As a longtime horror fan, I’ve seen horror games of all kinds debut in the gaming industry that often experiment with the genre through gameplay, storytelling, art direction and more.

Oftentimes, developers and publishers attempt to attract wider audiences to horror titles by needlessly stretching out their game’s runtime, adding unnecessary multiplayer modes, or optional modes that frequently jarred with the game’s horror premise.

However, I’ve found several all-killer, no-filler horror titles that managed to keep me on my toes throughout my entire playthrough or, at the very least, to stay within the realms of true stress-inducing horror throughout their presentation.

This doesn’t mean games absent from this list are bad horror games, per se, just that some other horror titles featured a bit too much padding or unnecessary features that limited the overall horrifying experience.

10

Five Nights at Freddy’s

The Beginning of a Phenomenon

Jump scares are some of the easiest and most common ways to scare people in horror movies, shows, and games, but when they’re done right, they can absolutely terrify people and sear horrifying moments into people’s memories.

2014’s classic Five Nights at Freddy’s is a perfect example of jump scares done right thanks to the game prohibiting player movement, limiting their actions to protect themselves, and setting the title in the forever creepy location of a Chuck E. Cheese-like pizzeria at night.

While Five Nights at Freddy’s gameplay may be rather basic, I always get tense watching the Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy animatronics from security cameras, waiting to see when and where they’ll move to and deciding I’ll have to use my precious power to shut doors.

In my opinion, it’s this basic gameplay loop, unsettling setting, and creepy animatronics that keeps the original Five Nights at Freddy scary, intense, and frankly fun all these years later without the expansive elements of Freddy’s numerous sequels.

9

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster

A Hectic Race for Survival

The Dead Rising franchise may not be as explicitly terrifying as some other horror franchises, especially as later sequels delve more into action and comedy. Still, the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster perfectly updates the original Dead Rising’s stressful and horror elements for modern platforms.

Dead Rising 1 is arguably the most serious entry in the series, since civilians are not used to zombies yet and there are not many jokes made at the expense of zombies, psychopaths, or survivors’ deaths, especially compared to the overly comedic Dead Rising 4.

What makes Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster an all-killer horror game is the limitless way Frank West can kill zombies, and its timing system, which often caused me stress by trying to save all survivors without missing main cases or inadvertently getting the survivors killed by hordes of zombies.

Psychopaths are legitimately unsettling in this game, at least for me, such as Cliff Hudson brutally murdering survivors and zombies and hanging them up in a hardware store or the Hall family mercilessly sniping survivors for fun.

8

Bloodborne

Dark Souls With a Victorian Horror Twist

Dark Souls on its own can be pretty terrifying and stress-inducing with it’s extremely difficult to defeat bosses and often grotesque creature design seen with characters such as Chaos Witch Quelaag or Nito, but FromSoftware delved deeper into horror elements with 2015’s Bloodborne.

Set in the gothic, Victorian-inspired city of Yharnam, Bloodborne has players embody hunters tasked with slaying monstrous beasts and crazed hunters as they slowly discover the origins of Yharnam’s plague and Lovecraftian past.

While Bloodborne does feature some PvP and co-op content like Dark Souls, its enthrallingly creepy world and vicious monsters kept me horrified by the game just as much as it captivated me despite my numerous deaths.

Bloodborne is one of the most unique horror games I’ve ever played. It’s Bloodborne’s haunting story, intense gameplay, and grotesque monsters such as Rom the Vacuous Spider and Orphan of Kos that make it an all-killer horror title.

7

The Last of Us Part 1

A Perfect Update to a PS3 Classic

2013’s The Last of Us and its 2014 remaster are considered to be some of the best games made in the 21st century, and The Last of Us’ 2022 remake, The Last of Us Part 1, is arguably the best distillation of the PS3 horror, action-adventure game.

For one, Part 1 is built upon the same engine as The Last of Us Part 2, making gameplay more free-flowing and making encounters with hostile survivors and monstrous Clickers all the more visceral.

While the omission of including multiplayer in Part 1 was disappointing to many fans who enjoyed The Last of Us’ team-focused Factions mode, Naughty Dog made the right choice to forego multiplayer, in my opinion, to better focus on improving the main campaign and Left Behind’s gameplay.

Factions was fun, but it always felt somewhat tacked on to me similar to other multiplayer modes added to traditionally single-player games, such as God of War: Ascension and Bioshock 2’s multiplayer modes.

6

P.T.

The Greatest Playable Teaser of All Time

There are few games that are raw, atmospheric, psychological horror in its purest form, like Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro’s 2014 P.T.

A playable teaser for the sadly canceled Silent Hills, P.T. doesn’t feature any combat or puzzles of any kind and instead forces the player to helplessly explore a house with looping hallways and bathrooms.

Despite its nature as a relatively short teaser, P.T. remains one of the best horror games thanks to its simplicity by having the hallway and bathroom appear increasingly horrific on each succeeding visit, with the appearances of the terrifying ghost Lisa and a hauntingly disgusting fetus.

While Silent Hills may never see the light of day, P.T. has forever made me second guess venturing into darkly lit hallways and bathrooms.

5

The Evil Within

Shinji Mikami’s Grand Return to Survival Horror

Shinji Mikami is legendary for his role in pioneering the survival horror genre in general thanks to his work on the original Resident Evil and Dino Crisis games, but arguably his best work in terms of presenting a horror roller coaster experience has got to be 2014’s The Evil Within.

A third-person survival horror title similar in gameplay to Mikami’s Resident Evil 4, The Evil Within was Mikami’s attempt to make horror games truly terrifying again after the late 2000s and early 2010s horror titles tended to veer more towards explosive action than presenting nightmarish sequences.

I believe Mikami succeeded with The Evil Within’s return to classic horror, as the game is a relentless, psychologically gory trip as soon as Detective Sebastian Castellanos ventures into Beacon Mental Hospital and first encounters the mysterious burnt figure known as Ruvik.

While The Evil Within’s gameplay is more intense than other horror games on this list, I’d say it makes up for a few explosive action moments thanks to its incredibly creepy and unique monster design seen through creatures such as Amalgam, Keeper, Laura, and Quell.

4

Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Resident Evil at its Finest

The Resident Evil franchise arguably has as many bad entries as it does good over its near 30-year-long lifespan, but when Capcom manages to do survival horror right, it’s an absolute masterpiece and this was the case for Resident Evil 2’s 2019 remake.

1998’s Resident Evil 2 was already one of the best sequels and survival horror games ever made, but 2019’s Resident Evil improved upon it in nearly every way while managing to retain the original’s core horror elements.

The level of engrossing graphical detail in zombies, Lickers, Ivy, G-Creatures, and the many G-Virus mutated forms of Dr. William Birkin is absolutely incredible in a truly horrifying way, not to mention the constant stress and fear Mr. X induces roaming around the RPD.

On top of these improvements, Resident Evil 2’s bonus modes, the 4th Survivor, Tofu Survivor, and Ghost Survivors, managed to maintain the overall serious, terrifying tone of Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield’s campaigns, albeit with Tofu feeling slightly more comical than others.

3

Until Dawn

Interactive Drama Horror Done Right

1980s Slasher and supernatural horror stories were pillars of the horror genre for decades and Supermassive Games strove to replicate and celebrate these horrifying and somewhat cheesy tales with 2015’s Until Dawn.

Similar in gameplay to Telltale Games’ point-and-click titles, Until Dawn is a horror title oozing with atmosphere and stress-inducing decision-making that can either save the group of young friends or sentence them to swift, brutally gory deaths thanks to its far-reaching butterfly effect system.

From Until Dawn’s prologue and Dr. Hill’s repeated eerie sessions, the game is a scare fest even when there’s no killer or Wendigo in sight, thanks to the game’s creepy snow-covered Blackwood Mountain setting and tense music composed by Jason Graves.

While its gameplay may be limited, Until Dawn’s story and presentation of this 1980s-inspired horror show makes it a thrilling horror game and one that I frequently force my friends to play just to see their reactions to the many twists, revelations, and shocking deaths Until Dawn entailed.

2

Dead Space (2023)

The Best Horror Remake Ever Made

Visceral Games’ original Dead Space was already a near-perfect third-person sci-fi survival horror game when it first released in 2008, but Motive Studio managed to do the impossible and perfect an already amazing horror game with the 2023 Dead Space remake.

2023’s Dead Space keeps the original’s core gameplay and plot intact but makes several little improvements that make the remake a true killer horror game, such as making Necromorphs’ flesh fall off after repeated attacks, expanding upon the backstory of Nicole Brennan, Elizabeth Cross, and Challus Mercer, and notably getting rid of 2008’s incredibly frustrating turret section.

Motive notably chose to forego adding any kind of multiplayer to the remake after the past failings of Dead Space 2 and 3’s multiplayer offerings to keep Dead Space’s original space Lovecraftian tone and presentation intact.

Motive’s Dead Space remake is what I believe to be what every great horror remake should strive to live up to, as it keeps the core tenants of the original intact but builds upon them to truly make Isaac Clarke’s journey exceptionally horrifying and enthralling.

1

Outlast

An Absolute First-Person Nightmare

It’s rare that a horror video game actually gives me nightmares and yet, Outlast’s visceral first-person survival horror presentation is one that I often frequent back to for how its reliability terrifies me and enthralls me with its mysteries.

Set in a psychiatric hospital owned by the suspicious Murkoff Corporation, Outlast follows freelance investigative journalist Miles Upshur as he attempts to investigate reports of inhumane experiments being done at the hospital, only to find himself trapped in a house of unspeakable horrors.

Part of what makes Outlast an all-killer horror game is Upshur inability to defend himself, as he’s only able to use his camera to help see in the dark and can’t defend himself, instead relying on stealth, running, and stressful shoving of items to evade his numerous psychopathic pursuers.

Outlast is a constant, gory, nightmare filled with some of the most terrifying antagonists in all of gaming, such as the hulking Chris Walker, the absolutely disgusting Richard Trager, and the phantom-like Walrider and its these characters, setting, and gameplay that makes Outlast one of, if not, the most terrifying horror game in the truest sense of the term.