Looking for a horror game that’ll scare the Hell out of you this year?
Horror games are awesome. Whether alone or with your friends, there’s nothing that can quite compare to the feelings of dread and paranoia that a game like Amnesia: The Dark Descent or Outlast can give you. So here’s a list of some new horror games from 2016 to help feed your need for that feeling of fear.
1) Dead by Daylight
On one hand, that’s a horrifying death she’s gonna have. On the other, she did leave the guy to die in the bear trap, so…
If you like hunting down your friends as a sadistic serial killer, then Dead By Daylight is the game for you.
This lopsided multiplayer game sees one player, the host, as the killer and four players trying to escape him. It’s a slasher movie, in video game form.
The survivors’ objective is to escape through the gates at the borders of the level. To do so, they have to power up generators scattered throughout the map. Once at least four are activated, they can escape. Sounds pretty easy on paper, right?
Well, then you add in the killer. There are currently four killers: the Hillbilly, the Wraith, the Trapper, and the Nurse. They each have their own unique perks and powers to fit their playstyles. For example, the Hillbilly has perks that allow him to resist stun effects, and uses both a hammer and a chainsaw as his weapons. He’s basically the tank archetype for the killers.
Meanwhile, the Wraith can turn invisible and has perks making it easier to track players. The Trapper, predictably, is focused on trapping. And the Nurse can teleport and is able to see the aura of any player being healed.
So the survivors have their work cut out for them.
Dead By Daylight was released in June and since then has seen two new killers added to the original three: The Nurse, already released, and “the Crawler”, said to add some verticality to the game.
That meathook looks suspiciously bloody…
I knew it!
The dev’s very own Twitch stream shows off the game’s features.
2) Outlast 2
Outlast II’s teaser gives us a sense of a more spiritual, religious, backwoods horror than its more scientific predecessor.
You are Blake Langermann, a cameraman working with your wife Lynn. As in the first game, the two of you are investigative journalists.
You and your wife have travelled to Southern Arizona to investigate the murder of a Jane Doe, who was found eight months pregnant on the side of the road. She was a member of a cult from the town of Temple Gate, a remote place in Arizona. According to the hospital records, the Jane Doe committed suicide, but there’s something about it that’s fishy enough to push the Langermanns to investigate.
Your search takes you to the secluded Arizona town, but your chopper crashes on the way and when you wake up, Lynn is missing. What’s more, the town you find yourself in is filled with psychotic cultists who think the End Times are here. Your objective is to find Lynn and then get the hell out.
Outlast II promises to live up to, and even surpass, the original horror game. Where Outlast was set in an insane asylum hiding a secret government facility, the sequel is much more “Old Time Religion”-ey, featuring an insane preacher named Sullivan Knoth, who seems to have converted the entire town into a psychotic End Times cult, “The Testament of the New Ezekiel”.
Recently, a gameplay demo was showed at PAX East. It was disturbing, to say the least. But to say more, it featured dead babies, Saint Peter’s Cross (which is often assumed to be a Satanic symbol), a large tentacle-like tongue, and a whole lot of mind screw. One of the main mechanics returning from the first game is the video camera and night vision. It’s dark out there, so the only way to see the creepy guy with the pickaxe is to use the nightvision setting on your camera and record what’s happening. Unfortunately, the camera just eats batteries. Better hope you can find more.
As you make your way through the town, there’s a very real feeling that you’re being stalked by… something. Probably a bunch of insane villagers, but there was more to the first game so there may be more here.
Outlast II is my personal most anticipated horror game of the next few months and I highly recommend the original to anyone who hasn’t played it but loves horror. I also recommend it to anyone who can’t handle scary, but that’s because it’s a lot of fun to watch them play.
Set for release in early 2017, Outlast II is sure to surpass its predecessor and may well be a contender for scariest game in recent memory.
I guess the last guy who came through here didn’t have a good time.
Not just dead babies, dead babies arranged in a cross. Man, psychotic End Times cults are weird.
3) Friday the 13th: The Game
Horror tip: Never hide under the bed, it’s the first place they look.
Friday The Thirteenth is the second of three “one predator hunts many prey”-style survival horror games to be released in 2016, the first being Dead By Daylight and the third, Last Year.
Seven Camp Crystal Lake counselors have somehow managed to disturb Jason Voorhees. Yeah, they’re probably going to die horribly, but that all really depends on the player. Seven players on one side, trying to survive the night, against one player as Jason.
The counselors can either hide, try to fight, or just run. Myself, I’d probably try to fix the boat and wait it out on the lake. But ultimately it’s up to you. Meanwhile, Jason has some pretty impressive tracking abilities and even a teleport to pop up right when you think you’re safe. And once he finds you...
Friday the Thirteenth is set to be released in the Fall, my own guess is probably around Halloween.
We hope you have a wonderful summer!
RUN.
Jason finds some campers for Mother.
4) Pamela
What the hell happened here?
You’ve just woken up in a fallen utopia called Eden, with only an AI called P.A.M.E.L.A. keeping it going. There are strange Afflicted citizens wandering around, as well as glitchy robotic maintenance droids, and more in the city, and depending on your actions may prove to be either valuable allies or, well… it’s a horror game, you do the math.
P.A.M.E.L.A. takes cues from Bioshock in that you find yourself in the aftermath of some… event that caused the downfall of a whole civilization. It’s up to you and the titular AI to find out exactly what happened to Eden. Along the way, you get different high-tech weapons and, for lack of a better word, biological enhancements for your character to assist you.
P.A.M.E.L.A. is an open world first person shooter survival horror game (can we please talk about genre classifications, this is a mouthful) being developed by NVYVE Studios. Its release date is, much like many other games on this list, Fall of 2016.
Remember those Afflicted I mentioned? Yeah… Future zombies.
You’d think a fallen utopia might look a bit worse than it does.
The sleeper wakes to find hell disguised as heaven.
5) Perception
THIS IS SUCH A COOL CONCEPT
You are blind. You keep seeing a place in your dreams and decide to investigate. The only way to see is through echolocation, which is hands down the coolest game mechanic I’ve seen in a really long time.
Your “sight” can be disrupted by steam pipes or other persistent noises, which will probably prove to be a big challenge in the released game. As well, there’s a presence in the house hunting you, and it’s up to you to both escape it, and discover the history of the house.
Perception, again, has an amazing concept and was developed by some game design veterans from games such as Bioshock and Dead Space.
Using echolocation to see, you get this creepy but awesome view of the house.
I’d really rather not get a closer view of whatever’s on the other side of this door.
Silent Night mode: choose between either a talkative heroine or a heroine who only speaks when it’s plot critical.
6) System Shock Remastered
Oh, right in the nostalgia…
You are a hacker who has just awakened from a surgery-induced coma. On waking, you discover you have some pretty high-tech neural implants, which is awesome, and the AI in charge has taken over and converted everyone into cyborgs, which is not so awesome.
The original System Shock was released in 1994 and was one of the most advanced games of the time. Over the years it’s inspired a few notable games, the best known being Bioshock and Dead Space. And now, it’s being remastered and rereleased.
As one of the first FPSes, it plays very much like Doom or Quake. The biggest difference from its peers, though, is its focus on story, which has a direct impact on any fear or horror you may feel while playing. Nobody was scared playing the original Doom game, because the story was “Here’s a gun, go kick ass”. But System Shock? It’s known for being, if not the first, then one of the first story driven games, with actual characters you can connect to, and for whom you feel loss when they’re gone.
System Shock Remastered is set for a holiday release.
When life gives you a hammer, you use it, and use it now.
Or if life gives you a gun, use it instead of the hammer and never have to get close to your enemies.
The first eight or so minutes of gameplay, courtesy of the pre-alpha demo.
7) Through The Woods
Ancient Norse ruins meets haunted forest. What could go wrong?
A woman has lost her son in the woods on the shore of Norway. The player relives her experience as she narrates. The forest is dark, oppressively so, and there’s a lot more to it than it seems at first glance. Such as ancient Norse monuments, towns, ruins, and apparently monsters. And then there’s the darkness. In fact, the darkness is so, well, present, that it makes the sound design a major gameplay mechanic.
The overall atmosphere of the Woods can be described as similar to that feeling you get when you went camping as a kid and went out exploring around dusk. The feeling that something’s out there, something you can’t see, but that’s following you and you have to get to a safe place NOW.
Through the Woods is meant to be released in October, and has been highly praised by early reviews of alpha and beta builds. Definitely a horror game to keep on your radar.
If I didn’t know better I’d say I was playing Skyrim…
Oh, cool, a draugr-zombie monster. One of the many horrors you’ll face in your quest to find your son.
A complete playthrough of the demo build.
8) Resident Evil 0 HD
Way back before Raccoon City got wrecked… Oh, there were still zombies. Right. Of course.
Bravo Team, of Raccoon City Police Department, has been tasked with finding former marine Billy Coen, who was scheduled for execution because he murdered twenty-three people. Sounds like a nice guy. After splitting up, the newbie on the team, Rebecca, manages to find an abandoned train containing Billy and a bunch of messed up zombie things. And so, Rebecca and Billy must work together to escape the horde of undead freaks. Unfortunately, after following the train tracks, they find an Umbrella Corp facility and things get a bit worse.
Resident Evil 0 HD is the remastered version of the original 2002 prequel to Resident Evil. It was the last game of the series to use a fixed camera, before the series moved to a more action-shooter style. As such, it might be jarring to go back and play it after playing the newer games. But, hey, I think that in a lot of horror games, the fixed camera helps with the atmosphere.
It was released back in January and is currently $19.99 on Steam.
Better resolve the argument soon, there’s some freaking zombies on the way.
Religious imagery? In a horror game? Shocking.
The first twenty minutes of the game, in which Rebecca finds Billy and kills dead things.
9) Allison Road
The official trailer gives barely a hint of the horror in store.
I’m sure most of you remember P.T. and Silent Hills, and the frankly amazing levels of idiocy Konami showed when they pulled P.T. from the Playstation store and cancelled Silent Hills. Well, Lilith Ltd definitely remembered, and decided to make a spiritual successor to P.T. in the form of Allison Road.
You wake up with a splitting headache and explore your house. It’s clear something bad has happened, but you’re not quite sure what… And it seems something might be haunting you…
Allison Road takes P.T.’s formula and expands it into a full game, since Konami couldn’t be bothered. As such, the gameplay is very similar. Walk around a house and piece together what’s happened, and try not to get killed by the shambling mass of dead thing that follows you around.
This game has been praised, not just for reviving a game that only an idiot would cancel, but for doing it in an original way, looking fantastic, and, well, being scary. Allison Road is set for release in late 2016.
Hey look, it’s the shambling mass of dead thing ominously lurching down the hall!
I know I’m being hunted by a mutilated ghost zombie thing, but I just have to stop and appreciate how great the kitchen looks.
10) Routine
The Routine Teaser from 2012 gives a very retro vision of the future.
Something bad has happened on the Lunar Base, and you’re the only survivor. For now.
Routine is a survival horror game originally announced in 2012. You play as the last survivor on a moon base where an unknown event killed everyone else. Even so, you’re not alone. Something is trying to kill you, and it’s up to you to find out what happened to everyone else and survive.
The environment is very retro- a bit like Alien Isolation in aesthetic. You know, how people in the eighties thought the future would look.
Unfortunately, Routine is in a bit of a development hell right now. The devs are working hard, but as of now there’s no official release date. Fingers crossed for a holiday 2016.
WHAT IS THAT-oh, I think it’s just a monitor. Or is it…
What monsters could be lurking in the shadows of an abandoned lunar base?
No, seriously, what the hell is going on here? Why did the robot man try to kill me?
11) The Hum: Abductions
Aliens? It’s about time.
The Hum: Abductions sees the player take on the role of Holly Sanders, a single mother whose husband vanished several months ago. Over the course of the game, Holly will discover what happened to her husband and realize the worst is yet to come for her and her infant son.
It takes some cues from P.T., such as taking place mostly in one house, at night, and trying to figure out what really happened in the past. Of course, this time around its scientific alien abductions and not eldritch horror and ghost girls.
Basically, wander around your house. Your infant son has been put to bed and you can’t sleep. Then weird things start happening, because apparently alien invasions are functionally no different from a haunted house. Still, the game manages to be quite tense and frightening, as alien abductions really should be.
The game is part of a larger sci-fi universe created by Ariel Areas and expressed through writings and now video games, with more games and novels planned for release in the coming months.
It was a dark and stormy night…
Cute. No way anything bad could happen here, right? It’s a kid’s room.
At some point you have to wonder why you can’t unlock a door in your own house...
12) Last Year
A basic overview of the game showing off the concept art and character models.
Five teenagers trapped in a high school, trying to get out before the killer finds them. Last Year embraces the high school stereotypes common in film and television and sets them against a crazed killer, slasher-movie style. Much like Dead by Daylight or Friday the Thirteenth above, this is an asymmetrical multiplayer game. A sixth player controls the killer with the obvious goal.
As the killer, you have the ability to despawn and respawn, allowing you to pop up wherever you like so the players are never actually safe. That mechanic reminds me of playing as the zombies in Left 4 Dead 2, where you could choose where to spawn as long as it wasn’t in sight of the survivors. It’s an interesting and somewhat unique mechanic that will really ramp up the paranoia the five other players are going to feel. There are three killers to play as. The Giant, the Slasher, and the Strangler. Their roles are pretty self-explanatory: Slasher slashes, Strangler strangles, Giant bashes.
As for the five other players, they fit into the stereotypes of high school, and have a team role. The Jock/Assault character who can attack and stun the killer; the Nerd/Tech character who can hack computers (because that helps when you’re being chased by a killer) and pick locks; the Unpopular Girl™/Medic who can apply first aid to any wounded character; and the Popular Girl™/Scout, the fast girl who fills the bitchy cheerleader teen horror film archetype and the fast but fragile gaming archetype. With their powers combined, they must get to the truck and drive away. It sounds pretty simple, but much like Dead By Daylight, there’s some prerequisite objectives to meet before you can drive off.
Last Year is set to be released in November.
Concept art from the Slasher’s point of view.
Looks like the Giant’s gotten a victim.
13) Camp Sunshine
A 16-bit horror game? How scary could it possibly be?
What do you remember about summer camp? Long afternoons in the lake? Camping trips to the local mountain? Waking up in the dead of night to find blood everywhere and a guy dressed as a mascot trying to kill you?
In Camp Sunshine, you play as Jez, who gets dropped off at summer camp and the next night wakes up to find, well, blood everywhere and a guy dressed as a mascot trying to kill him. As with many horror games, your objective is to survive.
This game is stylized as a 16-bit RPG. As such, gameplay is pretty simple and much of the challenge comes from puzzles and, of course, the killer named Isaac Illerman(seriously?).
Camp Sunshine is set for release around Halloween, and by all appearances is perfectly on track to meet that deadline.
That’s a lot of blood, I hope everyone’s alright.
Look, if it weren’t for the blood all over the place in the other picture, I’d be more happy to see you.
Aw, c’mon, why’s there gotta be a whole room of costumes?
As you can see, 2016 is a pretty strong year for horror. And this is only a few of the horror games set to come out this year. Good luck playing any of them in one sitting, though.
If you're as into horror as I am, you may also like these:
12 Most Gruesome Horror Games Ever Made
16 Horror Game Characters Who May Be Scarier Than Freddy Krueger
