There are countless ways to terrify people through creative media. The easiest and most convenient route is to simply present something grossly violent or repulsive. While some consider this cheap, it is still effective. The other, more creative method of eliciting fear from audiences is making them feel uncomfortable or confusing them.
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The ten games featured below are so weird, they terrify gamers as they question reality and wonder what in the game is real or not. Sometimes this is done through gameplay mechanics, and other times it is purely through the story. The best of the best, however, accomplish this sensation through a combination of the two.
Updated July 30, 2025 by Jason Wojnar:Part of what makes certain games so scary is the unexpected and the unknown. This often dives into the weird, as several of the currently existing entries already show.
Because horror never goes out of style, this list has been updated with more entries, a couple of which have come out recently. Not everything weird is scary, but the games below all throw things at players that make them both scared and weirded out.
14Doki Doki Literature Club
Do not be fooled by this game’s cutesy facade.The visual novel starts off just like any otherbefore going into some extremely creepy and unsettling directions. It uses the genre and the gaming medium to tell a unique story diving into some heavy, adult, and disturbing themes.
The game at least warns players that the game becomes darker than its intro implies. This entry won’t spoil anything, but players should know it gets creepy and sad.
13D
This oddly named game is more of an interactive movie than a traditional game. It is extremely short and follows a woman as she discovers her family lineage has a dark, vampiric secret. Other than its story and gameplay, the weirdest thing aboutDis the time limit imposed on players.
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One has to beat the game within two hours before being forced to restart. Once finding out what to do, it is a breeze to complete, but the structure will intrigue just as many players as it frustrates.
12Five Nights At Freddy’s
There is not a lot that needs to be said about this extremely popular franchise.Five Nights at Freddy’sisn’t really weird, but the story behind its creation is. Creator Scott Cawthon made another game beforehand that was heavily criticized for having unintentionally scary animations.
Instead of giving up, Scott took this criticism and turned it into the foundation forFive Nights at Freddy’s. Why not make the unintentional horror intentional and fully indulge in it? Thus the gaming phenomenon was born.
11Murder House
Murder Houseis just one in a long line of video games from Puppet Combo. The developer specializes inPS1-styled horror games.Like in film, the archaic aesthetic and shoestring budget only lends to the terror.
The firstEvil Deadis scary because of its low budget, andMurder Houseis more terrifying than if it was made with cutting edge graphics. The game follows a news crew as they are in a haunted house as someone in an Easter Bunny costume hunts them one by one. Even just reading that description will make it hard for some to sleep at night.
10Silent Hill 2
While it plays like a traditionalsurvival horrorgame, James Sunderland’s journey through the titular town is anything but traditional. The game starts with him entering the town looking for his deceased wife, Mary, who recently sent a letter to him from beyond the grave. Once he starts exploring, he meets several other characters and the mystery around his relationship with Mary starts to unravel.
For 2001, such a narrative was simply unheard of.The creature designs are amazing, and Pyramid Head still gives fans nightmares, but the true terror comes from the unsettling environment and mysterious guilt haunting the characters.
9Alone In The Dark
This one gets weirder and weirder as time goes on, although the3Dcharacter models against two-dimensional backdrops were a format many other horror games would follow. Despite the archaic graphics, the 1991 title still manages to scare the pants off anyone who plays it and thanks to gog.com, the classic horror game now runs on most modern computers.
The story is heavily inspired by writers like Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, with many of the creatures also taking cues from their writing. The series has since fallen from grace, but no one can eliminate the first game’s influence.
8Harvester
This point-and-click adventure title is meant to explore the nature between violence and various forms of media. The game features numerous brutal acts, some of which are perpetrated by the player as they discover the mystery behind the mysterious town they are in.
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The acting and full-motion video quality areabout what one would expect from 1996, but that just adds to the plot’s inanity. The ending won’t be spoiled here, but it really drives its thematic point home about fictional violence’s relation to real-world violence.
7Catherine
Atlus’s puzzle-gameCatherinedeals with relationships and infidelity, splitting the gameplay between social simulation and puzzle-solving mechanics taking place in the main character’s dreams.
It deals with the guilt and intensity that comes from cheating and leading a double life. On the surface, it looks like a creepy game about male fantasies, but its plot is far more profound once one actually plays it.
6Eternal Darkness
Silicon Knights' cult classicGameCubetitle takes full advantage of the medium to strike unease into the hearts of anyone who plays it. Players have a sanity meter that affects the world depending on how full it is.
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The effects of one’s deteriorating sanity start out subtle like statues' eyes looking at the player, but increase to such drastic moments like the player’s head popping off, or presenting a false, yet convincing, disc read error message. Knowing about them diminishes the terror somewhat, but people experiencing it for the first time in 2002 were in for the shock of their gaming lives.
5Fatal Frame
Zombies and other monstersare killed with traditional weaponry but how does one harm a force of energy with no physical energy like a ghost?
In theFatal Frameseries, players defend themselves through the use of the Camera Obscura, a device that damages these beings by capturing them on film. The more in-focus the ghosts are, the more damage the photo does. The first game came out on thePS2in 2001, at a time when most games were still focused on combat, making the premier title an especially unique project.
