(According to moi, of course, this is all subjective)

I’ve been wanting to make a post like this for awhile now, and since ‘tis the season for such things, I thought I’d better post it sooner rather than later. Without further ado!

10. Among the Sleep
There’s something uniquely terrifying about a horror game told from the POV of a baby. The developers did a fantastic job of putting the player in the mindset of a small child, like making all the writing on objects appear as incomprehensible scribbles or making it be faster to move around by crawling instead of walking (which will make you fall over if you try to walk too fast), and all around conveying just how helpless and small someone that age is, which really helped the immersive factor. And when you realize what exactly is going on in the story and why such awful things are happening to our tiny protagonist, the game becomes that much more sad and disturbing.

9. Until Dawn
This game does kind of have a cheesy 80s monster movie/slasher flick vibe going on, and does kind of rely a little too much on jump scares near the beginning of the game, but that said, when this game wants to bring the scares, it brings the scares. The wendigos especially are the stuff of nightmares. The atmosphere of the game is generally very well done, too, and the triple A graphics really help sell the setting.

8. Five Nights at Freddy’s

Yes, yes, say what you will about the fanbase and how the series has overstayed its welcome just a bit, but the core concept and lore to this series is still on point, i.e. the ghosts of murdered children haunting pizzeria animatronics to exact revenge for their murders. All the different animatronic models are still damn unsettling, too, the Puppet especially.

7. Ib
Why yes, did I put an indie game made in RPG Maker by one person over a triple A title that had an entire team of developers and paid professional actors behind it on this list, deal with it. The sheer amount of creativity in this game is mind boggling, and despite its humble graphics, it still manages to be immensely eerie and haunting, as it takes place in a haunted art gallery (seriously, why don’t more people get on this concept, this could be the most terrifying thing ever in the right hands with a big enough budget). One scene in particular stands out as being one of the creepiest, most nail-biting scares I have ever encountered in any piece of media ever, and still comes back to haunt me in the middle of the night every so often.

6.
Fran Bow
Imagine Alice In Wonderland set in the 1940s with gore,
body horror, and psychotropic drugs aplenty, and the Unreliable Narrator dial
turned up to 11, and you get Fran Bow. Honestly, no one really knows
WHAT’S going on in this game, though there are a ton of fan theories and
I have my own that I subscribe to, but one thing for sure, it
definitely earns its title as a horror game. The beginning section of
the game in the mental institution stands out as one of the most
viscerally disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed.

5.
Alice: Madness Returns
While we’re on the subject of
Alice In Wonderland, dark retellings of the novels themselves are nothing
new, but this game series does the best at conveying the “twisted fairy
tale” theme while delivering an extremely gripping and compelling
narrative that is mature while still managing to be generally tasteful about
the subject matter it chooses to explore.

This game isn’t so much outright scary, per se, as it is immensely
creepy and atmospheric, but it does creepy and atmospheric so well that
it definitely earned its number 5 spot. And not that there aren’t scary
scenes, either; one entire level in particular near the very end of the
game nearly gave me nightmares.

4. The Cat Lady
I don’t think there’s a game yet made that depicts the feeling of mental illness and depression quite like this one. It explores a lot of heavy subjects while also delving deep into the macabre, twisted world of psychopaths and serial killers, which our main character must battle along with her own mental illness and suicidal tendencies. It does a very good job of lulling you into a false sense of security and suddenly ripping the rug out from under you, such as one memorable scene that had me tearing off my headphones and nearly bursting into tears because of how terrified it made me, which I have never done before or since.

3. P.T.
Even though it’s not even a full game, just a playable teaser for a game
that will no longer ever be made (curse you Konami), P.T. still stands up
as a solid piece of media in its own right, with an intriguing story and some bone chilling scares.

I’ve never seen a game that does the tension and release cycle that’s so integral to a horror experience quite as well as this one does.

2. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Anyone who knows anything about horror games that came out in the last decade knows about Amnesia, and knows why it’s on here. The time I watched a let’s play of this goes down in history as the last time I went to bed with my lamp on because I was so spooked.

1. Year Walk
Named for the ancient Scandinavian ritual that would supposedly allow you to see into the future of the next upcoming year, Year Walk is ostensibly a game about introducing the player to lesser known aspects of Scandinavia’s more… colorful… folklore and mythological creatures, but quickly takes a turn into cosmic, eldritch horror near the end that I was most definitely not expecting.
This game… it got to me. Like… really, really badly. And I can’t really explain exactly why.
It just has this deceptively peaceful atmosphere that is at the same time eerie and oppressive, like a dream that could turn into a nightmare at any moment. There’s only about one jump scare in the entire game, and the rest of it is pure suspense and subtle horror, the kind that creeps up on you and lingers rather than startling and then fading away.