When it comes to making the best horror game, there isn’t a strict rule in place to terrify the player. You may be surprised just how many we’ve included in the top 30 best horror games of all time that aren’t particularly scary, but have strengths elsewhere.
Here is our ranked list of the 30 best horror games ever made.
The 30 greatest horror games, ranked
Rather than focus purely on scares, we have factored in all aspects that make a horror game great: Excellent storytelling, believable world-building, strong atmosphere that builds on your anticipation, and realistic sound design.
It’s tough to whittle the list down to the best of the best, so here are our honorable mentions that failed to break the top 30, but are still worth your time:
- Cry of Fear (2012)
- Ib (2012)
- The Cat Lady (2012)
- It Steals (2020)
- Murder House (2020)
- Midnight Scenes: The Nanny (2021)
- The Closing Shift (2022)
- Stay Out of the House (2022)
- Amanda the Adventurer (2022)
- World of Horror (2023)
- Fears to Fathom: Carson House (2023)
- Mouthwashing (2024)
Let’s dive into our list ranked from 30th place to first.
30) Clock Tower 3
- Release date: Dec. 12, 2002
- Story rating: 5/10
- Scare rating: 2/10
A standout for its voice acting and animated characters, Clock Tower 3 is an absurd horror game. I shouldn’t find this game as entertaining as I did, especially when children are being viciously attacked by grown ups. It’s bizarrely childish for what is a very violent slasher, as the murderers constantly remind us that they want to kill us (just in case we forgot what was happening).
The enemies resemble both pantomime actors and the Ex-Pop from Outlast Trials as they burst into the scene, and take their victim in the most brutal way possible before turning their attention to Alyssa. Mixing classic slasher cutscenes with fantastical gameplay elements, Clock Tower 3 feels like a fever dream.
29) Inscryption
- Release date: Oct. 19, 2021
- Story rating: 8/10
- Scare rating: 2/10
Inscryption isn’t particularly scary, but this doesn’t come as a surprise when it’s not meant to be a horror game. However, Inscryption has a great atmosphere that later inspired entries like Buckshot Roulette. Its gritty, otherworldly design makes it stand out in the indie horror scene as a deck-building game with a dark twist.
Confined within Leshy’s sadistic game, you’re tasked to escape his hell, only to venture into a new one with another set of rules to learn. Inscryption is a challenge that never gets old as you’re thrown into different deck-building games, each more demanding than the last.
28) IMMORTALITY
- Release date: Aug. 30, 2022
- Story rating: 8/10
- Scare rating: 3.5/10
Yes, IMMORTALITY isn’t sold as a horror game but my goodness, this game made my sister and I scream with The One’s first appearance. Hidden inside the tapes of Marissa Marcel’s lost films, The One appeared to us like a religious figure in black and white as we rewound the footage. It was an unexpected jumpscare that was incredibly impactful when we believed we were safe in our investigation into Marcel’s mysterious disappearance.
IMMORTALITY is a highly unique and engaging game for its sole mechanic of interacting with the setting of each film to piece together meaningless clips and make sense of not only their order, but to uncover what happened to the leading actress.
27) Dino Crisis
- Release date: Sept. 23, 1999
- Story rating: 5/10
- Scare rating: 4/10
Much like the original Resident Evil (1996), Dino Crisis is a classic survival horror with tank controls, fixed camera angles, and slow pacing. Playing through Dino Crisis is like living through the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park over and over again. Its slower pace and tanky controls mean it hasn’t aged particularly well, much like the retro Resident Evil games that received remakes years later.
Dino Crisis offered classic survival horror elements with ammo conservation, item management, and puzzle-solving. These retro survival horror were campy, entertaining, and didn’t take themselves too seriously.
26) Slay the Princess
- Release date: Oct. 23, 2023
- Story rating: 7/10
- Scare rating: 1/10
Slay the Princess reminds me of Silent Hill 2—a dark mystery with a love story at its center. Unlike other games on this list, Slay the Princess works through trial and error. With many endings to uncover and few objectives to complete, it’s down to your resilience to keep going and find out the truth. The game offers little help or advice throughout the tale. Because of this, it can be difficult to work out what you’re missing.
Like Einstein’s theory of insanity, the winding path to the cabin feels long and repetitive, as you’ve been here time and time again expecting different results. It is through failed attempts and your different choices that you learn more about the Princess, but doing so provides a fulfilling and beautiful experience to those eager enough to find it.
25) Five Nights at Freddy’s 4
- Release date: July 23, 2015
- Story rating: 3/10
- Scare rating: 6.5/10
FNaF 4 is the scariest game of the franchise. Although the first game is iconic for obvious reasons as it pioneered mascot horror and popularized point-and-click horror games in the modern era, the first FNaF doesn’t have the high quality gameplay that the fourth installment does. Challenging from the offset, FNaF 4 is the best mascot horror there is. Seeing the world through a child’s eyes, this FNaF entry feels like your childhood nightmares came to life and are knocking at your bedroom door.
A game of reflexes, FNaF 4 confines you to a single room, with the doors, closet, and bed being the only points of interest you can interact with. These aren’t places of comfort however, and hiding under your duvet won’t save you this time around. Keeping the animatronics at bay is anxiety-inducing as you’re forced to listen or peek from your bedroom door.
24) The Mortuary Assistant
- Release date: Aug. 2, 2002
- Story rating: 2/10
- Scare rating: 8/10
The ultimate jumpscare game, Mortuary Assistant is one of the few horror games that’s capable of scaring you with its tenacity. Standing still or quickly looking around won’t save you in this one, for Mortuary Assistant squeezes terror into every nook and cranny of its compact setting. Jumpscares vary from a Rack-like creature to a shadowy figure, hands appearing from the dark abyss, and corpses whispering to you while you embalm bodies.
If this was a list of the scariest horror games, then Mortuary Assistant would easily sit in the top 10. But its basic storyline and limited level design means it cannot compete with the best of the best horror has to offer. Instead, Mortuary Assistant plays more like an escape room where you must exorcise the evil spirits to survive and try not to scream too much in the process.
23) Condemned: Criminal Origins
- Release date: Nov. 15, 2005
- Story rating: 5/10
- Scare rating: 6/10
The first game that made me scared of other people, Condemned: Criminal Origins is the best horror game on the Xbox 360. With themes long forgotten by AAA games, Criminal Origins mixes Psycho Pass-like gameplay with intense, close-quarter brawls as you fight for your life with any weapon you can get your hands on.
Condemned: Criminal Origins isn’t terrifying, but it’s definitely a pressure cooker of stress that’ll put you off exploring abandoned buildings for life. There’s few moments where you feel secure as you invade the homes of squatters who behave erratically and violently, wanting nothing more than to see your brain smeared onto the dirt-covered walls.
22) Devotion
- Release date: Feb. 19, 2019
- Story rating: 7/10
- Scare rating: 7/10
Similar to Mouthwashing and PT, Devotion demonstrates the power of psychological horror. Enveloped in darkness, with only the howling wind to comfort your worrying head, the threat of your unravelling mind is at the forefront of Devotion. Piecing together lost memories of a traumatic past, the mystery behind Devotion has a bleak end for those who reach it. Devotion is a bleak and haunting walking sim experience that uses the repeating corridor mechanic to deliver an endless feeling of dread straight to your doorstop.
21) Parasocial
- Release date: Aug. 25, 2023
- Story rating: 5/10
- Scare rating: 7.5/10
It’s hard to pick between The Closing Shift and Parasocial when it comes to Chilla’s Art games, and there’s an uneasiness that comes with all of them. You know you’re playing a horror, and yet nothing scary happens until its inevitable climax. It’s almost like you’re tricked into completing mundane tasks, as if cleaning and having small talk with strangers is the real horror.
A story that reminds me of Kon’s masterpiece, Perfect Blue, Parasocial hides a lot of its scary content in plain sight. Your crazed fan makes an appearance throughout the game, with their creepy messages and abnormal infatuation slowly increasing to the dreaded climax as they invade your home. It showcases the fear of being stalked perfectly, while retaining a realism with the mundane that makes it a believable horror.
20) Crow Country
- Release date: May 9, 2024
- Story rating: 7/10
- Scare rating: 1/10
A surprising entry on the list for its release date alone, Crow Country is a modern throwback to the golden era of horror games. This retro horror mixes Silent Hill and Resident Evil together; with quirky characters, fun dialogue, great enemies and puzzles. It’s (almost) chibi aesthetic removes a lot of the atmosphere for me, but it’s the perfect love letter to the fixed camera, tank control horror games that most of us love and miss. Crow Country feels nostalgic to me, like an old friend I’ve reconnected with after many years.
The level design (for what is a very small map) is incredibly impressive, as you can quickly gather your bearings by backtracking to key locations. The appearance of enemies is like the mist settling over Silent Hill, while the Resident Evil-style puzzles are perfectly executed—not too hard, not too easy.
19) FAITH: The Unholy Trinity
- Release date: Oct. 21, 2022
- Story rating: 7/10
- Scare rating: 6/10
FAITH is legendary for its simplistic design and unnatural, robotic dialogue. It’s one of those games that seem like they’ve been around forever, likely due to its 8-bit design. It’s rare that such a flat, pixelated world could terrify with its scratchy, incomplete sketches of demons and supernatural entities, but FAITH manages just that. The small detail throughout FAITH (like the white speck on our character’s collar and the cross in his hand to tell us we’re a priest) is captured perfectly in its arcade aesthetic.
Time feels slowed down inside FAITH‘s tiny box. You cannot speedrun your way through the scares or hope that you’ll come out the other side unscathed. Moving through the scene in a dreamlike walk forces you to take in every inch of your surroundings and be alert in case something jumps out from the pixelated bushes.
18) Imscared
- Release date: Oct. 12, 2012
- Story rating: 6/10
- Scare rating: 4/10
Imscared has stayed with me for years, and it’s one of the best horror games I’ve ever played with its fourth wall-breaking mechanics. Making use of the platform it resides on, Imscared acts like a virus on your PC. It reaches out its hand in hopes to embrace you on the other side. It seeks an existence beyond the code it was born in and wants a beating heart for a meaningful existence.
Imscared is memorable for its pixelated look, creepy laughter, and unique progression mechanics. It communicates with you not only in the game, but in its game files, too. It often breaks the game on purpose so you’re forced to look elsewhere for clues.
17) Nun Massacre
- Release date: Sept. 29, 2018
- Story rating: 3.5/10
- Scare rating: 9/10
There is nothing subtle about Nun Massacre. In fact, this entry would easily sit in the top five if this was our list on the scariest horror games ever made. The perfect game if you’re a glutton for punishment, Nun Massacre isn’t for the faint-hearted. It will strip away all hope you have at beating the game as if you’re facing off against Manus, Father of the Abyss in Dark Souls.
Staying calm isn’t an option. Static fills your screen when she’s near. Eardrums burst at the sound of her screech. Tears will flow as the blade connects to your back. Even the ventilation shafts aren’t safe. Do yourself a favor and stay away from Catholic School; you can thank us later.
16) Until Dawn
- Release date: Aug. 25, 2015
- Story rating: 6/10
- Scare rating: 6.5/10
Interactive horror games have released since Until Dawn, but each have failed to capture what made Until Dawn so special. It delivered two types of horror: Supernatural and slasher. Both kept you on your toes while the characters kept you entertained throughout. The wendigos combined with the Don’t Move mechanic, greatly increasing the survival difficulty, made for great scares.
Until Dawn is a flawless watch your first time playing, but its choice to be an interactive tale means that you don’t feel fully in control of your actions. That natural hesitation you’d have if you could control your character is missing from this entry, making it more of a spectacle than a true experience.
15) Outlast
- Release date: Sept. 4, 2013
- Story rating: 5/10
- Scare rating: 7/10
Outlast took what made Amnesia popular and perfected it. A pioneer of the battery mechanic, Outlast increased the dread and anticipation you’d feel in The Dark Descent and escalated it tenfold, throwing danger at us around every corner. Unlike Amnesia, nowhere felt safe in Outlast, and there was little breathing room to take a moment and recuperate.
Outlast throws you into an unstable environment where you must navigate around an Asylum abandoned by authority. The game easily holds up to this day as a downright terrifying experience. It has its lows, of course (as seen with Dr. Trager), but there is a good amount of variety when it comes to outrunning and outsmarting the naked patients chasing you.
14) SCP: Containment Breach
- Release date: April 15, 2012
- Story rating: 5/10
- Scare rating: 6/10
Containment Breach may not look particularly great in the modern era of video gaming, especially when you compare it to the likes of The Last of Us or Alan Wake, but the sheer amount of content available in this free-to-play game is incredibly rewarding. There is a sense of curiosity and excitement you get when hopping into the Containment Breach for the first time as you have full autonomy to freely explore the world of SCPs.
For first-timers, SCP: Containment Breach can be terrifying. It’s best to head into this one without any prior knowledge to what each SCP can do. Learning the lore of the game is incredibly fun as notes are scattered throughout the facility, giving you insight into how to counter an entity. If you’re a fan of Lethal Company but never played Containment Breach—well, let’s just say one wouldn’t have existed without the other.
13) Dead Space 2
- Release date: Jan. 25, 2011
- Story rating: 6/10
- Scare rating: 8/10
If you were looking for the best action horror, then there’s no need to look beyond the intergalactic adventure of Dead Space 2. Drenched in atmosphere, Dead Space 2 is horrifying for its sound design and grotesque creatures. With the “cut off their limbs” slogan in full force as you explore the Sprawl mid-crisis, you quickly learn that this horror is all about the action. Your only choice is to let the endless shooting of mutated humans distract you from the persistent dread you’re feeling.
This was the first horror game I played where the sound design made me feel incredibly alone, forcing me to retreat to the pause menu for comfort. Playing through the game like a SWAT member, I’d pre-aim every corner with my Plasma Cutter, all while praying there wouldn’t be a Necromorph waiting for me.
12) Alan Wake 2
- Release date: Oct. 27, 2023
- Story rating: 10/10
- Scare rating: 3/10
The prettiest horror game in existence, Alan Wake 2 is a spectacle from start to finish. Polishing the complex story of the first game, the world of Alan Wake 2 is rich and detail orientated. While the enemies that attack inside the shadows can be frustrating at times and hardly ever scare you; the lighting, sound design, and ambience will fully immerse you into its story.
Alan Wake 2 will leave you in awe of its beauty. Creatively mixing live action with immaculate graphics, the game offers a woven narrative of two standout characters that have very different perspectives of The Dark Place, each providing a unique and eerie experience every time you enter it. This isn’t the type of horror that’ll leave you screaming, but it will stay with you long after you finish it.
11) SIGNALIS
- Release date: Oct. 27, 2022
- Story rating: 9/10
- Scare rating: 3/10
While SIGNALIS won’t leave you shaking in anxiety or crying in fear, it’s truly a master of its craft in world-building and storytelling. There is just an effortless coolness that SIGNALIS carries in its design, alongside an intrigue that demands you pick up a controller to see the game through. It’s best to consume SIGNALIS as quickly as possible, however, as it’s highly likely you’ll lose track of what you were doing if you take a hiatus from the mind-bending story.
A game about the loss of identity, SIGNALIS offers a lot of beauty within its darkness. It asks you to drop down into its bottomless pit and hunt alongside the protagonist in search for her truth.
10) Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
- Release date: Nov. 27, 2003
- Story rating: 6/10
- Scare rating: 7.5/10
Crimson Butterfly forces you to face the evil head-on with the Camera Obscura. In the comfort of the fixed camera angles that let you see the imposing threat on screen, you hold your breath to enter first-person mode, knowing a close-up shot of the aggressive spirit in front of you is now inevitable. It is a similar feeling to reading the final page of a Junji Ito short story.
Ghosts aren’t a problem for me, but it’s a completely different story for my sister who rips the PlayStation controller from its port the moment any ghost makes an appearance in Fatal Frame. Other times, the console is switched off in a panic because the force of her pull is too strong. This is her extreme solution to stop the spirits from attacking.
9) SOMA
- Release date: Sept. 22, 2015
- Story rating: 10/10
- Scare rating: 4/10
Perhaps the greatest story ever told in modern horror, SOMA is a thought-provoking experience that feels like a Christopher Nolan feature. Although it released years after Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA kept its most basic gameplay rule of stealth and hiding away from the monsters. This created a somewhat repetitive experience that lowered the overall terror of the game. However, as someone petrified of the deep sea, the setting was more than enough to keep me apprehensive as I explored the isolating openness of SOMA‘s waters.
SOMA is a lonely, beautiful experience and one that has a few terrifying moments, but not enough to call it a genuinely scary game. Instead, SOMA is high on the list for the best horror games ever made for its storytelling, voice acting, sound design, and atmosphere. As someone who believes this world may be a simulation, the existential dread I felt in SOMA is unlike anything I’ve ever felt in a video game.
8) Penumbra: Black Plague
- Release date: Feb. 12, 2008
- Story rating: 7/10
- Scare rating: 7/10
I am still haunted by my time at Computer Central. Black Plague is memorable for its unique storytelling with Clarence, an entity that resides inside the protagonist. A strange story that’s worth your time, we highly recommend playing through Overture (and ignoring Requiem). Penumbra is somewhat outdated now with its graphics and basic enemy AI, but the narrative and atmosphere of Black Plague is unmatched. This paranoia-inducing game will make you wonder if anything you’re experiencing is truly real as you mind slowly unravels.
Black Plague has great puzzles that invite you in alongside a carefully crafted world built through note reading (a recurring mechanic for Frictional Games). The quietness and stillness makes you feel like you’re being watched, but is whoever’s watching even human?
7) Haunting Ground
- Release date: April 21, 2005
- Story rating: 6/10
- Scare rating: 6/10
I often forget that this horror gem was created by Capcom, the same developer of Resident Evil. Haunting Ground still performs well with its clean mechanics, decent AI coding, and classic PS2 graphics. It is perhaps the most entertaining horror game out there that still manages to scare me, even with its outdated chase sequences.
Haunting Ground has everything I need for a great horror game: canine companion, fixed camera angles, and fleeing from the male gaze. Level design and puzzles are top notch, and the panic mechanic just makes me laugh every time. But seriously, who doesn’t want to play a game where you befriend a German Shepard called Hewey?
6) Little Nightmares II
- Release date: Feb. 10, 2021
- Story rating: 7/10
- Scare rating: 5/10
I have never felt more betrayed in my life than than witnessing that moment in Little Nightmares II. There’s something unique and special about escort missions and working with AI to reach your destination that offer a strange sense of comfort where playing with a friend or family member cannot. With so little co-op horror to share around, Little Nightmares fills that gap with cutesy characters that have to navigate a world that’s so desperate to kill them.
Little Nightmares II plays on our worst childhood fears and delivers them into a realistically macabre world. Every threat is like a game of hide and seek and every moment attempts to snuff your light as your nightmares feel like some kind of otherworldly folklore we haven’t learned about yet.
5) Amnesia: The Bunker
- Release date: June 6, 2023
- Story rating: 6/10
- Scare rating: 9/10
While The Dark Descent continues to fuel my paranoia long after its initial release, its core gameplay is now outdated and since been perfected by Outlast. But The Bunker restored my faith in Frictional Games as it dethroned The Dark Descent with a horror that’ll make you sink into madness. A claustrophobic game from start to finish, The Bunker keeps you confined within its walls while a monster stalks you. What Amnesia always does well is the fear of the unknown.
Unlike the overused battery mechanics that we see in so many horror games, The Bunker offers a winding flashlight and limited jerry cans that illuminate your way through the buried militia tunnels, but these are only a temporary solution. It takes the same concept of the battery, but its makeshift fix carries more significance and weight with every action you take, forcing you to strategize your next move so you’re never caught out in the dark.
4) PT
- Release date: Aug. 12, 2014
- Story rating: 8/10
- Scare rating: 10/10
A masterclass in horror, PT lived up to its name as it teased us with the greatest scares in gaming history. It pioneered an entire mechanic, and while its repeating corridors have since been overused to the point of exhaustion, PT showed me what true horror looked like.
PT didn’t need to be affiliated with Silent Hill. You could call it Corridor and it’d still slap. The game demonstrated the power of narrative, lighting, jumpscares, and timing. It didn’t care to impress us with realistic character models or excellent level design. Instead, it trapped you in a claustrophobic place—with nowhere to go—and forced you to peer into the mind of a killer.
3) Resident Evil 2
- Release date: Jan. 25, 2019
- Story rating: 9/10
- Scare rating: 7/10
In my opinion, Resident Evil 2 is the best survival horror game in the franchise. While the fourth in the series offers a flawless mix of action and horror and the seventh installment provides pure terror, it’s with Resident Evil 2‘s limited resources, thought-out puzzles, intricate sound and level design, and a variety of enemies that always kept you on your toes that places the second game into the top spot for me.
Resident Evil 2 includes two storylines, provided by two characters whose stories intertwine with one another as you move from location to location. This not only extends the total time it takes to beat the game, but it keeps you constantly moving through Raccoon City in a way that doesn’t feel slow, forced, or repetitive. It’s the perfect survival horror that deserved its remake.
2) Alien: Isolation
- Release date: Oct. 6, 2014
- Story rating: 7/10
- Scare rating: 9/10
Alien: Isolation is the first game that glued my mom to the screen (which is an incredibly feat, if you ask me). Its AI has the most intelligent antagonist I’ve ever fought against—the Xenomorph. Although the gameplay repeats and forces you to use stealth due to Ripley’s limited resources, Alien: Isolation‘s AI felt like an intense, never-ending Dead by Daylight match where outsmarting the Xenomorph became top priority.
The Xenomorph learns and predicts your playstyle based on your movement and where you choose to hide. It creates a genuinely terrifying and tense encounter that made my heart race whenever I switched to the motion tracker.
1) Silent Hill 2
- Release date: Sept. 24, 2001
- Story rating: 10/10
- Scare rating: 8.5/10
The original Silent Hill 2 isn’t just a masterpiece of a horror game—it’s also the greatest love story ever told. You would expect this type of narrative to appear exclusively on the big screen or in a novel rather than on the PlayStation 2, and that’s what makes Silent Hill 2 so special as a video game. To this day, its twist is one of a kind as it makes a seamless switch from terror, dread, and isolation to feeling betrayed. Tears stream down my face and I feel pure devastation as Mary reads her letter.
The mist felts like an entity in itself as it engulfs James and his desperation to find his late wife. It is the perfect display of a human’s psyche and demonstrates trauma in its truest form. Silent Hill 2 is an incredible story about love and pain, and everyone should experience it at least once in their lifetime.
