Summary
The only thing scarier than a greathorror gameis, well, a truly scary life-or-death situation in the real world. Still, that’s not scary in a good way. The only thing that’s scarier in a good way than a truly horrifying video game is one whose origin seems to evade everyone’s knowledge. Now, instead of something that’s just mortifying, they have something mortifying and actually mysterious, akin to that cursed tape fromThe Ring.
Gamers are lucky to have been able to experience true horror gems like the many titles in the hugeResident Eviland theSilent Hillseries. Still, gaming history is filled withfantastic horror games that fell through the cracks, games with histories as strange as their own stories, games that shouldn’t be forgotten. Let’s look at some of the strangest, most mysterious, and most criminally underrated horror games in existence.
Genre
Point-and-Click Adventure, Horror, RPG
This is arguably the most obscure game in existence.Garage: Bad Dream Adventurecame out for the PS1 only in Japan back in the mid-’90s, and it had such a limited release that very few people ever got to experience it, let alone tell the tale. For the longest time, people thought it was but a myth, but its code was finally restored, and the game is now available on Steam, Switch, and Mobile.
This horror point-and-click adventure’s plot is as strange as its story, as it follows a cyborg in a hellscape based on the now-vanished Kowloon Walled City as it searches for fuel needed to fulfill his mysterious and bizarre designs. Although it’s now playable in English,Garageremains just as abstract and just as interesting as it was when it first came out.
Hellnight,originally released in 1998 under the titleDarkMessiahin Japan, offers one of the most interesting and unique takes on survival horror out there. The main character is stuck inside a massive underground system of sewers and tunnels hidden beneath a futuristic version of Tokyo, and is being hunted down by the evil creatures put there for unknown reasons.
Within this immense hub, players will meet other interesting characters and run for their lives in a first-person gameplay loop that somehow prevents what would otherwise be a repetitive experience from ever becoming boring.
Adventure, Visual Novel, Horror
Dis an FMV horror mystery title originally made for the 3DO and later ported to the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. In it, players embody an investigator named Laura as she hunts after her father, who has supposedly gone on a murder spree at a hospital. Things get weird as soon as she arrives at the hospital, as it immediately turns into what looks like a haunted castle. Nothing is normal aboutD—even by modern standards—so imagine what it must’ve been to play a fully-FMV 3D immersive horror game back in 1995.
Dsold very well on the Saturn, but sold very poorly on the PlayStation because Sony simply didn’t believe in the project and ended up only printing less than 30,000 units, contributing to its largely-forgotten status today.
Point-and-Click Adventure, Sci-Fi, Horror
Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Agesis a point-and-click horror take on theMystformula that became a cult hit back in the ’90s. Though likely coasting on the popularity ofThe X-Files,there was a lot to like about this beautifully eerie game which tied together all sorts of wild conspiracy theories in its incredibly peculiar narrative.
Though successful upon release,Drowned Godended up mostly forgotten shortly after, only to come back to the limelight when the life of its creator, his wife, and their pets all ended in a brutal and mysterious way.Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ageswas made available on Steam in February 2025—on Valentine’s Day, no less—so anyone can now easily check out this dark and possibly cursed game.
Narrative Adventure, Horror
How Fish Is Made, developed by the same people behind thefantasticMouthwashing, is no less of an absolute nightmare. It’s a journey into an abstract world filled with disturbing horror beyond comprehension, and it’s beautiful. It’s an experience clearly unbound from the industry’s ever-present need to create something to sell to a mass audience. That means it feels less like looking at a spooky abstract painting and more like being eaten by one. Then it tries to make up what’s going on around the player, all the while they’re trying to survive the indecipherable hell all around them
AlthoughHow Fish Is Madeultimately fails to explain its premise—or perhaps never intended to in the first place—it remains an unforgettable experience in a gaming landscape populated by titles thatexplain things all too well.
Harvesterfeels like the evil version of a classic LucasArts or Sierrapoint-and-click adventure game.In it, the player embodies a conveniently amnesiac man who has no recollection of his past, seemingly having no other option but to perform tasks for a—possibly evil—cult to gain answers about his life.
In all honesty, it’s not as well-written as its most famous non-evil counterparts, but it more than makes up for that with enough wacky and gruesome content to keep players from questioning its bizarre plot.
The Voidtraps players in a uniquely eerie and spooky hub of different alien lands where they must engage in dialogue with the “sisters,” incredibly beautiful women with unknown allegiances and abilities, and do battle with their “brothers,” huge monsters who are clearly not allied with the player. Everything is as beautiful as it is strange, and so is the method used to deal with it all—painting. Yes, players will conjure the solutions to all of their problems by using a specific sort of paint to draw shapes that, in turn, conjure magical spells, and wasting this rare and finite resource will cause them to get hard-stuck in their progress.
To give readers an idea of how weirdThe Voidis, let’s just say that after its release, the developers at Ice Pick Lodge moved back to developing the “safer” and “more normal"Pathologicgames.
Sadly, both the sequel,Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, and the newerBlair Witchmovie are quite disappointing. However, players looking to further expand their knowledge of the fantasticBlair Witch Projectmythos, originated by the first movie, can do so withBlair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr. It’s a prequel to the movie, where players investigate the case of the infamous (made-up) serial killer referenced in the film.
It plays just like the originalResident Evilgames, down to the beautiful ambiance courtesy of some neat pre-rendered backgrounds.Volume 1was followed by Volumes2and3. Although they’re not as good as the first, they’rebetter than the most recent gameand might still prove worth exploring for anyone interested in this often-ignored series.
Nowadays, everything FromSoftware produces is an immediate hit due to the success of theSoulsseries. Back before the release of the originalDemon’s Souls, however, things were pretty much the opposite.Kuonis a veryinteresting horror gamethat likely didn’t get a lot of printed copies outside of Japan due to its dark themes.
Unfortunately, for anyone trying to get into it nowadays,Kuonhas evolved from a game nobody cared about to one that will require asignificant investmentto acquire.Kuoncurrently holds the title of the most expensive PlayStation 2 game, both due to its relatively obscure release and the modern pedigree of its developer.
Although the developers probably didn’t choose this name with the intention of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, that’s essentially what they achieved.Obscure,a game where a group of teens band together to attempt to make it out alive from their school during a monster invasion, was great, but unlucky.
It was released too close to thelaunch ofResident Evil 4, which, well, is the last game that would ever feature on this list.Obscure’sinspired horror mechanics ultimately failed to change the world, as everyone was busy replicating the elements seen inResident Evil 4;however, it remains a gem worth discovering.
