20 Scariest Videogames Ever

Yes, Alien: Isolation is a little long in the tooth, er, venomous fang, but that doesn’t mean its initial few hours aren’t some of the scariest in recent years. The famous xenomorph is smart, brutal, and indestructible—facing its wrath lead to some of the most frightening moments ever encountered in a game. And brilliantly, the game evokes the original Alien film, taking its time to introduce the fearsome beast so that every creak, shuffle, and eerie silence feels like it could be the moment you meet your doom. —Jonathon Dornbush

The game that spawned a thousand horrified reaction videos (this one is particularly hilarious), Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a masterpiece of atmospheric horror. Trapped in a castle and pursued by monsters with nothing but a lantern and your slipping sanity, Amnesia is a work of unrelenting tension. Its success spawned a new horror-games trend in which players are helpless and hiding is their only option. —Joshua Rivera

There are plenty of horrifying sequences in this sci-fi horror sequel, which sends engineer Isaac Clarke on a journey through an undead space metropolis (and through his own PTSD-rattled brain). But for my money, the scariest moment is the one without any space zombies. Late in the game, you have to perform a bit of impromptu brain surgery on yourself, stabbing a needle directly into your own iris. (Possible reference to the Buñuel/Dalí silent classic Un Chien Andalou?) By the way, you don’t want to know what happens if you fail. —Darren Franich

The Playable Teaser turned out to be an extended trailer for Silent Hills, but it’s also one of the most chilling interactive experiences ever devised. By keeping the focus narrow—the player walks down the same, seemingly mundane, suburban hallway again and again while haunted by a frightening presence—the game does a lot with relatively little. P.T. paved the path for a new breed of less-is-more horror games. —Jonathon Dornbush

The revelation of the first Resident Evil zombie was undeniably terrifying — you could argue that it kick-started the never-ending zombie wave in pop culture. But the precise instant when the Resident Evil series really announced the arrival of horror videogames came a little bit later in the game. You’re walking through a quiet hallway, minding your own business, and a freaking zombie dog jumps through the window. And then another one! And all you could do was run like hell. Cowardice was now a legitimate survival strategy. —Darren Franich

First rule of horror games: Never go into dilapidated psychiatric hospitals at night. NEVER. The protagonist of Outlast unfortunately never got the memo, so players must guide the investigative journalist through the winding halls of the facility. Armed with only a video camera with easily depleted batteries, the reporter hopes to uncover the secrets but stumbles into a nightmarish asylum filled with monsters, traps, and a crazed cult leader. Players can’t attack enemies, making for a particularly tense experience that should leave you—and any friends along for the ride—hoarse from all of your frightened screams. —Jonathon Dornbush

I could try to explain the specific horror that you’re seeing in the picture above, but context doesn’t do any justice to Pyramid Head, the stalking phantom of the Silent Hill sequel that could represent the protagonist’s psyche or could just be a nasty demon with a polyhedronic head. (If it makes you feel any better, those are mannequins. We think.) —Darren Franich

Gone Home isn’t a horror game, but if you go into the experience knowing virtually nothing about it, it certainly can feel terrifying. Set at night, in a thunderstorm, in a house devoid of inhabitants, Gone Home establishes a sense of fear and uncertainty by making the familiar feel strange. Even if it’s not the goal of Gone Home‘s beautiful story, developer Fullbright delivers an impressive amount of tension in a confined space. —Jonathon Dornbush

It’s hard to pick just one scary sequence from BioShock, which starts on a high register of ”unbearably tense” and gradually descends into ”unspeakably freakish.” Still, it’s tough to beat the moment when you see the silhouette of a drugged-out mother singing a twisted version of ”Hush Little Baby” into a stroller: ”When your daddy’s in the ground, Mommy’s gonna sell you by the pound.” (Fun fact: The stroller contains a revolver!) —Darren Franich

Videogame villains used to be funny: giant turtles, mad scientists with weird hair, vaguely Soviet cartoon characters. Then came the extended flashback sequence in Final Fantasy VII, in which supersoldier Sephiroth goes insane and butchers an entire village. The vision of Sephiroth in the flames etched itself in players’ memories forever. —Darren Franich

It’s-a me, Mario! Just toodling along through my candy-colored 3-D debut, trying to find some missing stars. Say, this mansion isn’t so scary, even if it is inhabited by ghosts. Gotta find more of those red coins. Oh, that’s weird, is that a piano AHHHH WHY DOES THAT PIANO HAVE TEETH? —Darren Franich

If a schizophrenic Scandinavian artist from a post-apocalyptic future tried to create an episode of The Simpsons using only a big box of crayons, the result would look something like the ”Dreamland” stage of this beat-’em-up classic, which takes random arcana from the first season of the show and twists it into surreality. Anthropomorphized doughnuts, flying saxophones that fire musical notes at you, and a horrific bowling-ball boss with long arms for some reason. If you’re not a little freaked out, you’re probably insane. —Darren Franich

Nothing about Eternal Darkness makes any sense. One second, you’re controlling a young woman wandering through a scary old house; the next, you’re controlling various characters from different time periods (a Roman centurion, a Franciscan monk, a colonial doctor). If your characters get too scared, the videogame starts hallucinating. Then, just when you think you’re getting steady, you walk into the washroom…and the camera zooms in on a dead girl in a literal bloodbath. And this was on the freaking GameCube. —Darren Franich

Myst was a cultural sensation with a long-tail backlash; like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, you either loved the game for its atmospheric horror or hated it because it was boring. Almost two decades on, though, Myst‘s focus on ambient storytelling — a gorgeous audio track, the hint of a grand universe beyond the game — seems uncannily prescient. For pure non-sequitur horror, nothing beats this tiny Easter egg in the mechanical age: If you look through a telescope at just the right moment, you see a skeleton hanging from a sunken mast. It’s practically the only sign of human life in Myst. —Darren Franich

The GoW franchise took an eerie turn in its closing moments, going into protagonist Kratos’ subconscious for a dreamlike interlude in which the warrior has to relive the most terrifying sins of his horrible life. The ”terror dream” is a weirdly common trope in action games — see also: Max Payne and Metal Gear Solid 3 — but it’s never been used to more devastating effect. —Darren Franich

One of the great monster introductions in videogame history begins when you walk down a long corridor in the Raccoon City PD. There’s a drip-drip-drip on the soundtrack — like the sound of a faucet, or a decapitated corpse hanging upside down. You continue down the corridor, turn the corner, look up…and see a monster that looks like X-Men‘s Nightcrawler turned inside out. —Darren Franich

A year before Gore Verbinski’s Hollywood remake The Ring kick-started the popular J-horror wave in America, the first entry in the Fatal Frame series prominently displayed all the essential tropes of the genre. Combining a folk-tale haunted-house story with a slow-burning psychological horror and a modern-technology twist — you can see ghosts with your camera — Frame (called Project Zero in its native Japan) would have been horrifying without the freakish doll room. But yeesh, dolls are scary. —Darren Franich

The first act of this monochromatic mini-masterpiece sends you through a spooky forest, where you wage a run-and-hide campaign against a giant spider. You think you’ve escaped…when suddenly the spider sneaks up behind you. Like so much else in Limbo?s universe, the semi-abstract animation just makes it more terrifying. —Darren Franich

Now, there’s no reason to be scared while you’re playing F.E.A.R. You’re not a helpless little girl, like the protagonist of Fatal Frame. You’re a badass government dude — nameless except for your Tarantino-esque call sign, ”The Point Man.” You’ve got anti-ghost weapons. You can slow down time. Still, though, this hospital you’re walking through is having some weird lighting issues, and it looks like somebody’s trapped in that room over there OH MY GOD, SCARY DEAD NURSE!!!! —Darren Franich

There are shock-scares and shiver-scares and scares that make you want to leave the light on. And then there are moments like the final showdown in Shadow of the Colossus, when you find yourself staring into the angry eyes of a creature the size of a skyscraper. Fair warning: If you’re afraid of heights, or if you’re afraid of feeling like a tiny ant in a vast unknowable universe, Shadow is probably not for you. —Darren Franich