Horror games are pretty notoriously hit-or-miss, despite the fact that the medium sounds like it would be ridiculously well-suited to the industry. Instead, there are tons of half-baked run-and-hide messes that are meant mostly for streamers to scream incoherently at.
That being said, there are definitely a ton of hidden gems in the genre, in addition to a few really solid triple-A titles. One of the biggest issues with the genre is that a lot of the games are pretty slow to start. We'll be looking at several spooky games that get much better as they go on.
10 Bloodborne
Bloodborne is one of the most beautiful games of all time if we're talking about a pure aesthetic. It melds together beautiful gothic influences with Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, lending it a sense of the vast unknown. The game is beautiful, hard, rewarding, and above all, the reason it's appearing here is that it's incredibly difficult. This is one of the reasons the game puts a lot of people off, but it's completely worth pushing further into. That being said, you will die. A lot.
9 Cry Of Fear
Cry Of Fear is a bit of an enigma in the horror community, mostly well-known among people who didn't have enough money in their Steam Wallet to buy any better horror games. It was free for the longest time, and for a free game, it's... good? Not good in the sense that it's a polished game with a great sense of story, but it's good in a liminal way. It takes a minute to gain an appreciation for, but there's a unique kind of Backrooms feel to the game, as if it exists outside of time and space.
8 Alien: Isolation
Alien: Isolation is probably one of the only games made that's based on a horror movie that accurately depicted the vibe of the movie it was based on.
The game reflects the struggles of low-paid blue-collar workers on ships in the future, from an employer who doesn't care for the survival of its employees to dealing with interplanetary creatures, in addition to creating an absolutely incredible lived-in vision of the future. That being said, it takes a good few hours before you even meet the alien.
7 Soma
In 2015, Frictional Games released Soma, another horror game. They were well-known before that, for their critically acclaimed Amnesia series. The game is actually really great, the story is wonderful and extremely well-developed, and the only thing that critics would say about it negatively is that the gameplay itself isn't necessarily up to snuff. The dark-sci-fi story might need just a little bit of time to feel right, but it's well worth it.
6 Alan Wake
Alan Wake is equal parts Stephen King and Twin Peaks. The story follows a writer, out on vacation with his wife. He's not there to study and research for the next book, nor is he there for an adventure, but it seems like fate has other ideas for him. Once he arrives at his lodgings, he realizes that he's embroiled in a huge supernatural conspiracy which he's the center of. It takes a bit to actually kick itself off, but when it does, it's enthralling from start to finish.
5 Outlast
Outlast has been a pretty important horror game, bringing new levels of gruesomeness into the medium. There had definitely been games that were equally gory or gritty, but they seemed to be much more tongue-in-cheek than Outlast.
Outlast and its characters are pretty disgusting, being more or less entirely evil other than the protagonist. It's also just got a pretty decent story, and although it follows the Amnesia model of seeing the scary thing, running, then hiding, it feels okay. Just give it some time to get there!
4 Doki Doki Literature Club
Doki Doki Literature Club is extremely controversial, pretty disturbing, and it wears a candy-coated mask for a decent amount of the duration of the game. Because the twist is one of the most important parts of playing the game, and there's a good chance that spoiling it would ruin the game for anyone who hasn't yet played it, we won't discuss it's here. That being said, the game starts out incredibly slow but then explodes into chaos.
3 Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a game that kind of set the groundwork for a lot of the horror games that would come out throughout the course of the later 2000s, and a lot of them that would come out since then.
The game follows a protagonist who has forgotten all of his past, only to wake up in a strange manor that had been owned by an occultist. The horrors in the house are actually pretty spooky, but it takes a bit to get where it's going.
2 Prey
Prey is a spiritual successor to System Shock, making it in some way a cousin to Bioshock. They're most definitely both horror games, although Prey might be just a little bit spookier, aside from the opening scene in the Bathysphere in Bioshock. There's also a pretty incredible twist waiting for the player towards the end of the game. All of this to say, even with the combat being introduced early on, the game doesn't do a great job at pulling in the player immediately.
1 The Last Of Us
The Last Of Us, at least in reference to the first game, is a masterpiece, regardless of anything anyone has to say about the second game. It's an incredibly effective horror game, and not just because the infected creatures are scary. It's actually a lot more than that. The broken-down dystopia forces us to realize that human reality makes a turn for the worst during any kind of apocalypse scenario. That being said, this game definitely takes a moment to make you care, and it also might not hit like expected if you didn't play it when it came out.