30 Best Horror Games To Play In The Dark In 2026

We’re midway through 2026, and that means we’re getting closer to what is, for many people, horror season. We take a lot of care in keeping our list of the best horror games updated with the latest haunts for those who come looking for them at any time of year, and this batch of 30 of the scariest games to play is no different. But it’s especially important that we offer you a look at the best horror games on console and PC as the summer carries on and nights start to get longer again.

Below you’ll find horror games meant for solo players with the lights turned off and the headphones on. You’ll find co-op scares that make you so nervous you can’t help but laugh your way through it. You’ll find big-budget sequels in the horror series you already love, and indie horror hits you maybe missed–but shouldn’t miss any longer.

Take a look below and keep checking back, as we update this list several times throughout the year as more great horror games arrive on the scene.

Alan Wake 2

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: Remedy
• Scare Factor: 6

One of the newer entries on this list, Alan Wake 2 may also be the most daring. Though you’d be best served by first playing the original game so you can more easily follow this mind-bending sequel, we do have a handy recap of everything that happened in the original Alan Wake if you want to get caught up more quickly.

Alan Wake 2 stands as a marvel in video game storytelling, with haunting moments spent in the woods flanked by some major plot twists, several punishing boss battles, and even some decidedly off-beat scenes we dare not spoil here. With the unique way it handles a dual-campaign structure, Alan Wake 2 is the sort of horror game that doesn’t come around often.

Read our Alan Wake 2 review.

Alien Isolation

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC
• Release Year: 2014
• Developer: Creative Assembly
• Scare Factor: 9

The original Alien film from 1978 still holds up brilliantly as a tight and well-constructed battle against extraterrestrial hostility, and in 2014, developer Creative Assembly bottled that cinematic lightning and used it to power a survival-horror experience that could put the film sequels to shame. Set 15 years after the events of Alien, Alien: Isolation follows Ellen Ripley’s daughter Amanda on a mission to unravel the truth behind her mother’s disappearance.

That’s easier said than done, as the decommissioned trading station of Sevastopol is a death trap full of inhabitants who’ll gladly stab you in the back, malfunctioning androids, and the ever-present threat of a Xenomorph hunting you down. Easily the best digital recreation of the world of Alien and its horrifying mascot. We won’t lie to you about your chances of surviving against a perfect organism whose mind is unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality, but you do have our sympathy.

Read our Alien: Isolation review.

Tooth and Claw’s library

• Platforms: PC
• Release Year: Various
• Developer: Tooth and Claw
• Scare Factor: Various

There’s nothing better than getting a new video game for the price of absolutely nothing, and over on Itch.io, there’s a rich selection of horror games now available. Sure, these are humble and smaller games that are often produced by a single person, but when it comes to inventive and experimental horror, there are some real gems to be had here.

If you need somewhere specific to start, I recommend the games from Dan McGrath, specifically. As a one-person studio named Tooth and Claw, he has made many of my favorite horror games on the platform, and he has more coming out a few times every year. If you want some seriously inspired horror shorts with a keen understanding of how to unsettle players, check out Mcgrath’s work, like my personal favorite: Incident at Grove Lake.

Amnesia: The Bunker

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: Frictional Games
• Scare Factor: 9

We want to highlight just one game from any particular series on this list, so it was difficult to pick only one from the Amnesia series. Ultimately, we picked the newest of them given how it adopted replayability in the way the past games lacked, and is arguably the scariest one in the series anyway.

Amnesia: The Bunker is set during World War I and pits players against a behemoth that lurks in the walls, always hunting and never satiated. Like Alien Isolation’s starring Xenomorph, the monster in The Bunker is somewhat unscripted, and its objectives change slightly with each playthrough, meaning you’ll own your failures and celebrate your successes all the more. Just don’t forget to lock that safe room door behind you–if you make it back.

Read our Amnesia: The Bunker review.

The Mortuary Assistant

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch
• Release Year: 2022
• Developer: Darkstone Digital
• Scare Factor: 9

I don’t know which part of The Mortuary Assistant scares me more, the ghosts haunting the mortuary or the on-the-job gameplay that asks players to actually live the life of a mortician. Cutting open corpses, draining them of blood, embalming them, and prepping them for funerals or cremations feels unsettling in its coldness. It’s not that you’re a bad person. You’re literally just doing your job, but it’s such a peculiar, hard-to-stomach job that it all feels so intense.

Of course, it doesn’t take long before doors start closing on their own, noises start coming from the body bags, and things start moving out of the corner of your eye. The new Definitive Edition on consoles and PC adds even more creepy content to a game already full of different endings and secrets to uncover. Good luck sleeping after this one.

Dead Space (2023)

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: EA Motive
• Scare Factor: 8

Dead Space was one of the early hits of 2023, and in a year with no shortage of blockbusters, this remake of the 2008 survival-horror game was still a strong contender for game of the year. It’s not hard to see why, as developer EA Motive did more than just take the digital DNA of the original game and slap a fresh coat of 4K paint on it.

Instead, this was a sci-fi horror game rebuilt from the ground up and improves on the original with some smart design choices. The end result? Unrelenting terror in the cold vacuum of space, adaptive difficulty that’ll keep your palms sweaty, and a leap in graphical fidelity that’ll have you reaching for a barf bag every time you run into a Necromorph.

Read our Dead Space review.

Little Nightmares

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Switch, Xbox One, PS4
• Release Year: 2017
• Developer: Tarsiers Studio
• Scare Factor: 8

The Little Nightmares series is soon to debut a third entry and offer co-op for the first time, but in terms of scares, it’ll still be chasing the high of the creepy first game. Just as the name suggests, this is a game–and series–about bringing a child’s nightmares to life. Trapped in a disturbing and hazy world with threats of various (but similarly inhuman) shapes and sizes, Little Nightmares feels like a bad dream you can’t wake up from.

Now, an actual dream like that is not usually something one would seek out, but as a video game, it really works. The monsters on display here have an unsettling meltiness to them, like someone has used the wrong clay in the kiln. It’s an enjoyable horror-platformer, but it’s really the sights and sounds that will stick with you long after you’re done.

Read our Little Nightmares review.

The Outlast Trials

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: Red Barrels
• Scare Factor: 7 in co-op; 9 in solo play

A previous version of this list featured Outlast 2, and if you only want the scariest entry in the series, that one is still it. But after a year in Steam Early Access, The Outlast Trials launched in its 1.0 form in 2024 and has since become one of the best co-op horror games available. The same depraved, unflinching settings and scenarios that made this series famous are back, only this time in an infinitely replayable framework for up to four players in co-op.

Across a great number of maps, players will work together to complete a wide variety of objectives while dodging some terrifying villains like Sergeant Coyle, Franco Barbi, and the unforgettable Mother Gooseberry. The series’ signature scares aren’t quite as scary with friends in The Outlast Trials, but the team at Red Barrels has built out an impressive metagame that will keep you coming back to unlock the game’s spooky rewards–and if you do want it to be as terrifying as other games in the series, you can always play it solo too.

Phasmophobia

• Platforms: PC (Coming soon to Xbox Series X|S)
• Release Year: 2020
• Developer: Kinetic Games
• Scare Factor: 9

One of the big Twitch hits when it first debuted in 2020, Phasmophobia is Paranormal Activity with a multiplayer twist. You’ve got all the ghost-detecting equipment you could ask for–but none of the ghost-busting gear–several haunted locations, and several phantasms that don’t take too kindly to the living.

It’s terrifying to play solo, but when you’re with friends, the built-in voice recognition adds a new layer of immersion as spooks and specters listen in on your conversations and react to them. For an even bigger scare, try the game out in VR to get some fearful face-time with the ghosts and demons that you encounter.

The Complex: Expedition

• Platforms: PC
• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: pgWave
• Scare Factor: 7

A modern list of best horror games is incomplete without a nod to liminal spaces. Today, Steam is flooded with games on the subject given how popular it’s become on video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Having played all the liminal space and Backrooms-style games I can find, I’ve landed on The Complex: Expedition as the best of them. In atmosphere, story, and visuals, it’s a tier above the crowd–though if you’re not beholden to the Backrooms aesthetic specifically, Pools is a great alternative.

In The Complex: Expedition, you play a worker investigating a liminal space. Why, when, where–these are all questions you can’t really gauge, but even if you had that information to begin with, it’s likely it would be no use to you once you clip through reality and find yourself in this eerie, vaguely hostile locale where the aesthetic changes frequently but the constant feelings of dread and disorientation remain. If you’ve not yet went down the liminal-space rabbit hole, start here, then let the genre take over your Instagram algorithm like it has mine.

Resident Evil 2 (2019)

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Xbox One, PS4
• Release Year: 2019
• Developer: Capcom
• Scare Factor: 8

It’s no small task selecting just one Resident Evil game for a list like this. Heck, even if you discount some of the more action-oriented Resi games, that still leaves several horror classics to argue about. In the end, we found the remake of Resident Evil 2 to be the best series representative for this list for a few reasons.

For one, though we enjoy the original, its remake is widely available and an instant classic in its own right. Exploring the labyrinthine police station as Leon S. Kennedy is dizzying in all the right ways; disorientation breeds horror. But more than that, it’s the inclusion of Mr. X, a towering, always-lurking figure, which escalates Resident Evil 2 to being the best horror experience the beloved series has offered to date. If you hear those footsteps coming, get to a safe room.

Read our Resident Evil 2 review.

Signalis

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Xbox One, PS4
• Release Year: 2022
• Developer: Rose-engine
• Scare Factor: 6

A nostalgic and haunting game that pays homage to its inspirations, Signalis doesn’t get bogged down by the horror classics of the past. Instead, you’ve got a game fueled by its love for the PS1 days of Silent Hill and Resident Evil, builds its own terrifying top-down 2D pixel universe, and throws you into the deep end.

What sets Signalis apart is that it never feels overwhelmingly scary, but it does create an atmosphere of constant dread where you’ll never want to let your guard down. In some ways, being constantly on edge can be more effective than a well-timed jump scare, and the eerie environment excels at making you brace yourself for the worst.

Read our Signalis review.

SOMA

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Xbox One, PS4, PC
• Release Year: 2015
• Developer: Frictional Games
• Scare Factor: 7

Ever felt like playing a video game that’ll give you an existential crisis? Then SOMA is a pretty good option, one that comes from the twisted development labs of Amnesia developer Frictional Games. Sci-fi horror set at the bottom of the ocean, SOMA is a surprisingly thoughtful game that focuses on themes of identity, consciousness, and what it means to be human.

Of course it also has lethal dangers lurking around the corners of the underwater facility that you’re trapped in, as corrupted humans, twisted creatures, malfunctioning robots, and an AI pulling your strings will leave you feeling unsettled and scared long after you’ve turned the game off.

Read our SOMA review.

Until Dawn

• Platforms: PS4, PS5 (Remaster arrives in October 2024 for PS5 and PC)
• Release Year: 2015
• Developer: Supermassive
• Scare Factor: 8

Supermassive used to make spin-offs based on the PlayStation IP of other first-party studios, but that all changed with Until Dawn, setting the team down a path of creating horror games almost exclusively. There are many great ones, but we still find the one that started it all to be the best for our time and money.

Until Dawn starts like a classic slasher, with teens congregating in the creepy woods for a night they can’t imagine would ever go awry. Naturally, things get creepy and bloody in a hurry, with a few fun twists along the way that you won’t possibly see coming. The Telltale-style choices make for an unexpectedly fun and scary party game too, as players can take turns trying not to get the game’s major characters killed.

Read our Until Dawn review.

Sylvio 2

• Platforms: PC
• Release Year: 2017
• Developer: Stroboskop
• Scare Factor: 9

Of all the games on this list, Sylvio 2 may be the most unknown and unheralded, but let that be a lesson in just how serious we were about including it here among some genre titans. Sylvio was a flawed but interesting game that showed flashes of brilliance from its one-person studio. Sylvio 2 realizes that potential to an infinitely and enjoyably creepy degree.

In Sylvio 2, you play a ghost hunter who records audio and, for the first time in the series, video of supposedly haunted places, then trawl through your captures to seek out spirits. The unsettling level of detail in these recordings is so authentic-sounding that it can really feel like you’re sitting in the dark with headphones on and discovering the existence of ghosts. Seriously, play it in the right setting and you’ll be blown away by this low-budget horror game with high marks in audiovisual design.

Observation

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Xbox One, PS4
• Release Year: 2019
• Developer: No Code
• Scare Factor: 7

No Code may soon make a much bigger name for itself with Silent Hill: Townfall, but horror fans shouldn’t overlook Observation, a smart and slow-burning sci-fi horror story set on an eerie space station. Borrowing from the style and sometimes substance of classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, Observation manages to tell its own tale that ends up being as unsettling as it is mesmerizing.

In gameplay terms, it’s closer to an adventure game than a traditional survival-horror game, but don’t take that to mean it’s not scary. With a central mystery we won’t spoil ending in a place you’ll never see coming, Observation is among the most atmospheric and ultimately memorable games on this list.

Read our Observation review.

The Blackout Club

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Xbox One, PS4
• Release Year: 2018
• Developer: Question
• Scare Factor: 8

For those who were disappointed with Redfall, we offer a hidden gem called The Blackout Club as an alternative. It similarly pulls a bit from the immersive-sim genre to pit a group of ragtag heroes against ancient horrors, but it’s a slower-paced and ultimately better-designed attempt at some of the same ideas.

In The Blackout Club, co-op stealth-horror is the name of the game, as players will team up to descend below the streets of their suburb to expose a cult that kidnaps people and leaves some of them as unwitting and sleepwalking agents of their misery. It’s a game where being quiet is paramount, meaning when things go wrong and get loud, you don’t just hear it, you feel it.

Lethal Company

• Platforms: PC
• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: Zeekerss
• Scare Factor: 8

Co-op tends to remove many of a game’s scariest parts, but Lethal Company shows that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, many of the scariest moments come from playing co-op. In Lethal Company, up to four players descend into a hellish world to extract resources for “The Company” to meet a revenue quota.

But that’s much easier said than done. You’ll have to stick close, or else the proximity chat and the dizzyingly arranged hallways may leave you stranded in the dark with hungry monsters. Even upgrading your equipment to use things like a radio, flashlight, or even a minor melee weapon hardly makes your team much stronger. It’s an uphill battle to satisfy your bosses, and all too easy to satisfy the hunger of the creatures dwelling just out of sight.

The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners

• Platform: VR
• Release Year: 2020
• Developer: Skydance Interactive
• Scare Factor: 8

If you have a VR headset, this is the horror game to seek out, and if you don’t yet have a headset , this could be the killer app you’ve been waiting to find before you obtained one. Saints and Sinners exists in The Walking Dead universe, putting players in a first-person perspective as a survivor in the deep south. The game’s gritty combat system runs deep, with a ton of weapons, both typical, like guns and knives, and improvised, like broken bottles and screwdrivers.

Furthermore, each level acts like an open-world hub, with tons of interior space to explore and many routes to success. There’s a subtle immersive-sim element to the game (and its sequel, Retribution) that lets you plan and improvise your way through any predicament. Stay too long in any map and the horde will eventually descend on you. It’s truly one of the best VR games in general, not just one of the best horror games on the platform.

Silent Hill 2 Remake

• Platform: PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2024
• Developer: Bloober Team
• Scare Factor: 8

The remake of one of the most revered horror games ever made turned out much better than many seemed to anticipate. Silent Hill 2 Remake is a haunting and memorable survival-horror game in its own right. Though it owes much of its success to Konami’s brilliant 2001 original, the remake takes calculated risks on the way to extending the game in a number of thoughtful ways. It’s a gorgeous and endlessly spooky experience for a new generation, but it’s just as memorable for players who enjoyed the original, too.

If you’re lucky enough not to have had this story spoiled for you over the past quarter-century, dive into this one grateful for your fresh eyes and ears and soak in its oppressive yet intoxicating atmosphere. After seemingly auditioning for this role for many years, Bloober Team was finally given the keys to the Silent Hill castle, and the team nailed it.

The Headliners

• Platforms: PC
• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: KAFI
• Scare Factor: 7

Lethal Company gets its own spot on this list, but it’s also inspired a long list of games like it, and The Headliners is among the best of them, even in its early-access state. In The Headliners, you and up to seven friends play as photojournalists exploring a city besieged by monstrous aliens. Your mission is to capture great photos in exchange for cash–without losing a limb or worse. The monsters come in all sizes, including Godzilla-size, and its found-footage vibe basically makes the game a Cloverfield sim. Each round is different, and the difficulty ramps up with each successful mission due to its run-based design. With its blend of genuine scares and irresistible laughs, The Headliners is on its way to becoming a big deal in co-op horror games.

Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch
• Release Year: 2023
• Developer: Black Tabby Games
• Scare Factor: 4

Slay the Princess stands alone on this list as the only point-and-click visual novel. If that’s not typically the kind of horror game you’re looking for, I’d strongly suggest you make an exception. In this black-and-white horror story, you come upon a cabin imprisoning a princess locked in the basement. The narrator tells you that it’s your sole duty to kill her in order to save the world. Why? What if you don’t? Shouldn’t you hear her side of the story first?

The game prepares for every possible avenue of thought you might have, granting you a dialogue choice to match, then lets you go down a winding path of multiple endings and metanarrative twists you couldn’t possibly see coming. It’s not scary in the traditional sense, but it’s very dark and has much to say for those willing to dive in head-first.

REPO

• Platforms: PC
• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: Semiwork
• Scare Factor: 7

REPO is one of 2025’s biggest success stories, and probably the single-biggest if you narrow the criteria to horror games exclusively. Designed by a small team taking inspiration from Lethal Company, REPO casts groups of players as antique collectors who enter into haunted places and try to extract valuables without getting killed off by the game’s deep gallery of monsters.

Like other Lethal Company-style games, much of the fun is in learning how each new horror behaves, such as the shotgun-wielding blind man, whose itchy trigger finger snaps at the slightest sound, often creating a chain reaction of teammates being killed off while each survivor yelps as they witness their pals blown to bits. The game’s physics-based gameplay takes it the extra mile and helps it rise above other games in its genre, providing as many co-op laughs as it does genuine moments of terror.

Cronos: The New Dawn

• Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2
• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: Bloober Team
• Scare Factor: 6

Cronos: The New Dawn is the first Bloober Team game to follow its superb remake of Silent Hill 2, and though it doesn’t quite reach the same heights, it’s also different and impressive enough that you’d be wise to play both in whichever order you choose. The sci-fi horror story has shades of Dead Space throughout its 15- to 20-hour story, but it definitely carves its own path.

The highlight is the game’s “merge” combat system. Enemy corpses become rejuvenating flesh for the shambling monsters of Cronos. Enemies giving chase can consume their dead lying about, fortifying themselves and adopting new abilities. It’s very stressful to take on a small pack of “orphans,” as the game calls them, while hearing another monster merging just off-screen. You know in that moment, things are about to get much worse before they get better.

Luto

• Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S, PS5
• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: Broken Bird Games
• Scare Factor: 7

Luto is the debut game from Broken Bird, and it’s one of the best debut horror projects in some time. The first-person horror story opens like yet another P.T. clone, giving players seemingly normal hallways to walk through while the world slowly peels away its facade, revealing something darker. But where so many similar games tried to extrapolate what a full version of P.T. would’ve looked like, Luto takes that inspiration and creates something I feel confident to say could not be what Kojima had planned.

That’s maybe an odd way to put it, since the game does go in some very Kojima-like directions, but they’re so specific that even when the fourth-wall-breaking and metacommentary feels like the former Silent Hills director’s work, you can be certain Luto is painting its own unique story with merely familiar paintbrushes.

No, I’m Not A Human

• Platforms: PC
• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: Trioskaz
• Scare Factor: 8

There are strangely quite a few horror games as of late that play off the idea of Papers, Please. Deciphering which visitors come in peace and which are monstrous doppelgangers hoping you let your guard down is a flexible premise, but No, I’m Not A Human does it best, with some seriously unnerving encounters that have left me even less willing to answer a knock at my door than I already was before.

No, I’m Not A Human cautions you not to make any wrong moves, as letting in a creature in disguise can be your swift demise. It’s that paranoia-laced gameplay loop that feels so immersive, like reading too many creepy stories at too late an hour on a subreddit. Good luck sleeping well after playing this one.

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch, Switch 2
• Release Year: 2016
• Developer: Behaviour
• Scare Factor: 7

Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetrical horror multiplayer game is one of the horror genre’s greatest success stories, with 70 million players across the game’s 10 years. DBD debuted as a horror game laden with homages to iconic killers of slashers past, but today it’s grown into something I like to call Spooky Fortnite, with over 40 playable killers and even more survivors, many of them now based on some of the biggest names in horror, like Scream’s Ghostface, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, and, most recently, Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. 

DBD is as competitive as you want to make it, which means if you don’t want to sweat it out with meta builds to perfect your character, it’s just as rewarding as a game to jump into with friends and laugh as you scream together. Many games have tried to exist alongside DBD with varied results, but none of them have quite been able to appeal to the horror community in the same lasting way.

Dark Hours

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2024
• Developer: Piece of Cake
• Scare Factor: 6

Have you seen the movie Abigail? In it, a band of criminals plans to kidnap a bigwig’s daughter, then hold her for ransom. The only problem: They didn’t know the girl is a vampire. Oops. Dark Hours is essentially that same pitch. You and three friends break into places like a museum with plans to rob the joint. Sadly for you, monsters dwell there. Good luck!

Dark Hours zigs where so many other co-op horror games zag into being Lethal Company-likes. Instead, Dark Hours feels more like Payday meets Phasmophobia. You’ll need to evade several different classes of monsters, each with their own behaviors, including a Lovecraftian cephalopod, a creepy, clowny magician, and a beastly cryptid. Escaping with all limbs intact becomes the main objective, and if you’re still in one piece, lots of loot would be nice, too. It’s the adage of “get rich or die trying” taken to the fullest in Dark Hours.

Reanimal

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2026
• Developer: Tarsier
• Scare Factor: 7

Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Remake

• Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2026
• Developer: Koei Tecmo
• Scare Factor: 8