Plenty of people put on a brave face when it comes to horror games, only to start jumping in their seats at every scare a few minutes into the game. Part of what makes these games so compelling is the investment in the protagonist of the story. Most players start to care about the main character as the game goes on and more backstory is revealed about them.
In recent years, we've seen characters from many different backgrounds come into the gaming world, including lots of leading women in horror. Here's a list of some great horror games that let fans play as a female protagonist.
10 Alice: Madness Returns
The story of Alice In Wonderland has always been both whimsical and creepy in its own way. However, this game turns the creep factor way up, adding bloody fights, stories of death and trauma, and an overall unsettling atmosphere. Alice is "returning" to Wonderland, but players begin to see that much of the story is Alice battling with her past in her own mind.
One of the things that this game does best is keeping things creepy in both in Alice's real world and Wonderland. This game could've easily made Wonderland the scary part of the game while giving players a kind of "safe" section to take a break when Alice is in reality. Instead, players have no time to relax as they feel chills run down their spines from Alice's adventures.
9 The Walking Dead
While not every game in this series has a female protagonist, the second and fourth seasons of The Walking Dead by Telltale Games both allow players to follow the story from Clementine's perspective. Her story develops throughout almost every game, giving players a strong investment in her as a character, and a better understanding of her backstory.
Not only do players get to take control of Clementine, but The Walking Dead: Michonne also lets players be a female protagonist. Fans of the TV show will already be familiar with Michonne, but now they get to see what the story is like from her perspective as well.
8 Resident Evil 3
Newly remade, Resident Evil 3 continues to bring thrilling action and intriguing characters to the Resident Evil series. In this installment, fans play as Jill Valentine, who's pretty strong considering how many terrible situations she gets out of. From surviving a train crash, being saved from the T-Virus, and killing Nemesis, a giant monster that she already escaped from multiple times, Jill has been through some rough times.
Still, she doesn't back down, and fans of this series can feel more confident about surviving from zombies with Jill in charge. She's a great character and leader, and when she says that she'll stop Umbrella, it's pretty easy to believe her.
7 Alien Isolation
The alien from the Alien movie series has become a staple in both the sci-fi and horror genres. Someone who hasn't even seen the movies could recognize this creature. However, with the movies, fans are just watching these horrific events take place to the characters, but in Alien Isolation, the experience is much more immersive since the player is the one in control, and the one being hunted down.
Amanda Ripley is the protagonist in this game, and she has her hands full with Alien activity aboard a ship. Just when players think that an Alien is gone, more problems pop up, including even more Aliens, that will leave fans wondering if Ripley can make it out alive. With an ending that also might leave fans with questions, they're sure to get invested in Ripley and her safety.
6 Little Nightmares
While this might not be the scariest horror game in the world, Little Nightmares is still incredibly unsettling. The main character, a girl named Six, is on a boat filled with giant people with sometimes strange proportions. Most of these people want to eat her, and players see other children that have been captured and will presumably be eaten by the giant people on the boat. However, Six doesn't plan on getting eaten anytime soon.
Throughout the game, Six tends to have problems because she's hungry, and these can lead to some disturbing scenarios, including her eating another small character known as a Nome. Her hunger continues to escalate with even more disturbing outcomes. For someone in such a dangerous scenario, Six doesn't always seem like the one who needs saving.
5 Resident Evil 2
For this installment in the Resident Evil series, players get to control two main characters in the story: Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. Players can choose one character to be for most of the game, and then they can go back and play the other character's story. In the case of Claire, players see that she's trying to find her brother, Chris, but that doesn't happen.
As if "regular" zombies weren't bad enough, Claire has to deal with a kidnapping Police Chief, the Tyrant that wants to take out anyone who didn't turn into a zombie, and a little girl named Sherry's dad who has turned into an infected monster. Sounds like a typical day in the world of Resident Evil.
4 Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice isn't just a psychological horror game. It's a game with a lot of heart and emotion that has found a way to represent certain aspects of mental illness to bring awareness about it to players. In the game, Senua is trying to fight her own inner demons as well as monsters that she has to fight physically, even if she doesn't realize how connected these two types of foes are.
Senua is trying to retrieve the soul of her dead love, Dillion, but on her journey, players see many of the other things that weigh on her, like the death of her mother and the abuse that she got from her father. It's a game that can make some players jump, but also make them look in their own minds and hearts to learn from Senua's experiences.
3 Oxenfree
While some might not find this game to be very scary, it still has the unsettling atmosphere that comes with most horror games. In Oxenfree, players get to be Alex, a girl who is traveling with her friends and her stepbrother, Jonas, to an island where they plan to party. Instead of having a fun night, they find ghosts who died on a submarine. From there, Alex and Jonas must try to fix different dimensional rifts that have to do with the ghosts staying on the island.
Players will see characters getting possessed, characters dying if they make bad choices, and relationships forming or breaking messily. One of the spookiest parts of the game though is playing it multiple times and seeing that the ghosts remember everything Alex did before.
2 Fatal Frame
In the Fatal Frame series, all the games have nearly all female protagonists for fans to play as. The only exception is that there are a few titles in the series where players get to be several different characters, including some who are men, but most of the playable characters throughout the series are women.
The games mainly focus on characters winding up in locations where there's supernatural activity, and their main defense is a camera that can stun ghosts if a photo is taken of them. It's a very interesting concept for a horror game, especially when some of the titles stayed in third person to move around but moved to first person to take pictures, which allowed players to feel more immersed and scared by the even clearer image of a ghost coming for them.
1 A Plague Tale: Innocence
A Plague Tale: Innocence involves one of the scariest things that humanity has ever faced in real life: the Bubonic Plague. If that wasn't unnerving enough, the main character, Amicia is put in charge of taking care of her younger brother, Hugo. Why is that unnerving? Because she has to protect him from a lord who wants him for his ability to control the rats that are thought to be spreading the plague.
Rats, plagues, and stealthy escapes from soldiers will have players on their toes with clenched muscles, but whether they fear getting caught or seeing a rat is an entirely different story.