The best horror games without guns

Key recommendations

• The best horror games create strong feelings of helplessness for players by stripping them of weapons and defenses.
• The scariest horror games portray players as the hunted, not the hunters, facing overwhelming odds.
• Helplessness in horror games is achieved by players being completely defenseless, with no weapons or combat options.

Good horror gamesexcels at making players feel helpless. While most action titles and role-playing games allow players to empower themselves with weapons and special abilities, horror games go in the opposite direction, throwing the protagonist into a truly hopeless situation and forcing them to fight to survive and find a way out.

One of the easiest ways to achieve this hopeless feeling is to make the player completely defenseless. Some of the scariest horror games have no guns, or any kind of fighting. The protagonist is left entirely at the mercy of the terrifying forces trying to end them, and the player must fight to survive the onslaught with no way to fight back. Here are some of the the best horror games without guns.

10 Five Nights at Freddy's

A week of woe

original Five Nights at Freddy's it's a game that needs no introduction. This indie darling has exploded in popularity thanks to its simple yet unique premise and the haunting designs of its terrifying animatronics. The title has since spawned a massive multimedia franchise spanning multiple games and even a major motion picture.

One of the reasons the game works so well is the utter powerlessness of the player character. The doors to the protagonist's small office offer only a weak, temporary defense against the lumbering animatronics, and players must carefully track the entire restaurant to stay alive. With no real way to fight back against these horrible machines, the player is a sitting duck for five horrific nights.

9 I'm on observation duty

Anomaly hunting

I'm on observation duty is a small-scale horror experience that spawned a respectable series of sequels, all based on the same thrilling premise. In I'm on observation dutyplayers take on the role of a surveillance operator who must scrutinize a mysterious house through a series of security cameras. The only way to survive is to catch the supernatural phenomena as they happen and report them on the spot.

This simple yet high-stakes gameplay loop leads to high tension and rampant paranoia throughout the game's short gameplay. Fans who want to experience more tension can turn to the game's many sequels, but the first game alone will make for a solid evening of pure terror.

8 The mortuary assistant

Condemned among the dead

Even among other horror games, The mortuary assistant it is a particularly macabre experience. As the name suggests, the player character is caught working in a morgue late at night when he is attacked by a creepy demonic entity. The player must fight to stay alive while figuring out how to banish the demon before it's too late.

Although the game is quite short, a robust element of randomization keeps its replayability high. Different hauntings and spectral events will occur with each game, preventing the game from becoming predictable or stale. Each visit to the morgue will offer unique terrifying demonic encounters that the player is almost powerless to resist.

7 Doki Doki Literature Club

Appearances can be deceiving

The shocking twist in the heart Doki Doki Literature Club it's the stuff of legends now, but when it was released, it took the gaming world completely by surprise. This addictive psychological horror game hides its deeply disturbing content behind a seemingly innocent visual novel about romance and poetry, only to draw fans into the true horror that lies beneath.

Doki Doki Literature Club offers some surprisingly deep and heavy themes about the nature of relationships and even the constraints of the video game genre itself. There is no combat in the game and not even enemies in the traditional sense, but Doki Doki Literature Club will likely keep fans on the edge of their seats from the first reveal of his true nature until the very end.

6 Iron Lung

Unimaginable depths

The horror genre's continued attempts to scare players in new and unexpected ways have resulted in some truly imaginative games and Iron Lung is one of the strangest. This game drops the player as a prisoner on an alien moon adrift in an ocean of blood, sealed in a tiny windowless submarine and forced to explore the depths of Stygia.

The protagonist's only means of interacting with the outside world is a slow, old-fashioned camera that will give them brief, time-delayed snapshots of the deep waters outside. These blinding flashes of perspective on an otherwise incomprehensible sea, coupled with the intense claustrophobia of the player's tiny submarine, create a sense of helplessness and horror that is almost unmatched in the genre.

5 Immortality

The mystery of Marissa Marcel

Immortality may stretch the definition of what a video game is, but it's still a remarkably creative horror experience that fans of the genre won't want to miss. The game is presented as a collection of archive footage from three unfinished films, all featuring a mysteriously missing actress named Marissa Marcel. Flipping through the footage, players can try to piece together what happened to her, but it quickly becomes apparent that something much darker is going on beneath the surface.

His secrets Immortality they are much better experienced than summary, but they take the game to some really disturbing places. This is far from a conventional horror video game, but it will lead to just as many sleepless nights until the mystery is solved.

4 Phasmophobia

Ghost hunting with friends

Phasmophobia exploded in popularity in late 2020 when it served as a seasonally appropriate way to freak out with online friends. This game features up to four players as professional ghost hunters, traveling to haunted locations and gathering spectral evidence to identify a ghost before killing them.

Players can subdue and banish the game's hostile spirits through various means, but cannot fight them directly. Usually, if a player sees a ghost face to face, it's already too late. Players must tread carefully and battle faulty equipment and mixed spirits to stay alive and earn their keep.

3 Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Depths of Madness

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is in many ways the gold standard for helplessness in horror games. This survival horror game casts players as a man without his lost memories in a dark and crumbling castle infested with horrors beyond comprehension. At no point does the game give the player any concrete way to fight these abominations, forcing them to rely on stealth and evasion if they want to stay alive.

The oppressive atmosphere of madness and horror that pervades every second of Amnesia made him an icon in the horror genre and provided the blueprint for several sequels. For all the fear these later games caused, Amnesia: The Dark Descent remains one of the most iconic survival horror games out there.

2 challenge

A nautical nightmare

This nightmare game from its creators Amnesia: The Dark Descenttransports players to an abandoned research station right at the bottom of the ocean. This terrifying facility is populated by wriggling robotic horrors and horribly mutated humans and fish. The protagonist, Simon, must learn how he got there and how to escape before he is slaughtered by the game's creepy and unstoppable machines.

Just like his sibling game Amnesia, challenge quickly spirals into despair and horror as players learn how the facility was destroyed and how Simon got there. This game deals with dark and tragic themes regarding the fate of the human race and the nature of digitized consciousness, and its philosophical implications are almost as disturbing as the horrors that haunt its watery halls.

1 for

A lost legend

the infamous for it's the stuff of video game legend, both for how profoundly, incredibly terrifying it is, and because it's forever lost to modern gaming. This short game served to set the stage for a future entry into silent hill franchise, created by the illustrious Hideo Kojima, but unfortunately the game has been canceled and the playable demo has been removed from stores.

When it was available, for it was a revolutionary title. It trapped players in an endlessly repeating hallway, going back and forth as players escaped the attentions of a malevolent spirit and puzzled over deeply sinister environmental clues to solve the game's dark past . Silent Hills It could have been a truly unforgettable game, but fans are lucky to play for they could still experience the hopeless feeling of being forever trapped in a madman's nightmare.