The Creepiest Games Of The Last Decade

The horror genre will continue to thrive as long as there are things that go bump in the night and unanswered questions that keep you awake. It's so easy for these narratives to get under your skin and poke and prod at your most basic worries and fears. Sometimes, horror games are content to hand you a shotgun and say "Go, my child. Shoot your fears in the face." Other times, they strip you and your characters down to the bare essentials and give you a real struggle.

There's room in the genre for both types of games, and the last decade blessed the world with plenty of hair-raising and spine-tingling titles. From sequels to beloved franchises to all-new nightmares cooked up by some of the sharpest minds in gaming, here are the creepiest games of the last decade. Pull up the covers and switch on that flashlight. It's gonna get spooky in here.

Following the more action-oriented Resident Evil 6, critics and fans doubted whether the once-terrifying franchise could regain its horrific bite. They were proven wrong when Resident Evil 7: Biohazard chewed its way onto the scene in 2016. Resident Evil 7 is grueling horror at its finest, scaling back from the increasingly ridiculous series mythology, giant explosions, and quick-time event battles of the preceding entries. Biohazard brought the series back to its roots. "The small-scale focus on a central location and an emphasis on survival over flashy combat creates a dark, oppressive, and frightening atmosphere that's long been absent from the series," wrote Kotaku's Heather Alexandra.

To make the scares even more intense, the game literally gets in players' faces in the VR version. Resident Evil 7's first-person perspective lends itself perfectly to virtual reality, with every knife jab and near-miss feeling more urgent than ever. The base game is already unsettling, leaving you wanting a shower after you play, but the VR version is like walking around in a nightmare.

Several action-oriented video game adaptations of the Alien franchise have emerged over the years. That's not necessarily a bad thing, considering how much gamers love to blow stuff up. In contrast, Alien: Isolation tells a truly bone-chilling story that has more in common with the original film. Instead of hordes of enemies from titles like Alien vs. Predator, Isolation pits you against a single, seemingly-unstoppable xenomorph. You must sneak through the derelict ship the alien has attacked, which feels much more intense than simply firing into wave after wave of faceless monsters. In fact, weapons are essentially pointless in this game. You're not trying to fight. You're trying to survive. 

"Alien: Isolation is a re-examination of what horror and the fragility of character is in gaming, hammering the notion that you're trapped, and with no way out," wrote GameSpot's Alessandro Fillari. It's a shame Isolation didn't sell particularly well, as it felt like the first authentic Alien game in quite some time.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is an indie gem that kicked the decade off with a scream. Following a character with no memory (and no weapons) as they make their way through a haunted castle, Amnesia: The Dark Descent gives you every awful thing it promises in its title and then some. The puzzles are interesting and the lore you uncover along the way is engrossing, but when the monsters finally come — and they will come — the game becomes a mad dash for survival. "Chases are just hideous, the monsters faster than you as you race for a door to slow them, or a dark room to hide in," wrote Rock Paper Shotgun's John Walker. "My leg muscles tightening in absolute fear as I almost touch my nose against the monitor trying to reach safety." 

Not only is Amnesia: The Dark Descent a high point in the horror video game genre, it also spawned some of the funniest reaction videos ever from the poor souls who weren't prepared for the horrors within. The developers added an even higher difficulty setting in late 2018, making now the perfect time to make the descent.

From the masterminds who created Amnesia: The Dark Descent comes Soma, a game that feels very different from Amnesia, but just as unsettling. Rather than being as in-your-face as Amnesia, the scares and dread in Soma come from the feeling of utter hopelessness that permeates every moment of the game. Being trapped at the bottom of the ocean elicits some very primal fears, as do the many sequences of body horror with characters transforming into monstrosities against their will.

Much like Amnesia, the name of the game here is avoiding or outsmarting your enemies. There's no traditional combat in Soma, which heightens the sense that you and your character are completely unprepared for the horrors you face. The game consistently presents you with difficult choices to make that reinforce the "us or them" mentality of the narrative, causing your character to do some inhumane things to survive. The experience is so harrowing that a "Safe Mode" was added two years after release, allowing players to experience the game's narrative without having to deal with the many difficult creature encounters.

Though light on plot, Little Nightmares features innovative and imaginative designs for its stages and enemies. Beyond that, the game does a splendid job of making you feel like you're constantly being followed as you guide the young protagonist, Six, through a gauntlet of hideous monsters. Developer Tarsier Studios used sound design and camera angles to make the game feel truly unsettling. "Puzzles, characters, environments, and controls activate our bodies to create physical symptoms of hyper-aware anxiety, so when the creep-outs, jump-scares, and mad dashes from Ito-esque horrors punctuate Six's escape, we truly feel them," wrote Peter Counter of Everything Is Scary.

Many scares found in Little Nightmares are drawn from actual phobias and real-life concerns, warping these concepts into unrecognizable creatures. Much of the gameplay involves Six's attempts to sneak past these monsters without being seen, reinforcing feelings of fear and fragility. Little Nightmares succeeds in creating a near-constant atmosphere of dread, which makes it quite memorable.

Until Dawn takes multiple genres of horror and melds them together in unexpected ways. It also gives you almost complete control over the way the story turns out, with every move and dialogue choice altering the fates of everyone involved. A stellar cast helps sell the story, including Hayden Panettiere, Peter Stormare and future Best Actor Academy Award winner Rami Malek. These actors give their all to the bizarre tale of stranded miners, ancient curses, and deformed monsters.

Much of the game's success comes down to the painstaking care developer Supermassive Games took to ensure that every action has a consequence, with the script reportedly running close to 10,000 pages at one point in production. Until Dawn feels like the ultimate interactive horror film, a feeling exacerbated by intense motion control sequences that put you in the position of the characters as you try to be as still as the grave. 

Dead Space 2 is a little more action-focused than its predecessor, but that doesn't make it any less horrifying. The game toys with feelings of PTSD and survivor's guilt, offering up a protagonist who has truly been scarred by his experiences. It raises the stakes in some interesting ways and is designed to have an atmosphere that feels just as oppressive as the first installment, with Kotaku's review drawing attention to Dead Space 2's "brilliant lighting effects and sound design tricks that regularly unnerve."

All this pales in comparison to a particular sequence in which a character must undergo laser eye surgery. One false move and you will be treated to one of the most brutal death scenes in gaming history. As Critical Hit so eloquently put it: "Forget about killer space monsters, rabid legions of homicidal humans driven mad by exotic science and the pure terror of survivor's guilt running rampant across your psyche," this is easily the high mark of gut-wrenching fear in the Dead Space series.