The Best Horror Games I Reinstall Every Autumn

The horror game I reinstall every autumn is Alien Isolation: no weapon that actually solves your problem, just a motion tracker, a locker to hide in, and a creature that is unreasonably good at finding you. If that's not your thing, Resident Evil and Silent Hill are the two other names worth going back to, both remade rather than left to gather dust, both trusting you to be scared of a locked door rather than a monster jumping through the window.

Mine's been on and off my laptop so many times the download's basically muscle memory. I get about a week into September, the heating clicks on for the first time, and something in me just goes, right, time to be frightened again. I'm not a gamer in the way people mean that word, one laptop, patience for about three genres, and no tolerance for anything that asks me to aim precisely while something is screaming. What I want is dread, the kind that sits in your stomach while you're doing something as boring as opening a door, because the game has spent the last twenty minutes teaching you that doors are never just doors.

What makes a horror game worth playing every year?

It's never the jump scares that bring me back. Jump scares are a cheap trick, they work once and then you're immune, same as a fire alarm going off in a building you already know is empty. What gets me every autumn is the slow stuff. Limited resources, so you're actually making decisions instead of just spraying bullets. A world that keeps its rules consistent, so when something breaks them, your whole body notices before your brain catches up.

The game I keep going back to is Alien Isolation. It's not new, it wasn't even that flashy when it came out, and that's sort of the point. You've got no weapon that actually solves your problem, just a motion tracker, a locker to hide in, and a creature that is properly, unreasonably good at finding you. I've had evenings where I've spent twenty minutes crouched behind a desk, controller in my lap, coffee going cold, not moving because I could hear it in the vents above me. That's the whole game. That's also, apparently, my idea of a lovely Tuesday.

If Alien Isolation isn't your thing, Resident Evil and Silent Hill are still the two names people mean when they say survival horror, and there's a reason both of them have been remade rather than left to gather dust. They're slower than a modern shooter, more puzzle than combat, and they trust you to be scared of a locked door rather than a monster jumping through the window. That patience is what separates a proper horror game from something that's just loud.

The ritual before I even press start

I won't play any of this with the big light on, obviously, that would defeat the entire purpose. Lamp on, jumper up over my hands, and I've become genuinely dependent on having something warm over my knees before I'll let a game frighten me on purpose. I've got a chunky knit throw blanket that lives on the arm of my sofa specifically for this, and I will die on the hill that being physically cosy makes being emotionally terrified so much better. chunky knit throw blanket It sounds ridiculous written down. It isn't ridiculous at eleven at night with something breathing through a vent three feet from your character's head.

Headphones on too, always. Horror games spend more of their budget on sound design than almost anything else, footsteps that don't quite match your own pace, a hum that gets very slightly louder in one room and you can't work out why. None of that lands properly through a laptop speaker. It just becomes background noise, same as the washing machine. Through headphones it becomes the whole evening.

Why do I go back to the same horror game instead of trying something new?

I do try new horror games, I'm not completely stuck in 2014. But there's something about a game you've already finished that a fresh one can't give you, which is knowing exactly what's coming and still flinching anyway. It's the same reason I'll watch the same handful of films every October. The scare isn't really about surprise. It's about your body reacting to something your brain has fully clocked is fiction and just doesn't care.

So that's my honest answer to what the best horror games are, at least for me: not the biggest release of the year, just the one that still gets a reaction out of a woman who owns three different kinds of hot water bottle. If you've got one you reinstall every year without fail, I'd genuinely like to know what it is. I'm always short on things to be scared of by November.

Ad · Includes affiliate links; we may earn a commission.