Horror games have no fearof exploring many different styles and ways to scare your audience. Jump scares and spooky creatures are a dime a dozen, but creating an atmosphere where you’re at the edge of your seat even while nothing is going on? That’s something only a developer with an understanding of what makes humans terrified will truly be able to grasp.
Surreal horror takes things that you are fearful of in reality, such as death and the feelings of guilt and failure, and externalizes them in a disorienting way that makes you feel as though you can’t trust what you see. You would be right. Is your favorite here, or have you found something new to try?
10Death Stranding
Death Strandingdoesn’t get enough credit for the fear-inducing entities that dot your journey through the post-apocalyptic lands of New America. Even just the normal run-of-the-mill BTs are something straight out of someone’s cosmic nightmares, but then you have to deal with giant creatures that can, and will, kill you cold.
Once you’re dead, the horror doesn’t stopas you find your soul within The Seam, the place that souls use to cross over to the beach in the afterlife. Hidden within the depths of the waters are large Catcher BTs and other creatures that live below the surface. Thalassophobia is the least of your worries in the Seam.
9Layers Of Fear
In 2023, Bloober Team launched the definitive edition of both itsLayers of Feargames into one cohesive package.It explores the pressures of creativity through artand what happens when something you love intensely is taken away from you. Or better yet, when your actions cause your passions to disappear.
Each of the three protagonists you come in contact with throughout the game is touched by what is called simply The Entity. It is theorized to be the representation of the creative process that is feuded by dark things, such as despair and the fear of failure. Something all creatives can relate to, no doubt.
8Infliction
Meet the consequences of your actions in Inflicion. You are attempting to find out what happened to your missing family while trying to avoid the rage-filled spirit that has inhabited your home. Your only defense is your camera, which unlocks hidden clues and temporarily destroys other malevolent beings out to get you.
The more youexplore your surroundings and solve puzzles, the more of the truth is revealed, and you’ll have to decide whether you want to face the finding out portion of messing around, or if you want to deny what’s being told to you.
7The Evil Within
There’s a noticeable pattern when you are talking about the surrealist horror genre. There are a lot of external elements meant to scare the hell out of you, but there are always questions of humanity and guilt just under the layers.The Evil Withinis no different. What starts as an investigation of a gruesome mass murder scene turns into something much more sinister.
Each of the cops quickly finds themselves under the influence of big bad Ruvik, the antagonist and conjurer of the murder scene. It’s a cat-and-mouse game of unspeakable horror as you try and find any clues about your wife, but can you make it out with your psyche unscathed?
6Among The Sleep
No one is going to argue that some of the most vulnerable people on the planet are babies and young children. They can’t fend for themselves and often let their curiosity get them into trouble from time to time. So what happens when you’re thrust into the role of a defenseless child?
You play as young David, a child of no more than two years old who has to find all of your memories from a house that is constantly transforming its labyrinthine hallways and hide two creatures that are dead set on getting their hands on you. You can’t do anything except run and hide. Good luck, little one.
5Yuppie Psycho
Look, it’s hard enough finding a decent job in this economy, but if a place is offering a job, and you’ve never applied to it, you might want to second guess it. Unfortunately, Brian Pasternack, the protagonist of this corporate hell, has found himself becoming a witch hunter and tasked to stop a plan of chaos.
What makes this game uneasy is how your new coworkers react to the building warping and bleeding around them. They don’t. To them, it’s just what happens at Sintracorp. Dead body? No big deal. Mutated spider crawling through the hallways eating employees? Eh, just a minor inconvenience. Their apathy is unsettling.
4Parasite Eve
Parasite Evehas one of the most iconic, and chaotic, openings possibly in the history of games. You go from enjoying the opening of a Christmas Eve opera to spontaneous combustion and mutating rats. New York City is turned inside out as Aya and her small team of survivors try and figure out what Eve is and what she wants.
The combat serves to add to the tension of the situation, and there are times when you’re left to do nothing but wait for your turn while avoiding attacks from all types of deformed creatures against the now-silent backdrop of the city. It paints a grim and surreal picture of horror that’s hard to replicate.
3Doki Doki Literature Club
If you’re an average visual novel fan and triedDoki Doki Literature Clubwith no idea of what was coming, then you were probably taken aback by how subversive it was. It toyed with your expectations and turned them on your head, not to mention not only making you the main character of the nightmare but complicit in who lives and dies.
Once the game was downloaded onto your computer, it snaked its roots throughout your hard drive, manipulating files or deleting them outright if they displeased Monika in any way. Until it was Just Monika left. Just. Monika.
2The Mortuary Assistant
Have you ever had to perform your tasks at work while trying to keep demon souls at bay from taking over your body? This is something Rebecca Owens has to deal with as she starts her apprenticeship inThe Mortuary Assistant. All while trying to make sure the bodies are processed right and demon-free.
1Silent Hill
The grandfather of surreal horrorhas found its way to the top.Silent Hillhas inspired countless games, and it’s easy to see why. You move between worlds and, depending on which game you play, you face off against the worst monsters of your psyche, reminding you of things you wish you could forget.
While the protagonist Harry Mason wasn’t necessarily guilty of anything like James in the second game, the land still calls him and his adoptive daughter to the town for the new God to be reborn, along with all the imaginable horrors that come with it.
