The best horror games to play in 2024

Partway between a point-and-click adventure and an idle game, The Longing is a soulful, often darkly comedic reflection on solitude, patience, and really, life itself. You play as a small, sooty-looking servant called the Shade, who serves a titanic king, alone and deep underground. As the king enters an uninterruptible sleep, he commands you to wake him in 400 days, at which point he will end all fear and longing in the world. A timer then appears at the top of the screen, and the 400 days start to elapse in real time, even when the game is closed.

What happens from there is up to you. You can wait the actual year-plus and see what happens. You can defy your orders and seek the outside world. You can simply exist somewhere in between, reading public-domain books, decorating your underground home, exploring the caverns, taking your time. No matter what, the clock keeps ticking, each second its own decision. To call The Longing an acquired taste would be an understatement: It is glacially slow by design, with no enemies to fight or dense gameplay systems to sink into. But few games are as provocative or singularly focused as a result. It’s the kind of project that makes you wonder why more video games aren’t so audacious. — Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter

INDIKA is a visceral game. It’s a (mostly) third-person narrative adventure set in an alternative 19th century Russia, and it stars an ostracized nun, Indika, who has the devil’s voice in her head. From this foundation, the game offers a flurry of whimsical absurdity, religious criticism and raw human suffering, always with a wink and a nod.

The entire game is underpinned by a delirious tension between levity and agony, and the developers at Odd Meter got the balance just right. Indika’s reality is a frozen hellscape filled with pain and isolation, but she also encounters laugh-out-loud moments that make the experience feel more like a rom-com than a psychodrama about a sad nun. The game also slips into a lighter visual style as it delves into Indika’s past, mining memories out of pixelated platformers in sun-drenched environments.

INDIKA is a masterful example of maturity in video games. That said, it includes scenes of sexual violence — though they’re handled delicately and don’t feel exploitative. INDIKA thrives in the messy area between pleasure and discomfort, and it’s worth a play for anyone seeking something completely original. — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a third-person noir detective game set in a haunted hotel with impossible architecture and a gruesome history. Its hallways are dense with logic-melting puzzles about magicians, mazes, astrology, filmmaking, mausoleums and physics, and it isn’t even clear why the protagonist is there in the first place. With artifacts from the 1800s, set pieces from the 1960s and technology out of the 2010s, it’s barely clear when she’s there. Lack of direction is a key tenet of the game, resulting in a sense of solitude that’s deliciously unsettling.

It’s also empowering. The hotel in Lorelei is a playground of secrets with no set path for players, and there’s a rich density of riddles and lore to untangle in every scene. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is horrific and emotionally powerful, and its visual vibe is “David Lynch does Kentucky Route Zero.” The entire thing is deeply, endlessly satisfying as a puzzle-solving experience. For lovers of riddles and psychological terror, this is one of the best games of the generation. — J.C.

The Outlast Trials draws from dark and true stories of government-backed inhumanity, religious manipulation and capitalistic greed in the 20th century. Trials is a cooperative, four-person horror experience where players are trapped in a secret facility run by the Murkoff Corporation. The goal is to graduate therapy (with your friends), complete objectives and survive monstrous villains in various maps, including an orphanage, courthouse, police station and toy factory. As in the original Outlast titles, gameplay mainly involves running and hiding from prowling, deranged sadists, though this time you’re not alone. Trials is a living game and its developer, Red Barrels, is churning out new content on a regular basis.

The entire Outlast universe is worth exploring, and most of it can be tackled solo. The original Outlast and its Whistleblower DLC are modern horror classics, introducing the series’ iconic night vision mechanic and injecting players with a deep sense of helplessness while they try to escape the monsters of Mount Massive Asylum. Outlast 2 takes the terror to the Arizona desert, where a doomsday cult is on a murder and torture spree. These original games are first-person, single-player experiences fraught with tension and battery hunting, and they’re all essential plays for horror-game fans. — J.C.

Kentucky Route Zero is a game vaguely about a road trip through the heart of Americana — not America, but the very idea of the United States. It’s more of an interactive art installment than a familiar adventure or exploration game, with slender characters traveling through a shadowy world of magical realism. It’s mysterious and slightly dangerous, and it rewards gentle curiosity with heartfelt human stories. It’s odd. Mostly, though, it’s beautiful.

Kentucky Route Zero was once a game trapped in purgatory. Created by members of an art collective, it rolled out over the course of nine years, revealed in 2011 and its final installment landing in 2020. The original release cadence was fitting for the game itself — disjointed yet perfectly seamless — but players today have the unique pleasure of being able to devour it all at once, closing the loop in one fell swoop. The thing is, Kentucky Route Zero is the kind of game that never really ends. It lives on in the subconscious in little snippets of music, monochromatic vignettes and haunting dialogue, and a feeling of bittersweet nostalgia that never truly dissipates once you’ve hit play. — J.C.

Hellblade II is more of an extended, extremely anxious and violent vibe than a traditional adventure game. Its combat is OK, its puzzles verge on tedious and it’s emotionally one-dimensional — but as an interactive brutality visualizer, Hellblade II is outstanding. Senua fights until her pores ooze blood, screaming through each swing of her sword as whispers fill her head, cuing her when to strike and telling her to ignore the pain. Every fight is close-up and one-on-one, warriors waiting in a circle of fog for their turn to rush in, punch her in the face and slice her to pieces. The sounds of flesh smacking against flesh join the whispers and the screen splatters red when Senua is hit. Hellblade II revels in physical violence.

And here’s the thing — it is absolutely beautiful.

Hellblade II is a third-person narrative adventure set in Iceland in the 10th century, and it’s the sequel to Ninja Theory’s 2017 game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Senua is a young warrior who hears a cacophony of disembodied voices in her mind, judging her every move. The whispers are a critical and permanent part of Senua’s psyche — a lesson she learned in the first game, after realizing the depths of her father’s abuse when she was a child. In Hellblade II, Senua is figuring out how to live outside of her father’s influence, but his voice still rumbles in her head at inopportune times, drowning out the softer whispers that she’s come to view as her allies. Hellblade II is the perfect game for a quiet afternoon when you’re craving a dark sensory overload. — J.C.

In Return of the Obra Dinn, you’re put aboard a ship, alone. There is, however, a corpse near the captain’s cabin. As you track the deceased’s final footsteps, leading to yet more gruesome ends, you need to figure out what happened. Who killed who? And who is still alive?

Return of the Obra Dinn is an unforgettable ghost-story-slash-murder-mystery with a distinctive old-school graphical style. It’s unlike any game we’ve played in a long while, with a low-key musical score and a style of puzzle solving that’s like unraveling one extended, satisfying, grisly riddle. Special mention to the sound effect that kicks in every time you solve the fates of three of the crew. Goosebumps. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief

Picture this: It’s the 1990s and you’ve just started a new job as a telephone operator answering calls about mysterious home pests and hazards. You’re tasked with properly diagnosing each issue and providing remedies to the concerned callers. Easy, right? Well, what if some of the problems were caused by poltergeists, boggarts, goblins and something called “bed teeth?” And what if a misdiagnosis could result in an entire family being drained of life by otherworldly forces? Yeah, that’s more like it.

Home Safety Hotline provides players with a ’90s computer interface and a growing list of house hazards, some standard and some paranormal, and the goal is to accurately pinpoint the pests and provide remedies to a string of callers. Your boss is on your ass the entire time and computer glitches remove your access to hazard descriptions at random intervals, which turns this into a game of identification, memorization and gut feelings. It gets pretty tricky.

Home Safety Hotline is the perfect game to play at your desk, on the PC, so you can let the retro interface fully engulf your senses. — J.C.

Resident Evil Village is delightful. It’s a gothic fairy tale masquerading as a survival-horror game, and while this represents a fresh vibe for the franchise, it’s not an unwelcome evolution. The characters and enemies in Village are full of life — even when they’re decidedly undead — and Capcom has put a delicious twist on the idea of vampires, werewolves, sea creatures, giants and creepy dolls. The game retains its horror, puzzle and action roots, and it has Umbrella Corporation’s fingerprints all over it. It simply feels like developers had fun with this one, and so will you.

And, yes, this is the one with the tall vampire lady. — J.C.

In Still Wakes the Deep, horror comes in multiple forms. Eldritch creatures stalk the Beira D oil rig on thin, too-long limbs that burst from their bodies like snapping bungee cords. Human-sized pustules and bloody ribbons grow along the corridors, emitting a sickly cosmic glow. The North Sea is an unrelenting threat, wailing beneath every step. And then there’s the rig itself, a maze-like industrial platform supported by slender tension legs in the middle of a raging ocean, groaning as it’s ripped apart from the inside.

Gameplay in Still Wakes the Deep is traditional first-person horror fare, executed with elegance and expertise by The Chinese Room. Its action involves leaping across broken platforms, balancing on ledges, running down corridors, climbing ladders, swimming through claustrophobic holes, and hiding from monsters in vents and lockers. There are no guns on the Beira D, and the protagonist has just a screwdriver to help him break open locks and metal panels, placing the focus on pure survival rather than combat. The game is fully voice acted and its crew members — most of them Scottish — are incredibly charming, which only makes the carnage more disturbing once the monsters board the rig.

Still Wakes the Deep is an instant horror classic. It’s filled with heart-pounding terror and laugh-out-loud dialogue, and it all takes place in a setting that’s rarely explored in interactive media. Amid the sneaking, swimming, running and climbing, Still Wakes the Deep manages to tell a heartfelt story about relationships and sacrifice. — J.C.

The Dead Space remake feels like a warm, juicy hug from a murderous necromorph, and we mean that in the best way possible. The 2023 version of Dead Space spit-shines the mechanics that made the original game so magically horrific back in 2008, and it doesn’t add any unnecessary, modern bloat. The remake features full voice acting, new puzzles and expanded storylines, and it introduces a zero-gravity ability that allows the protagonist, Isaac Clarke, to fly through sections of the game in an ultra-satisfying way.

None of these additions outshine the game’s core loop: stasis, shoot, stomp. Isaac gains the ability to temporarily freeze enemies and he picks up a variety of weapons, but he never feels overpowered; he’s always in danger. Mutilated corpse monsters appear suddenly in the cramped corridors of the space station, charging at Isaac from the shadows, limbs akimbo and begging to be shot off. The first game of Dead Space popularized the idea that headshots don’t matter and the remake stays true to this ethos – yet its combat rhythm still feels fresh.

The 2023 version of Dead Space proves that innovative game design is timeless (and so are plasma cutters). — J.C.

The Fabulous Fear Machine is a cheeky, real-time strategy game about using terror to gain ultimate power. It’s a heady topic presented in a pulp-horror style, with a magical fortune-telling automaton, exaggerated stakes and dramatic noir dialogue softening the narrative’s serious edge. Think Tales from the Crypt, but with propaganda and disinformation as the target subject.

Gameplay-wise, it’s a blend of Plague Inc. and Cultist Simulator — each round is set on a bright world map, zoomed in to the appropriate cluster of countries. After planting a seed of terror in one spot, players help it spread by dispatching agents to major cities, collecting information, and then dropping Legends cards there, cultivating dark myths and conspiracy theories based on local beliefs. Spreading chaos and terror — and maybe making some money along the way — is the goal.

It’s kitsch, it’s camp, and at times it makes you pause and say, huh. Put simply, it’s fabulous. — J.C.

Doki Doki Literature Club! looks like any other high-school dating sim, with your main character wooing the girl of his choice from among three options: the cheerful best friend, the quiet geeky lady and the nasty but secretly nice freshman. Your courtship is conducted by writing poems, angling your word choices toward the girl you hope to end up with. It seems straightforward — but when the girls start providing their own works of poetry, the cracks start to show. They’re weird. They’re unsettling. And the game only gets more distressing — like, deeply, soul-shatteringly disturbing — from there.

In visual novels, you’re supposed to make choices and have those decisions matter. Sometimes you’re wrong and you fail, but you try again. In Doki Doki Literature Club!, the choices are always wrong. You’re always going to fail. The game will emotionally abuse you as long as you continue to play. It will even break down the fourth wall to do it, something that made me scream, even though I knew the entire time it was just a game. — Kris Holt, Contributing Reporter

POOLS is the physical manifestation of the word “oppressive.” It’s less of a game and more of an interactive experience where every room and every turn is designed to increase your feelings of discomfort — even though it’s really just a bunch of pools. Gameplay involves walking through a cavernous, M.C. Escher-esque building of hyper-realistic wet rooms, traveling down dark corridors and wading through waters of various depths. It might sound lame, but this game is incredibly effective at producing feelings of claustrophobia and mortal peril. It’s also strangely gorgeous.

POOLS is a beautiful and unsettling immersive experience. It feels like something that was plucked directly out of my nightmares — and maybe yours, too. — J.C.

In Crow Country, you play as Mara Forest, who must painstakingly make her way through an abandoned amusement park in the year 1990 to find its elusive and corrupt owner, Edward Crow. Resources, like ammo and health kits, must be scavenged. Skinless monstrosities may emerge from the shadows at any turn to grab at you and puzzles of varying complexity promise to stall your progress. There is an ensemble of characters who — including the protagonist — each seem to have questionable motives.

There’s no question about Crow Country’s PlayStation 1 influences, which its creators at SFB Games have been upfront about: It is very intentionally the creepy-cute child of Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Final Fantasy VII. The game just about checks all the boxes for survival horror, but it takes a gentler approach to the genre, making it feel more like a test of mental endurance against some all-consuming bleakness than a constant fight for your life. — Cheyenne MacDonald, Weekend Editor

At its core, Inscryption is a roguelike deck-builder that’s dripping with horror. You’ll sacrifice certain animal-based cards to play more powerful ones against your opponent, and there are secrets to uncover in the room outside of the card game itself. There’s so much more to it than that, though this is definitely one of those games where the less you know about it going in, the better. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say things get pretty strange. Inscryption will absolutely mess with your expectations. — K.H.