Horror has plenty of beloved gaming franchises, the names of which roll off the tongues of a legion of fans, from Silent Hill to Resident Evil, Dead Space to Fatal Frame. Numerous titles have built a reputation for delivering quality scares, whether those are violent jumpscares in space or a quiet, unsettling feeling as one explores a haunted village.
For every game that wins the adoration of millions, there are many more that slip away into obscurity. Some retain cult followings while others are forgotten by all but a handful. Yet the cover art of these less popular titles is no less beautiful or disturbing. Cover art has the difficult task of selling, with a single image, the idea and feeling of an entire game, drawing in its prospective audience and convincing them to pick up the controller or mouse. Here is some of the scariest cover art those games have produced.
8 Sweet Home
1989's Sweet Home is a survival horror game by Capcom, and while it retains a cult following like many titles of its generation, it is in many ways the definition of forgotten horror. Even before players take their first step in its world, Sweet Home goes a long way toward disconcerting players with its cover art.
The range of facial expressions on display is somehow even more disturbing than the corpse and weaponry. A terrified scream, an evil sneer, the dead stare of victim and victimizer alike--Sweet Home knows how profoundly effective a look can be. Putting the terror and malice of its character on full display, the game sets the bar for the coming horror high.
7 Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Fans of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos he created will feel right at home in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. A story about forbidden knowledge, strange and incomprehensible evil, and the inevitable decay of the human mind in the face of such horrors, this game hits all the right Lovecraftian notes.
The game is rightfully notorious for its meta-horror elements, including pretending that the player's file has been corrupted if they save the game while their character is mad, but here the Lovecraftian horror begins with the cover art. In keeping with the source material, the cover image's collage of dark obelisks, eerie lights, and sinister eclipses is just the right stuff to put players immediately on edge, even before they've begun to wade into these black waters.
6 The Suffering
Fusing action with horror and splitting its focus evenly between the fights and the scares, PS1's The Suffering shifted the typical horror game venue from dripping catacombs and decrepit mansions to an even more horrifying setting: prison.
This obscure game doesn't pull any punches with its themes, and neither does the cover art. The electric chair, needles, and restraint devices are all on full display here, playing on medical phobias as much as the player's fear of imprisonment. The Suffering isn't much for subtlety, and neither is its art, but it's hard to argue with what works.
5 Phantasmagoria
A point-and-click game from 1995 about a haunted writer, Phantasmagoria needed seven discs to contain all of its content at the time of release. Its cover is abstract: delicate, pleated white fabric that doubles as a gown and angel wings, a headless mannequin with a pearl necklace, and unidentifiable black shapes.
Cutting across all of this are smears and splatters of blood, making an image that would otherwise only be beautiful also be horrifying instead. As with much great horror imagery, it's the unknown that makes the cover of Phantasmagoria so scary. The viewer doesn't know what is happening or why, only that it's something terrible.
4 Blair Witch
Based on the infamous found footage film, Blair Witch is a game few have heard of and fewer played. While the game may not have become the kind of legendary media that the film it's based upon did, the game's cover art will linger long in players' minds. High contrast is the key here, with crimson light encircling and overwhelming the protagonist and dog.
To their side, more eerie light filters through the trees, diluted by the foliage but all the more worrisome for it. Blair Witch, like the original film, is about the horror of implication rather than what is actually seen, so limiting the cover art to the implication of horrific things only is the perfect plan and accomplishes just what it means to.
3 Clock Tower
Sometimes artful framing, color composition, and cinematography aren't important for scaring people. Sometimes all it takes is a pair of big, bloody shears. 1995's Clock Tower is point-and-click retro survival horror that takes obvious inspiration from the slasher films of the previous two decades.
A lumbering, malformed monster with an iconic weapon is all that's needed to scare a bunch of teenagers, as legions of B-grade horror films had proved by the time Clock Tower was released. The game makes the most of this simplicity: with vivid blood, a startling POV angle, and a nondescript background keeping the killer at the forefront of players' minds.
2 Saw
2009's Saw meant to capitalize on the success of the ultra-violent franchise that spawned it. The game received mixed reviews and quickly faded into obscurity, but the cover art remains as solid today as it ever was. As iconic as the Reverse Bear Trap and other gruesome staples of the franchise are, arguably no image ignites the imagination more than Billy, the spiral-cheeked, tricycle-riding ventriloquist doll that the Jigsaw Killer uses to torment and communicate with his victims.
A close-up image of the doll is all that's needed to convey the atrocities to come. Its grimy, handcrafted face, in particular its haunting eyes, penetrate the viewer, suggesting a seediness and hopelessness to the events to come. It's unfortunate that the gameplay didn't live up to the imagery, because if it had, Saw could've been one of the greatest horror titles out there.
1 Condemned: Criminal Origins
Monolith Production's 2005 survival horror game Condemned: Criminal Origins uses the first-person perspective throughout, keeping the player uncomfortably close to all the ugliness that transpires. It is therefore fitting that the cover art should do the same.
A grainy, close-up image of a woman's face, encircled by chains, is all Condemned needs to solidify itself as one of the best forgotten horror titles in terms of cover art. The harsh contrasts between light and darkness on the captive's skin combine with the grainy, faded look to suggest an old photograph or perhaps 16mm film, grounding the uncomfortable image in a way that many, more stylistic covers fail to.