In a way, horror games and role-playing games are philosophical opposites: RPGs are generally designed to give players the fantasy of attaining power through new gear and higher stats, where good horror games make players feel increasingly vulnerable. The Evil Within 2 manages to thread the needle by featuring elements ganked from RPGs—a crafting system, open world sections, ability upgrades—that give a pleasing sense of progress, without making players feel invincible in the face of the game’s cosmic horrors.

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft Windows

There are a ton of platformers with horror elements out there, but none mashes up the genres better than Limbo. The moody black and white visuals, minimalist story, and focus on deep-seated fears of death and the unknown earned Limbo a reputation as one of the best platformers ever made. Each section of the game offers something novel, but you’ll have to practically force yourself to go forward. The drive to explore is tempered by the knowledge that what you’ll find is likely to be much worse than what you’ve already discovered.

Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, WindowsOS X, Linux, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, iOSA, Android

Hand Simulator: Horror is best played online with friends, and best described as a horror-comedy-simulation. It simulates what it would be like if your hands didn’t work automatically, if you had to consciously control your fingers, arm, and wrist like a puppeteer working a meat-marionette. This makes even a simples task like picking up a rock hilariously difficult. Or it would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the ghouls coming to kill you.

Platform: Microsoft Windows

H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are rarely successfully adapted into movies or video games, but The Sinking City is an exception. Based on the ruleset of excellent tabletop RPG Call of Cthulhu, The Sinking City evokes classic horror-game franchises like Silent Hill with its focus on mist-shrouded, decaying locations and its protagonist’s tenuous grasp on sanity. But unlike many survival-horror games, The Sinking City is set in an open-world, where you’re free to be destroyed by cosmic horrors in whatever location you’d like.

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5

The crazy thing about Doom is that even 30 years after its release, it still works. Even after the innovations and refinements made by thousands of subsequent shooters, the original game is so solid, it still will get your pulse racing. Plus, you can play it on a calculator. While Doom is primarily an action-oriented game, the “descent into Hell” plot and the tension of some of Doom’s levels makes it part of the horror genre in my book.

Platforms: Too many to list—you can play it on anything.

While the fan base for text adventures has dwindled considerably since the 1970s(!), there’s still a hardcore group of devotees who find it fun to type “GO NORTH,” and there are younger developers who are using the mechanics of text games in innovative ways. For example: Buddy Simulator 1984. The game begins as an old-school program designed to act as your AI buddy. It requires you to type commands into a DOS-like interface to play simple games that a 1984 computer could handle. Eventually, you’ll find that your AI Buddy is not what it seems to be, and the games you’re playing together are anything but lighthearted fun.

Platform: Microsoft Windows

Most horror games have puzzle elements—nothing adds suspense quite like trying to figure out the combination of a lock while a monster is chasing you—but Layers of Fear is all puzzles and exploration. There’s no combat to get in the way of the psychological horror. Instead of man vs. monster throw-downs, you’ll be exploring a truly disturbing house, trying to put together pieces of a puzzle you barely understand.

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, Mac operating systems

This play-it-with-your-friends-online game proves that horror doesn’t have to be a lonely affair. You and your friends will work together to classify the ghosts that are haunting various locations. The ghost hunt begins as a simple exercise, but, like the best horror, Phasmophobia bides it times and saves it ammo for unexpected encounters that will have you screaming. The fun comes from being scared together—and laughing at each other’s reactions, of course.

Platform: Microsoft Windows

There are a ton of takes on the “zombie invasion” genre out there, but few grapple with the complicated logistics of protecting a small human settlement from billions of marauding undead. To survive in They Are Billions, you’ll have to carefully manage your colony’s meager resources and make painful choices as you fight off an enemy with one tactic: Overwhelming you with sheer numbers. Even one zombie breaking through your defenses can infect the entire colony, and like the name says, there are billions.

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

If you’re tired of horror games casting you as a hapless victim, you’ll love the switcheroo of Carrion, in which you are slithering tentacle creature bent on terrorizing as many people as possible. As you devour more and more researchers at the secret research center where you live, you’ll learn about your origins and face the obstacles puny humans use to try and stop your reign of death.

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Amazon Luna, Mac operating systems

Horror games and movies are most often for adults, but no one responds to the genre as strongly as children, and the children have definitely responded to Poppy Playtime. This indie horror game is “suitable for kids” in that it doesn’t feature overt gore or violence, but it’s still really creepy for horror fans of any age. Poppy Playtime puts you in the middle of the abandoned Playtime Toys factory. The company and its toothy mascot Huggy Wuggy once provided toys to children all over the country, but judging from the messed-up factory and cursed toys, something has gone seriously wrong.

Platforms: Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows

No video game series has ever mined the horror of deep space quite like the Dead Space games. You are not just alone in a house or on island, you’re alone in space, millions of miles away from anything familiar and reliant on fragile technology to even breathe. Throw in nightmarish monsters and a dark-as-a-black-hole story, and you have a recipe for a truly terrifying experience. Hopefully the 2023 remake lives up to the standard set by the original.

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows

If you’re a gaming historian, and you want to go back to where the entire survival-horror genre was born, Alone in the Dark is the grandfather of the genre. Its 3D graphics were a revelation at the time of its release, and its dark, Lovecraftian storyline was notable for its maturity and spookiness. Basically every survival-horror game since, from Silent Hill to Resident Evil, are improvements and embellishments of Alone in the Dark. 

Platforms: iOS, 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, FM Towns, MS-DOS, Classic Mac OS

If you don’t think fishing and horror could go together, Fishing Vacation will prove you wrong. The look and feel of the game are lifted directly from the Nintendo GameBoy, and the plot is simple: You’re going on a fishing vacation! Of course, things take a horrific turn before too long, as you start to notice things lurking in the woods and in the lake. The fishing aspect of the game is satisfying and well done on its own, and when you add the humor and horror of the story, it’s a very strange mash-up that somehow works.

Platform: Microsoft Windows

There are a lot of first-person horror games out there, but Outlast stands out for what it doesn’t have. It doesn’t have a combat system. It doesn’t have character progression. It doesn’t have an intricate plot. It doesn’t have any weapons. It doesn’t have any way at all to make a powerful character. Instead of stocking up on shotgun shells, you’ll be praying the batteries on your flashlight don’t run down as you cower and hide from unspeakable things.

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Classic Mac OS

What we find scary is personal. While Papers, Please doesn’t have any ghosts or zombies, it digs deeply into my worst fear: the depersonalization of authoritarian political regimes. The player is a cog in the machine of a communist state, checking the passports of would-be visitors and trying to comply with an ever-changing series of regulations set by unseen bureaucrats. Papers, Please forces you into a constantly evolving series of deals-with-the-devil as you choose between the survival of yourself and your family and the well-being of strangers.

Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac operating systems, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation Vita, Linux

Most online multiplayer games are obsessed with keeping things fair and balanced for all players. Dead by Daylight is unfair by design. One player is the cast as The Killer—strong, relentless, and able to perform deadly special attacks—everyone else is much weaker Survivors (who should probably be called “Victims.” Like the cast in the slasher movies that inspired, if the Survivors don’t work together, they’ll be picked off, one-by-one. This power imbalance is the perfect set-up for horror, as Dead by Daylight (and the imitators it spawned) shows.

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Stadia, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S