31 Horror Games to Dive into this Spooky Season!

Clock Tower (1996)

Clock Tower is a sequel to the 1994 SNES game released in Japan. Much like the first game, it used a point and click interface, but it expanded the game world with a number of different endings and characters to play.

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Fatal Frame (2001)

Do you crave a spookier Pokemon Snap? Like taking pictures of ghosts? Feel like moving slowy around environments and peering at them through your camera? Then Fatal Frame is the game for you. Note: the fifth game was recently remastered for the Switch and is available in the Nintendo eShop.

Resident Evil (1996)

Jill is the master of unlocking, but she was also almost a Jill sandwich. Cheesy lines, zombie action, and tank controls. Inspired by the Super Famicom game Sweet Home.

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Silent Hill (1999)

This is the definitive horror game that validated using fog as an atmorpheric replacement for lacking draw distance in 3D gaming on the Playstation. It was also incredibly cool and is still one of my favorite PS1 games of all time.

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Alone in the Dark (1992)

Not all movies are as straight-forward as this 1986 slasher, but then sometimes it doesn’t need a twist to be fun. While pretty much everything is obvious from the first opening of the film, it ends up being a fun watch with friends and beer.

Alan Wake (2010)

Alan Wake had the mad flashlight action I never knew I wanted in a game. I’m pretty excited for the new game as well.

Penumbra (2007)

First person physics puzzles in a creepy and horrific environment where you can’t run-and-gun your way out of the situation? Welcome to Penumbra.

Dead Space (2008)

Dead Space Necromorphs were hands down some of the coolest enemies in a game, and cutting them up with a mining laser was also super fun. The remake was released earlier this year and expanded the space ship environments and ratcheted up the tension.

Alien vs Predator (1994)

AvP for the Atari Jaguar was a damn fun little first-person shooter, and the first AvP showing from Rebellion Studios. They would go on to make to make a PC revisioning of the game using the same multi-character class approach (Alien, Predator, Marine selection).

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Friday the 13th (1989)

Control camp counselors around Camp Crystal Lake to find and defeat Jason Voorhees with a variety of weapons. Even more hazardous that Jason are the local wildlife that is always trying to kill you.

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Nightmare on Elm Street (1989)

Players must wander around the city and collect Freddy Kreuger’s bones to defeat him. Along the way, they face rats, cats, dogs, skeletons, and other completely normal hazards. As they play, a sleep meter tracks their tiredness and will transport them into the dream world.

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Clive Barker’s Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie (1990)

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie (1990) is an adventure game with a number of action-oriented sequences that follow the story of the film as well as the novel Cabal.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1983)

Dodge fences, wheelchairs, and cow skulls as the iconic villain Leatherface wihile chasing down victims with your chainsaw. Due to its violent nature (and playing Leatherface), this game was not carried in many stores and sold poorly.

Play The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on free80sArcade.com:

Doki Doki Literature Club (2017)

Stop reading anything about Doki Doki Literature Club and go play it for free NOW! I’m serious. This is one of the best 4th-wall breaking horror games on the planet, and reading anything about it will spoil how it plays out. And how it plays out is glorious!

Get the original on itch.io:

Buy the Plus! edition on Steam:

Zombies Ate My Neighbors (1993)

With powerups and horror icons galore, it’s up to you to save your neighbors from monster mayhem! This and its sequel Ghoul Patrol were released on the Nintendo Switch/PS4/XBox One recently as well.

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The Evil Within (2014)

If Resident Evil has taught me anything, it’s hard to be a cop in a small town. In The Evil Within, Sebastian investigates a murder at a mental hospital only to get pulled into a nightmarish world of monsters and mayhem. The creature design alone knocks it out of the park.

Dino Crisis (1999)

One part Resident Evil and one Part Jurassic Park, Dino Crisis scratched an itch I didn’t know I needed. When dinosaurs run amok on a remote island, a cleanup crew is sent to investigate.

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Manhunt (2003)

Rockstar never shied away from controversy when they released a kill-or-be-killed snuff-fest. As a death row inmate, James Earl Cash has to murder criminal gang members hunting him on camera.

F.E.A.R. (2005)

F.E.A.R. stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, an elite group of soldiers who fight and investigate supernatural phenomena in that order. A psychic has gone rogue and another female psychic, Alma, is wreaking havoc.

Dead Rising (2006)

If you like Dawn of the Dead, Pokemon Snap, crafting, and third-person shooters, you’d probably enjoy Dead Rising. Trapped in a shopping mall with the ability to construct a number of weapons, photojournalist Frank West takes pictures and beats zombie ass.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002)

Eternal Darkness takes place across four different time periods with different protagonists as it explores the history of dark artifacts and how they affect the world at large. Character deaths often broke the fourth wall like pretending to erase the save games.

Left 4 Dead (2008)

Zombie co-op multiplayer game where the ultimate goal is to survive. With a number of different zombie types to create mayhem in the middle of a swarm, L4D really layered on the overwhelming stress of a zombie apocalypse.

Phantasmagoria (1995)

Mystery novelist Adrienne Delaney moves her family to a remote mansion previously owned by a magician whose wives died under mysterious circumstances. Now she’s having nightmares and must explore the grounds to discover the secret history of the place.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)

Harlan Ellison co-designed this nihilistic adventure game based on his short story of the same name. An AI has destroyed all of humanity except five people, and it keeps them alive to torture. The player must make philosophical decisions about insanity, rape, paranoia, and more to finish the game.

Nightmare Creatures (1997)

The Brotherhood of Hecate create monsters with experiments in hopes of finding a super-human elixir. Ignatius or Nadia must try to stop the madness and kill all of the creatures.

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The 7th Guest (1993)

An amnesiac player must solve twenty-one puzzles in Henry Stauf’s mansion. It was one of the most succesful CD-ROM interactive movie games alongside Myst.

OverBlood (1996)

OverBlood is part adventure game, part arcade game, and part fighting game…and none of them do a superb job. However, when the Lystra lab team needs to escape after conducting genetic experiments, the fun really does begin!

Night Trap (1992)

The game that made Joe Lieberman throw a fit about video game violence as the player tries to save a group of coeds from Augers, a weird name for vampires that wear ski masks. The player uses traps to stop them. It is available on the Nintendo Switch.

Splatterhouse (1988)

Splatterhouse is a side-scrolling beat ’em-up about a resurrected college student named Rick who has to fight his way through horrific creatures from US horror films to save his girlfriend Jennifer.

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Echo Night (1998)

A first-person adventure for the Playstation, Echo Night takes place on the ship Orpheus where ghosts are haunting and protecting areas. The player must resove the personal issues of the ghosts to help them find piece. They must also escape the ship and recover colored stones.

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Galerians (1999)

Psychic powers boosted by drugs and tank controls? Sign me up! Galerians is a horror-adventure game with Rion attempting to find a girl speaking to him in his mind. He uses drugs to boost his psychic abilities as evil henchmen are sent to stop and re-capture him.