When many players think of platformers, they picture mustachioed plumbers, tie-wearing gorillas, and anthropomorphic cups. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares. Yet another, darker breed of puzzle platformer exists, one in which a harrowing fall onto a pit of spikes might be the least of the character’s worries.
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Some horror puzzle platformers are outright violent, but many capitalize on softer, if no less unsettling, tricks. The flash of something hairy and hulking lumbering away, the rise of foreboding piano music, the anvil-drop of thunder — done right, these games have no limit to the ways in which they can torment players. And that’s before the pressure plates and teetering platforms.
Updated on July 16, 2025 by Patrick Armstrong:Puzzle platformerscan be uniquely stressful. As the hero journeys through strange and dangerous lands, they are often only a single missed jump or mistaken guess away from death and a frustrating return to the last checkpoint.Horror puzzle platformersonly heighten the tension, whether through an unsettling art style, horrific themes, or waves of bloodthirsty enemies to hunt the player. Horror, puzzle games, and platformers may seem like a strange mashup to some, but the best games in this ever-growing field show why they’re a natural, if terrifying, fit.
14Black: The Fall
Black: The FallandLimbohave more than a little in common. Both are side-scrollers. Both haveprotagonists trying to survivein a surreal industrial nightmare, navigating ledges and scaffolding whiletrying desperately to avoid a series of terrible traps.Both have a high-contrast art style that highlights the protagonist against gorgeous backdrops, selling the player on the immensity of the world, and the insignificance of the hero compared to it.
Limbogets the accolades, and justifiably so, but for those looking elsewhere for a taste of that same magic,Black: The Fallis the game to play.
13Albert And Otto
Albert and Ottois a dreamlike journey. At times a nightmarish one. The player is given almost no context or backstory to explain who the main character is or what he’s doing. While that may be frustrating to some, deep lore and a multi-layer narrative aren’t whatAlbert and Ottois about.
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The mechanics of this puzzle platformer are deeper than one thinks at first look,forcing the player to untangle its interactive elements or see their character die.The true draw, however, may be the game’s art style. Like many others in the genre,Alert and Ottofavors a high-contrast, monochromatic look, and the blacks and grays of its world make it stand out, highlighting each level’s geometry and giving everything an unsettling air.
12Nihilumbra
Hand-painted environments and a lush soundtrack help setNihilumbraapart from most games in its field. Even if many of its mechanics will feel familiar to fans of the genre,the game does an outstanding job ofbringing something new and rich to the worldin which those mechanics are rooted.
The game’s difficulty takes a sharp turn in the second half, which may deter some that had gotten used to its more welcoming beginning, but this experience is one that’s worth fighting through. Also notable isNihilumbra’swillingness to tackle serious themes in its writing, something most other puzzle platformers don’t bother with.
11Typoman
The schoolyard rhyme which claims that words can never hurt you is handily disproved byTypoman.In this game, individual letters fuse together like pieces of rusted scrap metal, becoming monsters that hunt the protagonist through a barren, eerie landscape.
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Its puzzles are also composed of letters, literally spelling out instructions, warnings, and threats. No other game makes language itself sinister in quite the same way asTypomanmanages to. Combine its unique premise and haunting atmosphere with the precision running and jumping that one would expect from a top-tier platformer, and the game offers something truly special.
10Tamashii
A platformer that embraces special effects and flashing lights the way Halloween embraces pumpkins,Tamashiiis horror as sensory overload. The world through which its protagonist must run and leap is grotesque, filled with hideous creatures, statues, and engravings, as warped and vile as they are strangely suggestive. It isa brief horror game, but brilliant.
Amongst the frenzied leaps and panicked sprinting,Tamashiirewards careful examination of its environments and study of its many puzzles. Cyphers and other easter eggs give players much to occupy themin this tale of witches, ancient entities, and temples in good need of a cleansing.
9Closure
The protagonist of indie delightClosureis a spider demon, but unfortunately, it isn’t the most awful thing waiting in the dark. Light and darkness are critical features of this game, in which objects outside of the light dematerialize as if they had never existed. InClosure,that the light does not touch does not exist.
This isn’tthe hardest puzzle game,and that’s a good thing. The art looks like the illustrations in an Edward Gorey book, and the story tells the interwoven tales of three humans. The audio hammers with excitement and tension, and the central mechanic of light manipulation opens many unique avenues for gameplay.
8DARQ
Lloyd is trapped in a nightmare, and unsurprisingly he isn’t thrilled by this news. The protagonist ofDARQis a lonely, skeletal young man who would make a great addition toGrim FandangoorThe Nightmare Before Christmas,two worlds the game seems to channel in the best of ways.
The premise of someone trapped in a nightmare may not be novel, butDARQmakes the most of this familiar premise by letting the protagonist bend physics and the fabric of the dreamscape to his advantage. It has clever rather thanimpossible puzzles,and its environmental navigation is an M.C. Escher delight.DARQis a game in which platforming adds to, rather than distracts from, the horror at hand.
7Rain World
Is it a slug? Is it a cat? Yes, because it’s slugcat, the protagonist ofRain World.This game takes the platforming, horror, and survival genres, throws them in a blender, and sprinkles a dash of pixilated monster into the corrupt slurry. As a slugcat prowling the dystopian ruins in search of prey and on the run from predators, players are given the opportunity to explore a virtual world that feels truly alien.
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Despite its spear and lightning reflexes, slugcat is a fragile beast, and being hunted by the crocodilian shadows ofRain Worldis a terrifying experience at times. When even the rain wants the character dead, fear is only appropriate.
6Deadlight
The new Seattle which Randall Wayne explores doesn’t look much like it did before a cataclysm in the 80s all but ended the human race. Now Randall is searching for his family, and only quick climbs, precision leaps, and desperate fights will keep him in one piece until he finds them.
Unlike most horror platformers,Deadlightis 2.5D, a gorgeous landscape of urban decay the player must traverse or die.Deadlightgives new life to zombie horror by emphasizing traversal as much as combat, offering a much-needed respite to fans of the genre bored of repetitive slaying. Throw in excellent sound design, andDeadlightis a solid contender, though it could easily have been justanother forgotten zombie game.
5Shady Part Of Me
The game is as close as they come to being a living storybook, with animation and an aesthetic befittingCoraline.This brief puzzle platformer is heavy on ambiguity and creepiness. Dark, surreal, emotionally wrought, and altogether excellent,Shady Part of Meis also surprisingly heartfelt.
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The protagonists of theShady Part of Meare a little girl and her shadow, and the light and shadow mechanic allow the player to switch between 3D and 2D gameplay at will.Those who play it will likely find the game impossible to imagine without the narration by Hannah Murray (Gilly fromGame of Thrones), whose voice works wonders to deepen the atmosphere of this dark fairytale.
