Dang, 2024 was a great year for horror game fans

Relating to new horror video games, there are occasions of feast and famine, and this previous 12 months we gorged till our bellies bulged and our mouths dripped with grotesque grease. In 2024, we obtained a wealthy unfold of darkish experiences from solo creators, indie groups, AA builders and AAA studios in an enormous array of genres and visible kinds. There was a incredible Silent Hill 2 remake and beefy updates to up to date classics like Phasmophobia, Alan Wake 2 and The Outlast Trials, and there was additionally a gentle cadence of brand-new horror franchises increasing the style in surprising methods.

First, let’s take a second to rejoice a sampling of the 12 months’s recent horror universes. In 2024, we received the next new titles:

This isn’t a complete checklist of latest horror franchises in 2024, but it surely’s an acceptable demonstration of how huge and diverse the choices had been this 12 months. Indie studios are main the cost in terms of recent concepts and authentic mechanics, of course, however there are additionally loads of references to early-2000s graphics and PS1- or PS2-era survival horror on this checklist. The mix of innovation and nostalgia is especially potent in titles like Concern the Highlight, Crow Nation, Mouthwashing and Hollowbody. These video games infuse blocky 3D worlds with trendy sensibilities and easy animations, leading to experiences that illuminate the staticky recollections of Resident Evil and Silent Hill that lurk in our heads. That is how we wished these video games to really feel, fastened digicam angles be damned — or, within the case of Hollowbody, lovingly embraced.

It also needs to be famous that Concern the Highlight marks the debut of acclaimed horror-movie maker Blumhouse as a online game writer. Concern the Highlight is the primary launch in Blumhouse’s lineup — which incorporates future titles from EYES OUT, Half Mermaid, Good Rubbish, Playmestudio and Vermila Studios — and it’s a wonderful exploration of low-fi teenage drama and dread. The horror-game revolution is upon us and Blumhouse is completely going to snag a bit.

The least horror-like recreation on the above checklist could also be Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and it additionally occurs to be the one title from a AAA studio. I’ve included it as a result of, as a devoted fan of horror video games, I believe Kunitsu-Gami checks loads of containers: It options large, disgusting demons and a deadly blight that envelops entire cities in skeletal but surprisingly juicy natural materials. Its monster designs function colourful shows of lechery and physique horror, and there’s consolation to be present in its tense strategy-action gameplay loop. Kunitsu-Gami wasn’t marketed as a horror expertise, and it definitely incorporates simply as many scenes of gorgeous magnificence because it does grotesquerie, however I heartily suggest it to any horror fan. I believe you’ll be pleasantly shocked.

INDIKA is one other entry that straddles the genres of horror, camp and non secular satire, but it surely undoubtedly options a couple of scenes of soul-piercing terror. Plus, the literal satan is your pleasant companion all through the sport, and that has to rely for one thing. Amongst scenes of grief, inhumanity and devastation, INDIKA is amusing riot, and it’s a preeminent instance of mature themes dealt with properly in online game kind. An extra genre-bending standout from 2024 is Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It incorporates extremely satisfying logic puzzles in a lodge made out of mysteries — however phantoms hang-out the hallways, there’s a corpse within the again backyard and each scene drips with palpable unease. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is without doubt one of the greatest and most unsettling video games of the 12 months, interval.

Nonetheless Wakes the Deep, in the meantime, presents a well-known and delightful model of monster-stalking horror on an oil rig in the midst of the offended North Sea. It’s a must-play recreation for any horror fan, performing as a vessel for The Chinese language Room to indicate off its expertise in constructing genuine worlds and cultivating ceaseless pressure with a magical edge. Plus, it is one of many best-looking video games I performed on PS5 all 12 months. Slitterhead is one other one for the action-horror gamers on the market, presenting a supernatural thriller in a model of Hong Kong that’s been infested by body-snatching demons, that includes buckets of blood and frantic close-range fight.

The 12 months started with the discharge of Residence Security Hotline, a simulation of a Nineties name middle the place gamers assist diagnose and deal with family pests, which embody otherworldly threats like Mattress Tooth, Fae Flu, The Horde, Laundry Gnome, Mirror Nymph, Bathroom Hobb, Unicorn Fungi and others. Residence Security Hotline actually was the amuse bouche of 2024’s horror recreation lineup — and Mouthwashing is the dessert.

All the horror kids these days are taking part in Mouthwashing, a polygonal first-person romp by means of a stranded house ship crammed with doomed crew members steadily shedding their minds, overseen by a maimed captain with a maniacal, bandaged smile. Mouthwashing is unusual and claustrophobic, and it’s a superb technique to finish the 12 months in horror gaming.

However we haven’t even talked concerning the current franchises but. The Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Workforce, the Polish studio behind Layers of Concern and Blair Witch, was an excellent success, even within the face of exacting requirements from longtime sequence followers. The remake appears to be like and seems like the sport that gamers keep in mind, solely spit-shined and smoothed over, and Silent Hill 2 stays simply as terrifying in 2024 because it initially was in 2001. Possibly much more so. Bloober Workforce had loads to show with this one, they usually made us elder-Millennial horror gamers proud.

Alan Wake 2 was one of the best games of 2023, horror or in any other case, and it obtained two important batches of DLC this 12 months: Evening Springs landed in June and The Lake Home went reside in October. Every little bit of content material not solely retains Alan Wake’s hellish world alive, but it surely provides depth to the cross-franchise universe that Treatment is constructing between Management and Alan Wake. Personally I all the time need extra Alan Wake, and in that regard, 2024 didn’t disappoint.

Two live-service indie video games, The Outlast Trials and Phasmophobia, additionally noticed main updates previously 12 months. After getting into early entry in Could 2023, The Outlast Trials studio Crimson Barrels has been working to ascertain a stable cadence of latest content material drops, and this 12 months they actually received into the groove. The Outlast Trials launched in full in March 2024 and it’s obtained a number of updates since then, introducing new enemies, maps, recreation modes and limited-time occasions for the gamers trapped within the Murkoff Company’s secret Sinyala Facility. The quantity of labor that Red Barrels puts into The Outlast Trials is endlessly spectacular, particularly contemplating there are solely about 65 builders on the studio.

Phasmophobia has a fair smaller crew than Crimson Barrels, however they’re making large strikes. The crew at UK studio Kinetic Video games have saved Phasmophobia alive since its Steam launch in September 2020, and this 12 months, they lastly introduced the ghost-hunting recreation to consoles. Phasmophobia hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29, and it additionally got here to PS VR2. Kinetic Video games has grand plans to maintain supporting and increasing Phasmophobia in 2025 and past, so although the console launch occurred 4 years after launch, that is actually only the start.

There it’s — our humble ode to horror gaming in 2024. It’s been a dozen months of indie innovation and beautiful gore, with a aspect dish of fabulous remakes and sizable updates. Some new horror video games push in opposition to the boundaries of the style, increasing our concepts of what’s scary and why, whereas others discover recent methods to dissect basic tropes. It’s a case of recent delicacies vs. consolation meals, and on my plate, there’s loads of room for each.