7 gateway horror games for my fellow fraidy-cats

When it comes to movies and TV, there’s no genre that feels more like home to me than horror. Stephen King novels taught me to love reading as a child; he’s the reason I became a professional writer some 15 years ago. My dad raised me on stuff like The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Alien. But the medium of video games, which we hold so dear, is a different animal. 

When you’re identifying so closely with the player character at the center of a game, making choices that doom them and constantly running for your life, there’s a different level of anxiety than I get when I’m sittin’ back in my easy chair, having a Diet Coke and some popcorn, and watching George C. Scott or Jada Pinkett Smith hunt demons.

Back in 2014, I tried streaming Alien: Isolation on Twitch. I thought the pressure of having a couple people watching me might be incentive enough to stick with it. I lasted four hours before I shut the game off. But I hope to one day finish it—I’m a massive fan of the Alien series—and I’ve made some real strides in the horror-game arena since. Some of the games on this list served as comforting bridges along the path from total fraidy-cat to… well, being a guy who can get through three Resident Evil games in a row.

If you struggle to play horror games but would like to give them a shot, I hope this helps you find a good entrypoint. Just be sure to do a bit of extra research if you’re someone who likes to know all the specific trigger warnings ahead of time. Part of the nature of horror is that it gets into some pretty thorny territory, and that’s true of many of the games on this list.

1. Don’t Sleep with the Fishes (2026)

In Don’t Sleep with the Fishes, eldritch horrors peer out from the deep, the kraken demands sacrifice, and humanoid figures claw at the underside of your boat, which is constantly, gradually deteriorating. Will you ever find dry land? Get rescued by a passing cargo ship in the night? Or, in the end, are we all doomed to starve at sea, one way or another? While you’re taking on water and navigating across the waves, I have little doubt you’ll find a great deal of meaning in this lovely, eminently replayable game from DopplerGhost.

2. The Park (2015)

If you want a fairly short, mechanically simple place to start with horror games, this walking sim is a really solid choice. I tend to think of it as the first real horror game I ever finished, and I look back on the experience with a lot of fondness.

It has a few memorable scares, but it’s not terribly stressful, and the central mystery and trippy psychological elements ensure you’ll be thoroughly engrossed. I found the amusement-park setting both creepy and familiar. Most of the game is scary simply because you’re alone in the park at night. But there’s plenty waiting for you out there in the dark.

3. Inside (2016)

For big-time horror gamers, this one might seem like it hardly qualifies, but it’s got some tense, scary moments for sure. It tells a kind of story, but it’s all done with sound and visuals—no dialogue here. You start off on the run, fleeing dogs and gunmen, and take refuge inside (there’s that word!) some kind of surreal industrial complex.

As you solve puzzles to progress through this mysterious institution, things just keep on getting stranger and stranger, and it all leads to a very memorable climax. If you enjoy puzzles or anything vaguely Lynchian, this one’s a must-play.

4. Forbidden Solitaire (2026)

I have fond memories of playing classic Windows games like Solitaire and Mahjong, so the marketing for this pulled me right in. It’s a nineties-infused horror trip in the vein of Blair Witch Project and The Ring; it’s a beautifully busted combo-based card game like Balatro. It even tells a gripping story with full-motion video and sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying voice-over. Hours of pure enjoyment, and one of the coolest games you’ll play this year.

5. The Thing Remastered (2024)

If you’re new to proper survival-horror games like I am, this is a really solid game for learning the conventions of the genre in a fairly low-stress sandbox. It has some moment-to-moment tension, but I didn’t find it stressful in the way that, say, The Evil Within and Alien: Isolation were when I was first interested try to these games—and failing to get more than a few hours deep.

If you’re a John Carpenter fan, all the better. This is more a sequel than an adaptation, so it goes out of its way to expand the scope of the story in some fun, creative ways. It’s definitely a new favorite of mine.

6. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2023)

I started playing asymmetrical horror games with the launch of Friday the 13th: The Game in 2017, and I’ve enjoyed trying out most of its various successors in the years since. (Halloween: The Game is the title I’m most looking forward to right now.) I reviewed Texas Chain Saw and Killer Klowns for RogerEbert.com a while back, and while I quite loved them both, Texas is the one that’s maintained a really healthy player base post-launch, and I think it offers more of a skill ceiling.

It’s fairly easy to jump into if you just want to have a good time online with some friends (or deadly strangers), but there’s also plenty of room for true mastery. It’s got a bit of Dead by Daylight flavor for people who prefer to play a killer, whereas it becomes more of a stealth game for the survivors.

7. Resident Evil 3 (2020)

My friend Elijah Beahm, author of a recent book on the Dead Space series, first told me to try this a few years ago. It’s a shorter game—not an ounce of fat on it, really—and it teaches you every fundamental convention and skill you’ll need to survive some of the harder, longer installments in the series. I was skeptical going in, but I found that I really loved Jill Valentine as a character, and her scrappy brand of resilience reminded me a lot of Bruce Willis’s character in Die Hard.

The Nemesis creature also makes for a fun, focused story, like Laurie Strode fleeing the Bogeyman or Sarah Connor battling it out with the Terminator. If not for starting here, I never would have made it through the rest of Capcom’s Resident Evil Remake Trilogy.