror games—and 2017’s Observer is one of the company’s major productions: A cyberpunk horror experience, this title delves into disturbed minds and digital nightmares, building its atmosphere with intense dystopia and paranoia.
Visually speaking, Observer brings a different take to the horror genre, focusing on hi-tech environments and a premise that leans a little bit on the growing scare rather than sudden jumps, and most of its uneasy feelings come from Bloober’s excellent writing.A convoluted story about a private police corporation able to hack citizens minds in a dystopian future version of Krakow, Poland wouldn’t be the most scary premise to think about, but Observer belongs on a category of horror games that make you see it to believe it.
And trust us, you will.
Silent Hill 2
September 2001 / October 2024 | Team Silent / Bloober Team
Widely considered the pinnacle of psychological horror, Silent Hill 2 features a profound narrative, rich symbolism, and an atmosphere of despair that lingers in your memory. The 2024 remake managed to preserve this essence with updated visuals and gameplay. We’ve talked about this in another article we ran a while ago, when we told you about a certain body in a car, but that’s just the beginning.
Not that we would spoil the experience for you, but bear in mind: Silent Hill 2 was the first to introduce the now world famous Pyramid Head. And the memento where he and your character get acquainted is, to this day, just…wow.
SOMA
September 2015 | Frictional Games
Yup, The Dark Descent’s team at Frictional Games take another swing at you, this time transporting you to SOMA, a futuristic world where, well, there is no world, humanity is extinct and you, as a biomutant of sorts (we are skirting widely to avoid spoilers here), needs to make sure that mankind’s sole remnant—a black box with several human minds were uploaded—makes its way to space.
As is the case with Amnesia, SOMA does not allow you to fight back, meaning you can only outrun or hide from enemy encounters. While there is no Sanity Meter to contend with, the environment still looks cramped, giving you a mild perception of claustrophobia. As the story and character development progresses, you end up encountering more and more difficulties, as the bittersweet forms of how humanity ceased to be starts creeping on you with the realization that you are alone, regardless of what you do. That, and the enemy encounters have their capacity to scare you from inside out.
Honorable Mentions
We often cherish independent games and concept projects for their creative freedom: unlike AAA games and their constraints, these titles are designed to explore complex concepts and deep writing, making them unique in their ability to shock you.
So here’s to all these beautiful jewels of the horror games genre:
P.T.
August 2014 | Kojima Productions (under the pseudonym “7780s Studio”)
Oh yeah, we didn’t forget about these. What does a demo game that only has one, ever-changing scene (a house with strangely narrow corridors and a handful of rooms) have to say for itself under the “scary gaming” department?
A lot, that’s what. Though originally meant to be a Silent Hill game made by none other than Hideo Kojima, P.T. quickly became huge in its own regard, perfectly contextualizing every horror mechanic known to man into one neat, incredible fearsome box. Oh, and after some very invested gamers debugged the whole thing and saw in its code that a certain antagonist was behind you all the time, it made the whole thing and even weirder, mind bending terror.
Just take a look at Fil’s article on this and you’ll understand…
Among Ashes
December 2024 (PC) / June 2025 (Xbox) | Rat Cliff Games
Not many games out there can play with meta concepts as well as Among Ashes. In this “game-within-a-game” scenario, you’re never sure if it’s your PC glitching, or if it’s the game’s intention to show you several bugs that are callbacks to the internet culture of the late 90s (the Y2K bug, spooky creepypasta forums and less than optimized messaging apps). You face monsters within the game’s game, only to see it bugging, all the while learning that not only it is cursed, but why and how it is cursed. Certainly, a key addition to your horror games collection.
Layers of Fear (remake of 2023)
June 2023 | Bloober Team
Bloober Team is back into our list with another interesting concept: a psychological horror driven by paranoia. Layers of Fear brings a story that, as you’ll see when it unfolds in front of you, any man can relate to: a deranged, fallen out of grace painter wishes to finish his masterpiece, and to do so, he must travel to his own mansion’s—now in a decrepit state—corridors in search of appropriate items. As you travel through, you’re let in on how his life got to that point, what happened to his wife and daughter, and how the impact of losing everything affects your life and mental health.
Layers of Fear, essentially, brings the concept of a man hitting rock bottom, thinking “how can this get any worse” and… Well, showing you exactly how worse it can get. Throughout the game, familiar hallways suddenly distort and constrict, things that you were sure were there no longer are, as changes in small details start to amount, slowly making you lose sense of self, awareness and logic. Is this a prank the developers are playing with you? Is this what happens to a person who’s seen the world escape through their fingers and now fights desperately to have it back? You can only know if you play it.
MADiSON
July 2022 | Bloodious Games
When P.T. was discontinued by Konami, it left a void within the horror games branch of the industry. Gamers saw what a truly unnerving, psychological thriller looked like, and craved for it.
Enter MADiSON, an indie title from Argentina-based Bloodious Games. Compared to its spiritual predecessor and inspiration, this game has the unique capacity of crafting an atmosphere of dread and mystery, and as first-person horror go, this story of a demonic possession is truly frightening, with complex puzzles that add more details to its excellent storytelling boosting an already menacing aura to levels that will leave you uncomfortable for weeks after finishing it.
The Mortuary Assistant
August 2022 | DarkStone Digital
Horror movies that are set in a morgue are nothing new—any Final Destination has at least one scene in one—but The Mortuary Assistant takes the lead on this by being set entirely on, well, the titular mortuary. Being surrounded by dead bodies is unsettling enough, but of course you’ll come face to face with supernatural entities—one of which, by the way, is sloooowly taking possession of your own body.
This game mixes familiar mechanics from several other titles, like Five Nights at Freddy’s and the aforementioned Dark Descent, for instance. Progressing through a first-person point of view, it also boasts sanity-like mechanics that might make you see things that are not there and… Oh, the corpses of the mortuary are possessed as well.
The horror comes from procedural situations, constant uncertainty, and the pervasive feeling of being watched, which is a proper combination for any scary media. Oh, right: The Mortuary Assistant is supposedly getting the movie treatment, although information on the project is scarce.
Luto
July 2025 | Broken Bird Games
Another P.T.-inspired project, Luto is the newest addition to the horror games genre: it just came out—July 22, precisely—the game is a first-person psychological trauma based game where you spent a lot of time exploring several haunted, cramped, narrow environments where every corner might have something your mind may not be ready to face.
“Luto”, in Portuguese and Spanish, means “grief” or “mourning”,so you can expect the story to go for elements like trauma, devastating losses and emotional damage, promising an agonizing experience of what is or is not real.
Final Thoughts: “Watch out. The gap in the door… it’s a separate reality. The only me is me”
As horror games go, this industry has seen a lot of them over the decades: from more action packed titles like Resident Evil to more psychologically challenging projects like Silent Hill, there is a bit of scary gaming stuff for every taste out there.
Because of that, we’re bound to have some games left out of our list. So why don’t you tell us your favorite scary game and why in the comments?
