What we love about psychological horror video games is that they are not solely focused on monsters and ghosts. What they use as horror elements revolves around the fear that exists in people’s minds. The year 2018 features some of the best psychological horror video games for PCs and gaming laptops. And today, we are featuring the top five on our list.
Let’s check them out:
We Happy Few
We Happy Few is an action-adventure game like no other. It puts the player in a drug-fuelled, retro-futuristic city called Wellington Wells in an alternative 1960s England. In this game, the player will control three flawed characters who must explore the city carefully to uncover the dark mystery surrounding the streets of Wellington Wells. The key in the game is conformity. The player must either choose to fight or decide to blend in with the drug-addled inhabitants of the city.
Visage
Visage is a psychological horror video game that puts the player in a strange ever-changing house in an atmospheric world which brings both an uncomforting and horrifyingly realistic environment. The story goes that the house has had a terrible past. Every family who lives in it was brutally murdered by their own family member, or either went insane or committed suicide. Reminds of the Amityville Horror, huh?
Rise of Insanity
The Rise of Insanity is another first-person psychological horror video game which supports VR. The developer, itself, said that it was based on the best psychological horror titles like The Exorcist, The Shining, and The Silent Hill. The game is set in the 70s and follows the story of a doctor named Stephen Dowell, a famous psychologist who deals with people that have mental disorders. You must explore the darkest corners of the human mind and overcome your fear to find the true cause of the tragedy that happened to your family.
Transference™
Transference features a narrative mystery where the player must explore the walls of his house to interpret the events happening inside it, and discover the truth. The game puts you in what seems like an escape room in a deranged mind. While trying to escape the room, the player must also recover fragments to unravel the mystery hiding in this mind-bending psychological thriller video game from Ubisoft and Spectrevision.
COLINA: Legacy
COLINA: Legacy is a survival and psychological horror video game that features puzzle elements. The player controls the character named Alex as he struggles to grasp the mystery after his terrifying visit to his grandmother’s house. It features stunning visuals and sounds, and gameplay that brings you back to the old-school survival horror games. As described by the developers, the game is a homage to the greatest horror survival video games from the past.
Yume Nikki appeared on Steam in 2018 too. This is one of a kind psychological horror (although it doesn’t look at all like any of the games on this list). Also, it’s free, so it was one of the most popular games with this theme https://rawg.io/games/2018?tags=psychological-horror