2026 has been such a horrific year games-wise that you won’t run out of frightful experiences anytime soon, even if you limit yourself to this year’s releases.
Here’s our list.
Table of contents
Resident Evil Requiem
Requiem has become one of the most successful horror games of all time, but a serious contender for 2026’s GOTY award. It perfectly blends old and new in one of the wildest campaigns in the series’ history.
The fanservice goes well beyond letting players revisit Raccoon City, as the entire game mixes gameplay from the two most successful RE eras: Resident Evil 4 for Leon’s more action-heavy segments, and more tense first-person style for Grace’s bits. Though the final third of the game lacks the amazing punch packed by the rest of the game, there’s a good reason why Requiem quickly rose near the top of Metacritic’s best user-rated games ever.
Silent Hill Townfall
This isn’t my favorite Silent Hill game, but that shouldn’t detract from your enjoyment of it as a horror experience. There’s a lot to love in this beautiful coastal escapade that almost seems to double as a Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth sequel.
Though its action-y combat sets it too far apart from what I’m used to in the series, and the story fails to hit the highs of the original three games, this is still an absolutely gorgeous title. Townfall should make for a terrific AAA-level horror experience for any non-SH purists.
Halloween: The Game
I’d feel silly writing a list of great Halloween titles in the only year we ever got a Halloween game adaptation, and the game sucked. It sure doesn’t. Halloween: The Game makes for one of the most interesting, complex, scary, and sometimes hilarious asymmetrical horror games out there. It can stand tall without requiring guest appearances from any other horror IP.
Halloween started a lot of what still resonates with horror fans today, and it’s amazing to see so many young people getting a fresh taste of what was such a formative piece of art.
Subnautica 2
If you’re considering buying Subnautica 2 because it looks like a cool, diving-themed getaway, be warned: it taught many players that some nightmares come in colorful shapes.
Fans of the series warn that the spooks might be diminished for anyone getting into the game after playing the first one, but not me. The depths will always be scary, and Subnautica 2 does a great job of adding to the frights of all these critters I’d never swim near in real life.
The Sinking City 2
It’s not very often that we get a great H.P. Lovecraft-inspired game, but The Sinking City 2 gives us that, tightly wrapped in gorgeous film noir sensibilities. It outdoes the original in every way imaginable and tells the story of a man uncovering a strange town’s secrets better than any game since the original Resident Evil 4. This is a must-buy if you want something new with a very familiar flavor—sadly, Lovecraftian games rarely do well sales-wise, so if you want to help a studio reliably delivering you more nightmares in the future, this is another reason to pick this up.
Hellraiser: Revival
Welcome to the big leagues. How devious is Hellraiser: Revival, you ask? Well, I could describe it to you, but I’m afraid I’d just be forcing my editor to delete most of this entry and send me a DM asking what gave me the idea that I should be putting such images in our readers’ minds, and, worse, his own. No joke. One YouTuber got their account permanently banned simply for showing the game’s opening sequence, and it wasn’t for copyright reasons.
I expected this game to be gruesome, but this is on a whole new level, one fans of this kind of thing have never seen in a video game, and one they should experience spoiler-free. My only gripe is that the combat, despite featuring both melee and gun action, just isn’t as fun as the rest of it is scary. Still, I think this is easily the third best Hellraiser experience of all time, only behind the original and Hellraiser 2: Hellbound.
