No medium captures the horror genre as well as video games. Sure, the descriptive nature of novels helps add gravity to horror concepts that initially seem esoteric, and movies provide an extra dimension through disturbing sounds and visuals. Still, horror games offer yet another layer that's impossible to replicate: immersion.
During a playthrough of any survival horror game, you don't feel like you're experiencing a character's story; you feel like you are the character. With high-quality headphones and a dimly lit room, a horror game allows players to forget that they're playing a game at all, and that's just how we like it.
At this point, every talking head and listicle online has discussed the titans of the horror genre in gaming to death, but we here at Complex want to break the mold. And while some of these games are super difficult to play on the title's original hardware, most of them can be played today on Steam and other emulator services through Sony, Xbox, and Nintendo.
Here are the 10 forgotten horror games you need to play in 2025.
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10.Echo Night: Beyond
With Echo Night: Beyond, FromSoftware, the developer behind the Dark Souls series, presents a bold vision of the first-person, survival horror game. Eschewing the conventional weapons-based approach, Echo Night: Beyond doesn't allow players to combat the game's ghostly antagonists directly, lest your character succumb to a heart attack. Instead, players have to outmaneuver the ghosts throughout the space station where the game is set. Echo Night: Beyond follows a newlywed protagonist who is separated from his wife on a lunar base. By focusing on dispelling spirits instead of battling them, Echo Night: Beyond truly embodies the essence of survival horror.
9.The Black Mirror 2: Reigning Evil
While some point-and-click games still exist in modernity, the advancements in PC and console gaming in the 90s and 2000s have significantly impacted the genre's popularity. However, that isn't to say the genre is devoid of any hidden gems. In 2010, Cranberry Productions released a sequel to Future Game's Black Mirror. Picking up 12 years after the original game, players control Darren Michaels as he finds himself drawn into a complicated web of mystery and horror. Players may remember the 2017 reboot of The Black Mirror franchise, but The Black Mirror 2 allows them to return to the title's roots.
8.Evil Dead: Regeneration
Games based on horror movie franchises have an advantage over their competition. Aside from tapping into an installed fanbase, games set in the universe of a horror movie don't have to spend too much time setting up the premise. However, 2005's Evil Dead: Regeneration takes a different approach by presenting an alternate version of Sam Raimi's trilogy. Evil Dead: Regeneration does, unfortunately, employ an annoying "babysitting" mechanic, where players escort a secondary character through missions, which was already cliché in the era. However, if you're looking for a fun hack-and-slash game, you can do a lot worse than Evil Dead: Regeneration.
7.Siren
As a creative, few things are as mentally taxing as following up on a hit project. Typically regarded as the sophomore slump, most artists tend to fall asleep at the wheel on their second outing in a medium or genre. Luckily for gamers, Keiichiro Toyama, creator of the Silent Hill franchise, is not like other artists. With 2003's Siren, Toyama directs and co-writes another ambitious survival horror masterpiece set in a Japanese town following a paranormal event. Featuring a large cast of ten characters, players weave through a series of interconnected stories, wherein their choices impact how the game unfolds.
6.The Suffering
Horror can pair well with almost any genre. When action becomes horror's co-star, the fusion of genres produces a dazzling mixture that works impossibly well in the medium of video games. 2004's The Suffering is a prime example of this fabled pairing. After monsters besiege his prison following an Earthquake, a death row inmate named Torque must combat the hellish hordes to escape. With a morality system akin to Fable, The Suffering offers three endings that stem from the player's choices. Although The Suffering did produce a sequel, The Suffering: Ties That Bind, gamers should familiarize themselves with the original.
5.Through The Woods
Despite being one of the newer entries on the list, as an independent game, Through the Woods needs as much attention as it can get. Closing in on a decade since its 2016 release, Through the Woods is rapidly approaching nostalgic territory for its fans. The game focuses on Karen, who braves through the titular woods of Norway's Western Shore to find her son Espen. Utilizing the third-person perspective, players are equipped with a flashlight as they traverse the dreary woods. Although the flashlight-focused gameplay is fun, Through the Wood's winding and mature narrative is truly what sets the game apart.
4.Fear Effect
After the success of the Tomb Raider franchise in the 90s, the game's publisher, Eidos, upped the ante with 2000's Fear Effect. With gameplay similar to other survival horror games of the era, such as Capcom's Resident Evil, Fear Effect allows players to choose from three anti-hero protagonists. Set in the not-too-distant future, players are thrust into a gritty world of crime, brilliantly realized by groundbreaking cel-shading animation. Although the game's combat is top-notch for its time, Fear Effect's story and slick presentation make the game truly feel timeless. Take the game's health bar, a simple EKG meter, for example.
3.Cold Fear
They say that death comes in threes, but entertainment comes in pairs. From Armageddon and Deep Impact to The Prestige and The Illusionist, there's a long history of movies with similar premises releasing concurrently. The same thing happens in gaming. Cold Fear, a third-person zombie survival game that was released shortly after the genre-defining Resident Evil 4, experienced the phenomenon firsthand. Despite being impressive and meticulously animated to replicate the rolling ocean, Cold Fear couldn't compare to its unintentional rival and elder statesmen in the genre. Perhaps a second appraisal might earn the maritime horror a new appreciation among gamers.
2.Lifeline
Video games are a beautiful combination of art and technology, wherein both halves of the equation are necessary for a title to become successful. With 2003's Lifeline, Konami pushed gaming technology to a new frontier with innovative use of voice commands. Instead of controlling the game's protagonist, Rio Hohenheim, in the traditional sense, players have to issue verbal commands on a microphone. With hundreds of commands at your disposal, players help Rio escape a space station overrun with monsters, as well as conduct casual conversations. Lifeline's idiosyncratic approach to survival horror perfectly represents gaming's fusion of art and emerging technology.
1.Manhunt
The early 2000s were quite a paradoxical time for video games. Despite the medium of games growing by tremendous leaps and bounds, in both technology and content, a majority of the public still regarded video games as simply children's entertainment. Leave it to the ever-controversial Rockstar Games to poke the proverbial bear with 2003's Manhunt. At its core, Manhunt is a gritty stealth game that pits the protagonist, James Earl Cash, against scores of murderous gang members. In reality, Manhunt is arguably Rockstar's most notorious title, as the game was banned in a host of countries for its graphic content.