Games

Saddest Horror Games, Ranked

Published

1 month ago

October 20, 2024

Christoph Rediske

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Key Takeaways

Table of Contents

Executing compelling horror games requires quality visuals, audio, and stories to engage players.
Players connect with characters and stories, such as Layers of Fear’s tragic painter, for an emotional impact.
Games like Silent Hill 2 and Devotion tackle dark themes and personal tragedies for truly haunting experiences.

The best horror games know how to mess with a player’s emotions and immerse them with great visuals, audio design, stories, and more. It’s easy to label this genre as a fountain of cheap jump scares and streamer bait, but the truth is that executing compelling horror is a Herculean task. Developers must ensure that their games are oozing quality from every pore if they want to succeed in a genre that is notorious for featuring many sales duds. After all, many players aren’t huge fans of going out of their way to scare themselves.

When players push themselves to check out a horror game, they’ll love the idea of engaging with a narrative that makes them feel something. The stories told in these games can be hard to digest, but players need to understand the plight of the characters they’ve formed a connection with to understand why their lives have spiraled into depression and madness.

8:27

The 20 Best PS5 Horror Games, Ranked (October 2024)

The best PS5 horror games don’t just rely on the console’s power, with their settings, characters, and gameplay mechanics also playing a pivotal role.

5 Layers Of Fear

The Harrowing Story Of A Painter’s Dying Marriage

Released: February 16, 2016
OpenCritic Rating: Fair

The idea of exploring the mansion of a painter who is slowly losing his mind is a tantalizing one. This concept serves as the premise of Layers of Fear, an excellent psychological horror game that deserves more attention. It’s a masterful experience that turns the simple act of walking into a nightmarish experience. The environment slowly becomes more surreal, dropping hints about the tragic events surrounding the painter’s life.

Players can’t help but feel for the painter and his wife as the full story rears his ugly head. The painter used his partner as a muse and was infatuated with her beauty, only for a sudden fire to scar her face for good. Unable to find inspiration in anything else, he locked himself in his room and ignored his wife, causing her to suffer from loneliness and eventually take her own life. It’s a chilling story that makes Layers of Fear one of the saddest horror games players can get their hands on.

4 Silent Hill 2

It’s Hard To Sympathize With The Protagonist As The Plot Unfolds

Systems

Released: October 8, 2024
OpenCritic Rating: Mighty

Props must be given to Bloober Team for modernizing a horror classic and letting a whole new batch of players enjoy the greatest Silent Hill game of all time. More people can experience the story of James Sunderland now, but these players must be prepared to be shocked and horrified by the story surrounding the protagonist and Mary, his wife, whom he seeks out in the town of Silent Hill.

The story’s psychological horror comes into play as players begin to realize that something’s not right. Side characters know way too much about James’ life. A woman resembling Mary dies numerous times throughout the game, almost as if she were torturing James. It’s not until the end of the game that players find out the truth — the couple enjoyed a happy marriage, only for a terminal disease to wreck their lives. Unable to deal with the constant grief and sadness of this relationship, James killed his wife to escape this torment, a heartbreaking end to their once-fulfilling relationship.

3 Omori

One Of The Saddest Plot Twists In An RPG

OMORI

Released: December 25, 2020
Developer: Omocat
OpenCritic Rating: Mighty

A harrowing RPG that deals with trauma and PTSD, Omori revolves around a boy named Sunny who is a shut-in and prefers to retreat into dreamland to escape something from his past. His friends try to help him come out of his shell, only for the events of his past to come back and haunt him as Sunny tries to escape into his dreams instead of facing the truth. After a few fateful days spent in the company of his friends, players finally understand the truth about what happened.

6:28

Genuinely Scary PlayStation 1 Games

While it may not have the realism of today’s platforms, the PlayStation 1 had truly chilling and genuinely scary games.

Sunny and his sister, Mari, were very close, but things took a turn for the worse when they tried to prepare for a musical duet. Mari demanded perfection and demanded more from Sunny than he could give, leading to a breaking point where the young boy snapped and pushed his sister. Unfortunately, they were arguing near a flight of stairs, and Mari tumbled down and broke her neck. Along with another friend named Basil, Sunny staged her death as a suicide to hide this act, with the memory of this event haunting him ever since.

2 Devotion

Players Get Attached To A Family That Experiences Tragedy

Systems

Released: February 19, 2019
Developer(s): RedCandleGames
OpenCritic Rating: Strong

It’s easy for horror games to introduce a monstrous entity to scare players and call it a day. However, the truest form of horror is when the simplest of things are morphed into a nightmarish construct, and this is precisely what Devotion does with the idea of family and faith. The story focuses on a family struggling to make ends meet. The situation embodies patriarchy’s worst qualities as a failed screenwriter refuses to let his wife work, further worsening their economic situation.

Eventually, the man alienates his wife to the point where she leaves him, and his daughter develops a psychiatric illness that he refuses to seek help for. Instead, he turns to a cult that brainwashes him into drowning his daughter in a bathtub. It’s a haunting tale that shows the negative impact societal expectations and misplaced faith can have if one is not willing to change.

1 The Cat Lady

Several Dark Themes Make The Game Tough To Get Through

The Cat Lady

Systems

Platform(s): Linux , Microsoft Windows
Released: December 1, 2012
Developer: Harvester Games

The Cat Lady is not a game for the faint of heart. Several dark themes are explored in a story where players control a lonely widow named Susan Ashworth, who tries to kill herself only to be granted immortality as she’s tasked with killing five so-called ‘parasites’ roaming the realm of the living. These people are twisted to the core, which is pretty disturbing on its own. However, what makes The Cat Lady such a sad tale is Susan’s backstory, which players uncover over the course of the game.

She has a deep-rooted hatred for flowers, which is explained when Susan reveals that her child died of an allergic reaction to pollen as she was busy fighting with her husband. It’s a horrifying revelation, and players can’t help but feel for Susan. All of a sudden, her self-destructive acts make a ton of sense, and only one of the endings gives her a truly happy ending that she deserves.