Summary
- Garage: Bad Dream Adventure is one of the most obscure horror games, finally re-released in 2018.
- Hellnight offers a unique survival horror experience in a massive underground hub.
- Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages and How Fish Is Made are dark, eerie, and unforgettable horror games worth exploring.
The only thing scarier than a great horror game is, 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 from The Ring.
8 Great Horror Games That Sold Poorly
These horror games deliver a variety of frightening experiences across their diverse settings, but they all share one thing in common: poor sales.
Gamers are lucky to have been able to experience true horror gems like the many titles in the huge Resident Evil and the Silent Hill series. Still, gaming history is filled with fantastic 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.
10 Garage: Bad Dream Adventure
The Grandfather Of All Weird Horror Games
|
Platforms |
Nintendo Switch, PC, macOS, iOS, Android |
|---|---|
|
Released |
March 25, 1999 |
|
Developer |
Kinotrope, 作場金属製作所 Sakuba Metal Works |
|
Genre |
Point-and-Click Adventure, Horror, RPG |
- Yes, it's real, but should it really be?
This is arguably the most obscure game in existence. Garage: Bad Dream Adventure came 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, Garage remains just as abstract and just as interesting as it was when it first came out.
9 Hellnight
Literally And Figuratively Underground
Hellnight
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror, First-Person
- It should feel repetitive, but it doesn't.
- Being hunted down has never felt better.
Hellnight, originally released in 1998 under the title DarkMessiah in 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.
8 Best Dark Fantasy Horror Games
Dark fantasy games often run parallel to horror, eschewing the magic and wonder of high fantasy for the dark and grotesque scenes in these titles.
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.
8 "D"
Yes, Just The Letter
|
Platforms |
PlayStation, PC, macOS, Linux, Sega Saturn, MS-DOS, 3DO |
|---|---|
|
Released |
April 1995 |
|
Developer |
Warp, Rozner Labs |
|
Genre |
Adventure, Visual Novel, Horror |
- Mysterious, unique, and enigmatic.
D is 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 about D— even by modern standards—so imagine what it must've been to play a fully-FMV 3D immersive horror game back in 1995.
D sold 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.
7 Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages
As Weird As Any Real-Life Conspiracy
|
Platforms |
PC |
|---|---|
|
Released |
November 16, 1996 |
|
Developer |
Epic Multimedia Group |
|
Genre |
Point-and-Click Adventure, Sci-Fi, Horror |
- Wild conspiracies in the pre-Internet era that turned into dark mysteries in the real world.
Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages is a point-and-click horror take on the Myst formula that became a cult hit back in the '90s. Though likely coasting on the popularity of The 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 God ended 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 Ages was 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.
6 How Fish Is Made
Spoiler: This Game Doesn't Tell You How
|
Platforms |
PC |
|---|---|
|
Released |
November 16, 1996 |
|
Developer |
Wrong Organ, Johanna Kasurinen, Jeffrey Tomec, Martin Halldin |
|
Genre |
Narrative Adventure, Horror |
- Disgusting, impossible to explain, and impossible to forget.
How Fish Is Made, developed by the same people behind the fantastic Mouthwashing, 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
8 Best Horror Games To Play This Summer
Plenty of horrific fun can be had this summer with the following spine-chilling games!
Although How Fish Is Made ultimately 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 that explain things all too well.
5 Harvester
This One Gets Dark
Harvester
- Released
- October 1, 1996
WHERE TO PLAY
- Grisly, hardcore horror with an extra layer of weirdness underneath it all.
Harvester feels like the evil version of a classic LucasArts or Sierra point-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.
4 The Void
Weirder Than Pathologic
The Void
- Released
- April 17, 2008
WHERE TO PLAY
- Bizarre, otherworldly, and utterly inspired.
The Void traps 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 weird The Void is, let's just say that after its release, the developers at Ice Pick Lodge moved back to developing the "safer" and "more normal" Pathologic games.
3 Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr
Better Than Any Of Its Sequels
Blair Witch: Volume I - Rustin Parr
- Released
- October 13, 2000
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PC
- An interesting expansion of the mythos and will feel familiar to Resident Evil fans.
Sadly, both the sequel, Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, and the newer Blair Witch movie are quite disappointing. However, players looking to further expand their knowledge of the fantastic Blair Witch Project mythos, originated by the first movie, can do so with Blair 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 original Resident Evil games, down to the beautiful ambiance courtesy of some neat pre-rendered backgrounds. Volume 1 was followed by Volumes 2 and 3. Although they're not as good as the first, they're better than the most recent game and might still prove worth exploring for anyone interested in this often-ignored series.
2 Kuon
Rare And Expensive
Kuon
- Released
- April 1, 2004
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- m
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror, Adventure, Fighting
- A dark gem of Japanese horror.
Nowadays, everything FromSoftware produces is an immediate hit due to the success of the Souls series. Back before the release of the original Demon's Souls, however, things were pretty much the opposite. Kuon is a very interesting horror game that 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, Kuon has evolved from a game nobody cared about to one that will require a significant investment to acquire. Kuon currently holds the title of the most expensive PlayStation 2 game, both due to its relatively obscure release and the modern pedigree of its developer.
1 Obscure
Stating The Obvious
Obscure
- Released
- April 6, 2005
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Language, Violence
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
- An interesting take on horror that deserved better.
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 try to make it out alive from their school during a monster invasion, was great, but unlucky.
It was released too close to the launch of Resident Evil 4, which, well, is the last game that would ever feature on this list. Obscure's inspired horror mechanics ultimately failed to change the world, as everyone was busy replicating the elements seen in Resident Evil 4; however, it remains a gem worth discovering.
10 Best Horror Games To Beat In One Go, Ranked
For those players with a penchant for horror but happen to be short on time, these top-notch horror games should fit the bill.