When it comes to new horror games, there are times of feast and famine, and this past year we gorged ourselves until our bellies bloated and our mouths dripped with horror grease. In 2024, we received a wide spread of dark experiences from solo creators, indie teams, AA developers and AAA studios in many genres and visual styles. There is a unique Silent Hill 2 remakes and beefy updates of contemporary classics such as Phasmophobia, Alan Wake 2 and The Advanced Testsand there’s also a steady cadence of new horror franchises that expand the genre in unexpected ways.

First, let’s take a moment to celebrate a sampling of the year’s new horror universes. In 2024, we got the following new titles:

This isn’t a comprehensive list of new horror franchises in 2024, but it’s a fair indication of how big and varied this year’s offerings are. Indie studios lead the way with new ideas and original mechanics, on coursebut there are also many references to early 2000s graphics and PS1- or PS2-era survival horror in this list. The combination of innovation and nostalgia is particularly strong in titles like Fear of the Spotlight, Crow Country, Mouthwash and Hollowbody. These games infuse blocky 3D worlds with modern sensibilities and smooth animations, resulting in experiences that illuminate static memories of Resident Evil and Silent Hill that hides our heads. This is how we want games to feel, the camera angles are bad – or, in the case of Hollowbodyloving hugs.

It should also be noted that Fear of the Spotlight marks the debut of acclaimed horror-movie maker Blumhouse as a video game publisher. Fear of the Spotlight is the first release in the Blumhouse line — which includes upcoming titles from eyeHalf Mermaid, Perfect Garbage, Playmestudio and Vermila Studios — and this is an excellent exploration of low-fi teenage drama and horror. The horror-game revolution is upon us and Blumhouse is absolutely going to grab a piece.

The least horror-like game in the list above may be Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddessand it also happens to be the only title from a AAA studio. I included it because, as a dedicated fan of horror games, I think Kunitshu-Gami checks a lot of boxes: It features large, hideous demons and a deadly blight covering the entire town in skeletal but strangely juicy organic material. Its monster designs have colorful displays of lechery and body horror, and there is comfort to be found in its tense strategy-action gameplay. Kunitshu-Gami is not marketed as a frightening experience, and it certainly has as many scenes of grotesque beauty as grotesquerie, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to any horror fan. I think you will be surprised.

issue is another entry that covers the genres of horror, camp and religious satire, but it definitely has some scenes of horror. Plus, the literal devil is your friendly companion throughout the game, and that has to count for something. Amid scenes of sorrow, desolation and devastation, issue is a riot of laughs, and it’s a prime example of mature themes handled well in video game form. An additional genre-bending standout from 2024 is Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It contains incredibly satisfying logic puzzles in a hotel made of mysteries – but phantoms haunt the hallways, there’s a corpse in the back garden and every scene oozes there is discomfort. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is one of the best and most exciting games of the year, period.

Still awake Deep downOn the other hand, it offers a familiar and beautiful brand of monster-stalking horror on an oil rig in the middle of the angry North Sea. This is a must-play game for any horror fan, acting as a vessel for The Chinese Room to showcase its skills in building real worlds and cultivating relentless tension with paranormal content. Plus, it’s one of the best games I’ve played on PS5 all year. Slitterhead is another for the action-horror players out there, presenting a supernatural mystery in a version of Hong Kong infested with body-snapping demons, featuring buckets of blood and chaotic close combat.

The year began with the release of Home Safety Hotlinea simulation of a 1990s call center where players help diagnose and treat household pests, which include otherworldly threats such as Bed Teeth, Fae Flu, The Horde, Laundry Gnome, Mirror Nymph, Toilet Hobb, Unicorn Fungi and more. Home Safety Hotline is exactly the amuse bouche of 2024’s horror game lineup – and Mouthwash is the dessert.

All horror kids now playing Mouthwasha polygonal first-person shooter that roams a stranded spaceship filled with a doomed crew that keeps losing their minds, presided over by a crippled captain with a maniacal, bandaged that smile. Mouthwash weird and claustrophobic, and it’s a fantastic way to end the year of horror gaming.

But we haven’t even talked about the current franchises. the Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team, the Polish studio behind the Layers of Fear and Blair Witcha brilliant achievement, even in the face of proper standards from longtime fans of the series. The remake looks and feels like the game players remember, just spit up and smoothed out, and Silent Hill 2 remains as terrifying in 2024 as the original was in 2001. Maybe even more so. The Bloober Team has a lot to prove with this, and they make us elder-Millennial horror players proud.

Alan Wake 2 is one of the best games in 2023, horror or otherwise, and it received two significant batches of DLC this year: Night Springs landed in June and Lake House went live in October. Every bit of content not only brings the hellish world of Alan Wake to life, but it adds depth to the cross-franchise universe that Remedy built between Control and Alan Wake. Personally I’ve always wanted more Alan Wake, and in that regard, 2024 did not disappoint.

Two live-service indie games, The Advanced Trials and Phasmophobiahas also seen major updates in the last 12 months. After entering early access in May 2023, The Advanced Trials Studio Red Barrels has been working to build a solid rhythm with new content drops, and this year they really got into the groove. The Advanced Trials was fully launched in March 2024 and has received many updates since then, introducing new enemies, maps, game modes and limited-time events for players trapped in the secret Signal Facility in Murkoff Corporation. The amount of work that Housed in Red Barrels The Advanced Trials endlessly impressive, especially considering that there are only about 65 developers in the studio.

Phasmophobia has a smaller team than Red Barrels, but they are making big strides. The crew at UK studio Kinetic Games continues Phasmophobia has been alive since its launch on Steam in September 2020, and this year, they finally brought the ghost-hunting game to consoles. Phasmophobia hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29, and it also came to PS VR2. Kinetic Games has big plans to continue to support and expand Phasmophobia in 2025 and beyond, so even if the release of the console happened four years after the launch, it was really the beginning.

It’s here – our humble ode to the horror game of 2024. It’s been a dozen months of indie innovation and beautiful gore, with a side dish of great remakes and tons of updates. Some new horror games push against the boundaries of the genre, expanding our ideas of what is scary and why, while others find new ways to dissect classics. trope. It’s a case of modern cuisine versus comfort food, and on my plate, there’s plenty of room for both.