The best horror games that play on your fear of death

Key things

• Great horror games find new ways to get rid of the fear of death through story and mechanics and create tense situations.
• Games like Bloodborne, Death Stranding, & Fear and Hunger 2 create fear through death mechanics.
• Games like Soma & Silent Hill 2 explore the fear of death from unique philosophical and emotional angles.

Death is a common but primal fear shared by almost every human being. Ultimately, people fear the end and everything that comes with it, so horror games have naturally started to play on that fear throughout the genre's existence. While almost every horror game (and most games for that matter) usually features death in some way, it's never more than a slight annoyance when you hit restart and lose a bit of progress.

Really great horror games find new ways to get rid of the player's fear of death. It could be through a well-crafted and terrifying story or some clever implementation of mechanics.

8 Bloody

Even the best hunters will be lost in blood

Like any good Lovecraftian game, Bloody has a bestiary of tough, creepy enemies, from werewolves to spiders to inexplicable abominations that like to eat or curse hapless hunters.

If that wasn't enough, players will also have to contend with the basic gameplay mechanics similar to Souls; upon death you lose all blood echoes (serving as experience points and currency). Of course, they can be recovered if the player collects them before their next death, but the enemy that killed the player could have collected them. This can create a tense situation where the player may have to face the very enemy that killed them in order to get their precious blood echoes back.

7 Death Stranding

Avoid BT with bated breath

Although not strictly horror, Death Stranding it has many staples of the genre, such as the brooding of a haunted, desolate landscape and dealing with supernatural enemies in the form of BTs, the souls of the deceased who are trapped and try to kill the protagonist Sam. The player must use Sam's Bridge Baby to reveal the BT to sneak past them so they are not pulled into the dark inky abyss, losing their precious cargo and creating a void, a large explosion that persists in the world even after the player dies in this way.

Sam is a repatriate, meaning he can come back from death, forcing players to live with the results of their mistakes instead of reloading the checkpoint. While the story is the expected amount of insanity expected from Hideo Kojima, it also has quiet moments where the story forces the player to think about death, not just in the context of loved ones, but in the context of the entire human race as the 6th Extinction Event. threatens to wipe out humanity.

6 Darkest Dungeon

Heroes lose their minds and sometimes even their lives

While its sequel has many similar elements, the original Darkest Dungeon is much more brutal with death. Similar to the campaign X-COMIll-prepared players can irrevocably lose party members they've worked hard on to any number of black horrors. To make matters worse, the stress of dungeons can cause party members to disobey the player or even give said party members a heart attack.

To make some progress Darkest Dungeonthe player will have to play with these circumstances and find a way to prevail, even if it means leaving a party member to a terrible fate…

5 Fatal frame

Death Seen Through the Lens

When it comes to facing death, it doesn't get much closer than fighting literal ghosts. Fatal frame the player traverses a Japanese mansion, encountering supernatural terrors and solving puzzles, all while dealing with vengeful ghosts that can only be fought by taking a picture with the Camera Obscura, which requires players to get close to the ghosts. Similar to other survival horror games, they have their own types of ammo, Fatal frame uses different types of photographic film that work similarly.

The story itself centers around a character named Miku who is looking for her brother Mafuya, but opens with the secret that a sacrificial ritual has gone wrong and the protagonist must confront the ghosts of those who died because of it.

4 Faith: Holy Trinity

Memento Mori

Mortis – Latin word for death. This is the world that appears when John Thomas Ward, the protagonist Faith: Holy Trinityis dying. It's a constant reminder to the player of how vulnerable their protagonist is, especially since it only takes one hit to kill the player.

As a result, they will need to be on their A-game and beat every boss perfectly by learning all the attack patterns. There is even an achievement for beating the game marathon (all 3 chapters back to back in one sitting) without dying once. All of this is wrapped up in a gripping tale of loss of faith and regret for not saving someone from a fate worse than death.

3 Soma

What does it mean to be human?

From the creators of the Amnesia franchise, Soma is a sci-fi horror game set in an underwater facility in the far future. The game explores death in an interesting and philosophical way, focusing on transhumanism, consciousness and whether preserving life by any means necessary is really worth it.

These aspects Soma it really makes players think about the concept and plays on the fear of death from the angle of immortality and how isolating it can be. A truly unique take on this common fear.

2 Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Death is just a tossed coin

There aren't many games as relentlessly punishing as Fear & Hunger 2: Terminaa unique hybrid between survival horror and the JRPG genre (with a touch of roguelike). Not only is the combat brutally difficult and requires careful strategy to defeat enemies far stronger than the player, but every single encounter is potentially lethal, and some enemies have insta-kill attacks that require the player to correctly call a coin flip to defend against them. .

Even saving is a luxury, and carries with it its own risk of being hacked and advances the time and countdown on the player's precious three-day time limit. This limited save means that the player can lose a lot of progress after death, but that's what causes the friction Fear and hunger 2 so convincing. Death is also a big factor in the story where fourteen people are mysteriously thrown into a battle royale where only one can walk away alive.

1 Silent Hill 2

Causes restless dreams

Whether it's a remake or an original, one of them Silent Hill 2'The most common theme is death, specifically the death of a loved one and the regret that you didn't do everything you could for them. The game sees protagonist James Sunderland on his way to the titular town after receiving a letter from his wife Mary, which should be impossible since she died three years ago.

What follows is a dive into James' psychology as the city reflects his inner guilt through its environment and iconic monsters like the Pyramid Head. Players will peel back the layers of intrigue in the city, such as the mystery of why Maria looks a lot like Mary and why Laura can seemingly move around the city unharmed. Silent Hill 2 it's not so much about the traditional fear of death expected of the genre, but more about the emotional fear of losing someone and leaving so much unspoken and unspoken.