The best horror games on PC

What are the finest horror games available for the PC? Traditional action principles are often turned on their heads in horror games, forcing you to flee and hide from your foes. Scary games make you feel vulnerable rather than empowered, and they're the kinds of games that stick with you long after you've finished them.

Of course, horror games are about much more than jump scares and gore. While we've included some obvious choices like Outlast and Amnesia, you can also expect to find games that employ a variety of strategies to get your heart racing and your hands sweating. Don't worry about this list going out of date: we update our lists on a regular basis to include new scary games.

Remember what Roosevelt once said: "We have nothing to fear until that scene in FEAR where Alma suddenly comes out and you're all like argh!" Here are the best PC horror games available right now... if you dare.

The following are the best horror games:

PHASMOPHOBIA

Since its Early Access release, Phasmophobia has exploded in popularity, outselling games like Balder's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam. What makes Phasmophobia so good? It's grown into a cult following and shows no signs of slowing down.

Although Phasmophobia is primarily a horror game, you may think of it as a co-op detective game in which you and up to three other investigators investigate a haunted site in order to figure out what kind of ghost is haunting the place before reporting back. To cross the dark, tight halls and strangely quiet rooms, you'll need collaboration, your best detective hat, and calm nerves.

You and your team must investigate the haunting and fulfill objectives such as snapping a picture of dirty water or asking the ghost questions using equipment such as ouija boards, a spirit box, a crucifix, and smudge sticks. But be careful; all your probing will most certainly irritate the ghost, and you don't want to be around when it begins hunting.

METRO EXODUS

Metro Exodus is a collection of games crammed into one tempting post-apocalyptic slice of Russia: it's a story-driven family drama as well as a Wolfenstein-style, heavy metal-scored first-person shooter. On the way to the final Metro Exodus ending, though, there are plenty of spine-tingling horror game sequences.

The day/night mechanic in 4A Games' radioactive adventure allows you to pick whether Artyom's adventure should be a guns-blazing assault or a covert affair hidden in darkness. Expect a more frightening experience if you choose to sleep through the day to sneak up on your opponents in the dead of night. The chill of a howling Watchmen or the charge of a Humanimal is extremely uncomfortable, even if human opponents are on the back foot.

However, as we mentioned in our Metro Exodus PC review, this is a game that is most frightening when the rules are changed. Early on in the game, you'll learn how to suppress light and master shadows. Then it becomes your weapon in the spider-infested bunkers beneath the Caspian Sea. Because light makes your arachnid adversaries deadly weak, they hide around in whatever dimly lit crevice they can discover. As their nasty, hairy legs scramble furiously against the walls, it becomes clear that you must never let your defenses down in Metro Exodus.

RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE

Ethan Winters, the protagonist of Resident Evil Village, never has it easy. We first see Ethan in Resident Evil 7, when his long-lost wife inexplicably contacts him and he sets out to find her, which leads him to a scary bayou home and a violent encounter with the Baker family, the unsavory residents. Thankfully, Chris Redfield intervenes to save Ethan, and his life returns to some kind of normalcy, if only for a short time. In Resident Evil 8, Ethan's world is flipped upside down once more. This time he's stranded in a remote village full of creatures and savage villagers. Resident Evil Village is best known for its seductive opponent, the tall lady, but the first-person survival game quickly turns terrifying.

Resident Evil has a long and storied history of good and horrible games, with Resident Evil 6 being the series' lowest point. As we saw in our Resident Evil Village review, this game is on the higher end of the spectrum. It's a suspenseful journey in which you'll need all of your wits to overcome hordes of werewolf-like beasts, zombie thralls, and other terrifying creatures. The tall lady, too, has long, pointed claws that can sever limbs. This may not be the proper Resident Evil game for you if you can't handle body horror and dismemberment. It also has the series' scariest scene to date; we won't give anything away about it here. Unless you're feeling very courageous, we recommend that you play with the lights on when you enter that residence.

THE EVIL WITHIN 2

You won't be able to sleep at night if you play the finest horror games. The Evil Within 2 shouts its way to the top on that metric. After seeing a pile of chopped bodies skitter over the floor and rearrange themselves into the form of a pallid, meaty mass of limbs with numerous faces – all of them laughing – and a buzzsaw in place of a right arm, you'll have a hard time sleeping.

This and other skin-crawling set-pieces abound in The Evil Within 2, each one as imaginative as the last. But Tango Gameworks' excellent sequel is much more than a compilation of the best horror gaming moments. Slaying enemies and visiting creepy houses are interspersed with open-world parts where you never know what you'll find: some much-needed shotgun rounds or a nefarious phantom who will follow you for the rest of the game. The Evil Within 2 keeps loyal to its survival horror roots beneath the whip-smart opponent and level design, always throwing you against one more insane adversary than you have ammunition for. If that isn't enough to persuade you, check out our review of The Evil Within 2.

ALIEN: ISOLATION

Alien: Isolation is one of the year's top games. It's a horror game about being trapped on a space station with a (spoiler) enormous scary alien, which is more terrifying than it should be because of devious AI and level design. This horror game is practically a first-person hiding simulator, as we learned while writing our Alien: Isolation review – your hideous stalker cannot be beaten, shot, or pounded into submission. The best horror games make you feel completely helpless, and Alien: Isolation will rely on your wits, your ability to crawl under desks and into lockers, and a number of distractions to keep you from succumbing to the massive, Gigerian terror. What more could you want from a horror game opponent than a dangerous creature that can appear at any time, unplanned, and without warning?

CONDEMNED: CRIMINAL ORIGINS

Do you prefer your horror games to be unflinchingly violent and spine-chillingly tense? Despite its decade-old graphics, Monolith's Condemned: Criminal Origins is a superb and seamless first-person frightener worth finding out.

Here's a homeless-fighting simulator in which you take on the character of Ethan Thomas, a nightly crime scene investigator, and a human punching bag. Condemned: Criminal Origins is a flashlight horror film that is notable for its lack of guns, with scary, unwashed individuals springing out from around corners and out of shadows. To survive a battle, you must carefully time your punches and calmly block your opponent's assaults, and your best option in encounters with several foes is frequently to flee. It’s odd as police games go, but the horror games genre could use with a little more Condemned: Criminal Origins in their lifeblood.

DARKWOOD

In horror games, the sound is underappreciated, and if you ever need a reminder of how powerful a simple scraping noise or a distant knock can be, check out Darkwood, one of the best indie horror games. A mystery man cooks mushrooms in a house in the middle of a plague-infested woodland in this top-down horror game.

When it's light outside, you can walk the rotting woods, fending off vicious dogs, gathering resources, and attempting to figure out who you are and how you got here. However, at night, your only option is to return home and wait for the night's horrors to pass you by. You can fill your generator with fuel to keep intruders at bay, barricade the windows to hide, and create traps as a last line of defense, but no matter how carefully you prepare, they will find you.

Darkwood has an extraordinary power to creep into your pores and torment you without even showing you a limb. Rustling noises, unearthly shrieks, and creaky doors had us repeatedly slamming the Esc key and stepping away from the computer. Don't be fooled by the top-down perspective; this is one of the best horror games available.

SYSTEM SHOCK 2

System Shock 2 ushered in a new generation of first-person survival horror games. It has an open-ended design with a never-ending maze of decks and quarters that encourage exploration and discovery. It's like being trapped in a haunted John Lewis, but with psychological death monkeys instead. The above-the-speed-of-light Von Braun is a persistent environment that seems to exist and unfold even when you're not looking, creating a stronger sense of location aboard the sparsely occupied vessel.

But it is SHODAN, the corrupted artificial intelligence, who elevates System Shock 2 to one of the best horror games ever released on our fair platform. She torments and fools you ceaselessly, elevating an already horrific survival RPG into an isolated horror classic, right up there with HAL 9000 in the soothingly voiced yet subtly wicked computer stakes. System Shock 2 has a unique sensation of isolation that few other space games can replicate.