From Resident Evil to Five Nights at Freddy's, these scary video games left players horrified by their eerie settings and haunting characters.
Frictional GamesA monster from the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
In 1958, a physicist named William Higinbotham released what’s widely considered to be the world’s first video game: Tennis for Two. It was a simple concept with just a few lines and dots as graphics, but it changed the world of entertainment forever. Developers began producing games in a variety of genres, and in 1972, the first scary video game was created.
Haunted House was included with the Magnavox Odyssey, the first video game console. It involved players navigating through a haunted house to reach a treasure chest while collecting clues and avoiding a ghost. The plot certainly wasn’t terrifying by today’s standards, but it introduced the idea of horror games for future creators to expand upon.
Since then, developers have pushed scary video games to new limits. From haunting storylines to gruesome graphics, each game that’s released introduces a unique twist on the genre that keeps players coming back for more.
Although hundreds of horror video games have hit the shelves over the years, the following 13 games, which span from the early 1990s to today, have stood out among them as the scariest video games of all time.
The Cultural Phenomenon Of ‘Slender: The Eight Pages’
ExoGhost/YouTubeIn Slender: The Eight Pages, the eerie form of Slender Man can appear on screen at any moment.
In June 2012, independent developer Mark J. Hadley released a scary video game based on the Creepypasta phenomenon Slender Man. The character originated as a meme on the internet forum in 2009 with fictional stories about a tall, slim, faceless figure in a black suit that stalked and abducted people.
Hadley decided to transform the eerie tales into a video game. Slender: The Eight Pages takes place in a dark forest, and players must collect eight book pages scattered throughout the gameplay area without being caught by Slender Man, who can appear at any time. The game ends if players look at Slender Man for too long, and the creepy character appears more frequently as pages are gathered.
This video game isn’t the only media Slender Man has inspired. The Creepypasta meme also spawned several films — and, tragically, a horror story of its own. On May 31, 2014, 12-year-old Anissa Weier and her friend Morgan Geyser stabbed their friend Payton Leutner because they wanted to please the fictional character.
The incident only strengthened Slender Man’s popularity and attracted more players to Slender: The Eight Pages. Given the game’s relative simplicity, it was easily accessible even for those new to the scary video game genre.
“Slender is not a complicated game,” one Game Developer review stated, “but it is addictive… In a time when everything seems to be getting bigger, brighter, and more complicated, this simple game has appeared everywhere. Games need to be good, not just technically impressive.”
