5) Alien: Isolation
It’s surprising how long it took to get a half decent Alien game. Fortunately, the wait was ended a few years ago with Alien Isolation, a vivid homage to the original movie. Right off the bat, Alien Isolation does an excellent job with allowing itself the time to build suspense. It doesn’t force its scares before the player is in the right frame of mind. It lets the player’s mind do the work in scaring itself. When the Alien finally does show up, it’s just… there. From that point through the rest of the game, a cycle of bone-chilling panic and hair-raising anxiety begins. Every place the Xenomorph could possibly be hiding becomes a source of anxiety. When you do stumble across the Xenomorph, your entire body will shake as your mind struggles to develop a plan through the waves of adrenaline telling you to run. It’s fear with a retro skin. Enjoy.
4) Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Before SOMA, there was Amnesia. As the title implies, Amnesia: The Dark Descent has you descending into the darkened bowels of an ominous castle as a man named Daniel, who has voluntarily sacrificed his memory. Over the course of the game, you begin to uncover a bit of Daniel’s history as you solve puzzles and avoid from the game’s monstrous amalgamations of flesh and viscera. There’s plenty to celebrate about the horror here, but to avoid spoilers and because I love it so much, I’ll give you a taste by describing the monsters found in the first thirty minutes of play. There are none. The game is patient. It knows exactly how to build your anxiety. It knows where the scares are expected to be, and it says, “Not yet.” It knows it has time to scare you, and it will, but first it’s going to throw its heavy, atmospheric dread over your shoulders and watch you sink.
3) Penumbra: Black Plague
And before there was Amnesia, there was Penumbra. While it wasn’t the first Penumbra game, and may not be the best one, Black Plague was the scariest of the Penumbra games. It is, in my opinion, the scariest game Frictional Games has ever made. In addition to showing how horrifying the human penis can be when attached to emaciated walking corpses, the oppressive atmosphere, horrid environments, and grim narrative all serve to provide an excellently frightening game. It has aged a bit, though. If you do plan on playing Penumbra: Black Plague, I would encourage you to consider modding it. It can really add a fresh coat of paint to a well-deserving game.
2) Silent Hill 2
Cliche, I know, but for good reason. To clarify, Silent Hill 2 was released first on the PlayStation 2, but its PC release wasn’t a remake and came out the following year, so I’m including it on this list. I won’t dwell too long on this game because I’m sure you’ve all hear many people sing its praises again and again, but I will say that Silent Hill 2 is, even today, worth a play for anyone who doesn’t outright hate horror games. If you do fall into that group of people who aren’t fond of horror games, then go watch the production documentary for the game. No matter how you view video games, you’ll walk away with a special kind of respect for Silent Hill 2 and the development process. However, it’s not quite the scariest game on PC.
1) Outlast
Outlast is all fear. Even using the common insane asylum as its setting, familiarity with the trope won’t change the fact that, while playing, you’ll wish you were anywhere else. The game’s reviews on Steam are probably better than I would personally give the game, but no one telling you that the game is scary is misleading you. I spend a lot of time consuming this genre’s media. After playing Outlast for a little less than an hour, I sat back and very calmly said to myself, “I think I need a break.” It scared me to the point where I needed to take a step back and have a nice relaxing cup of tea before continuing. Speaking of which, after going back over these games for this list, I think I’m going do the same now.
Is my list of the top 10 scariest PC games wrong? Of course it is! Feel free to correct it in the comments or on Twitter.