It’s been a great year for horror games. In fact, it’sarguably been the very best. Both on the indie scene and in the mainstream, developers have been flaunting their horror chops, giving us beautifully crafted remakes of some of the classics, interesting directional shifts for established series, and unthinkable fusions between cozy fishing games and Lovecraftian nightmares.
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Whether your desired horror outcome is squealing in delight at a jump-scare, trembling with ecstatic fear at unbearable suspense, or being weirded out by dark powers of other dimensions, 2023 has accounted for horror from all angles, and here are our top 10, as voted on by the DS Staff.
Disclaimer:These rankings are based on a direct vote put out to DualShockers’ 100+ contributors, writers, and editors, not our individual reviews.
10The Outlast Trials
Co-op Horror Done Right
We weren’t expecting huge things fromThe Outlast Trials, given that horror’s moved on from the cheap-scare stylings of the previous entries in the series, but this co-op spin-off became an unlikely favorite here at DualShockers, giving our teamplenty of thrillsand compelling us enough that we decided tochat with the devs about it.
It builds suspense brilliantly, before exploding into frantic chases.
The idea is that you’re stuck in an MK-Ultra-style facility and must initiate themed missions (warped iterations of a circus, a police station, etc.) with up to three pals to solve puzzles while being chased by frenzied—and often naked—goons. It builds suspense brilliantly, before exploding into frantic chases, and even has a fun hub space where you canengage in armwrestling tournamentswith other players.
The Outlast Trials
A Cozy Fishing Nightmare
Oh, what it is to be fishing out at sea; the briney air, the wind beating on your ruddy fisherman face, the unspeakable deep-sea monstrosities that emerge to try and drag you into the endless darkness below.Dredgeis a relaxing fishing indie game by day, but when night falls it turns into a mysterious horror bound to give even the hardiest sailors bouts of thalassophobia.
Our Matt O’Dwyer loved it, regaling us about the time he spent so long out at sea that his sleepless fishermen began to hallucinate. you’re able to approach it as a fairly chill fishing sim, but big rewards await those willing to brave the darkness of the oceanic beyond.
8Layers of Fear
Gaming’s Best Ghost Train, Revisited
Bloober Team’s beloved ghost train game casts you as a painter navigating a haunted house that turns into a nightmarish psychedelic trip as the walls shift, paintings deform, and the ghost of your wife stalks you through the building. This remake bundles together bothLayers of Feargames, their DLCs, and an all-new chapter set in a lighthouse, uplifting all of them to Unreal Engine 5, making the horror feel more tangible than ever.
Unreal Engine 5 makes the horror feel more tangible than ever.
Our Rob Zak had mixed feelings about it,praising the visuals but condemning the storytelling, but the DualShockers writership has spoken, and the Layers of Fear paints its way into our end-of-year Top 10.
Layers of Fear
Welcome To Hell-A
It’s rare for a game that’s been through development hell and back to come good in the end, but to the surprise of just about everyone,Dead Island 2turned out pretty great. Casting aside the fact that LA is clearlynotan island, it’s a vicious, splattery first-person brawler that’s best enjoyed with a bunch of electrified-shovel-wielding pals.
Our reviewer CJ gave the game an 8.6/10, appreciating the representation of ‘Hell-A’ and how it let you experience the city, from its hillside mansions to iconic beachfronts, with a thick slick of gore splattered over the idyllic setting.
Dead Island 2
6Darkest Dungeon 2
Into The Depths Once More
After its Early Access journey,Darkest Dungeon 2launched in 2023, and it did so with all the unapologetic difficulty, fantastic atmosphere, andgrueling roguelike (roguelite?) designthat you’d expect ifyou played the original. But the sequel also shakes things up, with a polished new art style that doesn’t lose any of the original’s brooding, gothic charm, a bunch of new characters and classes, and improved balancing.
The sequel has a polished new art style that doesn’t lose any of the original’s brooding, gothic charm.
As your party delves into the procedurally generated dungeons and suffer through hideous monsters, dwindling sanity, and mental strain, they’ll also form relationships this time out, giving a nice bit of narrative flavor to the largely relentless experience.
Darkest Dungeon 2
5World Of Horror
Lovecraft Meets Junji Ito
After four years in early access, the gorgeously 1-bit-styled story-led horror—part point-and-click, part RPG—finally launched this year. Through a roguelite structure, where death is part of the journey, you explore a Japanese town beset by rampant Old Gods and other horrors that fuse the imagery of Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft.
You explore a Japanese town beset by rampant Old Gods.
The dearly departedJosh Furr praised the game’s awesome imagery and atmosphere, as he took on the game’s mysteries, named such things as ‘Spine-Chilling Story of School Scissors.’World of Horroris a dark, unforgiving game with a great mystery at its core that unfurls across several playable protagonists, and many,manydeaths.
World of Horror
4Sons Of The Forest
Survival-Horror — Or Is It Horror-Survival?
Still in Early Access, the sequel to the hit 2014 survival game has been a phenomenal success. Stranded on a remote island, you must chop wood, gather food, and establish some semblance of safety for you and up to seven players alongside you, all while fending off the myriad horrors that emerge from the surrounding woods.
you’re able to play through the story, or just treat it as a spooky open-world survival sandbox. Either way,Sons of the Forestis already very good, and it’s only going to get better as it marches toward full release.
Sons of the Forest
A Stompingly Good Time
The start of the year feels like a long time ago, and some of us have only recently begunstomping Necromorphs into oblivion, but theDead Space Remakeestablished itself early on as a GOTY contender. Redesigning certain parts of the daunting USG Ishimura mining ship to allow for more exploration, ramping up the graphics (while keeping them incredibly well optimized), and fleshing out the story have been some of the most noticeable changes, but Dead Space very much feels like an uplifted version of the terrifying, ultraviolent space horror we remember from 2008; and that’s great.
The remake supersedes it in the tasteful and faithful way that it should.
Our Elijah loved most of the changes inhis review, giving the game an 8.9/10, including slightly revamped weapons that make dismembering those vile Necromorphs even more satisfying. The original is one of the best horror games of all time, but the remake supersedes it in the tasteful and faithful way that it should, reigniting that singular, solitary horror that so many of us loved all those years ago.
Dead Space Remake
2Resident Evil 4 Remake
Our 7/10 review for Resident Evil 4 Remakewas a bit of an outlier, but that wasn’t going to stop what’s widely seen as a triumphant remake shooting to second place in our horror GOTY rankings. It gives previously stereotyped characters like Luis and Ashleysome much-needed characterisation, it modernizes the visuals and outdated elements (walk-and-shoot—yay!), and it offers hero Leon Kennedy more room to explore the iconic, desolate region of rural Spain.
Ignorethe weirdo holdouts who can’t handle progressive change. This is everything a remake should be—both loving homage and deftly handled upgrade—and is the best way to enjoy the game that revolutionized action-horror.
Resident Evil 4
1Alan Wake 2
All-in On Weirdness
Remakes are great and everything, but there’s nothing quite like an utterly weird and original game that straddles multiple genres (which ultimately orbit around eerie Twilight-Zone-Twin-Peaksy horror) while somehow managing to integrateFMV segments that actuallywork. Well,Alan Wake 2is that game, and it’s an absolute treat.
It gives a ton of material for Remedy’s recently established connected universe.
It’s not perfect, such asa combat system that very much makes you feel like a neurotic writer(albeit with some great dance moves) fumbling around in his own headspace, but this dark, spiraling wormhole of a story is one that will stick with you.Excellent side-characters, an interesting dual-protagonist setup, and some fantastic environments to explore in a fondlySilent Hillkinda way make for the best horror game of the year, and one of the most unique horror games ever made.
It gives a ton of material for Remedy’s recently established connected universe (currently inhabited byControlandAlan Wake), and most importantly it makes us look forward to whatever weirdness comes next from the fantastic collective creativity of the Finnish studio.Alan Wake 2 earned a 9.4/10 from DualShockers.
Alan Wake 2
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