Resident Evil Village aside, it’s been a pretty quiet year for horror games so far, but that’s going to change once the bright lights of summer are out of the way and the nights start to close in. From eerie indies to bloody blockbusters, here are 15 of the upcoming horror games that we’ve got our eye on.
Ghosts
(PC, Xbox One, PS4, Switch)
It’s early days for this title, recently funded on Kickstarter, but you’re going to want to keep track of it all the same. It comes from Jed Shepherd, the screenwriter behind surprise lockdown hit Host, and sees him reuniting with most of the cast for a full-motion video game (ie, it uses actual video footage, not graphics) about a struggling team of TV ghost hunters who may have bitten off more than they should when they investigate the local legend of the “Long Lady.” In a gimmick that the late, great William Castle would have been proud of, the game can only be played after 10pm wherever you are. At least that was the original plan. It now seems you’ll be able to play during the daytime, like a big cowardy custard, by completing a mini-challenge on the menu. Whenever you play it, however, the team behind one of 2020’s best horror movies moving into the interactive realm is very exciting.
Chasing Static
(Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 5)
There aren’t many surprises in the setup for this UK indie game. You’re a hapless everyman, heading home to a small town in Wales after your father’s funeral. Lost in the rain late at night, you stop at a roadside café and are soon caught up in all manner of weirdness that almost certainly is almost certainly connected to an abandoned research post in the woods and a series of strange radio frequencies. The 1990s low-poly graphics give it a distinct look, and the inventory puzzles hark back to the classic survival horrors of old, albeit viewed first person this time.
Lunacy: Saint Rhodes
(PC)
More first person investigation awaits in Lunacy: Saint Rhodes, with yet another estranged relative encountering town-wide horror tangled up with their own family history. The town of the title is overrun with hideous creatures and it apparently ties back to a murder spree that polished off your own family. What makes this interesting is an AI overseer known as The Author that will tweak and change the game depending on what you do and how you play. We’ve seen similar reactive design before, in Left 4 Dead notably, but it’s rare to see it applied to a solo narrative game. Color us intrigued.
Hello Puppets Midnight Show
(PC)
Coming from tinyBuild, the indie publisher behind creep-em-up cult classic Hello Neighbor, this latest title from them includes some familiar hide-and-seek gameplay elements as you try to evade your pursuers by hiding in cupboards and setting traps to slow them down. The difference here is that, as hinted in the title, you’re being hunted in an empty TV studio by The Handeemen, a troupe of 1980s TV puppets brought to life. So, yes, a little Five Nights at Freddy’s is in the mix as well. A PC demo reveals an emphasis on puzzles to open new areas, and the need to find batteries to power essential mechanisms as you scurry around.
They Are Here
(PC, Xbox One, PS4)
There’s no shortage of games in which you creep around an abandoned location, reading notes to fill in the backstory and triggering jump scares as you go. They Are Here stands out from the herd by using UFOs and alien abduction as its source of scares, rather than the expected ghosts and ghouls. You’re a journalist, investigating lights in the sky over a rural farm, but when you get there everyone is missing and the electrics keep going loopy. A recently released demo felt a little prescriptive, forcing you to focus on things rather than letting you spot them organically, and the obligatory notes of exposition seemed hilariously long-winded and verbose considering they were supposedly scrawled in a panic by a terrified farmer fighting extra-terrestrials. Still, when the alien shit goes down it’s genuinely freaky – calling to mind everything from The X-Files to Signs to Communion, and for that alone we’re intrigued to see what the full game offers.
Once Upon a Time in Roswell
(PC, Xbox One, PS4)
The second UFO-themed game to catch our eye is this psychological horror, based around the infamous 1947 saucer crash conspiracy. You’ll be able to explore the town, poke around in the homes of those involved, and no doubt uncover sinister secrets that go all the way to the top. It looks gorgeous, with lots of period detail, and the prospect of a more robust detective aspect should help to make the experience more than just an interactive spook house.
Deathground
(PC)
Also grabbing our attention by mixing up different flavors of horror is this promising cooperative multiplayer game in which you must fight and plan in teams of three in order to find valuable loot and escape the killing ground of the title, without being munched by AI-powered dinosaurs that have broken loose, in a manner similar to a certain film franchise, and are now looking for a snack. The indie development team includes people who worked on titles such as Alien Isolation, SOMA and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs so its bona fides are pretty damn solid.
Dead Static Drive
(PC, Xbox)
“Grand Theft Cthulhu” is the attention-grabbing elevator pitch for this end-of-the-world adventure, in which you must make a final cross-country dash as eldritch horrors reclaim our dimension. Viewed from an elevated third-person view, and with an emphasis on driving rather than walking around, you can see where the Grand Theft Auto comparison comes from. What really makes this interesting, compared to other apocalyptic games, is that it’s also described as an “anti-nihilism simulator” with a gameplay focus on trusting people, rather than being suspicious and shotgunning them before they swipe your canned goods.
Abandoned
(PS5)
This survival game is arguably more famous now for what it isn’t rather than what it is. Conspiracy theories flew around like angry wasps after developer Blue Box Games tweeted none-too-subtle hints that this might be a top-secret continuation of the Silent Hill franchise, with Hideo Kojima pulling the strings. So far, so internet. It’s all been denied, of course, but the speculation threatens to overshadow what looks like a fascinating game in its own right. Exclusive to the PlayStation 5, and delivering graphics that look pretty damn near photo-real, you’ll be dropped into a wintery wasteland and left to fend for yourself, finding food, water and warmth, even as adherents of a nearby cult try to ensnare you for their own unpleasant ends.
Martha is Dead
(PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
No, this isn’t a spin-off from Batman vs Superman. It’s a horror tale set in Tuscany, Italy, in the last years of WW2. You’re Giulia, a young woman from a wealthy family, fleeing fascists while investigating the apparent murder of your sister. Given the tone and style of everything released so far, it seems fair to assume that we’re looking at something somber and supernatural rather than slashers or zombies. Elevated horror goes gaming? We’re down with that.
House of Ashes
(PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
The next entry in the Dark Pictures Anthology series takes us back to the Gulf War in 2003, and follows a US Special Forces unit, plus tagalong CIA operative, and an Iraqi patrol as their firefight at the site of a supposed chemical weapons facility actually opens up a long-buried Sumerian temple. Trapped underground both sides have to put aside their earthly rivalries to survive an ancient menace intent on picking them off. As always with this series, expect lots of narrative wiggle room as any character can die horribly depending on your actions and choices.
Rainbow Six Extraction
(PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
Just as the Dark Pictures series stirs a little Spec Ops action into its latest story, even the macho military world of Tom Clancy is getting its horror on. The next iteration of the long-running Rainbow Six tactical multiplayer shooter series, now renamed from Quarantine to Extraction for obvious reasons, will put you and your squadmates not against terrorists or enemy combatants, but alien parasites known as Archaeans. How will the breach-and-clear gameplay that Rainbow Six is famous for adapt to this new threat? We have no idea, but you can bet we’re curious to find out.
Back 4 Blood
(PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
The Left 4 Dead games revitalized horror gaming when they launched, offering first-person zombie blasting action with frantic co-operative gameplay in which – in true Romero style – the biggest danger came from the all-too-human selfishness or idiocy of your teammates. Well, it’s been over a decade since Left 4 Dead 2 and publisher Valve is clearly in no hurry to launch a third game. That’s why some of the original development team have reconvened to launch a game that is emphatically not Left 4 Dead 3 for legal reasons, but is nevertheless designed to tick all the boxes fans expect. Your enemies are fungal-infected rage monsters, not the living dead, and there’s a new random card deck element to play around with, but let’s be honest: we just want that ol’ trigger happy horror panic back, please.
Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare
(PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch)
It was last year when we reported in this very column that exploitation legend Ruggero Deodato was making a video game sequel to Cannibal Holocaust. Well, one surreal year later, and it turns out this wasn’t a fever dream. Now titled Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare, the game is an old-school point-and-click adventure, and has already been criticized for using actual Bornean tribes and depicting them as flesh-eating savages. Can you even make authentically brutal and racist 1970s-style exploitation media for Nintendo Switch in 2021? Should you? We’ll find out later this year, apparently.
Evil Dead: The Game
(PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch)
Those old enough to remember when the end credits rolled on Army of Darkness back in 1992 will know that the continuation of Evil Dead was something of a holy grail for fans. Poor Bruce Campbell was forever being asked when or if he’d ever play Ash again. Fast forward a mere (gulp) thirty years and he’s returned to the role a lot more often than we thought he would. As well as voicing several Evil Dead console games in the 2000s, he reprised the role in three seasons of Ash vs Evil Dead on TV and will now strap on the groovy chainsaw once again for a co-op multiplayer game set in what is now officially the Evil Dead universe. Yep, you’ll be able to play as characters from the original three movies and the TV show (not the 2013 remake, though) as you work together to dismember Deadite enemies and try to avoid being dead by dawn.
