Top 10 SCARIEST Sci-Fi Games

Given the torment she went through as a child, we can totally see things from Alma’s point of view…but does she have to scare the crap out of us while she’s at it? As Delta Force operative Michael Becket, we get to experience Alma’s rage first hand, along with plenty of visceral hallucinations. With Alma’s ghostly presence haunting the player every step of the way, you might want to keep that trigger finger primed. Oh, and who could forget about that horrific rape scene at the end? Yeesh, Becket did not have it easy on this mission.

The classic John Carpenter movie introduced us to a creature made up of our worst nightmares. It could be anyone, anything, and came with quite a set of teeth, providing everything you could ever want in a horror game. Despite its primitive graphics, the game’s narrative still manages to channel the sense of paranoia and dread that made the film so suspenseful, along with plenty of guts and gore. In terms of movie-to-game adaptation, where most exist in the laughably bad side of the quality spectrum, this one gets huge props.

Don’t be fooled by the low-res graphics, the premise alone is enough to make you shudder. Following the extermination of mankind by a twisted supercomputer known as AM, five humans are kept as its personal playthings, where they are tortured for well over a century. Sound cheery enough yet? Well, AM decides it wants to test their spirits by means of a point and click adventure that forces them to come face to face with their own worst flaws. Whether they overcome or lose to AM’s cruelty is up to you. In-game text has never been so terrifying.

Looting around the site of a recent nuclear disaster? What could possible go wrong? As it happens, the answer is: quite a lot. As a Stalker, your scavenger mission takes a drastic turn when it’s discovered that the results of a second Chernobyl incident has led to the creation of several deadly mutants. And wouldn’t you know it, they’re all trying to kill you. From Bloodsuckers to Pseudogiants, just one look at these things lets you know that you are in for a really bad day. Remember, kids: never go scavenging in disaster zones.

Fending off one supernatural monster is bad enough, imagine being trapped inside a facility filled to the brim with them. When a power outage frees the insidious SCPs from their cells, you have only one option; run like hell. The sense of fear this indie darling manages to exude with each new procedurally generated room is palpable; mostly because you never know which SCP you are going to run into next. From a statue that tries to kill you every time you blink to an acidic old timer, who can guess what fresh horror awaits you around every corner of this madhouse.

Humanity, death, rebirth and psychotic machine hybrids, all set at the bottom of the ocean on a dying earth. Welcome to the end of humanity. Simon Jarret’s desperate struggle to escape may have resulted in a game that acts more as a reflection on the frailties of man as opposed to an outright horror title, but there’s no denying there are a lot of scares to be found here. With the constant reminder that the planet is on its last legs, the abundance of suicides as survivors try to upload their consciousness onto computers, and of course quite a variety of horrific monsters chasing us down. Tie all that together, and Soma remains a truly haunting experience.

Just because you are armed to the teeth doesn’t make this trip into the inferno any less of a scare-fest. When demons start spilling out through a dimensional portal on Mars, players have to lock and load and send them right back to hell with a bullet to the brain. Easier said than done, especially with so many gruesome and disturbing enemies standing in your way. All of the enemies in the game are intimidating in their own freakish way, to the point where not even the BFG 9000 is enough to ease your fears.

It’s not easy being Isaac Clarke. Stranded on a spaceship bursting at the seams with alien monstrosities, including the grotesque Hivemind and indestructible Hunter, life kind of sucks. Between the vast amount of Necromorphs, religious nutcases and hallucinations about his dead girlfriend, there is barely a moment to breath in this game before you are set upon by a new horde of monsters. Throw in all of the painful ways Isaac can bite the dust, and chances are you’ll be stocking up pretty heavily on all that Plasma Cutter ammo.

One word; SHODAN. While having to fight your way through yet another infected vessel brings about its own fair share of scares, nothing compares to the reveal that the voice that has been guiding you to safety this whole time has been none other than this psychotic A.I. With her petrifying cyberpunk design and distorted voice, SHODAN ensured that our time aboard the starship Von Braun was one of absolute dread. Even with the common goal of destroying the Many, she never failed to unsettle us with her less than benevolent views on humanity.

You can run, you can hide, you can blast away with your flamethrower, it still won’t save you from the jaws of this Xenomorph. While on the hunt for her missing mother, Amanda Ripley finds herself trapped on a massive space station, where the galaxy’s most terrifying creature has just so happened to make its home. With no way to defend yourself other than to evade it, there’s never been a more frightening game of cat and mouth in the whole cosmos. Oh god, don’t let it see us, don’t let it see us!