Horror

Horror is the genre where the medium has the clearest advantage. A film can show you something frightening; a game can make you walk toward it. Control is what makes horror games work, and most of the craft in the genre is about taking that control away in ways you can feel — a camera that will not turn fast enough, an inventory that is one slot too small, a door that has to be opened slowly.

The strains of horror

Survival horror makes scarcity the mechanic. Ammunition, health and save opportunities are limited, so every encounter costs something and avoiding a fight is often the correct play. Psychological horror works on ambiguity instead, unsettling you through sound design, unreliable narration and environments that are subtly wrong rather than overtly threatening. Action horror gives you the means to fight back and generates fear from being outnumbered instead of unarmed.

More recent forms have emerged largely from independent developers. Found-footage and analogue horror borrow the visual grammar of degraded video and corporate training tapes. Puzzle-driven horror hides its threat inside a system you have to keep operating. And there is a healthy tradition of short horror — twenty-minute games built around one idea, executed and finished before the effect wears off.

Where horror games live

This is a genre where the platform genuinely changes the experience. Headphones matter more than resolution, because directional audio is doing most of the work. VR intensifies everything to a degree that some people find genuinely too much, and developers building for it usually say so. A phone screen in a lit room is a different game from a dark room and a large display, and neither is wrong.

Independent horror runs on modest hardware as a rule, so you will find it on PC, Mac, Linux, console, VR headsets, mobile and in the browser. Each listing states its platforms and links to where you can play or buy it.

Content warnings

Horror covers a wide range, from atmospheric dread to explicit gore and psychological distress. Developers are asked to describe the content on the game page. If you are sensitive to a particular thing, read that section before starting rather than trusting the tone of a trailer.