The Best Horror Games To Play This Halloween

Alan Wake Remastered

Halloween is just around the corner, and that means it’s the perfect time to start playing spooky games. Horror games are almost as old as the medium itself, and have spanned out to become one of the most varied genres in the gaming space.

Ahead of the spookiest day of the year, we thought we’d go through and pick out a couple of the best horror games on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

The Best Horror Games On Nintendo Switch

Alien Isolation

Let’s be clear, the Nintendo Switch isn’t the only console on which you can play Alien: Isolation, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably the best way to play it. Being hunted down by a Xenomorph with little to defend yourself is an utterly terrifying experience, but doing so in bed late at night with headphones in on the Nintendo Switch escalates the experience tenfold. The Switch port of Alien: Isolation is rock solid, too, so you won’t have to worry about any compromises made to get the game running on handheld hardware.

Metroid Dread

Speaking of terrifying things chasing you through space stations, Metroid Dread is exactly that. Most Metroid games have some spooky aspects to them, but Dread takes the SA-X chase sections from Metroid Fusion and turns them into straight up horror zones scattered throughout the planet. Combine that with subtle soundtrack and sound design and some atmospheric world-building, and you’ve got one of the most terrifying games in the Metroid series, and on the Switch.

The Best Horror Games On PlayStation

Resident Evil 4 Remake

The original Resident Evil 4 was a master class in action-y survival horror, and should definitely be played by everyone, but the remake made it even better. It’s tense, beautiful, and an absolute delight to play, with wonderful characterization, tight and punchy controls, and some incredible weapons to play around with (especially on new game plus).

Read GLHF’s Resident Evil 4 Remake review on videogames.si.com.

Until Dawn

Until Dawn wasn’t Supermassive Games’ first game, but it was the one that shot it into the public eye, with its inventive new horror gameplay that was quite unlike anything that came before it. In Until Dawn, you’re essentially the director of a teen horror movie, making decisions and choices that ultimately decide who lives and dies. It’s an homage to every classic slasher film from the past half century, and it kickstarted a whole new subgenre of interactive drama horror games that Supermassive excels at to this day.

The Best Horror Games On Xbox

Signalis

Signalis is a fantastic little indie horror game that takes the best parts of classic series like Silent Hill and Resident Evil and dresses them up in some of the best pixel art in gaming. Don’t let its relatively simplistic graphics fool you though — Signalis will scare the pants off of you, and you’ll have a great time in the process. There are few games that build atmosphere as well as this, and fewer games still that do it with such style and grace. Signalis is available on Xbox Game Pass, so you really have no reason not to check it out if you own an Xbox.

Dead Space Remake

Sometimes video game remakes are transformative – like Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy 7 – while others go for an approach more akin to refinement. Dead Space is one of the latter, with 2023’s remake of the game sanding off some of the original’s rough edges, modernizing it for a new audience, and refining or improving just about every aspect of the original.

Read GLHF’s Dead Space remake review on videogames.si.com.

The Best Horror Games On PC

Phasmophobia

Not every horror game is about sitting alone in the dark by yourself, sometimes terror is more terrifying with friends. No game better exemplifies this than Phasmophobia, a co-op ghost-hunting game that’s in part terrifying because of its gameplay, and in part terrifying because of your friends screaming whenever something happens. It’s as joyful as it is spooky, and while it can be played solo, it’s best enjoyed with friends.

Alan Wake Remastered

With Alan Wake 2 finally here, now’s the perfect time to go back and play the original — or at least the remastered version of the original. Alan Wake isn’t quite a horror game, but it’s certainly got the vibes of one, and it’d be difficult to come away from the game without having jumped at least once or twice. It’s a little bit on the pretentious side, but it’s worth putting up with for everything else the game has to offer.