Summary
Remedy Entertainment has dropped another masterpiece in its extended AWE universe,Alan Wake 2, a game that gives you a unique horror experience significantly different from the last adventure you had with the author in Bright Falls over a decade ago. While you may’t possibly top this game, there are many horror gamesand psychological thrillers out therethat share similar themes.
The storytelling style of Remedy is unmatched and is what makes its studioone of the best developers around in the Triple-A industry. However, whether through their brilliant writing, atmospheres, and characters, here are some games that would be a great companion to Alan Wake 2.
Updated on Jun 28, 2025, by Dennis Moiseyev:One year after it launched, the Alan Wake 2 experience now comes complete with its two expansions – the Night Springs DLC and The Lake House DLC – as well as receiving physical copies. Whether you’re just starting to experience Remedy’s survival horror masterpiece for the first time or have already completed it multiple times over and finished all the DLC, you now have some more games to add to your list!
Alan Wake 2 is a horror game with a unique premise but also features wonderful performances and a well-written script. Another horror game where you’ll find just that is Still Wakes the Deep. The horror shenanigans take place on an oil rig known as the Beira D,and the environments are extremely atmospheric, with lots of different phobias factoring into the gameplay.
Like Alan Wake, your main protagonist, electrician Caz McLeary, is away from his wife and facing great peril in the form of infected creatures created by otherworldly biomass that emerged from the ocean known as The Shape. From the first-person POV, you’ll navigate the areas of the Beira D on a quest to save as many of your crewmembers as you can and make it back to your family.
Alan Wake 2 features plenty of Norse mythological aspectsin its characters and plot, and if you’re really into Norse mythology, psychological horror, cinematic gameplay, and stellar sound design and performances, look no further than the Hellblade games. They star Melina Jeurgens in an award-winning role as the titular protagonist Senua, a traumatized and grief-stricken Pict warrior looking for revenge on the Vikings who slaughtered her village.
The first game is a more intimate experience where Senua traverses the harsh environments of Hel in search of her dead lover, Dillion, and the sequel sees Senua on a new path in Iceland with new allies and getting to slay giants. There’s plenty of psychological horror and unsettling moments, with Senua’s Furies really proving effective in that department. Both games have ghoulish enemies and bosses, with the sequel upping the frightening variety and also including giants.
The medium of art, whether it be writing, painting, filmmaking, songwriting and music, or photography, is one of the key themes of the Alan Wake series, as that’s what the Dark Presence feeds off of. Another horror game that explores supernaturaland Lovecraftian elementsrelated to an art form is Supermassive’s The Casting of Frank Stone, which is a narrative-driven game based on your decisions.
The setup here is that serial killer Frank Stone, whose crimes have haunted the town of Cedar Hills, Oregon, was involved in a lot more than everyone thought. In the ’80s, Frank Stone’s spirit still stalks the steel mill where he was supposedly killed and chases after new victims who are filming a movie on the premises. Simultaneously, you get a glimpse into the present in 2024, where an enigmatic woman is hunting after pieces of that amateur horror film.
Alan Wake 2’s supernatural detective thriller vibe would be best paired with 2024’s Alone in the Dark, which is a game that also stars some notable Hollywood stars. David Harbour from Stranger Things and the MCU is the iconic P.I. Edward Carnby, and Killing Eve’s and The Bikeriders' Jodie Comer stars as Emily Hartwood.You have a choice to play either protagonist, like in the original, but you should experience both of their characters for a complete experience.
This modern reimagining of the 1992 classic survival horror game takes you back to Derceto Manor and has you solving the mystery of Jeremy Hartwood’s disappearance. Your journey will take you to another dimension somewhat reminiscent of the Dark Place and filled with grotesque enemies that are designed by Guillermo del Toro’s collaborative artist, Guy Davis. And the game offers plenty of atmosphere and twists.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden comes from another unique storytelling studio: Don’t Nod, the creators of Life is Strange and Vampyr, and this game is designed more like the latter title.It’s an underrated choice-based RPGthat explores a supernatural love story between Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte, who are a husband-and-wife duo of titular Banishers, or ghost hunters, in the 17th-century colony of New Eden.
Tragedy strikes at the beginning of the game, and it’s a melancholic horror-fantasy journey throughout, where Red’s connection to Antea is explored not only through narrative but also through combat. The environments and art style build tons of atmosphere to place you in that era and are absolutely every bit as wonderful as the award-winning environments and art direction from Remedy’s Alan Wake 2.
2023’s Dead Space is like a perfect companion game after finishing Alan Wake 2. The Necromoprh jumpscares are plenty (albeit not on-screen pop-ups like Alan and Saga had), and the combat featuring intense Necromorph speed and melee should relatively feel the same as battling Taken, with obvious enemy design differences.
The storytelling, twists, and psychological horror elements of Alan Wake 2 are also present in Dead Space. you may treat the audio logs as the manuscripts or radio segments you collect. You have video calls throughout and lots of writing in blood around the environment, like the graffiti in the Dark Place. The graphics, lighting, and sound design are right on target with Alan Wake 2 as well.
14Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
One of the chapters in Alan Wake 2takes you to the Oceanview Hotel, a place filled with macabre sights of Taken, dead cultists, and The Shining’s Overlook-style bathrooms, and apparently the location where an interactive stage play was taking place. An even more harrowing hotel experience in the survival horror genre is Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel.
This 2022 first-person survival horror game drops you into the titular hotel located in Treze Trilhas, Brazil, as an investigative journalist. Like Saga and Alex Casey, you’re also on the trail of a cult rumored to be performing experiments inside it. The setting, atmosphere, and mechanics are a cross between Outlast and Resident Evil (as are the monsters), and the camera here can alter the environment to reveal new things.
The central theme of Alan Wake 2 is that the Dark Place feeds off the artists, whether it’s the writer Alan Wake, the filmmaker Thomas Zane, or the band Old Gods of Asgard. What’s another Dark Presence in gaming that quite literally feeds on artists and then assumes their form? The immortal beings known as The One and The Other in the FMV game Immortality.
If you enjoyed the Yötön Yö bit from Alan Wake 2 andthe game’s complex mind-bending narrative, in general, not only are similar themes tying into acting and auteur filmmaking explored here, but the entire game is live-action. In Immortality, you must piece together countless clips from three films to peel away at a more mind-boggling supernatural mystery tied to Marissa Marcel’s disappearance.
With the character Saga Anderson added in Alan Wake 2, the game transformed beyond the original to be more of a detective horror-mystery thriller. Part of that entails Saga going into her Mind Place and getting into the minds of witnesses, suspects, and Taken with her Seer ability to profile them and gain new clues for the caseboard.
Another video game detective with this ability to look into people’s minds in a much more sci-fi, cyberpunk fashion is Observer’s Daniel Lazarski, voiced by Rutger Hauer. Observer is set in the year 2084 amid a dystopian ‘Nanophage’ plague and war-ravaged society where futuristic neural detectives solve crimes by hacking into minds, which also offer some trippy environments.
Paranatural phenomena, opening Overlap tears between dimensions, a dark dimension known as the Dark Place where ghoulish beings called Taken are escaping from, tools like clickers and flashlights used to fight them, time moving strangely in loops (or spirals), misconstrued masked cults, collecting loose pages, and tuning signals. Where else has all this been? Why, also in the Oxenfree series.
Instead of Taken, you’ll fight ‘The Sunken’ in Oxenfree and Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals, which are eerie ghosts from another dimension trying to take possession and enter the real world. And the key to fighting them is a radio tuned to specific channels and breaking out of loops. When you really think about it, Oxenfree is Alan Wake but with a more teen-focused story and a unique 2.5D art style.
