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!
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice had such a vivid portrayal of auditory and visual hallucinations and the psychological aspects thereof, as well as being rooted in genuinely spooky themes. Playing it in the dark with headphones was a truly psychologically scary experience and it didn’t really rely on jumpscares for the scary factor. ( which to me is a huge plus )
Metro 2033 and Half-Life 2 lol, I cannot play horror games. I quit Metro, couldn’t help myself.
But at least I completed all HL games apart from Alyx. With all achievements on base HL2 and EP2.
Ravenholm was manageable if I play without sound 🤣 But there was a long tunnel section in EP1 that was very uncomfortable and dark, felt longer than Ravenholm.
I found 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors to be very unsettling. I played it in bed at night with headphones on and it totally sucked me in. I guess this is a different type of horror to many of the games suggested here, which I personally don’t find scary.
Ohh I’ve wanted to play the zero escape series at some point. I didn’t realize it could be unsettling! Cool I will put it on the list, thanks!
The first game is much creepier than the second, I think due to a combination of the character designs, the writing and the general plot. The second game feels more akin to Danganronpa, in that the characters and setting are a bit surreal. Because it was a 3DS game, it also uses cartoony 3D models that make everything a bit lighter and less gritty than the original game. I haven’t played the third one yet (still need to get around to 100% completing the second game).
I am not a fan of horror games all that much, and Half-Life Alyx is not one, but the horror elements are stronger than previous titles and I still haven’t finished the game because of that. The game is incredible, but I just can’t get past the scary parts.
“Hey there, Jeff” (0.0) that bit had me stuck for a month until I decided to push through it!
Silent Hill 2
Halo: Combat Evolved (the Flood levels are horror masterpieces)
At the time, PT was the scariest thing I’d ever played. Was super obsessed with that demo.
Will never get over silent hills cancelation
PT stands on its own in the horror video game genre IMO. Too many games fail to convey one of the elements of horror well, typically overusing shock and disgust as it’s hard to achieve psychological terror when your art medium has the potential for funny things to happen (like physics objects in amnesia deciding to fling themselves all over the room when you let go because they bounced wrong). Really interrupts the flow of the scared juice. The other half of horror games give you enough tools to completely defuse the horror after an initial few encounters (death stranding) or straight up don’t try to scare you situationally, just acting as combat action games with horror themes (later resident evils).
PT remakes for PC are in a good place finally, “P.T. emulation” being a bit closer than unreal PT to the source material as a project. How konami could possibly drop a project with star power like kojima+del toro is beyond me, especially considering reception to the demo was GREAT and it was slated to release while streamers playing horror games was still in vogue. Unbelievable fumbled bag lying there
PT is great. I wish it was still easily accessible.
That whole situation is such a shame. There was so much potential there!
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s requiem. It’s an older game, GameCube era. I don’t like horror games and this one isn’t true horror. There are some good jump scares and body horror though. I had to stop after a certain scene because of the jump scares. The sanity system is really great.
I’ve always heard about this game from time to time. It’s one I really want to try at some point. It sounds amazing!
I recommend it. Try to go in blind.
I don’t play horror games, Amnesia was too much for me. After that bit with the invisible creature in the flooded corridor, I uninstalled the thing and never touched it again. That was fifteen years ago
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.
cliched yes, but I will always remember how scared as hell I was playing Silent Hill for the first time in high school, when you go down that dutch angle alleyway and the evil toddlers stab you to death…
i couldnt play any more for a few days haha, it was a pretty stand out memory for scary game stuff. Its hard to state how unexpected it was at the time, I hadnt played any early horror games, and I dont know how many similar experiences there were at the time (year 2000ish) so it really was brutal and surprising
I’ve yet to play the first 3 silent hills. I feel like they’re the elephant in the room for me lol
Minecraft probably. I avoid legitimate horror games (and movies) and the fact that you don’t have saves can get a little stressful when you’re down in a cave, don’t know how to find your way back (and thus probably won’t find your body) and then basically get jumpscared by dangerous enemies or holes in the ground.
if you want to know how to get back, pick a side (i chose left) and always put torches on that side going down. to come back up, keep the torches on your right. 🔥
Doesn’t work that well when the way is constantly twisting and splitting. Cave layout can be extremely confusing.
Lol that’s true. Nothing like a creeper or two to sneak up behind you in the dark.
The original Resident Evil was pretty revolutionary and terrifying for me, but the 100% scariest I’ve played is the original Dead Space.
More recently, The Outlast Trials is really good, and I would HIGHLY recommend any of the Dark Pictures Anthology games, but my favorite is Man of Medan.
Dead space is great. I recently played the remake and thought they did a pretty good job! The anti grav sections were cool
I really loved it. But way too early i realized what was up. I remember reading about the gas leak incident in some comic i read when i was a kid in the 80s, and my mind made that connection rather early. I still enjoyed it throughly, and I’m always waiting for whatever Supermassive is up to next.
Alien: Isolation. That shit is unplayable it’s so scary.
When it came out, I saw the trailer and decided that it’s not for me. Way too scary. Then recently I watched a commented speed run and thought “Yep, I was right”.
It has a VR version and I’m pretty sure if I tried it I’d run into a wall in a panic a few times at least.
It was definitely intense, that’s for sure. The aliens AI is pretty cool. At release, it was very exciting to see how advanced it seemed.
Subnautica can straight up give you thlassophobia.
Absolutely! It was probably one of the scariest games I’ve played in recent memory. The dread it made me feel was unmatched compared to a lot of horror titles
the original resident evil. couldn’t even get through the first 15 minutes before i threw the controller across the room. i don’t play scary games anymore, but i love watching other people play!
silent hill was super fun to watch.
The friggin’ dogs in Resident Evil.
I have a kind of funny story about that. I was too young to be playing RE when it came out, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking it out of my dad’s collection of grownup games to try it anyway.
So there’s this well known jump scare, probably in the first fifteen minutes as you say where you’re running down a hallway and suddenly some dogs jump through these glass windows. I screamed, fumbled the controller, and was eaten by dogs. Might have been the first jump scare of my life.
So I hadn’t hit a save point, so you have to start the game over. So I decide to just leave the mansion through the front door instead of going out that way. And you get a cutscene where a dog jumps through the door and you have to wrestle it away.
I still haven’t played the game since.
But my wife and I are a big fan of the series, so eventually we decided to marathon them on the condition that she plays RE1. She’s playing the remake and goes into the room where the dogs jump through the windows and I’m holding my breath waiting for it to happen. Only it doesn’t.
So I’m a little disappointed, but I figure it’s a remake so maybe they’re switching things up a bit and going to put the jump scare somewhere else in the mansion.
Sooner or later you have to backtrack through that corridor though, and on like the third time going through this “safe” corridor the dogs jump through the window. She screams, fumbles the controller, and is eaten by dogs.
Seven-year-old me was vindicated that my adult wife also got punked and I’m not alone.