Left to Survive

While we’ve largely avoided talking about zombie games in this article, because there are so many of them, they deserve their own separate article (and, indeed, we have written one), but we thought we’d include one for good measure – after all, to many people, a zombie apocalypse is pretty much the most terrifying thing of all.

The game we’ve chosen to represent the genre is Left to Survive. This free to play game that offers a fair bit of variety in its gameplay. On the one hand, there are the on-rails shooter levels where you come up against the zombies in various abandoned urban locations, then there’s also the base-building side of things, where the resources you gather are used to cultivate your own settlement of survivors, and if you want to challenge other players, there’s even a PVP mode.

Phasmophobia

Phasmophobia has climbed rapidly in popularity since its Early Access release, growing beyond a cult following and showing no signs of slowing down, so what makes it so good?

Although Phasmophobia is primarily a horror game, you could look at it as a co-op detective game as you and up to three other investigators explore a haunted location in an effort to deduce what type of ghost is spooking out the premises before reporting back. It requires teamwork, your best detective hat, and steady nerves to navigate the dark, tight corridors and eerily quiet rooms.

Using equipment, such as Ouija boards, a spirit box, a crucifix, and smudge sticks – you and your team need to investigate the haunting and complete tasks such as taking a picture of dirty water, or asking the ghost questions. Be careful, though, all your prying will likely upset the ghost, and you don’t want to be around when it starts hunting.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus is a number of games packed into one inviting post-apocalyptic slice of Russia: it’s a story-focused family drama as much as it is a Wolfenstein-esque, heavy metal-scored FPS. However, there are plenty of spine-tingling horror game sequences creeping en route to the climactic Metro Exodus ending.

4A Games’ irradiated outing allows you to choose whether you want Arty om’s adventure to be a guns-blazing assault or a stealthy affair shrouded in darkness thanks to the game’s day/night mechanic. But, if you choose to sleep through the daylight hours to creep up on your opponents in pitch darkness, then expect a much scarier experience. Human enemies might be on the back foot, but the chill of a howling watchman or the charge of a Hum animal is excruciatingly unsettling.

Yet, as we pointed out in our Metro Exodus PC review, this is a game that is at its most terrifying when it changes the rules. Early stages of the game teach you to extinguish light and master the shadows. Then, in the spider-infested bunkers beneath the Caspian Sea, it becomes your weapon. Your arachnid foes are fatally vulnerable to light, so they skulk about in any dimly-lit crevice they can find. As their disgusting, hairy legs scrabble madly against the walls, it becomes apparent that, in Metro Exodus, you can never let your guard down.

Resident Evil Village

It never gets any easier for Resident Evil Village’s main protagonist, Ethan Winters. We first meet Ethan in Resident Evil 7, when his long-lost wife mysteriously makes contact, and he sets out to find her, leading him to a creepy bayou cabin and a nasty run-in with the unsavory residents, the Baker family. Luckily, Chris Redfield swoops in to save Ethan, and his life regains some normality, if not for long. Ethan’s world is once again turned upside down in Resident Evil 8. This time he’s stuck in an isolated village inhabited by monsters and feral villagers. Resident Evil Village may be remembered for its alluring antagonist, the tall lady, but this first-person survival game soon lets loose the scares.

Resident Evil has a long, storied history of good and bad games, with Resident Evil 6 being a low point in the series. This game is up in the higher echelons, as seen in our Resident Evil Village review. It’s a tense adventure where you need to have your wits about you to survive hordes of werewolf-like creatures, undead thralls, and other horrifying monsters. Even the tall lady has long, sharp claws capable of slicing limbs off. If you can’t stomach body horror and dismemberment, this may not be the right Resident Evil game for you. It also has perhaps the scariest moment in the series to date; we certainly won’t spoil it for you here. We suggest that when you enter that house, you should play with the lights on, unless you are feeling a little braver than usual.

 The Evil Within 2

The best horror games keep you up at night. By that metric, The Evil Within 2 screams itself to the top. You will certainly struggle to get to sleep after you have seen a pile of severed bodies skitter across the floor and assemble themselves into the form of a pale, fleshy mass of limbs with several faces – all of them laughing – and a buzz saw in place of a right arm.

The Evil Within 2 is packed with skin-crawling set-pieces like this, each one as inventive as the last. But Tango Game works’ impeccable sequel is much more than a list of the best moments in horror games. Slaying bosses and exploring spooky mansions are separated by open-world sections where you never know what is waiting for you: some much-needed shotgun shells or a devious specter that will continue to haunt you for the remainder of your play through.

Underneath the whip-smart enemy and level design, The Evil Within 2 stays true to its survival horror roots, always pitting you against one more crazed enemy than you have bullets for. If that’s still not enough to convince you, then take a look at our The Evil Within 2 review.

Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation is a horror game about being stuck on a space station with a (spoiler) big scary alien, which, thanks to some devious AI and level design, is more terrifying than it ever has any right to be. As we discovered while writing our Alien: Isolation review, this horror game is effectively a first-person hiding simulator – your monstrous stalker can’t be beaten, shot, or bashed into submission.

The best horror games make you feel utterly powerless, and in Alien: Isolation it is your wits, your knack for crawling under desks and into lockers, and a variety of distractions that will save you from the hulking, Gigerian horror. A deadly creature who can appear at any moment, unscripted, and without warning: what more could you ask for from a horror game antagonist?

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Like your horror games unflinchingly violent and heart-gripping tense? Monolith’s Condemned: Criminal Origins is an accomplished and effortless first-person frightened worth seeking out despite its decade-old graphics.

Here is a homeless-person-fighting simulator in which you play the role of nocturnal crime scene investigator and human punching bag Ethan Thomas. Most remarkable for its lack of guns, condemned: Criminal Origins is proper flashlight horror, with terrifying, unwashed men leaping out at you from around corners and out of shadows. Coming out of a brawl alive means carefully timing your punches and patiently blocking your opponent’s attacks, and in encounters with multiple enemies, your best option is often to run away.

It’s unconventional as police games go, but the horror games genre could do with a little more condemned: Criminal Origins in their bloodstream.

Dark wood

Sound does not get enough credit in horror games, and if you ever need a reminder of how powerful a simple scratching noise or a distant knock can be, seek out one of the best indie games to delve into the horror genre, Dark wood. This is a top-down horror game about a mysterious man cooking mushrooms in a house right in the middle of a plague-infested forest.

When it is light outside, you are free to roam the festering woods, fighting off rabid dogs, collecting resources, and trying to figure out who you are and how you ended up here. By night, however, your only option is to get back to your house and wait for the horrors of the night to pass you by. You can load up your generator with fuel to ward off enemies, barricade the windows to hide yourself, and set traps as a last line of defense – but they are coming for you, no matter how well you have prepared.

Dark wood’s ability to seep into your pores and haunt you without showing you as much as a limb is uncanny. Rustling sounds, inhuman shrieks, and creaky doors had us smashing the Esc key and walking away from the desktop time and time again. Don’t let the top-down perspective fool you, this is one of the best horror games out there.

System Shock 2

System Shock 2 kicked a particular flavor of first-person survival horror games into gear. It boasts an open-ended structure, with an endless maze of decks and quarters that promote exploration and discovery. It is a lot like being stuck in a haunted John Lewis, except with psychic death monkeys.

The faster-than-light Von Braun is a persistent world that appears to exist and unfold even while your back is turned – building a heightened sense of place aboard the scarcely populated starship.

But it is corrupted artificial intelligence SHODAN who makes System Shock 2 one of the greatest horror games to have ever graced our fair platform. Right up there with HAL 9000 in the soothingly voiced yet subtly evil computer stakes, she torments and tricks you endlessly, transforming an already terrifying survival RPG into an isolationist horror classic. Few space games match System Shock 2’s sense of isolation.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Nightmares aren’t much like horror games; they don’t tend to have rules that make sense. But Amnesia: The Dark Descent is genuinely nightmarish. This is a horror game in which monsters can get at you no matter what, in which sneaking and hiding from these creatures is your only means of self-defense, and in which simply looking at the monsters can drive you insane.

You almost literally curl up into a ball and shut your eyes when Amnesia: The Dark Descent’s monsters are in the room, using audio cues to guess when they have left. Few horror games are as unnerving as Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which sticks by the golden rule of horror: fear of the unknown is the most powerful fear of all.

There is a sequel, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, which is just as psychologically arresting. But we wouldn’t recommend mainlining them one after the other – just like Amnesia’s main character, you need to manage your sanity.

Dead Space

Like the horror game adaptation of Event Horizon that never was, Dead Space is the story of a fun cabal of né’er-do-well cultists who bring a deep space mining ship to its flickering, malfunctioning knees.

You are a mechanic armed with a laser cutter capable of strategically dismembering the legions of already malformed alien creatures who now infest the ship, but despite your powerful weaponry, you are never close to being at ease.

Like all the best horror games, Dead Space’s brand of horror is disturbing and often lashes out at your psyche, subtly mixing violence and paranoia to create an atmospheric and unrelentingly bleak miasma of despair. All aboard a classic haunted house spaceship with dark corridors and slightly too many corners for spooky things to hide behind.

The Quarry

PS4 exclusive Until Dawn was a surprise hit back in 2015, telling a ‘cabin in the woods’ style teen horror by letting you make all the tricky decisions. Creators Supermassive Games return to a remote woodland setting with the latest game in the Dark Pictures Anthology, The Quarry, which tells the story of a group of teen counselors on their last night at camp.

The group settle in for a night of partying, only to find themselves targeted by the bloodthirsty villagers and something else lurking in the woods. The aim is simple: get all the characters out alive. So if you’re always the one calling out stupid decisions characters make in horror movies, now you can see how far your decision-making would get you. Check out all The Quarry cast for all the playable characters, as well as how to get the best of the Quarry endings and save everyone.

That’s all from us, the very best horror games available on PC. If you’re in need of a little R&R why not check out the best card games or building games on PC? It’s OK, you can come out from behind whatever piece of furniture you’ve been cowering behind, that really is everything – we’re not going to throw a cheap jump scare into the credits or anything like that.