10 Video Games That Were Secretly Horror Franchises

Horror is a wonderful, if sometimes confusing, genre. It spans countless wonderful and horrifying books, films and video games - all of which have a varying success at generating fear, dependant on the person experiencing them.

While, say, the film Arachnophobia is painfully spooky watching for all of us who get itchy near even a regular house spider, for those without any fear of the eight-legged menaces, it's probably a boring time. Similarly, I.T isn't half as bad to sit through if you don't consider clown the most horrifying godawful creation humanity ever cursed the Earth with.

The reverse, however, is also true - while some horror falls flat in scaring us for whatever reason, some stuff we wouldn't naturally consider horror can terrify us. This is especially true in the land of video games, where series and instalments that seemingly weren't supposed to be horror games can easily be interpreted as such.

Unless you're not even vaguely unnerved by nightmarish sea monsters, uncanny mall mascots, and a hefty dose of existential horror - in which case horror is probably a genre that doesn't exist for you anyways.

For the vast majority of us, swimming is a fun activity, be it paddling in some shallow water or zooming down water slides at speeds our ancestors would never believe possible.

That said, it's instinct to be a little nervous when you look into a deep body of water and realise you've no idea what's at the bottom, because you can't see it. This instinct takes Subnautica from a fun relaxing game where you discover countless strange and beautiful aquatic creatures, to a romp through phobia territory.

This would be bad enough if it weren't for the fact that some of the creatures you encounter really play on a fear of the unknown in dark waters.

When you're grabbed by malicious monsters, it's more or less a jumpscare half of the time, made worse by the fact they are generally the type of tentacled nightmare you fear from our actual ocean's depths, only ten times more deadly and frightening.

And, once you realise this will happen a decent amount, swimming through the depths can quickly take a more more terrifying tone, as you wait to be hunted down once more.