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Top 20 most spine-chilling horror games ever

Daniel Caceres

Daniel Caceres

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BY DANIEL CACERES

Feel like getting truly scared? We’ve collected the most terrifying games that only the bravest can play. Don’t agree with the order of the top 20? Vote to change the order to suit your tastes!

Top 20 most spine-chilling horror games ever

Most of these games can be easily found nowadays. We’ve avoided typical choices like Resident Evil or Five Nights at Freddy’s.

Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 is more psychologically scary than the other games on this list. The story never mentions this directly, but the characters, including the protagonist, are escaping their mistakes or trauma instead of confronting them. As a result, the city of Silent Hill becomes more ominous and sinister until the fantastic end.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The classic that gave rise to all modern horror games. Amnesia sets aside action, betting on stealth instead. While you explore the passageways of a sinister castle, you’ll encounter abominations hunting you down. You can’t finish them off, so you have to hide or manage your light sources to avoid becoming devoured in the darkness.

Alien: Isolation

Isolation not only is the best game in the Alien saga but also boasts of one of the smartest and most terrifying enemies in the genre. During the course of this adventure, the alien adjusts to the structure and the ins and outs of Sevastopol. What once worked for you suddenly becomes your last resort unless you want to die.

Outlast

The key to Outlast is leaving you completely unprotected when facing dangers hidden in the insane asylum. You have to hide under beds or in closets while you look for keys or clues to advance. Your only light source, your camera, adds tension thanks to a battery that threatens to run out at every step.

Dead Space

Unlike other monsters, the creatures of Dead Space don’t die with a bullet to the head. What’s more, sometimes they don’t have a head where they should. Dead Space’s ¨strategic dismembering¨ system guarantees that no encounter will be the same as another… and the designs of the monsters are the stuff of nightmares.

Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly

The ¨brilliance¨ of Project Zero 2 is that it forces you to face your fears. The only way to defeat the game’s ghosts is to photograph them, the closer they are when the photo is taken, the more pain you cause. Can you handle it all?

Dead Space 2

Dead Space 2 is ¨bigger and better¨ than the first release. There are more frights, stories and places. The only downside is that, while Dead Space was a personal and organic adventure, its sequel seems like an amusement park: impressive but somewhat artificial.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

One of the most undeservedly forgotten installments of the saga. Shattered Memories is more than a remake of the first release. For starters, it personalizes your nightmare with the appearance of a mysterious therapist. On the other hand, it takes away all kinds of weapons to give you only one option when facing danger: to run.

The Evil Within

The Evil Within is like an exhibition of all horror game cliches in the third person. The result should be chaotic but it’s actually an adventure with an admirable rhythm that doesn’t stop coming up with new ideas and enemies so you never feel safe.

10 Layers of Fear

Remember P.T., the demo teaser of the canceled Silent Hills installment? Layers of Fear is everything that it could have been. You’ll discover a complex and strange story where you’ll be afraid to do anything, whether opening a door or turning a corner. You’ll never know when a fright is coming!

11 Condemned: Criminal Origins

Condemned is terrifying from beginning to end because you don’t face off monsters but rather people who have gone mad. Although there are firearms, most fighting involves violent and difficult duels with hand-to-hand combat. Here you can’t kill bad guys from afar!

12 Among the Sleep

A first-person horror game where you control a 2-year-old child. Horror has never been addressed from such an affectionate and childlike point of view. You’re not a hero. You don’t have thousands of weapons. You’re only a vulnerable and scared child in a world that wasn’t made for you.

13 Resident Evil 7

A brilliant resurrection of the Resident Evil saga that sets aside the intense showing off of previous installments to focus on a house with numerous problems. The first part is pure horror while the second part tends towards more traditional action.

14 Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of Earth

The best game inspired by the literary work of H.P. Lovecraft. You’ll take on a private detective who must investigate the secrets hidden by a strange fishing village. Prepare yourself for cosmic horrors, nocturnal pursuits and an original system of madness that will infect you if you don’t run away from evil in time.

15 SCP – Containment Breach

If you like creepypastas, surely you’re familiar with the SCP Foundation stories. Containment Beach compiles some of the best horrors of these stories in a free horror game where you never know what kind of creature will shock you next.

16 SOMA

Do the depths of the sea scare you? Beware of SOMA! It’s a science fiction adventure that takes place in a complex under the sea where everything that could go wrong gets WORSE. It’s a spiritual successor to Amnesia that scares and shocks you, of course, but it’s the storyline that will captivate you the most.

17 Alan Wake

Alan Wake spirals into action as the hours pass, but its story (a man who predicts his own decline into madness) keeps you going even in repetitive moments. Its literal use of lights and shadows is impeccable.

18 Sylvio

Sylvio is a little-known horror game that encourages us to investigate electronic voice phenomenon (the voices of the dead, for example). Its combination of disturbing sounds and eerie shadows makes it a terrifying adventure that deserves to be in your collection.

19 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat

The last release of the fortune hunters saga in Chernobyl is the best of them all. While at first glance it seems like a pseudo-military shooting game, Call of Pripyat includes mutants and aberrations awaiting you at night or in abandoned buildings.

20 Clive Barker’s Undying

Undying traumatized many gamers in its day and continues to traumatize more thanks to its setting and soundtrack. Your mission is to penetrate a cursed mansion and face the four children of its owner who have become possessed. This is a very long adventure that never has a dull moment.

Daniel Caceres

Daniel Caceres

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