10 Retro Horror Games That Are Still TERRIFYING

10 Retro Horror Games That Are Still Terrifying

Welcome to MojoPlays and don’t let their dated graphics or mechanics fool you, these games might be decades old but their scares are just as fresh as anything releasing today.

“Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem” (2002)

Horror games today owe quite a lot to the innovations of Eternal Darkness back on the GameCube. While sanity meters are much more common these days, this game challenges the player’s sanity in a number of ways. With four playable characters across multiple time periods all meticulously detailed, Eternal Darkness offered some welcome variety from the typical horror games of the time. As the characters explore their respective Lovecraftian nightmares, the horrors they encounter will slowly drive them mad leading to the game messing with players in a myriad of ways. Whether it is the walls suddenly bleeding, the game threatening to delete your save file, or the camera placement becoming extremely off balance, Eternal Darkness reveled in messing with its players. While many of these effects have lost their effect over time and advancements in technology, Sanity’s Requiem is still a terrifyingly interesting take on the familiar Lovecraftian formula.

“Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth” (2005)

Speaking of Lovecraftian horror, few adaptations of the famed author's work are as faithful as Dark Corners of the Earth. The game’s use of zero HUD only further immerses the player in the nightmare forcing them to rely on the character’s heartbeat, breathing, and even movements to keep track of their health. Although the game is primarily about investigation and uncovering the mystery of the town, this doesn’t stop the game’s many enemies from quickly depleting your ammo reserves and testing the limits of your sanity. Much like Sanity’s Requiem, Call of Cthulhu also makes use of a sanity meter which when depleted can affect the world around them with audio and visual hallucinations, but takes things a step further and if left untreated, the complete loss of sanity could lead to a game over. The atmospheric world might be intentionally linear, but provides more than enough scares to make the journey to Innsmouth.

“Siren” (2003)

When it comes to atmospheric horror, few do it better than a Japanese setting. Whereas other horror titles will give you a myriad of weapons to aid you in your fight for survival, Siren strips most of that away and leaves the player almost completely helpless besides their “sightjacking” ability, encouraging them to approach each level as stealthily as possible. With ten levels to silently creep their way through, players can use the “sightjacking” ability to temporarily inhabit the shibito or “corpse people” and be able to see from their perspective to better avoid them. Given the game was crafted from the mind of Keiichiro Toyama, the original creator of Silent Hill, it goes without saying that Siren is incredibly atmospheric and makes incredible use of the limited draw distance and enemies hiding within the shadows. You’ll definitely be playing this one with the lights on.

“...Iru!” (1998)

School can already be an unsettling place, but once the sun goes down, it becomes pure nightmare fuel. Upon finding you’ve been locked inside the school overnight, and with your fellow students mysteriously and often gruesomely dying one by one, you must not only uncover what’s going on but survive the night. Iru has zero combat and your only defense against the game’s horrifying enemies is to run and hide. The limited draw distance and first-person perspective makes exploration especially unsettling as you must thoroughly investigate the school in order to solve its many puzzles and make your escape. Don’t let the game’s blocky graphics and minimalist presentation fool you, Iru still manages some impressive scares, and the accompanying musical score ramps up the tension of each narrow escape while you hope the encroaching enemies don’t discover you. Going back to school has never been so disturbing.

“Koudelka” (1999)

On the surface, Koudelka looks like any other survival horror title in the wake of Resident Evil’s breakout success with its darkly foreboding atmosphere and fixed camera angles, but it manages to differentiate itself in its combat design. Exploring a medieval monastery, players uncover a deep and disturbing mystery involving the occult and inhuman experimentation. When players encounter enemies, the game switches to turn-based, and players move along a grid to attack enemies with their numerous powers and abilities. The environments are based on real locations within Wales and the design of the monastery itself is well crafted and detailed and along with the team’s use of motion capture, crafted a horror experience unlike anything else available at the time. Despite the dated mechanics, the narrative, strong and interesting characters and world along with its unique approach to the traditional horror gameplay are worth a few turn-based steps into madness.

“System Shock 2” (1999)

The precursor to Bioshock, System Shock 2 managed to combine elements of horror, sci-fi, and the threat of AI all into one truly unsettling package that is still influencing games outside of Bioshock even today. The derelict ship the players explore at the edges of space is immediately unsettling and atmospheric and the horrors only become even more disturbing the deeper you explore, and the mutations and machinations of the rogue AI SHODAN are revealed. The first person combat puts players up close and personal with their attackers, and the ship itself is intricately designed with branching pathways full of hidden audio logs to uncover the horrific events that occurred onboard the Von Braun with each area feeling distinct from one another and filled with the haunting cries of “The Many”, the mutated experiments of SHODAN that are as deeply unsettling as the malevolent AI herself.

“Resident Evil” (2002)

Resident Evil is widely considered the granddaddy of survival horror and for good reason. Not only does it deliver a truly unexpected and atmospheric setting but filling it with nightmarish mutations kept the player guessing as to what abominations waited in the next room. And somehow, the remake of this classic not only made everything much more detailed but expanded on what made the original such an icon while making important changes to the formula, crafting the definitive version of survival horror royalty. Zombies are much more aggressive this time around, following players into rooms and the introduction of Crimson Heads, which are only truly killed if burned or beheaded, made backtracking a much tenser proposition. Combine this with your already limited inventory and each encounter truly embodies the idea of “survival horror” far better than the game’s original release.

“Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly” (2003)

Haunted houses are a tried-and-true formula for horror but combining that trope with traditional Japanese horror produced one of the most terrifying experiences in gaming with Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly. Crimson Butterfly is unbelievably atmospheric, with most of the world drenched in darkness and only your tiny light to pierce the shade and all manner of ghosts hiding within the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike fear in your heart and your underwear. With your only defense the Camera Obscura, a camera that can hurt ghosts with every snapshot, you must wait until the specter is nearly on top of you to deal the most damage, forcing you to get up close and personal with the often horrifically disfigured anomalies. With multiple unlockable endings, you’ll be forced to relive the nightmare multiple times if you want to see everything this experience has to offer.

“Kuon” (2004)

Years before they first challenged players to “Git Gud”, FromSoftware was scaring the pants off horror fans with games like Kuon. Set during the Japanese Heian Period, players must explore the grounds of the manor, uncovering its mysteries, solving puzzles and narrowly surviving enemy encounters. The world of Kuon is wonderfully realized with incredible detail poured into every explorable area. Players not only need to try and avoid enemy encounters due to their limited offensive capabilities, but also because any noise will draw in even more creatures ready to make you their next victim. The slower pace of the gameplay might not be for everyone, and limited weapon selection admittedly makes the game harder than your standard survival horror, but for pure atmospheric terror, few do it better than FromSoft with Kuon.

“Silent Hill” (1999)

The original Silent Hill is the epitome of retro horror. Not only does the game still hold up remarkably well, but the developers' inventive use of the hardware’s limitations made the series a horror icon. The use of fog to hide the pop-in as the player explores the dilapidated town of Silent Hill makes the tension and atmosphere that much more horrifying, alongside the town’s frequent shifts to the “Otherworld” which is somehow an even more nightmarish version of itself. Every encounter is a fight for survival and the deeper the player explores, the more unsettling the town becomes. Combined with the game’s impressive audio, particularly the radio that alerts the player to nearby threats, every design decision works in tandem with one another and tells a deeply mature and graphic story of the town’s descent into a nightmarish hellscape that has endured for generations.

What was the most horrifying retro gaming experience you ever survived? Share your traumas in the comments.