Prepare yourself for the scare of your life as we present the top horror games 2022 for PC. Put your headset on, turn out all the lights, and get ready.
Which PC horror games are the best? Horror games frequently flip the script on conventional action ideas, making you flee and hide from the bad guys.Scary games make you feel helpless rather than strong, and they are the ones that stick with you for a very long time.
Of course, the finest horror games provide much more than just blood and jump scares. As a result, while we have included some obvious choices like Outlast and Amnesia, you can also anticipate seeing games that employ a variety of strategies to quicken your heartbeat and cause you to perspire. Also, don’t worry about this list being outdated; we frequently revisit them to include fresh terrifying titles.
The top horror video games for PC are listed here for you to enjoy right now if you dare.
Table of contents
- The Evil Within 2
- Alien: Isolation
- Darkwood
- Outlast
- Little Nightmares
- Oxenfree
- Little Nightmares
- Stories Untold
- Dead Space
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent
- System Shock 2
“The Evil Within” 2
Even at night, the finest horror games keep you awake. The Evil Within 2 shouts its way to the top by that standard. After witnessing a mass of dismembered bodies skitter over the floor and assemble into a pallid, meaty mass of limbs with several smiling faces and a buzzsaw in lieu of a right arm, it will be difficult for you to fall asleep. Skin-crawling set-pieces like these are abundant in The Evil Within 2, and each one is as creative as the last. However, the superb sequel from Tango Gameworks is much more than a rundown of the scariest video game events.
However, between defeating opponents and visiting eerie houses are open-world segments where you never know what you’ll find: some desperately needed shotgun rounds or a sneaky phantom that will follow you for the rest of your journey. The Evil Within 2 keeps faithful to its survival horror roots, constantly throwing you against one more crazy opponent than you have ammunition for. This is hidden behind the whip-smart enemy and level design. If that’s still not persuading you, look at our review of The Evil Within 2.
Alien: Isolation: Horror games 2022
With the help of some cunning AI and level design, the alien in Alien: Isolation, a horror game about being stranded on a space station with a (spoiler) giant frightening alien, is more horrifying than it ever had any right to be. Since your monster stalker cannot be battered, shot, or pounded into submission, this horror game essentially functions as a first-person hiding simulator, as we discovered when researching and writing our Alien: Isolation review.
The finest horror games make you feel completely helpless, and in Alien: Isolation you must rely on your cunning, your propensity for squeezing into lockers and beneath desks, as well as a number of diversions, to protect yourself from the massive Gigerian terror. What more could you want from a horror game opponent than a lethal entity that may come at any time, unpredicted, and without notice?
Darkwood: Horror games 2022
Horror games undervalue the importance of sound design; if you ever need a reminder of just how terrifying a distant knock or a simple scratching noise can be, play Darkwood, one of the finest independent horror games. A mystery guy is preparing mushrooms in a home in the middle of a plague-infested woodland in this top-down horror game. You are free to travel the infested woods while it is light outside, fending off rabid dogs, gathering supplies, and attempting to identify who you are and how you wound up here. But at night, your only choice is to return home and wait for the night’s grotesqueries to pass you by.
No matter how carefully you have prepared, they will still come for you. You may seal the windows to hide, fill your generator with fuel to stave off invaders and create traps as a final line of defence. Uncanny is Darkwood’s capacity to creep into your pores and stalk you without exposing a single limb. We often smashed the Esc key and got up from the desktop due to rattling noises, strange shrieks, and creaking doors. You shouldn’t be deceived by the top-down perspective; this is one of the greatest horror games available.
Outlast
Outlast is a first-person exploration game that uses the “found footage” technique of modern horror movies and is set within a deserted mental institution. This abandoned psychiatric hospital is home to a cast of psychotic patients and brutal personnel, which you must avoid in order to live with all of your intestines still inside your body. This is true of all abandoned psychiatric facilities in horror games. While these clichés may have been well explored in the film, horror games may still benefit from them, as Outlast demonstrates.
You must cautiously see through your camcorder’s infrared mode while navigating Outlast’s dimly lit passageways. As a result, Outlast has a very spooky visual identity, and you feel exposed to enemies following you. The fact that the hospital you are visiting is stocked with batteries that are the exact same make and model as your camera is a tiny mercy considering how briefly your camera’s batteries last.
Little Nightmares: Horror games 2022
Even if Little Nightmares is now on its second instalment, it’s still worthwhile to play the first game in the series since it may even be scarier than the sequel when it comes to setting the stage for the series’ climactic clash with The Thin Man. You take on the role of Six, a little boy attempting to escape the horrors of the isolated vessel, a location shrouded in mystery and evil, set amid the cramped hallways of The Maw.
In order to navigate a dangerous labyrinth of rooms and corridors while avoiding the dwellers inside, you’ll need to solve riddles. You are urgently trying to get away, but the monstrous Twin Chefs are chasing you with their razor-sharp butcher knives, while The Janitor’s lengthy arms weave through the air vents after you. Little Nightmares may be a little game, but it succeeds in building suspense in a dark, unpleasant setting, weaving a terrifying tale, and leading us on a terrifying trip that culminates in an epic conclusion.
Oxenfree
Like another cabin in the woods-style horror story, the narrative opens with a group of friends travelling to a lonely island to party. However, once they arrive and set foot on the island, which is home to long-forgotten monsters, the party takes a nasty turn. You take on the role of Alex, a disobedient teenager who creates a rift in another universe, and you may influence the plot by selecting speech fragments and decisions that affect how the game is played out.
It’s a supernatural thriller that alternates between a chilling adventure game and a paranormal horror to create a tense, unsettling atmosphere that lasts right up to the shocking conclusion. Oxenfree succeeds in bending genres into something enchanted, lovely, and absolutely horrifying.
Stories Untold
Stories Untold is a frightfully inventive collection of four short horror stories, each of which uses a unique piece of vintage technology as the primary medium for its twisted story. You are thrust in front of a large, outdated CRT monitor in the first episode, where you must play the terrifying text adventure game The House Abandon. It doesn’t take long for your surroundings to start to resemble the one in the novel you’re reading, as lights start to flicker, unexplained thuds continue, and imagined noises keep you glued to the screen in expectation of a jump-scare that never materialises. Stories Untold’s four episodes take a more deliberate approach than most other horror games, valuing ambience and mood over quick thrills.
The frightening tales come in a variety of genres and formats, from a tense thriller that is solved by deciphering radio signals to a complex science fiction tale that has you utilising a variety of tools and devices to conduct an experiment on a mysterious relic. While each episode is distinct, they are connected in subtle ways, and the last act has a revelation that would send M. Knight Shyamalan into shock. The horror game Observation, a sci-fi thriller from the same developer, puts you in control of an AI that must strive to defend a space station that is in danger.
Dead Space: Horror games 2022
Dead Space tells the tale of a hilarious gang of ne’er-do-well cultists who drag a deep space mining ship to its flickering, malfunctioning knees, much like the horror game adaption of Event Horizon that never existed. Despite having a laser cutter and the ability to methodically dismember the legions of already deformed alien beings who have taken over the ship, you are a mechanic who is never comfortable using it.
Dead Space’s kind of horror, like all the finest horror games, is upsetting and frequently strikes at your psyche, delicately fusing violence and paranoia to create an evocative and unrelentingly depressing atmosphere. All onboard a spaceship that resembles a traditional haunted home, complete with dim hallways and a few too many nooks for ghosts to hide in.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
In contrast to horror games, nightmares don’t frequently follow logical laws. Amnesia: The Dark Descent, however, is actually terrifying. This is a horror game where monsters can attack you at any time, where your only defence is to sneak and hide from them, and even just gazing at the monsters can send you mad. When the creatures in Amnesia: The Dark Descent are around, you almost crawl up into a ball and close your eyes, relying on acoustic cues to determine when they have departed.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which adheres to the truism that “fear of the unknown is the most potent dread of all,” is one of the most terrifying horror games ever created. The follow-up, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, is as compelling psychologically. However, we wouldn’t advise taking them all at once; much like the protagonist of Amnesia, you need to manage your sanity.
System Shock 2: Horror games 2022
A specific subgenre of first-person survival horror games had its start with System Shock 2. With its open-ended design and a never-ending labyrinth of decks and rooms, it encourages exploration and discovery. Similar to being trapped in a haunted John Lewis, but with psychological death monkeys instead. On the sparsely inhabited spacecraft, the faster-than-light Von Braun is a persistent environment that seems to continue existing and developing even when you turn your back on it.
However, System Shock 2 is one of the best horror games to ever hit our venerable platform thanks to SHODAN, a corrupted AI. She torments and fools you forever, turning an already horrific survival RPG into an isolating horror classic, ranking right up there with HAL 9000 in the soothingly spoken yet subtly wicked computer stakes. Few space-themed video games can equal System Shock 2’s sensation of loneliness.
That’s it, gamers! Which one of these horror games gave you goosebumps? Do let us know.
Also read, Top 10 Zombie games for Android in 2022