10 Best Horror Games To Play With The Lights Off

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

The first game from Night School Studio is back with even more scary moments and a new story. It still takes place in one night, but this time on Camena instead of Edwards Island. The glowing red things and chilling sounds of the Sunken, the sound design of your walkie-talkie and radio stations, the visual scares from the screen effects, and the exploration create an amazing atmosphere that is best enjoyed at night.

In Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals, Riley Poverly’s new job is to set up receivers to record the strange things that are happening on Camena. Her boss Evelyn is at her walkie-talkie channel, and a neighborhood handyman named Jacob Summers is right next to her. Right after the first transmission is turned on, the night takes a turn, and you soon have to deal with Riley’s future, a cult, and the supernatural horrors that are all around you.

Five Nights At Freddy’s Series

Even though the Five Nights at Freddy’s games are made for kids, the jump scares work best when the lights are out. After all, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has closed, and you’re in a dark room watching cameras to keep track of some of the creepiest animatronics that come to life and slowly move toward your office.

When you switch feeds and see that these well-known but creepy characters are gone, you will feel fear. And if they come right up to your door or vent, or if you hear childlike voices, giggles, or other scary sounds coming from them, you might want to check out your real-world settings.

Dead Space Remake

In the 2023 version of Dead Space, there could be a great sci-fi horror story with some unique scary monsters to fight and a lot of scares. Isaac Clarke is on a mission to find his girlfriend, Dr. Nicole Brennan. He has his plasma cutter with him and is ready for the scary things that will happen. In the middle of all the scary things, you also find the secrets that were kept on the USG Ishimura.

In a dark room, the intense set pieces with Necromorphs running at you and the moody lighting of the surroundings would work even better. This version also shows the crew of the station doing more frightening things, like hitting their head against a wall at the end of a hallway.

The Mortuary Assistant

If you liked The Autopsy of Jane Doe and want a scary game like that, The Mortuary Assistant is even scarier and more intense. The idea that you are alone in a mortuary at night with dead bodies is scary enough, but the corpses seem to be haunted and follow you around the room.

There is more to learn about the River Fields Mortuary and the helper named Rebecca Owens who works there. But what happens next is a never-ending set of hauntings where more than one demon is involved, all while you are trying to embalm the bodies.

Blair Witch

Since you probably watched the Blair Witch movies in a dark room, the game should be the same way. It’s kind of like a mix of the Slender Man games and the Outlast games, since you use a flashlight to scare away the supernatural creature and a camcorder to play back footage and change the surroundings.

You are not a filmmaker going into the Black Hills Forest. Instead, you are a former police officer who has become a private investigator looking for a lost boy. Strange things happen and there is a lot of tension, but it’s a little easier to deal with because your dog, Bullet, is right there with you and always wants some pets and belly rubs.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Resident Evil’s seventh mainline game went in a totally different direction, and it turned out to be one of the scariest games in the series. Biohazard, which came out in 2017, stopped being a third-person shooter action-adventure game and became a first-person survival horror game like Amnesia and Outlast, but with fighting.

You play as Ethan Winters and go to a Louisiana property held by the Bakers to look for your wife Mia. You find that no one is what they seem to be. You can tell right away that Flappy Bird works best in the dark because the first few minutes have jump scares that are triggered by changes in lighting and a “found footage” system where you can watch VHS tapes.

Visage

Visage is a scary psychological horror game that tries to be like P.T. The premise is the same: you’re in a house and your radio and other things are making noise, and there are jump scares and dark hallways around every turn.

It will remind you of scary movies like “Sinister,” and it has something to do with the horrible past of the people who lived there before. Like many horror games like this one, you have no weapons and have to solve problems and outsmart enemies without being able to hurt them.

Layers Of Fear (2023)

Layers of Fear will be remade in 2023, and it will start with a new character named the Writer who works from a tower. It reimagines the original story by combining the first game, its sequel, DLC, and new material into one horror anthology story. With the help of Unreal Engine 5, you also have much better images that look shockingly real.

The Painter has to deal with a spirit in his own home, where the rooms are always changing and more troubling things keep coming to light. Then there’s the Actor and the Musician, who each have their own nightmares that could end in different ways. Each story has a lot of mood and clever scares that will make you feel better in the dark.

Madison

A horror game played in a dark room would be a great place for a feature where you have to aim and take pictures in the dark. Because in Madison, you have a Polaroid camera that you have to flash at dark places to show that the game’s name-giving demon is there, which makes for some scary jump scares.

It’s a cat-and-mouse horror story that has to do with what Madison did and how it affected the main character, Luca. As you try to get out of Madison and figure out what’s going on, you’ll run into some problems that you can solve with the help of your camera.

Until Dawn

There are a lot of story-driven Supermassive horror games that could have ended up here, but Until Dawn is the best one to play in the dark. It happens at night on a cold, snowy mountain called Blackwood, which has a cozy chalet lodge, a scary mine, and a hospital. Also, there’s a killer among you, and some supernatural animals are coming after you.

During the game, you play as different friends who came to the lodge on Blackwood Mountain a year after a tragedy killed two sisters. There are quick-time events, places where you have to make a choice and time is ticking down, and well-done horror sequences that feel like they belong in a movie. The figures are voiced by Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, and Peter Stormare, all of whom do a great job.