It takes bravery to explore an unknown world, and while there are a ton of games that do this in fairly safe, non-hostile environments where nothing can harm you, there are plenty more where the world openly wants to kill you. Something like Green Hell will make players feel like they're an unwelcome guest that can hardly catch a break from the wilderness around them, while Minecraft, even with hostile mobs, is mostly danger-free overground during the day. Usually, you'll have a pretty good idea within the first couple of minutes what kind of time you're going to have exploring—but not always.
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One of the most intriguing types of exploration games are ones where you're not really sure from the get-go if you're in a horror game or not. Things are ambiguous. On one hand, the world looks friendly enough, and there might be a light-hearted story or tune, or the graphics don't seem particularly dark. But on the other hand, you can't help but shake off the feeling that something is very wrong. It could be a sudden shift in the overall tone, a rising dread, or something you spot in the distance. These types of games tend to have layers to them, and especially if you play them blind, you'll live in an uncomfortable state of not knowing whether to be afraid or brush off your own paranoia. From mysterious walking simulators to fishing games with a bizarre Lovecraftian twist, here are the games where dread will eventually creep up on you.
Find all 10 pairs
Find all 10 pairs
Dredge
Become A Boat Captain In A Lovecraftian Fishing Adventure
At first glance, you might think Dredge is just a simple fishing game where you manage a cute little trawler, fish, and gather treasure from the depths, and then sell off your catch in order to upgrade your boat in order to go further and faster. That's not true. This game is much, much deeper (pun intended), with a surprisingly terrifying flair of horror that lurks underwater, particularly after dark or when the infamous fog makes its arrival. Three words: eldritch sea serpent.
It all starts off quite tame, but as the game goes on, you'll travel further into its world from island to island, completing increasingly more challenging quests to acquire even weirder and rarer fish and trinkets. Overall, it's not an action-packed game, and some players might even find it relaxing to get into, but it does have a slight undercurrent of dread the more you dig into it. Perfect for anyone who's a fan of Call of Cthulhu and cosmic, eldritch horrors of all kinds.
The Stanley Parable
Things Are Not Quite As The Narrator Says—Or Are They?
Walking simulators are, in my opinion, the most fertile ground to start injecting a sense of unease, making you doubt and question everything on a deep, philosophical level. That's what The Stanley Parable does, at least. In this game, you are Stanley (or are you?), an employee at a company that makes you think of something straight out of the world of Severance, with your only job being pressing buttons according to commands on a computer screen. One day, the commands stop, and you decide to get up and investigate... Or do you?
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This is a game that challenges you to question everything. Will you listen to what the narrator tells you to do? Or will you choose to remain where you are, indefinitely? Will you take another path and go down a strange rabbit hole to discover something you never expected to find in the first place? With multiple endings available and a weirdly unsettling, empty liminal space as your environment, it's hard not to feel like there's something very, very wrong in the world of this game. Not just visually, but in a philosophical, at times darkly humorous way.
Outer Wilds
Something Isn't Right In The Solar System You're Sent To Explore
Outer Wilds is often praised for the incredible experience it drops you into when you step into the game blind. With no notion of what's waiting for you, other than the fact that you're an astronaut about to head into space for the first time for your species, it immediately slams you headfirst into a mystery that becomes your obsession to decrypt. Something is very, very wrong with the world you are in, and that's because the solar system you inhabit is, in fact, stuck on a time loop, which lasts about 22 minutes, or a full day. By the end of it, the sun scorches all, and you're sent back to the beginning.
Why is this happening? Fly over to the planets and other points of interest around the system, and see how they change during a single loop. You won't be able to solve it all in a single 22-minute session, but instead, the game encourages you to go back in over and over again. Each loop, you learn something new, which leads you to the next clue, some darker and spookier than others. One thing's for sure: watching a planet completely crumble within that loop over and over again is unsettling in a way you wouldn't expect to see in a non-horror game.
Firewatch
In The Wilderness With Minimal Contact, Your Mind Will Start To Spiral
I have to preface this by saying that Firewatch is by no means a full-on, proper horror game (even if it does have the Horror tag on Steam), but there are definitely moments that play into that sensation of something being off. After a tragedy hits you, you're sent off to man a firewatch tower in the middle of the forest, your only contact a woman called Delilah. Every day, you'll find something new and strange in the wilderness, which slowly unravels the mystery of the small, bizarre happenings around the area.
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A dark figure, looking down at you from a cliff. A fenced-off area. A strange, creepy old cavern that holds more secrets than you can imagine. These all start to play with your imagination, and it doesn't exactly help that Delilah seems just as much in the unknown as you. There's an emotional depth and lightness to the story, but it would be false to say there aren't moments when you feel like you're not alone, and that something is very, very wrong out there. It's definitely a game I expected to turn into something creepy. Instead, it was quite wholesome and leans more into a thriller above all else.
Subnautica
A Wonderful Aquatic Adventure That Hides A Darkness Beneath Its Surface
Unlike Firewatch, Subnautica actually deserves its horror tag on Steam. That still hasn't stopped many unwitting players from jumping into this game, thinking it would be a fun, cozy underwater open-world survival crafting game, only for the truth to be unveiled. First of all, if you're at all afraid of the depths, Subnautica will make you feel uneasy from the get-go. You've crash-landed on an alien planet and need to find a way to leave the ocean world. To do so, you'll have to gather all the resources you can, while exploring the treacherous depths, including the underground Lava Lakes and Lost River that require you to go far beneath the surface.
Your starting location will have you awwing and sighing in wonder at the beauty of the world around you, from gorgeous exotic fish to vibrant coral reefs, but if you dare stray past the crashed ship and explore locations you're not ready for, you will encounter some truly monstrous creatures that are hostile on sight. Play this game blind, and you'll be in for a dreadful surprise, as the leviathan enemies tend to announce themselves vocally first before actually showing up. Good luck to anyone who happens to have thalassophobia as well.
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