I feel like I’ve played a good amount of horror titles, and I find I don’t really get scared much anymore.

What are some titles that scared you the most? I would love to hear your recommendations!

  • The first Layers of Fear was pretty spooky, very PT inspired. The second one was decent too, but not as scary.

    Outlast is the standard I hold walking sim horror games to. I can speedrun through it now since I’ve played it so much, but the first few times were terrifying.

    Some people have mentioned Amnesia, so I’ll throw in the recent iteration with Amnesia: The Bunker. It’s like Alien: Isolation in a WW1 setting.

    Speaking of which, Alien: Isolation is probably no. 1 for me. Between the alien, the androids, and even other people, that game is very stress inducing.

    • I really liked Outlast when it first released. Outlast 2 was pretty good as well. I think the tricky part is if you die or mess up too many times in horror games, the fear gets dulled.

      I don’t recall layers of fear creeping me out much, but I haven’t tried the second yet. Definitely worth a shot

      I find Amnesia titles don’t do it for me anymore. I think maybe I played too much and got too familiar with how the AI works. I’ve peeled back the curtain, so to speak and ruined them for myself, aha.

      I really liked alien isolation when it first came out. I thought it was a very cool take on horror. The AI seemed super impressive

      • If it’s any consolation, Amnesia: The Bunker has a different AI than the previous iterations. I mentioned it’s like Alien: Isolation, and the monster works very similarly, like reacting to how much noise you make and stalking which parts of the bunker you’re in. Most items with every run are also randomized, so you can’t memorize where to pick up supplies. (You can also customize the difficulty, which I thought was really cool.) But if you’ve already tried it, then my point is moot lol.

        • Yeah, I thought it was pretty okay! I ended up getting about halfway through, I think? I got caught by the monster a couple of times when he randomly decided to pop up, and I somewhat shifted from “this is spooky” to “I’m just avoiding this road block”

          It’s super tricky because I don’t know how to keep myself immersed in the experience for a lot of these titles.

          I did enjoy the fact that they tried something new with the bunker. I thought it was probably the closest I got to being scared since the Dark Descent, so I think that says something for sure.

          I think I’ve been exposed to too much horror, which might have dulled the experience somewhat. I really enjoy hearing about what/why people enjoyed horror games, so I don’t think your point was moot! I think horror is a very unique genre that pushes game design to its extremes in a lot of ways.