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2023 brought the scares in abundance with both big-budget and smaller video games. The horror from the year is incredibly diverse in its gameplay options, whether players are looking to get scared as a group or alone in a dark room, whether they’re looking for mindless multiplayer fun or deranged, disorienting narrative experiences, it feels like there’s a horror game in 2023 for everyone. These are the best horror games of 2023.
10. Paranormasight
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a Square Enix-published horror title that will service a very niche group of gamers in 2023. For those who like games in the vein of the Danganronpa series, this will scratch that exact itch. It’s a creepy, visual novel-style title that involves a mystery and a lot of investigation. For those that find this type of game tedious, it’s an easy skip, but if you’re looking for a bonkers whodunnit, this’ll fit the bill nicely.
9. Sons of the Forest
What Sons of the Forest primarily suffers from is not doing particularly much to differentiate itself from its predecessor, The Forest. By the same logic, however, this does in many ways come up feeling like a more refined version of the game that put EndNight on the map. Sons of the Forest has all of the survival-horror, crafting, and mystery that fans of the original or other games in this genre need to have a good time.
8. Dead Island 2
After an incredibly long wait and one of the most turbulent production cycles in recent gaming memory, Dead Island 2 has finally arrived and thankfully does meet the expectations set by its 2011 co-op zombie slasher predecessor. This has everything fans of the original game would want with the level of polish that’s necessary for it to compete with what’s out there after more than a decade sitting on the backburner.
7. Amnesia: The Bunker
The Amnesia series has a unique superpower to make the most mundane of hallways supremely intense to walk down, and that continues to be true in the series’ latest entry, Amnesia: The Bunker. Once again, Frictional Games brings the heat with its maddening isolation and petrifyingly helpless gameplay that is certain to make more than a few players pause the game mid-chase and walk it off.
6. Lies of P
Many souls-like games can (debatably) be called horror by virtue of their bleak aesthetics and oftentimes grotesque enemy designs. The moments in Lies of P where an enemy comes out of nowhere to deal devastating damage could certainly be classified as jump scares. On top of that, Lies of P presents a horrific take on the classic Pinocchio story and blends that with Neowiz’s creative take on souls-like combat to make it a must-buy title for fans of this genre.
5. The Outlast Trials
Taking the horrifying, faux-found-footage and gritty gameplay of the first couple Outlast games and combining that with multiplayer seems like it could be an oil-and-water combination from a distance. In practice, Red Barrels has created an experience that, while not as scary as its other games by virtue of not being so isolated, still maintains the Outlast spirit in a way that makes it feel fresh.
4. Lethal Company
Lethal Company is not the best-looking or most mechanically intricate video game on this list by a long shot, but it proves that all a game truly needs to be addictive, horrifyingly hilarious, and viral is a great idea and foundation. It takes the co-op horror mechanics that many are familiar with from Phasmaphobia and places it into a world that feels far more SCP. This game is only in Early Access as of 2023, which makes it very exciting to wonder where the game will go from here as the team continues to add new monsters and maps.
3. System Shock
2023 was full of horror remakes, and it’s not that games like Resident Evil 4 aren’t worthy of being placed on a list like this, but of every remake fans got it’s undoubtedly System Shock that felt the most deserving and thus the most fulfilling. The 1994 cult classic horror title runs with surprising modernity in its 2023 remake, making the cyberpunk terrors feel right at home and hopefully bringing a whole new generation of gamers up to date on why the original game was so inspirational to other landmark series like Bioshock.
2. Dredge
There have been a number of titles in recent years, from Subnautica to SOMA, that have explored the inherent terror that comes with the vast depths of the ocean. Dredge combines this with fishing simulation mechanics and just the right amount of Lovecraftian nightmare fuel to make this a one-of-a-kind experience that is improved by the seamless functioning of its individual parts.
1. Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 took a previous generation game that it felt like many had forgotten about and revived it in a way that has seemingly expanded its audience far beyond its original horizons. It accomplishes this through some groundbreaking gameplay techniques that perfectly blend the game’s perplexing scares and convoluted storyline into nothing but compliments of each other. If any 2023 video game can be argued as “cinema,” it’s Alan Wake 2.
