The best horror games

Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus is an abandoned horror adventure/RPG hybrid game with elements of dark fantasy, developed by Horror Soft and published by Accolade for DOS in 1991. Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus is also part of the Elvira series of games, each of one based on the popular movie/TV personality Elvira.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is an action-adventure game released in 1999, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos Interactive. It’s the second game in the Legacy of Kain series. The game is set in the world of Nosgoth, a gothic realm dominated by vampires. The protagonist, Raziel, is a vampire lieutenant under the rule of th...

Bram Stoker's Dracula (the game) is based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the movie) based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the book). Confused yet? Good. This 1993 action-platformer has you battling the undead with the grace of a drunken Van Helsing. It's moody, messy, and full of things trying to kill you—like a haunted Castlevania knockoff ...

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is a horror-themed point-and-click adventure and RPG video game released in 1990 by Accolade for platforms including Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS. It’s loosely based on the campy, gothic horror persona of Elvira, played by Cassandra Peterson, who was a popular horror hostess in the 1980s and early '90s. You pl...

The Legacy: Realm of Terror is a first-person view survival horror RPG set in the modern world, in a haunted house. The Legacy was developed by Magnetic Scrolls and published by MicroProse Software in 1993.

Castlevania, originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986, was developed and published by Konami. The game was known in Japan as Akumajo Dracula (Devil's Castle Dracula) and was later renamed Castlevania for its North American release. In Castlevania, players take on the role of Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter from the Bel...

The sequel no one expected takes our trench-coated hero from gothic horror to gangster ghost story. Yes, Alone in the Dark 2 (1993, DOS) swaps Lovecraftian horror for Tommy guns and pirates - because why not? The combat’s a bit like slap-fighting with broomsticks, and the puzzles could drive a monk to madness, but the charm is in the chaos. I...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and now you must juggle your thirst for blood with your desire to not completely lose your mind. The game world is dense, filled with dark alleys, gothic hackers, and more dia...

Beetlejuice: Skeletons in the Closet is a video game based on the popular Beetlejuice franchise, which includes a 1988 film directed by Tim Burton and an animated television series that aired in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The game involves controlling Beetlejuice as he attempts to clear skeletons from various closets in a haunted house. T...

Hugo's House of Horrors is an adventure game developed by David P. Gray and released in the early 1990s. The game is a text-based adventure with simple graphics, and it gained popularity for its witty and often tongue-in-cheek approach to the horror genre.The story of the game revolves around the main character, Hugo, who receives a letter from his...

Forget Freddy’s razor glove for a second - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1989) for DOS is terrifying in its own way. Mostly because of the controls. You play as a teen trying to stay awake and alive while navigating dreamscapes full of death and digitized screams. The gameplay is a mix of exploration and survival, wrapped in graphics that look l...

Weird Dreams is an abandoned action - puzzle game developed and released by Rainbird Software in 1988 for DOS, but also published for Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64. Weird Dreams is a surreal action game in which you have to take part in absurd activities in order to progress to the next level.