10 Horror Video Games That Had No Right To Be This Good
This is a Japanese dating sim, so why is it so scary?!
Horror and gaming are about as well suited for each other as strawberries and cream, dry skin and moisturiser or Bethesda and bugs. It's hard to find a better way of scaring the pants off people than placing them into the shoes of someone going through something unimaginably terrifying, which is why horror gaming is as monstrously popular as it is.
Despite being a huge industry, plenty of people still look down on the genre of scary games, as many are considered nothing but cheap attempts to throw jump scares at you. It's safe to say that a lot of the genre does fit into that category, but to bunch it in so tightly neglects the overwhelming amount of fantastic horror titles available to players.
You can see through these following games that horror can be anything it wants to be. Whether it's something as simple as frightening a gamer or as moving as delivering a profound and nuanced story is irrelevant. All of these titles worked their butts off to give players incredible (and spooky) experiences that leave them gobsmacked!
10. The Mortuary Assistant
Short indie horror games with a simple concept and some frightening moments are a dime a dozen. The best of them usually find life on YouTube and Twitch, scaring the bejesus out of streamers for a time, gaining popularity, and then falling back into obscurity once the dust settles. The Mortuary Assistant, on paper, seems like yet another one of those flash-in-the-pan titles, but it deserves more credit than that.
In this game, you play as a mortuary assistant (shocking, right?) who is haunted by a demon. The game forces you to perform arbitrary embalming duties with a tedious and meticulous process. While that sounds boring, you'll be on edge the whole time, as frequent scares will have you constantly guessing when the bodies will jump at you next.
The Mortuary Assistant isn't just a scary game; it's also a surprisingly deep narrative. There's a deliberate fleshing out of the demon world, with different occult practices helping you learn more about the monster that's stalking you.
The frightening gameplay, terrifying antagonist and dense story all come together to form a title with frights and ambition by the bucket load.