The ’90s and the 2000s may have had their fair share of groundbreaking horror game classics, but the 2010s were the decade that saw a fascinating rebirth for the genre. As a result, horror in gaming has arguably never been more prominent.

Horror games were struggling to be noticed as we entered the ’10s. The peak that was Resident Evil 4 saw a slow decline in standout titles year on year, and publishers took it upon themselves to decide that the public didn’t want horror games, they wanted action. This shift had a damaging effect on the big hitters. Silent Hill was increasingly hot-potatoed from developer to developer, Resident Evil veered further away from horror, and the less said about Alone in the Dark the better. Even a newcomer like Dead Space lasted just a single console generation before its developer was swallowed whole.

The rise of the indie scene on PC would prove to be the catalyst for a horror revival, coupled with the rise of YouTube Let’s Plays. The creative spark of small, talented teams of developers (sometimes just a single person) led to a finer appreciation of the horror genre, and it branched out in new and exciting paths. Sony’s PlayStation brand played its part too, delivering several important horror titles in a short space of time (oh, and also The Order:1886).

By the end of the decade, horror gaming was in rude health, with the future looking bright. Bloody Disgusting’s Dead Pixels team has discussed at length what games it feels are worthy of being championed from the past decade, and we’ve narrowed it down to 25 titles. Below are those final choices, voted for by Games Editor Neil Bolt, Gaming News Writer Mike Wilson, plus regular Dead Pixels contributors Andrew King, Aaron Boehm, Michael Pementel, John-Paul Jones, and Harrison Abbott. Each writer has also contributed a few words for certain games, explaining what makes those games special and why they love them.

As with Bloody Disgusting’s best horror films of the decade list, we’ve focused on games that are predominantly horror-based rather than horror-adjacent.

First though, the honorable mentions, of which there are quite a few.

Honorable Mentions

The Darkness 2, Slender: The Arrival, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Control, Dead Space 3, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, The Persistence, Layers of Fear 2, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Dante’s Inferno, Little Nightmares, Observer, Plants Vs. Zombies, Resident Evil: Revelations, Mortal Kombat X.

25. Dead By Daylight (Behaviour Interactive, 2016)

Launching a year ahead of Friday The 13th: The Game, Behaviour Interactive’s Dead By Daylight brought fans longing to finally play as a killer hunting victims to life in asymmetrical multiplayer action. Like Friday The 13th, Dead by Daylight had a bit of a rough start with bugs and spotty server connections.

However, the devs have striven to be on top of issues and player concerns, which has resulted in the game’s community growing and remaining dedicated since the game’s launch in 2016. Behaviour Interactive has continued to be active in the game’s ongoing evolution, scheduling regular events and adding additional cosmetic items.

More importantly, they’ve continued giving fans the opportunity to play as licensed characters (including Freddy Krueger, Ghostface, Leatherface, Michael Myers, and The Demogorgon) that we’ve only dreamed about. The game’s original creations are nothing to sneeze at, either, thanks in part to the game’s expanding lore. The thrill of playing a lethal game of hide-and-seek never stops being fun. –Mike Wilson

24. Layers of Fear (Bloober Team, 2016)

Until Layers of Fear, Bloober Team’s greatest horror had been that it made a genuinely terrible multiplayer title. Layers of Fear changed that, and led to the Polish studio becoming one of gaming’s biggest champions of horror in the past decade.

Layers of Fear sees you taking the role of a tortured artist, so obsessed with creating his magnum opus that it has seemingly led to personal tragedy. On the surface, your part is to find the necessary tools to finish your painting by exploring a sprawling mansion. Things get super weird from there.

Every time you look away and look back, it appears something is different. The painter’s fragile psyche, coupled with his guilt and obsession have a tangible effect on the mansion and its layout. It’s less about jump scares, and more about assaulting you with an unceasing mind fuck as stranger and stranger things confront you at every turn.

The madness escalates, the truth comes out, and Layers of Fear plays out like a beautiful modern twist on classic ghost stories. – Neil Bolt

23. Detention (Red Candle Games, 2017)

You’ll see that this list has horror from many perspectives and in many styles, but how many were as deeply interesting under the surface as Red Candle’s Detention?

Utilizing the folklore, religion, culture, and history of Taiwan, Detention brings the kind of informed horror that you’d typically see in a Guillermo Del Toro film. It’s set in Taiwan in the 1960s during martial law, and sees two students trapped in their remote mountainside school after freak weather causes an evacuation. It’s not long before the school undergoes a sinister change, and evil creatures roam the grounds. The young duo has to work together to escape and unravel the mystery of the school’s curse.

The way historical fact is intertwined with the story makes for an intriguing horror story where parallels between the evils of folklore and reality are frequently highlighted. The revelations that unfurl towards the end have an air of a certain popular horror franchise, but the restraint with which Detention doles out its terror and tragedy is unparalleled in modern horror games. – Neil Bolt

22. The Walking Dead: The First Season (Telltale Games, 2012)

The Walking Dead as a multimedia franchise was easily one of the biggest of the decade. The T.V. series alone was a cultural phenomenon, but it wasn’t alone in having an important impact.

Telltale Games had dabbled in episodic gaming before, notably with spins on Jurassic Park and Back to the Future, but its series based on Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead graphic novels was where the studio really hit paydirt (and ironically led to its eventual downfall). The story of Lee and Clementine was one of the most memorable of the decade because it connected you in that special way only this medium can manage.

Lee Everett is heading to jail when the zombie apocalypse grants him a reprieve of sorts. In the chaos, he meets a young girl named Clementine, left alone after her babysitter’s death. The pair go in search of safety and Clementine’s parents and meet others along the way.

Just as the graphic novel and the show did, Telltale’s Walking Dead has horrific gutpunches. From the first major decision, the episode concerning Duck’s fate, the ending of the penultimate episode, and the heart-wrenching finale. I played through The Walking Dead on four separate occasions and that emotional connection remained strong. I still haven’t brought myself to finish the final season because I’m not sure I want to say goodbye to Clem. – Neil Bolt

21. Inside (PlayDead, 2017)

Inside builds an intoxicatingly oppressive world without a word. From the instant your mysterious runaway emerges from a dark thicket and begins moving across the screen until the roiling body horror of the game’s final moments, Inside holds you in its grasp.

Playdead’s horror platformer is a masterpiece of cinematography, despite using a side-scrolling perspective; a fantastic work of storytelling, despite a complete lack of dialogue.

Even four years after its release, I still want to say as little about it as possible. The surprises this game holds are best experienced unspoiled. So, I’ll just say this: Inside is available on PC, every current-gen console and mobile devices. Play it as soon as possible if you haven’t. – Andrew King

I had little in the way of expectations for Inside. I hadn’t been all that enamored with Limbo, so at first glance this looked like more of the same. How wrong I was.

Inside‘s strange dystopian nightmarescape stays with you, all the way to that insane ending. – Neil Bolt

20. SOMA (Frictional Games, 2015)

After the release of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, developer Frictional Games amplified the terror with their next title, 2015’s SOMA. For the majority of its gameplay, SOMA takes place in an ominous underwater facility. The decay and Lovecraftian-like presentation allow for SOMA’s world to permeate with mystery; from the dim lighting to the various environmental sounds, the game’s world exudes anxiety.

Along with the player, SOMA’s protagonist is just as clueless as to what is going on around him. Having entered a machine in the year 2015 for an experimental health procedure, protagonist Simon wakes up in the facility, the year now being 2104. As Simon explores his surroundings he is confronted by a terrifying threat that stalks the halls. He also comes across a variety of machines that display human characteristics – they emulate the personalities and memories of those humans who once inhabited the facility.

For all its chilling imagery, SOMA excels when it comes to existential horror. Without going into spoilers, as the player and Simon move forward in the story, the game presents chilling philosophical questions about consciousness and existence. For all its thematic dives and environmental design, SOMA is one of the most compelling psychological games of the decade. – Michael Pementel

19. Prey (Arkane Studios, 2017)

Many horror games borrow heavily from film, fashioning jump scares with familiar tools: framing, lighting and well-timed bursts of furious movement. But, the horrors that await players in Prey — the 2017 sci-fi immersive sim from Arkane Studios, the developers of the Dishonored games — are, much more often, the result of the game’s weird systems getting under your skin.

Any conversation about Prey as a horror game will likely begin and end with the Mimics. The game’s setting, the Talos I space station, has been taken over by the Typhon, an inky alien race that can assume many forms more terrifying than this cat-sized subspecies. But, Mimics behave as their name suggests, adopting the form of random objects throughout the environment. You will constantly, panicked, ask yourself, “Did that coffee cup just move?” Sometimes, not always, the answer is yes; a fact that will have you unloading your already scarce ammunition into innocent cookware. The Mimics aren’t powerful, but they are a constant threat; one that could strike from anywhere at anytime. They suffuse Prey with a feeling of unending paranoia.

This is the most ambitious game that Arkane has made so far — opting in to the use of alien powers means that you too can eventually become the coffee cup (!) — and a fantastic example of the horrors that our imaginations can cook up when aided by stellar systemic interactions. – Andrew King

18. The Evil Within 2 (Tango Gameworks, 2017)

The first Evil Within came with a great deal of hype, largely due to the involvement of genre legend Shinji Mikami, but it failed to live up to the legacy in the eyes of most fans. It attempted to capture the feeling of Resident Evil 4 with imagery closer to (while nowhere near as elegant as) Silent Hill, but failed to live up to either. There was a go-for-broke, over-the-top attitude that I appreciated, but the linear structure and less than compelling setup didn’t end up doing anything for me. Ironically, The Evil Within 2 fulfilled the promise of the series, with reduced involvement from Mikami.

Ditching the cliché asylum setting of the first game, The Evil Within 2 attempted to take the wild and out there franchise mythology and make a more personal family story. The story is still a bit all over the place, but it’s a lot more grounded and interesting than before, giving you better emotional anchors to keep you invested as things get more bizarre.

The gameplay structure also opened up, giving the player an opportunity to explore a small town rather than be led around like the first one. Resource management became more interesting, showing places on the map where items are located, challenging players to risk themselves to acquire extra ammo and upgrades. The new structure also allowed for wonderful side stories to be hidden all over, rewarding exploration with new content.

While I’m excited for Tango Gameworks new game, GhostWire: Tokyo, I’m a little sad that this probably means we won’t see a new Evil Within game in the future. The second one was so much more confident than the first, finding its own identity and injecting more options in a genre that can sometimes become trapped by repetition. –Aaron Boehm

17. The Last Door (The Game Kitchen, 2013)

Don’t let the fact that The Last Door has pixels the same size as an infant’s balled fist fool you – there’s a lot of unpleasant nastiness going on under that Atari 2600 visual layer. Taking place within the unfurling and evocative foggy streets of Victorian London, The Last Door is a point and click adventure that weaves a slow-burning tale of horror and madness that would make Lovecraft and his fellow literary bros blush.

That said, The Last Door is much more than just another video game take on the increasingly shopworn works of the aforementioned Lovecraft, instead carefully channeling the literary influences of folks such as Poe, Blake and more to complement and round out the inspirations that act as the bedrock for its terrifying yarn.

A more effective horror than many of its genre brethren that boast more modern veneers (a fact that should perhaps come as little surprise given that developer The Game Kitchen also developed the recently released Blasphemous), The Last Door is a fiendishly constructed, keenly directed horror that demands every moment of your attention. The Last Door is a sterling example of how developers can do more with less. – John-Paul Jones

16. Doki Doki Literature Club! (Team Salvato, 2017)

This is a game that takes its time to sell the player on its tropes – all before it goes full speed into absolute insanity. Doki Doki Literature Club! is a visual novel that plays to the tune of an anime dating sim. The player assumes the role of a student who has joined a literature club; along with the club’s four adorable girl students, the player interacts with each of them.

For those who have played visual novels or dating sims in the past, the first half of Doki Doki plays out in a very cute manner – but around the halfway point, things get GRIM. From there, Doki Doki unravels, becoming an experience of psychological horror. Touching upon topics such as suicide and depression, the game’s characters find themselves trapped in a bizarre nightmare that is out of their control.

From its introduction and early moments, one would not expect such a disturbing and intriguing tale. For all its shock and uneasy tension, Doki Doki Literature Club! also makes for a unique subversion of anime and visual novel tropes. By disguising itself as just another anime-related dating sim, Doki Doki Literature Club! is able to masterfully catch players by surprise and immerse them in a nightmare. – Michael Pementel

15. DOOM (id Software, 2016)

Of all the things in the universe that shouldn’t have been wildly successful, a from-the-ground-up reboot of perhaps the most legendary first-person shooter of all time that spent far too long in development hell was certainly among them.

But yet, here we are. Not only did id Software fashion a genre effort that deftly honored its shotgun-blasting, demon-murdering, and color key-grabbing roots, but it also wrapped around it a scintillating shooter underpinned by the furious thrum of one of the decade’s best video game soundtracks.

Even today, right now, there is no other shooter out there which blends hyperkinetic ultraviolence and furious horror as deftly as DOOM. A stellar, genre-redefining effort that launched in a year already stuffed with great shooters (hi, Titanfall 2), DOOM in 2016 was the game that shouldn’t, but could and did. Bring on DOOM Eternal in March 2020. –John-Paul Jones

14. The Forest (Endnight Games, 2014)

While the notion of a sandbox survival effort is hardly an original one, the idea of creating such a genre offering underscored by the sort of horror genre premise that a pre-Hellboy Neil Marshall might have come up with, proves to be quite the compelling concept indeed.

The lone survivor of a plane crash, the last thing you remember before falling unconscious is some humanoid creature taking your child away into the sun-kissed beyond. Naturally then, your first inclination is to scour the island for food and supplies as you attempt to eke out a sort of rudimentary existence amongst the mutated cannibals that inhabit the area.

Though there are other titles such as The Long Dark and Impact Winter that place a premium on survival, it’s really in the cannibal mutants that The Forest meaningfully sets itself apart. Not just a rampaging horde hellbent on murder, these cannibals have their own behaviors, families and belief systems. Do you attempt to escape the island, or do you become a cannibal yourself, and give in to your baser instincts? Such a choice has never been more delectably presented. – John-Paul Jones

13. Lone Survivor (superflat Games, 2012)

When I get sad about the disappearance of P.T. I try to comfort myself by re-installing Lone Survivor on my PC. Tonally, the game is as close to the tone of early Silent Hill games that you can get, and manages to do so from a 2D perspective. Players control a man who may or may not be the only survivor of a mysterious plague that turns people into shambling horrors as he explores the remains of his decaying apartment complex.

You start off having a dream where you talk to a man with a cardboard box on his head, and it only gets more surreal from there. The line between hallucination and reality wears thin as your character tries to sneak past zombie-like creatures and solve strange puzzles. The pixelated art style does a great job implying the shape of the horrors without giving you a clear glimpse, allowing your mind to fill in the gaps.

Like many survival horror games, resource management becomes paramount, this time focusing on keeping together the fragile physical and mental state of the character. In order to survive, you must be well-fed and well-rested, forcing you to make trips back to your home base when your situation gets dire. This loop encourages you to check your Silent Hill-like map in order to plan out what you want to do with your limited time each day.

Don’t shy away from Lone Survivor due to its unconventional perspective. It’s the total package for survival horror, featuring satisfying resource management, a compelling and creepy story and an eerie mood, enhanced by a haunting score. – Aaron Boehm

12. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2018)

While known for their action-driven titles, Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice makes for one of the decade’s most impactful experiences. Inspired by Nordic mythologies and Celtic culture, players take on the role of Senua – a Pict warrior striving to save the soul of her lover. Her journey involves traveling a fantastical world brimming with nightmarish beings.

Described as an “independent AAA game,” Hellblade offers intense and exciting combat. As players move forward in Senua’s quest, the landscape that surrounds them exudes awe and terror. But for all its moments of adrenaline and majesty, Hellblade is also an exploration into the horrors of mental illness.

Struggling with PTSD and psychosis, as well as displaying symptoms related to depression, Senua must also face the agony that lives within her. From the voices that whisper in her ears, to the various hallucinations and visual connections that flutter before her eyes, the game creates a bridge of sympathy for players to connect with Senua. Utilizing game mechanics and its narrative, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice proves to be a profound game about one’s battle to find peace. – Micheal Pementel

11. Outlast (Red Barrels, 2013)

Where could you go after other companies had seemingly exhausted the genre of Survival Horror? Red Barrels put that to the test with Outlast. Foregoing any sort of weapons, the player is armed only with a video camera as their source of light, leaving you stuck having to use stealth to avoid the denizens lurking in Mount Massive Asylum.

All the while, you’re on the lookout for batteries to power your camcorder, promoting even more tension to amplify the scares. Sure, the story of an evil corporation sponsoring morally-questionable experiments that go horribly wrong has been done before, but who really cares when you’re scared out of your wits trying to avoid the hulking monstrosity hunting you down from room to room?

Amnesia: The Dark Descent was the forerunner, but Outlast distilled the panic and the fear to perfection. – Mike Wilson

10. Dead Space 2 (Visceral Games, 2011)

With a lot of gaming franchises, I usually get on better with the second entry than I do the first, and Dead Space 2 is no exception. Don’t get me wrong, the original has the raw ingredients for a cool space-faring survival horror, but Dead Space 2 is so much better at it, even if it does start the rather rapid escalation towards turning the series into action-horror.

Dead Space 2 does do the drip-feed tension of the original, but it certainly throws that out of the window for its opening minutes. Poor Isaac Clarke survived the nightmare aboard the Ishimura only to end up in the middle of a fresh Necromorph outbreak. The game begins with Isaac being troubled by visions brought on by the power of the markers, then throws both him and you into a padded room, with an agitated figure desperately trying to free the former engineer.

Unfortunately, a Necromorph quite graphically kills Isaac’s would-be rescuer, and turns before his very eyes, all in a very uncomfortable close fashion. What follows is a Necro-dodging gauntlet (with a straight jacket still on for some of it) through the halls of the ship, as death is avoided and witnessed many times over before Isaac can even put one foot in his iconic engineer suit and really take the fight to the evil.

In that opening 20 or so minutes, Dead Space 2 starts you off completely helpless, before gradually giving you more and more tools to fight back; but in true survival horror style, death is but one wrong move away. It sets the tone for the rest of the game beautifully. – Neil Bolt

9. Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games, 2010)

Arguably, there’s no game on this list that’s been quite as influential as Frictional’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent has been on horror games in the last decade. You can track its legacy throughout this list in fact. Would Outlast exist without it? Layers of Fear? Frictional’s own SOMA? Would Resident Evil have taken the turn it did? Would the infamous title below have been shaped the way it was without Amnesia? The short and long answer is no.

Think of all the Lovecraft-inspired horror games that have spewed forth in recent years; Amnesia is partially responsible for that too, but amazingly, even now, very few come close to doing it as well as Amnesia.

Waking up in that castle, slowly discovering who you are and what insane situation you find yourself in is one of the most engrossing horror adventures of all time.

It wasn’t the first of its kind, but it was the perfect melting pot of psychological horror and that most essential of horror staples, a feeling of helplessness. To go back now, it’s clear that it has been replicated and refined elsewhere so much that it already seems a touch archaic, but for me, no horror game of the past decade matches the kind of first-time experience I had with Amnesia: The Dark Descent. – Neil Bolt

8. P.T. (Kojima Productions, 2014)

Declaring P.T to be one of the decade’s ultimate horror accomplishments feels like a redundant exercise, given that all the praise in the world isn’t going to be enough to resurrect this interactive teaser. Nor will it undo the damage that was sadly inflicted upon it by its own publisher. Indeed, if you haven’t experienced this watershed moment in gaming yet, then you’re shit out of luck. Because (save for treasured YouTube playthroughs and amateur tributes) you won’t be able to find a record of it anywhere.

For those who are blissfully ignorant of the tragic background, P.T was essentially an appetizer for a hitherto unannounced collaboration between Hideo Kojima and director Guillermo Del Toro. Covertly uploaded to the PlayStation Store back in August of 2014 – under the guise of being an original IP – it transpired to be a preview slice for a brand new Silent Hill title, something that the undernourished fanbase had really been hankering for. Upon release, the ‘’playable teaser’’ was showered with praise for its innovative puzzles, stripped back level design, haunting atmosphere and photorealistic graphics, to the point where it successfully cracked into some ‘’Game of the Year’’ lists despite only being a demo.

Which makes it all the more baffling that Konami did what they did. Presumably overcome with a self-destructive impulse, the publisher ended up nixing the much-anticipated project and severed all ties with their most bankable creator (Kojima) in the process. It was an utterly bone-headed move, one so incomprehensible that many chalked it up to an ill-advised publicity stunt. Alas, the sudden cancellation turned out to be all too real and not only did Konami abandon the full game, but they also went a step further by eradicating any trace of its existence in the first place. Quickly removing P.T. from the digital storefront, they made the free preview unattainable for anyone who didn’t already have a copy stored onto their hard drive. So unless you’re willing to fork out $700 on eBay for one of those fabled PS4s, then you might as well consider this horror gem to be a mythical relic, akin to lost Inca gold or the Florentine diamond.

And that’s a damn shame, because even with 6 years’ worth of hindsight and a lineage of inferior copycats, P.T continues to live up to the hype. No other game has so accurately distilled the feeling of being trapped in a nightmare, what with its illogical geography, hazy narrative, and surrealist imagery. Forcing you through interminable psychological torment, it makes you walk around the same corridor over and over again, until you gradually start to notice that things are changing with each loop. At first, it’s just little details; a door might open a crack, some ambiguous sounds might echo in the distance, or cryptic writing might appear on the wall. But as it goes on, things get exponentially more sinister, and you’ll eventually find yourself dealing with a vengeful revenant, a talking paper bag, and an undead fetus in a sink. It’s properly fucked up and that’s why I love it so much!

Unlike their movie counterparts, horror video-games are rarely capable of frightening me outside of the immediate moment in which I’m playing them. I’m always too conscious that what I’m looking at is an amalgamation of pixels on a screen and not something tangible that could be lurking in the dark while I’m lying in bed at night. As such, once I turn the console off, digital antagonists like Chris Walker from Outlast or Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 tend to lose all power over me, and I can safely put them out of mind. But that wasn’t the case with P.T, which managed to linger in my subconscious for days on end. I was genuinely creeped out by some of the things I underwent in this hellish journey, and that is a legacy even Konami cannot erase. – Harrison Abbott

7. The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013)

Any title that is heralded as ‘’gaming’s Citizen Kane moment’’ is guaranteed to draw in a few detractors and incite a certain amount of backlash. After all, a grandiose proclamation of this magnitude inevitably paints a target on the back of its subject, opening it up to scrutiny as everyone tries to pinpoint flaws and take it down a peg. Such has been the case with The Last of Us, a game that has been on the receiving of so much contrarian discourse and hot takes about how ‘’overrated’’ it is, that it’s now bizarrely on the verge of becoming undervalued.

So let’s set the record straight once and for all. The Last of Us is pretty good. Terrific even. In fact, I’d go so far as to contend that it probably is gaming’s Citizen Kane, boasting thematically rich storytelling, layered characterization, nuanced mo-cap performances, sophisticated writing, atmospheric music, gorgeous visuals, impeccable sound-design, and polished (albeit slightly run-of-the-mill) mechanics.

No other video-game has managed to captivate me with its narrative quite like Joel and Ellie’s gut-wrenching trek across post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh. Although the plot is relatively familiar when dismantled into its core elements (self-centered loner has to escort a remarkable child across a perilous wasteland) the way in which it’s executed here is what really elevates proceedings. The naturalistic dialogue, the convincing central relationship and the way in which Naughty Dog balances pervasive tragedy with moments of subtle tenderness, all come together to form something that’s utterly mesmerizing to watch as a back-seat gamer, never mind as a player with a vested interest.

That alone would justify a lot of the fuss surrounding The Last of Us, but the fact that the combat has been so tightly constructed is just the cherry on top. Encounters against humans are invigorating enough, however, it kicks into a higher gear once night falls and you’re left to deal with the infected. Getting rushed by a swarm of these bloodcurdling enemies is a genuinely panic-inducing occurrence, especially on the harder difficulties wherein you’ll frequently be backed into a corner and forced into a desperate last stand. With you trying to make every bullet count, praying that you’ve placed your traps in the most impactful spots, and hurriedly crafting those much-needed Molotov cocktails, these set-pieces recall the intensity of Resident Evil 4’s village siege. Only this time that feeling has somehow been sustained for 16+ hours.

And then there are those bloody Clickers! Having progressed into the third stage of infection, due to prolonged exposure with the Cordyceps fungus, these blind mutants might just be the most nerve-wracking iteration of zombies I’ve seen to date. Their appearance is absolutely grotesque, their sporadic movements keep you on your toes at all times, and let’s not forget that telltale echolocation sound they produce when navigating environments. Trying to avoid detection from their ultra-sensitive hearing never stops being scary, no matter how many times you’ve done it. – Harrison Abbott

6. Resident Evil 2 Remake (Capcom, 2019)

After the superb remake of Resident Evil for the Gamecube, fans pined for years for Capcom to finally pull the trigger on remaking Resident Evil 2. And after years of waiting, Capcom delivered on the daunting task in 2019 with the Resident Evil 2 remake.

Any doubts that the game wouldn’t meet fans’ sky-high expectations were quickly dispersed once we finally stepped back into the shoes of either Leon S. Kennedy or Claire Redfield. Much like what they did with the remake for Resident Evil, things were similar but tweaked just a little bit with the RE2 remake, drawing in longtime fans and newcomers alike.

The game shipped 4 million units in its first month of release, and eventually surpassed the lifetime sales of the original Resident Evil 2. Adding to it all is the fact that fans have taken to modding the game in weird and wonderful ways. Coupled with the equally-successful release of Devil May Cry V, Capcom’s comeback after the previous decade of uncertainly was complete. – Mike Wilson

Resident Evil 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. Any excitement I had for the remake was weighted with worry that it couldn’t possibly be anywhere near as good as the original. Luckily, the remake was different enough, whilst retaining a familiar nostalgic flavor. For newcomers though, it’s a near-perfect modernization of what made survival horror such an impactful sub-genre. – Neil Bolt

5. Bloodborne (From Software, 2015)

Playing Bloodborne for me was like learning a new language. When I was younger I played difficult character action games like Devil May Cry, but had never tried out the Fromsoft Souls games, so this was something entirely different. Every fight was lethal, every encounter a true challenge. Nothing could be taken for granted, and that was a completely different way of playing. It took me a long time, but once I got used to the nouns the game threw at me and figured out how to use the verbs, I could read it like a book.

It wasn’t just the combat that I had to get used to; the game also changes the way you take in the story. I remember letting a friend borrow the game, and he gave it back saying he didn’t like the lack of story. When first starting out, I can see his point, but once you figure out how information is presented in Bloodborne, you see that the world is as rich as they come, with a unique mythology and tragic tale of misplaced ambition. What looks on the surface to be a fairly standard tale of hunting beasts turns into a tale of cosmic horror about evolving mankind into its next stage. This information isn’t doled out in cutscenes, but rather item descriptions and lore notes, making you work for the story, hunting down every corner of the map to discover secrets.

And what a map it is. Yharnham, the game’s gothic setting, is one of the most beautifully realized worlds in video games. Dark, shadowy streets, snowy castles and hellish forests give the player plenty of variety as they explore, running into increasingly hideous creatures as they get closer to discovering the game’s secrets. These rich levels are wonderfully crafted, looping back on themselves to create satisfying shortcuts. One particular moment of one level looping back to another was one of the game’s most interesting revelations, showing how tightly constructed the sprawling world is.

I could go on for hours about how much I love this game. To me, it’s the complete package of outstandingly tight gameplay, a fully realized world and an intriguing story to explore. Not only is the base game great, but The Old Hunters DLC features some of the best levels in the game, further expanding on the lore. Despite its difficulty and depth, Bloodborne was the first game I earned the platinum trophy for, after 130 hours of playing. If you have the patience to learn, you’ll find that this is one of the most rewarding games ever created. – Aaron Boehm

4. Alan Wake (Remedy Entertainment, 2010)

Remedy had made their mark with the Max Payne series, but they needed to grow. The solution: Alan Wake.

Not only did the game borrow heavily from genre stalwart Stephen King and Twin Peaks (pleasing many), but the way the story unfolded in a unique episodic nature similar to a mystery television program worked so well. The use of real-life product placement and the game’s soundtrack only helped the immersion of players into the fictional Washington locale of Bright Falls.

Topping it off was the game’s plot, a Twilight Zone-like experience that had you coming back for more each time. – Mike Wilson

Every good thing that Remedy has done since Alan Wake undoubtedly has Alan Wake to thank. Remedy is great at building its own worlds. It’ll be exciting to return to Bright Falls when Control‘s expansions release. – Neil Bolt

3. Resident Evil 7 (Capcom, 2017)

I’ll never forget the feeling I had watching that first trailer at E3 2016. The franchise had been floundering a bit after the disappointment of RE6, and they smartly created a trailer that looked nothing like any other game in the franchise and saved the name reveal until the very end. Ditching the zombie-fueled corporate conspiracies for backwoods hillbillies, the game appeared to be the breath of fresh air the series needed.

Not only did it change the setting, but it also switched from the classic third-person view to a first-person perspective. Even with all the changes, the game perfectly evoked the feel of the original Resident Evil in a completely different context. The level design was reminiscent of the RE1’s Spencer Mansion and RE2‘s police station, constantly looping you back and forth while unlocking new areas.

While the game did a great job of taking what worked from the original games, it also pulled some inspiration from other successful horror franchises, like Alien: Isolation and Outlast. No longer were you a special forces operative, instead just some guy in way over his head and very underpowered for the situation. Resource management and ammo crafting became very important, and the addition of unkillable stalker enemies added variety to the standard combat encounters. Escape room sequences also appear a couple times, giving you very tense and high stakes puzzles to solve.

Capcom has been focusing strongly on remaking some of the classic PS1 games recently, and while that’s satisfying, I’m very curious to see where they take the Resident Evil franchise next. What made Resident Evil 7 so refreshing was how surprisingly different it was than all the other games that came before it, and it’s going to be hard for them to capture lightning in a bottle a second time. The game is such a singular experience that I’m confident the team will find a way to keep the series fresh for whatever Resident Evil 8 ends up becoming. – Aaron Boehm

2. Alien Isolation (Creative Assembly, 2014)

As with its cinematic ancestry, the gaming side of the Alien IP has had its fair share of peaks and troughs. Potentially its lowest ebb came in the form of 2013’s risible Colonial Marines – an FPS so obscenely janky that it was poised to kill any remaining interest in the brand with one fell swoop. Yet in a redemption arc worthy of Dickens, the series was able to turn itself around just one year later, by delivering what is arguably its greatest installment (filmic or otherwise) since 1986.

Cleverly distancing itself from its forebears, the peerless Alien: Isolation took inspiration from Ridley Scott’s franchise progenitor (rather than the more bombastic sequel) to craft a decidedly slow-burn experience that reinstates the Xenomorph as a formidable killing machine. No longer mere cannon fodder for grunts to brainlessly mow down with their pulse rifles, the creature in this game requires actual strategy and crafty thinking to be outsmarted. You see, you can’t kill it with conventional weapons (a handicap that it does not share, as it is capable of eliminating you in a single hit), and so have to resort to your wits in order to create distractions, ward it off with fire, bait it into attacking hostile NPCs, or just stay far out of view.

This is easier said than done however, thanks to the extremely lifelike A.I that brings the menacing hunter to life without the need for patrol routes or pre-ordained behaviors. Working in tandem with a ‘’virtual director’’ – that calculates the opportune moment for applying additional pressures – this system generates intense and spontaneous encounters that will consistently reduce you to a nervous wreck. There will be split-second decision making, heart-pounding near misses, and excruciating cat-and-mouse sequences that are all unique to you as a player.

Parcel that together with immersive sound-design, top-notch lighting effects and procedurally generated music and you’ve got an endless supply of unscripted, white-knuckle suspense. As far as I’m concerned, this has become the gold-standard for Amnesia style ‘’hide-and-seek’’ horror, with that electrifying sense of unpredictability keeping you on edge even as you head into your 4th or 5th playthrough. That it also accurately captures the look and feel of the original movie, with well-observed environmental details, properly judged fan service and authentic audio effects, is just the icing on the cake. – Harrison Abbott

Alien Isolation made the Xenomorph a terrifying threat in a way that so many of the films have not. I’ve genuinely not been as worried about a video game enemy’s appearance as much as I was of the Xeno in Isolation. Just when you start to get the upper hand, the sneaky bastard ups its game. Alien Isolation is an all-timer. – Neil Bolt

1. Until Dawn (Supermassive Games, 2015)

Until Dawn’s core appeal is that it gives us enlightened genre aficionados a chance to put our money where our mouth is and finally demonstrate that we would actually be able to hack it in one of those slasher flicks we know so much about. Everyone has watched Halloween, I Know What You Did Last Summer, or Friday the 13th and ruminated on how they would be a much sharper protagonist than those making dumb mistakes on the screen. Always mocking these fictional characters for their errors – like investigating suspicious noises, tripping over in the woods, and failing to pick up defensive weapons – we’re under the impression that our survival instincts are above reproach and that, if we ever found ourselves in a comparable scenario, we wouldn’t falter.

Supermassive Games’ interactive horror movie invites us to test out that theory, by making us responsible for a group of prospective murder victims so dated and stereotypical, that you almost expect it to be foreshadowing some kind of Cabin in the Woods meta-commentary. There’s the rich mean girl, the arrogant jock, the class clown, the awkward bookish type, the aspiring model, the pervy weirdo and, of course, the token final girl. To a certain extent all these characteristics are inflexible and set in stone (it’s not like you can transform the athlete into an engineering major, or make the unbearable comic-relief actually funny) but what you can do is influence their actions, within the parameters of the given personas of course, to facilitate desired outcomes.

For example, you could fan the flames of a hormonal dispute to create entertaining drama, you could deliberately lead one of them to meet a grisly end at the hands of a wood chipper, or – if you want to be super boring about it – you could try to keep everyone alive until the credits roll. The game won’t admonish you either way, meaning that you’re free to pull the strings however you see fit. It’s almost like you get to direct your own horror movie, tallying up the ideal kill count, indulging in your preferred clichés and, at one point, even dictating what form the scares will take. I personally enjoyed discovering just how many gruesome death variations there were for each character, as some of the elaborate fatalities proved to be exceptionally imaginative.

Experimenting with all the different branches is what’s so engrossing about Until Dawn, because it legitimately feels like an open-ended narrative. People can die at the drop of a hat (due to either an obscure decision that was made hours ago or something as insignificant as a failed QTE) and whole environments can be skipped over if you don’t forge the requisite path. Granted, it’s not an especially frightening game – and those sections wherein you sluggishly potter around looking for glistening objects to advance the plot can get a little wearisome – but that doesn’t detract from the overall experience. Because getting to be the puppet master is just way too much fun. – Harrison Abbott