Horror games, much like their film counterparts, fall into a niche genre experience that is supported in large part by a very loyal and active fan base. Especially in the Indie Horror game scene. The most recent generation of video game consoles has seen the release of more games annually than we’ve seen in previous generations.
The PlayStation 4 is home to many great gaming experiences, and if you’re simply looking for horror games it’s home to some of the best the genre has ever seen. Due to the nature of the medium horror games come in many different shapes and sizes. Let’s take a look at the best horror games on the PlayStation 4.
Updated September 29, 2024 By Matthew Mckeown: As the nights close in around spring and things start to get a little, eerie. Developers far and wide working on horror games start to either tease or just release their titles. And we usually get some pretty good stuff.
This year has been no different as alongside a reimagining of a SUDA51 classic, we’ve got some great indie horror coming to consoles as well as bigger launches as well. If you’ve been in the dark or are a Sony Pony scrounging around for a new spooky game then look no further, here’s an updated look at the best horror games on PS4, ranked.
25 Layers of Fear
Experiencing An Artists Breakdown
Many people consider art to be confusing and overrated. Abstract art tends to be the one that draws the most disdain and confusion from people trying to figure out why people like or enjoy it. Layers of Fear is a horror game that follows the story of an artist struck by tragedy and personal demons.
Everyone at one point in their life has come across a piece of art that’s off-putting or makes them irrationally uncomfortable for some reason. Layers of Fear plays on this general experience in brilliant ways.
If you’re looking for the penultimate box set for this game, you’re recommended to check out the Layers collection.
24 The Evil Within
Mind-Bending Horror With Surreal Scenes
Shinji Mikami, the man responsible for Resident Evil and Dino Crisis, formed Tango Gameworks with the hopes of tackling the survival horror genre once again. The Evil Within was the studio’s first release and the moment they released the first trailer for the game, fans across the globe new Mikami was back with a vengeance.
The Evil Within pays heavy tribute to Resident Evil while giving fans a new disturbing world to play around in. It features new devilish creature designs that invoke characteristics of Pyramid Head from Silent Hill or the dogs from Resident Evil.
It’s highly recommended to upgrade the Harpoon Bolt as it can one-shot the Safe Head Butcher later on.
23 Resident Evil 7
Welcome To The Family Son
Resident Evil Seven was a return to the original formula that made the franchise so popular. It returned to its survival horror roots and stepped away from the ongoing action focus that upset fans of the series as the franchise continued to move away from horror with each new mainline installment.
Despite returning to the classic formula it made the bold decision to be entirely played from the first-person perspective. The game has players traveling to a home estate in the backwoods of Louisiana in search of your missing girlfriend.
22 Little Nightmares
An Instant Cult Classic
You’ve likely never considered the possibility of a 2-dimensional platformer delivering a top-notch horror experience. In Little Nightmares, you play as a small child trying to escape this awful world that surrounds her. The art style and design of the horrid people that live in this machination of terror will make your stomach hurt.
Players will feel fear and fright not only in the grotesque imagery but in the immersion of playing as a character much smaller than the people around her. It’s like a dwarf trying to escape the land of giants, only the giants were designed by Tim Burton and Wes Craven.
If you enjoyed Little Nightmares, it does have a very enjoyable sequel.
21 Visage
A Haunted Home Invasion
Visage is a title that is heavily inspired by P.T. There was a bevy of indie horror games that tried to ride the wave of the Silent Hill demo that took YouTube and the gaming world by storm.
Visage takes place in a home and features high-quality environments and plenty of scares. The game’s mechanics rely on light and if the player spends too much time in the dark their sanity begins to slip and the supernatural events occur at shorter intervals. Visage is a great horror experience.
20 Project 13
Spot-The-Difference With Consequences
A Walking Simulator meets Spot The Difference, Project 13 from Drybread is a gorgeously rendered game that relies heavily on your ability to focus on the tiny details in life. You play as a Probant, someone who’s been captured and used for experiments by the mysterious Project 13 Group.
You’re sent through seemingly normal-looking areas, but if you can’t find the anomaly during your wander through it’ll all reset and you’ll need to try again. Find all the anomalies, escape the loop by the 13th walkthrough, and don’t get trapped forever. It’s a surreal adventure that’s short, simple, and enjoyable, plus its relatively inexpensive.
There’s over 35 different anomalies that can occur. So inspect every inch and remember the layout of each corridor.
19 In Sound Mind
A Psychologists Playground
Dive deep into the twisting psychological realms of past trauma with In Sound Mind from We Create Stuff. A very imaginative, colorful, and very artistic Indie horror game, In Sound Mind has you traveling into various worlds transposed from therapy session tapes scattered around an abandoned building.
Unravel the mystery of each person’s pain whilst trying to escape from the strange void you find yourself trapped in. There’s some light puzzle elements to solve, strange creatures to encounter, and some pretty haunting memories to listen to as you go further into this world of unreality. If you enjoy horror games with a lot of hidden meanings, then check out In Sound Mind.
There is a lovely white cat in your HUB within In Sound Mind and yes you can pet them as much as you like. There’s even an achievement tied to it.
18 Observation
Security Camera Simulator
Observation is one of the newer releases on this list seeing as it came out in the first half of 2019. It’s a science-fiction horror game where you play as the artificial intelligence of a space station. You work alongside an astronaut aboard the space station and your focus is on figuring out what happened to the other astronauts.
As the story unfolds the tension builds and you start to question everything you’ve done. It’s a neat perspective to play for a sci-fi game and it makes use of the player’s strengths and weaknesses of playing as a piece of technology as opposed to an actual human being.
17 Outlast
Outlast in many ways was the catalyst for an entire sub-genre of horror video games. In Outlast you’re trying to escape an insane asylum with nothing but your wits and a video recorder. The main mechanic of the game revolves the video recorder being used as a light to visual guide you through the game.
Its batteries drain the more you use it so gathering and stocking up on new batteries is a big part of the experience. There’s also follow-up downloadable content for Outlast as well as a sequel that follows a brand new protagonist if you happen to enjoy your time with this game.
If you enjoyed the terror of Outlast but fancy some company, check out Outlast Trials. The multiplayer prequel to the Outlast series.
16 Home Sweet Home
Terrifying Thai Horror
A first-person horror game from Yggdrazil Group, in Home Sweet Home is a journey into the terror of Thai mythology. You play as Tim, a man that’s been having a pretty hard time since his wife’s mysterious disappearance. One day poor Tim wakes up at home, except it’s not his house at all.
Instead, he finds himself hunted and haunted by hostile spirits as he tries to sneak his way out of his home and to safety. A surprisingly tense game with an emphasis on stealth and puzzle solving, Home Sweet Home will keep you on edge right until you hit those end credits. Plus, the environments are large and very unsettling so you never quite feel safe.
15 Until Dawn
Surviving A Horror Film With Your Friends
Horror games had stuck to a pretty familiar structure for a long time. The genre itself is very niche and fans have always yearned for refreshing experiences that invented new ways to scare the player. Until Dawn mixed survival horror with a consequential choose-your-own-adventure game and knocked it out of the park.
Players take control of several young adults spending the weekend out at a log cabin. It’s considered one of the best games to play with friends because instead of yelling at a screen because someone did something dumb in a horror movie, you’re actively choosing what the best action to take is.
14 The Casting of Frank Stone
Another SuperMassive Movie Game
If there’s one thing SuperMassive seems to enjoy, it’s making movies inside of games. Though they’re often a bit hit-and-miss, The Casting of Frank Stone has proven to be on the more positive side.
Set in the Dead By Daylight Universe, The Casting of Frank Stone follows a group of friends in Cedar Hills. A town with a dark shadow cast over it by the violent Frank Stone and the legacy he left behind. Banish the darkness, save the town, and try to keep everyone in the group alive if you can. After all, it’s a SuperMassive production so nobody is safe.
Despite a mixed reception, The Casting of Frank Stone is a notable, if convoluted step up in storytelling from the confusing wet squib that was The Quarry.
13 Home Safety Hotline
Cowering In A Call Centre
An analog horror game that’s got a lot of buzz about it, Home Safety Hotline from Night Signal Entertainment is as odd as you think, but trust us, give this one a go. The premise is simple, you’re the hotline operator that has to help people having all sorts of difficulties, but there’s a twist.
Some of the problems are of the supernatural and as things start to unwind you’ll get to see how deep and weird the rabbit hole goes. There are untold horrors living in those homes and you’ll have to do your best to help your callers. It’s an unnerving and fantastic return to form from Nick Lives and highly recommended if you like odd indie horror games on your console.
12 Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP
Slipping On Those Old Comfy Suda Shoes
Juliet Starling is back and in higher definition than ever in Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP from Dragami Games. The Suda51 classic that follows everyone’s favorite wacky family of Zombie Hunters is home once more on our screens and for an entire generation, this is an insight into how wild gaming used to be.
After San Romero High School becomes overrun with Zombies, it’s up to Juliet and the head of her boyfriend Nick to save the day. What follows is a gory grindhouse display of completely nonsensical writing, massive music-themed boss monsters, a head-bopping soundtrack, and a generally all-around enjoyable game. If you like weird horror games you’ll fit right in with Lollipop Chainsaws world.
A warning if you plan on streaming Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, the game’s soundtrack is full of licensed music.
11 The Outlast Trials
Chaotic And Murderous Group Therapy
If you’re looking to drag some friends into a night of screaming, jump scares, and teamwork then The Outlast Trials from Red Barrels is worth picking up. Similar yet different to previous Outlast games, Trials has you and your friends working together to torture targets, perform gruesome tasks, and complete other mind-bending experiments.
It’s got quite the learning curve but a ton of customization options, brutal gameplay moments and it leaves a lot of room for cathartic chaos with some friends. For replayability, there’s extra side missions and a skill tree system that lets your team specialize for each encounter.
The Outlast Trials are a secret prologue to the main games. The organization running the tests is the same one behind the experiments in Outlast and Outlast 2.
10 Escape The Backrooms
Liminial Space Has Never Been This Good
A title from Fancy Games that needs little introduction by this point, Escape The Backrooms is the go-to for fans of the Backrooms urban myth horror lore. You, or a group of friends, are members of a team sent into the titular Backrooms, but after becoming trapped you’ll need to find your way out.
Descend through the depths of the Backroom realms through floor after floor of nightmare worlds, strange monsters, unique puzzles, and some genuinely unsettling and tough gameplay sections. All whilst trying to scavenge Almond Water to survive and just get to the next floor alive.
If you’re unfamiliar with The Backrooms, it’s recommended to read into it. The floors you’ll face are based on the lore so you’ll get a nice heads-up on what to expect.
9 Amnesia: The Bunker
Subterranean Period Horror
A successful follow-up in the Amnesia series, The Bunker took the familiar formula and locked it inside a small World War One bunker that had become the hunting grounds of a Mole-like monstrosity known as The Beast. You play a lone French soldier trapped within this deadly Rabbit Warren and with the exit blocked by rubble, trying to escape is going to be a hard task.
The Bunker is pitch black, your fuel to keep the lights on is limited and every noise you make draws the ire of the resident man-mulching monster. The game itself is fairly short, but there’s some unique replayability in that non-key items will change position on each playthrough.
The developers have continued to tweak and tinker with the game and there are new things added regularly to keep replayability fresh.
8 Dead By Daylight
The Best Multiplayer Horror Game On The Market
An asymmetrical horror game with a massive roster of monsters and celebrity cameos, Dead By Daylight is a great spooky game to have on your console. Especially around Halloween as there’s usually a special event or new character drop to celebrate the scariest time of the year.
For those not familiar, Dead By Daylight pits a team of Survivors versus a Killer. The arenas can be small or sprawling, but the goal is Survivors have to repair Generators to power up an Exit Gate, whilst the Killer has to stop them. There are a lot of bizarre powers, helpful passives or skills, and the ability to mix and match to get your own unique build once you put a good bit of time into the game. Great on your own and better with friends, Dead By Daylight is definitely worth trying.
7 Alan Wake
A Masterclass In Horror Writing
A literary adventure into the metaphorical and literal darkness. Alan Wake is a cult-classic horror game that took an interesting look at the haunted, tortured author trope and made it into a third-person survival horror game set in the haunted pines of Bright Falls.
Feeling like a mixture between a Stephen King novel and Twin Peaks, you play as the titular Mr. Wake. Who after visiting a quiet town to finish writing his novel, unleashes a dark demonic entity upon the town. With the only safety from this eldritch nightmare being in the light, what follows is a rollercoaster adventure into a reality-warping nightmare realm. Plus, with the well-received Remaster making the rounds and a sequel shortly about to drop, now is the perfect time to take a trip to
For those going into Alan Wake 2, it’s worth knowing that the American Nightmare DLC is also canon to the story.
6 Still Wakes The Deep
The Best Scottish Voice Acting Ever Heard
Fans of Indie horror and Scottish accents listen up, Still Wakes The Deep from The Chinese Room should be firmly on your radar. It’s the latest successful spooky game that’s been making a lot of waves and it’s worth diving into if you have six hours to kill.
Set on an isolated Oil Rig off the Scottish cost in the 70’s, there’s an otherworldly horror beneath the waves and it seems the rig workers have woken it up. Through scenes filled with body horror and other nightmare fuel, you’ll try to figure out what’s happened whilst trying to escape.
