Scariest Horror Games You Need to Play in 2025

Patrick.Yu

If you’re craving a good scare in 2025, there’s no shortage of horror games to haunt your screen. Whether you prefer slow-burning psychological dread or fast-paced survival panic, this year offers plenty of terrifying experiences across PC, console, and handheld platforms. Some are recent hits, others are time-tested classics, but all of them are still widely available to play right now. In this article, we’re rounding up the best horror video games on pc you can dive into in 2025, from indie nightmares to AAA blockbusters that will leave you sleeping with the lights on.

Tip: Need help managing the scares? Check out our guide on how to play horror games without getting too scared for tips that make these games easier to handle.

1. No, I’m Not a Human (Coming Q3 2025)

No, I’m Not a Human might be the most unsettling indie horror experience of the year, even though it’s not fully released yet. Currently available as a demo, this Papers, Please-style survival horror game traps you in a crumbling home during the end of the world, where every knock at your door demands a chilling choice: let the person in or leave them outside. The game doesn’t rely on jumpscares to create fear. Instead, it builds dread through atmosphere, unpredictability, and moral tension. With randomized encounters, eerie radio signals, and haunting visitors, it creates a heavy sense of helplessness and sorrow. You aren’t a soldier or a savior here. You’re just an ordinary person trying to make it through the night. Every act of kindness might be a mistake, and every moment of doubt might cost someone their life. 

The demo, available now, includes lore, dialogue, and mechanics that already set this apart as one of 2025’s most promising indie horror games. It deserves your attention.

2. Beyond Hanwell (2024)

Beyond Hanwell is a first-person survival horror game set in a rain-soaked, decaying version of London. Developed by Steel Arts Software, it’s a direct follow-up to Welcome to Hanwell and expands the series’ lore while raising the bar for indie horror presentation. You play as a lone survivor navigating a non-linear, open-ended city where every door holds a story and every street hides a threat. Your main goal is to uncover the mystery behind a figure known only as the Director, all while evading horrifying creatures called Anomalies.

What makes Beyond Hanwell stand out is its atmosphere. Using Unreal Engine, the game delivers photorealistic visuals, dynamic weather, and haunting sound design. Gothic architecture, ambient soundscapes, and an entirely HUD-less interface draw you in completely. Combat is gritty and creative, mixing melee and limited firearm use with clever environmental traps. Whether you’re crafting explosives or wielding improvised weapons like chainsaws, every encounter feels tense and personal.

Despite some launch bugs and mild repetition, Beyond Hanwell has earned strong reviews for its visuals, freedom of exploration, and chilling immersion. If you enjoy psychological horror with a focus on mood and mystery, this is one of 2025’s must-play hidden gems.

3. KARMA: The Dark World (2025)

KARMA: The Dark World is a psychological horror game set in a dystopian future where identity, memory, and reality are always in question. You play as Daniel McGovern, an agent working for a powerful organization called Leviathan. Tasked with entering the memories of suspects, Daniel quickly finds himself spiraling through fragmented visions, disturbing environments, and the growing possibility that his own past is not what it seems.

The game blends oppressive atmosphere with surreal design. One moment you are crawling through black goo-filled corridors, and the next you are navigating eerie domestic spaces filled with mannequins or abstract memory hubs. The visuals are striking, shifting between gritty realism and stylized absurdity, while the audio design keeps you tense with ambient noise, unsettling whispers, and sudden distortions.

Gameplay is straightforward, focused mostly on exploration, short puzzle sequences, and scripted chases. The story is deliberately cryptic, offering more questions than answers, and the final act feels rushed despite a fascinating premise. Still, KARMA succeeds at delivering an emotionally disorienting experience. For players who enjoy dreamlike horror, unreliable narrators, and cerebral storytelling, this is a strange but worthwhile journey.

4. Mouthwashing (2024)

Mouthwashing is a deeply unsettling narrative horror game that explores guilt, identity, and complicity aboard a doomed space freighter. Set on the Tulpar, a long-haul ship reeling from a mysterious disaster, the game slowly reveals the truth by shifting between timelines and letting you piece together how things went so horribly wrong. There are no intense action scenes or combat sequences here for most of the experience. Instead, the focus is on quiet, uncomfortable conversations, small decisions, and the creeping realization that the real horror comes from within.

With a lo-fi visual style reminiscent of early PlayStation titles, the characters look human but feel ever-so-slightly off, reinforcing the game’s uncanny atmosphere. Distorted sound design and muffled voice acting add to the sense of disorientation, as does the non-linear narrative structure. Dreamlike tasks like mixing drinks or wandering dim hallways always carry a menacing undertone.

Occasional survival horror segments are less refined, but they are brief and serve a narrative purpose. What Mouthwashing does best is force you to confront uncomfortable truths—both about its characters and, by reflection, yourself. It’s grim, slow, and emotionally raw, but for those who can stomach it, this is one of the most thought-provoking horror games of the year.

5. R.E.P.O. (2025)

R.E.P.O. is chaotic co-op horror at its best, blending the item-fetching loop of Lethal Company with unpredictable physics, creepy enemies, and hilarious proximity chat. You and your friends play as sardine-like robots collecting junk for a faceless boss while surviving haunted maps filled with bizarre monsters. Items must be levitated with a gravity tool, and every collision or drop lowers their value, making even simple tasks nerve-wracking and absurd.

The enemy lineup includes floating heads, mind-killing aliens, and the terrifying Huntsman, a blind man with a shotgun who hears everything and rarely misses. Fail to meet your quota, and you're thrown into a ridiculous arena brawl using random junk as weapons. Win or lose, it's always memorable.

Even in early access, R.E.P.O. stands out as one of the best multiplayer horror games of the year. With more levels, customization, and enemies coming soon, it’s a must-play for fans of funny, frantic co-op chaos.

6. Silent Hill 2 (2024)

The Silent Hill 2 remake is not a game built for fun. It is a slow, suffocating descent into psychological torment, and that is exactly why it succeeds. Bloober Team’s reimagining of the 2001 classic preserves the original’s heavy atmosphere while updating its visuals, sound, and controls for a modern audience. The thick fog, decaying interiors, and pitch-black corridors are not just visual flair. They are deliberate choices designed to make players feel trapped and uneasy.

The horror comes not from fast-paced combat but from oppressive level layouts, unsettling puzzles, and a soundscape that keeps you constantly on edge. Armed with only basic weapons and limited ammo, you are left vulnerable in every situation. There are no jokes, no power trips, and no relief from the tension.

The remake does improve the original’s clunky camera and movement, but it makes few other concessions. You still plunge into darkness, face grotesque creatures, and backtrack through confusing spaces. These moments reflect James Sunderland’s emotional breakdown and force the player to share in his misery. Silent Hill 2 is not about having fun. It is about grief, guilt, and the dark corners of the human mind. And it lingers long after the credits roll.

7. The Mortuary Assistant: Definitive Edition (2022)

The Mortuary Assistant is a grim, atmospheric horror game that mixes realistic mortuary tasks with relentless supernatural dread. As Rebecca, you take on your first solo shift at River Fields Mortuary only to discover a demon has marked you. To survive, you must embalm three bodies, uncover hidden sigils, and identify the demon’s true name, all while the building shifts around you in terrifying, unpredictable ways.

Originally released in 2022 for PC and later ported to consoles, the game struggles with clunky controls outside its native platform. Menus are awkward, and basic actions like entering data or using tools feel unintuitive with a controller. But beneath those flaws is a standout horror experience, filled with environmental scares that rarely repeat themselves. From shadowy figures vanishing in hallways to objects that rearrange themselves when your back is turned, every shift feels different.

Rebecca's story gives the game emotional depth, with hauntings that reflect her past trauma and guilt. Paired with a strong voice performance, it elevates what could have been a basic scare simulator into something more personal. While the gameplay can be repetitive, and the visuals occasionally rough, the sound design and scares are top-notch. It's imperfect, but undeniably memorable.

8. Still Wakes the Deep (2024)

Set aboard a crumbling oil rig off the Scottish coast, Still Wakes the Deep is a masterfully executed survival horror experience. The atmosphere is oppressive, the voice acting is rich with regional authenticity, and the visuals are as beautiful as they are grotesque. You play as Caz, a flawed but deeply human protagonist, forced to navigate collapsing platforms and face horrific, mutated crewmates while haunted by his own past. With tight pacing and strong environmental storytelling, the game pulls you in early and refuses to let go.

What sets this game apart is its relentless sound design and gruesome body horror. The monsters are towering, fleshy nightmares that shout obscenities as they hunt you. Stealth and chase sections are finely tuned, and the lack of combat keeps tension high. Some creatures look too similar, and underwater segments can drag, but these are minor blemishes. This is a disturbing, unforgettable gem in modern horror.

9. Sons of the Forest (2024)

Sons of the Forest takes everything that made The Forest a cult favorite and elevates it with smarter survival mechanics, more nuanced storytelling, and terrifying encounters. Set on a vast, lush island filled with mystery, your goal is to survive, uncover a missing billionaire’s fate, and endure what lurks beneath the surface. Caves remain the heart of the horror, blending resource management, claustrophobic level design, and brutally tense combat.

What truly sets it apart is the behavior of its cannibal enemies. They stalk you, study you, and act unpredictably. Sometimes they back off if they sense you're not afraid. Story moments now come with voice acting, expanded lore, and even new endings depending on your choices. Despite a frustrating bug late in the game, Sons of the Forest is an ambitious and terrifying evolution of the survival genre. Whether you’re a builder, explorer, or thrill-seeker, this is one of the most immersive and unsettling experiences available, made all the more haunting by its mix of grounded realism and supernatural dread.

10. Dying Light: The Beast (Coming August 2025)

Dying Light: The Beast looks to be Techland’s boldest entry yet in its acclaimed open-world survival horror series. Set in the hauntingly beautiful Castor Woods, this new chapter follows Kyle Crane after years of captivity and genetic torment. Now part human, part infected, Crane battles not only hordes of zombies but the raging monster within himself. Players will switch between two playstyles: calculated survivor and brutal beast, as they seek revenge on the man responsible.

The game promises all the hallmarks of the Dying Light franchise, from intense first-person parkour and day-night survival mechanics to visceral, up-close combat. At night, survival becomes a desperate gamble as more terrifying threats emerge, forcing players to fight, flee, or hide. A wide variety of biomes, from mountain towns to swampy backwoods, offer dynamic exploration and stunning visuals.

With support for 4-player co-op and shared progression, Dying Light: The Beast could be one of 2025’s biggest horror releases. It is shaping up to be a ferocious, emotional, and action-packed evolution of a fan-favorite series.