Best horror games to play right now

The best horror game cover the gamut of what it means to be afraid. From dread to terror, tension to jump scares. There can be monsters or sometimes, even worse: a worrying lack of monsters. You  might interpret the symbolism of things, or just see a pile dead bodies and laugh at the excessive gore. Whatever you encounter these game can be enjoyable scary fun, introspective metaphor, or more. 

Coming up this list of the best horror games covers a broad range of games, across a range of eras and platforms. There's some old classics that are worth seeking out, some modern stuff but whatever's here is almost guaranteed to be an essential play for any self respecting horror fan. So turn down the lights, wait until midnight and prepare to be terrified with the best horror games you can play right now.  

25. Returnal

This might not seem like an obvious scary game but there's strong vein of cosmic horror running through everything Returnal does. This time looping roguelike is littered with Lovecraftian alien ruins, wrong shaped monsters and a terror that comes from trying not to die every 10 minutes. I get that it's a big ask to try this as it is all about trying to fight through waves of monsters and impossible feeling boss fights. But there's a great atmosphere to it all and disturbing story that gradually unfolds as you piece together the past and your place in it. 

Available on: PS5 

24. Slender: The Eight Pages

It's old but it's free and a classic moment in horror gaming. While you can no longer play it online, it's easy to find a free download you can try. The premise is simple - find eight pages scattered around a spooky forrest location without the Slender Man catching you. Every time you find a page he gets closer and harder to avoid. It's a simple idea but the execution is flawless and, even with the potato graphics, it's a terrifying experience. It's also a great game to challenge your friends to play and see how they get. 

Available on: PC

23. Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly

Picking up on the tropes of Japanese horror and folklore that were made famous in The Ring and Ju-on, the Fatal Frame series has always been unsettling. Characters are frozen in place with fear, their only weapon against soul-stealing ghosts is an ancient camera. This means the only way to fight your enemies is to face them head-on, an increasingly terrifying proposition as the game wears on. The franchise has several great entries, but we choose to single out the second game as the best fit for this list.

Crimson Butterfly updates the graphics a bit from the first game, and it's the most inviting in its difficulty, making sure there's an ever-present threat without getting too frustrating. It also has the best story, a personal journey between two sisters dealing with loss and guilt. Its always nice when the intense experience is backed up by a plot thats deeper than 'survive'.

Available on: PS4 and Xbox One (via backwards compatibility)

22. Mundaun

Mundaun is weird creepy little game with a The Lighthouse and Midsommar vibe to it's strange hand drawn tale. The black and white first person scares see you revising your Swiss hometown after the death of your grandfather and uncovering [spooky voice] an ancient family curse. The Swiss, 1920s-ish location and folklore, along with the scratchy penciled art, create an otherworldly vibe that give the whole thing a foreign movie vibe you usually only see in Japanese horror games. It's a little clunky in places, with a few unclear puzzles and goals, but worth powering through if you want to try a horror game build from a different cultural foundation. 

Available on: PS5, PS4, PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Switch 

21. Resident Evil Village

While Resident Evil Village certainly captured the public imagination, Lady Dimitrescu in particular, it's far from the best the series has ever been. There are some strong moments though. Especially in the opening few hours with Castle Dimitrescu offering up some great Gothic monster threats and characters. It's House Beneviento however that cements this game's place in history. It's an incredibly creepy, rewarding escape room beat that ends with one of the best reveals the series has ever seen. It's a high point for the game, the series and the genre in general. The rest of the game is good but veers strongly into action and shooting, eroding the scares through familiarity and ending on a fairly low brow shooty bang charge to victory. It's always fun though, and varied enough that you feel like you get a bit of everything. 

Available on: PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One and PC

20. Alan Wake

Alan Wake isn't like most horror games. It doesn't trade in excessive gore or jump scares - in fact, it's not that scary on the whole. But its sense of place and character is second to none. That place is Bright Falls, a Twin Peaks-inspired mountain community with a terrible secret. The dulcet tones of the night DJ rambling across the airwaves - mixed with the little vignettes you can catch on TV - make this town feel alive, like a character unto itself. Its story unfolds like a thrilling TV miniseries, right down to the episodic structure that bookends each plot twist and revelation.

Alan Wake further distinguishes itself by, well, being a lot of fun to play. Maybe that sounds a bit mean, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more enjoyable horror game than Alan Wake from a pure gameplay perspective. Developer, Remedy is as famous for action as storytelling, and that comes to bear here, as simple, fluid controls do away with the stilted awkwardness that's characteristic of this genre. Taking on a group of enemies is challenging for all the right reasons: the encounters are well crafted, and the pistol-plus-flashlight combat combo is fun to use without making you feel invincible.

Available on: PC and Xbox One (via backwards compatibility)

19. Carrion

Carrion might look like a bit of fun, because it is, but it's also a great horror game that reverses the roles and lets you play the monster. Through it's pixelly recreation of tentacles and teeth it really captures the essence of a good creature feature as you hoover up screaming scientists, rending limb from limb and leaving nothing but parts in your wake. It's excessively gory in a laugh out loud way and in between the bloody carnage there's some decent puzzles to work out using an ever expanding range of monster powers.  

Available on: PC, Xbox One and Switch 

18. Prey

While Morgan Yu’s trek across a space station doesn’t offer the breathless horror Dead Space does, especially the Mooncrash DLC showed off Prey’s potential for horror. A fairly straight-forward alien shooter can become much more unsettling when the goal changes from  you defending yourself to saving others, and the element of randomisation in Mooncrash does a lot in keeping you on your toes. But basic Prey, too, has a certain spookiness to it. Apart from being  a brilliant game with many secret nooks and crannies to discover, Prey, just like other Arkane games, gives you a certain freedom of approach. Many stories you come across in its environment tell of horrifying accidents, people trying to flee or alien encounters. If you want a bit more action but love good environmental storytelling, this is another game you shouldn’t sleep on.

Available on: PC, Xbox One, PS4 

17. Little Nightmares 2

There is something deeply wrong with Little Nightmare 2, in a good way. The sequel really doubles down on the original creepy children's story world but somehow ups the unpleasantness to impressive levels. The weirdness just creeps under you skin as you explore. From creepy juddering mannequins, to faceless, lost people - faces seemingly worn away my the TV static they'll die to stare at - there's little in this game that won't unnerve you, or leave you feeling uncomfortable thinking about it. It can be frustrating at times - the controls never really live up to the demands and there's a few trial and error encounters to blunder through. But stick with it and you'll experience probably one of the most traumatizing games on this list. 

Available on: PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Google Stadia

16. Until Dawn

Teen slashers have been around for nearly four decades now, but aside from the abysmal Friday the 13th on NES, games haven't really been brave enough to venture into that territory. Until now. Or rather, Until Dawn (zing), a 2015 survival-horror game about a pack of randy teens going on vacation to an isolated mountain cabin, only to find that some heinous entity is set on killing them off. But it's not all fun and games: the characters will die gruesome deaths if you can't navigate Until Dawn's horror movie logic, and it takes every opportunity to scare the bejaysus out of you.

While many games on this list are here because of their fear-factor alone, Until Dawn earns a spot for more meta reasons, too - it's wilfully, soulfully entrenched in horror tradition, and uses those tropes brilliantly. It's packed with winks to the slasher genre, and you'll still love the ridiculous twists even if you see them coming from a mile away. You'll laugh as much as you scream, if not more, and few horror games capture that sense of grisly fun so well.

Available on: PS4