Games often strive to immerse the players in their worlds, with detailed environments designed to feel like real places, filling them with lore and environmental storytelling. Sometimes, however, games do something else to try and immerse the player in their characters’ heads with the use of nightmare sequences.
Nightmare sequences can take the player deep into the minds of the characters, exposing their deepest fears. These sequences can either be the result of psychological trauma or induced through drugs, but they usually occur at key points in the game’s story to allow characters to work through their troubles and face their fears.
10 Red Room (Deadly Premonition)
Deadly Premonition is a game that owes a lot to Twin Peaks, to the point where the game saw huge changes during development to move it further away from its similarities to David Lynch’s iconic TV show. Among the many parallels that made it into the final game is Deadly Premonition’s equivalent to Twin Peaks’ Lodges, the Red Room.
Effectively the mind palace of protagonist Special Agent Francis York Morgan (call him York), it’s also home to a lot of creepy imagery and an odd collection of furniture in a forest setting. While the Red Room is never explained, it’s theorized to be a deep part of York’s psyche holding repressed memories and also seems to hold a connection to the dead.
9 Shadow Moses Memories (Metal Gear Solid 4)
During the events of Metal Gear Solid 4, Solid Snake learns that he must return to the site of a previous mission, Shadow Moses Island. However, on the way there, something strange happens. Snake drifts off and has a dream reflecting on his previous mission.
What’s interesting about this is that because Shadow Moses was the location of the original Metal Gear Solid on the PS1, the dream is just an emulated version of the opening section of that, complete with low poly graphics and a top-down perspective. It’s implied to be a PTSD-inspired dream, as Snake can wake up with horror after experiencing it, but this also implies that he lived it exactly as it appeared in the original game, which fits well with Hideo Kojima’s love of breaking the fourth wall.
8 Heather’s Dream (Silent Hill 3)
Silent Hill 3 starts with protagonist Heather wandering around an abandoned theme park, fallen into disrepair and full of creepy bunny mascots and monsters. When she walks onto the tracks of a roller coaster she is instantly killed by the train, revealing it to be a nightmare as she drifted off in a café at the local mall.
However, this is Silent Hill, so it turns out to be prophetic. The theme park appears later on in the game as a location Heather visits for real, but this time she comes armed with the knowledge to turn the roller coaster off before she walks the tracks.
7 Ubar Hallucinations (Uncharted 3)
The story of Uncharted 3 focuses on Nathan Drake’s search for Ubar, an ancient city lost in the desert sands of the Middle East. At this point, it’s expected that something supernatural may be hidden there, much like El Dorado and Shambhala in the previous games. Sure enough, after arrival, Drake sees a strange eclipse, watches his friend Sully die and soon finds himself fighting off against mercenaries with flaming heads and the power of teleportation.
However, none of this is real. When he first arrived in Ubar, he drank from a fountain. Turns out, the water of Ubar is contaminated by a hallucinogenic drug and everything Drake saw was simply the psychoactive dreams he experienced as a result. Nothing supernatural, but terrifying all the same.
6 Scarecrow Nightmare (Batman Arkham Asylum)
Batman: Arkham Asylum features several of Batman’s classic villains hidden within the chaos of Joker’s escape attempt. One of these is Scarecrow, a villain whose gimmick revolves around hallucinogenic toxins, and Arkham Asylum plays with this multiple times throughout the game.
At key points of the story, Batman will encounter strange events involving shifting corridors, crumbling architecture, an inability to radio Oracle, a flashback to his parents’ deaths and, of course, a surreal cityscape populated by a gigantic Scarecrow. At one point, the game even crashes to a fake version of the opening cutscene, bringing the nightmare directly to the player.
5 Max Caulfield’s Nightmare (Life is Strange)
Life is Strange protagonist Max Caulfield has the power to rewind time, and much of the game involves her trying to solve various problems around her school. However, at the start of the final chapter, this overuse of her time powers results in her falling into a nightmare reflecting her fears and insecurities.
It’s a lengthy sequence, one that features backwards repeats of earlier sequences, established characters hurling insults at Max and a stealth-based maze section where she has to avoid various male characters from the story. It culminates in her literally facing herself in the town’s diner and putting all her thoughts together through this confrontation with her Doppelgänger.
4 Himuro Mansion in The Manor of Sleep (Fatal Frame 3)
Much of Fatal Frame 3 takes place in a dream. The Manor of Sleep is a location that appears in dreams to people who have lost loved ones, drawing them in with the promise of being reunited with them. Protagonist Rei Kurosawa becomes a victim of this curse, kicking off the events of the game, but soon her roommate and research assistant Miku Hinasaki finds herself being pulled into the Manor too, providing one of the most memorable moments in the game.
However, Miku was also the protagonist of the first Fatal Frame, so the first time we arrive in the Manor playing as her, it takes on a different form, appearing as a warped version of Himuro Mansion from the first game. It’s a surprising trip down memory lane for returning players, but also allows us to see how much the events of the first game affected Miku.
3 Max Payne’s Nightmare (Max Payne)
Max Payne is a man tortured by the death of his family, as two years before the events of his self-titled game his wife and infant child were killed by drug-addicted lunatics who broke into his home. This led to him going undercover in an attempt to uncover those responsible for putting the drugs onto the streets.
However, during the events of the game he is knocked unconscious and forced to take the drugs himself, causing him to dream of his wife and child’s deaths, trapped in a surreal landscape of unending corridors and blood trails through a black void. It’s a harrowing and shocking moment that examines Max’s tormented mental state.
2 Milkman Conspiracy (Psychonauts)
While the rest of these entries are characters finding themselves in their own nightmares, Psychonauts sees protagonist Raz exploring the mindscapes of other people. The most beloved, and arguably the creepiest, of these is the mind of a paranoid security guard, Boyd Cooper, who calls himself The Milkman.
The Milkman Conspiracy reflects Boyd’s paranoia, as it presents itself as a twisted, gravity-defying version of suburbia. Every bush, mailbox and trash can seems to contain cameras and poorly disguised federal agents, complete with trench coats and ominous monotone voices, hang around on every street. While most of the interactions with these suspicious G-Men tend to be hilarious, there’s still a sense of dread throughout the level.
1 The Entire Game (Catherine)
Catherine is all about a man named Vincent who has commitment issues in his relationship with his girlfriend, Katherine, which lead him to having an affair with a mysterious woman named Catherine.
However, after this affair, he soon has recurring dreams involving sheep, and vast towers of blocks in a deadly void. These dreams make up most of the gameplay of Catherine, as Vincent has to climb these blocks, usually with a gigantic creature based on his fear of commitment looking to devour him.