2013 - DayZ Mod
The DayZ mod for Arma 2 was released in 2013, and is currently in development as a standalone game. You’ve got limited supplies, and finding ample supplies appears to be an impossibility. There isn’t a particular goal beyond surviving, but with a group of mates, surviving the zombie apocalypse game is quite the thrill.
On most servers, any player can enter, and you’re not necessarily all on the same team. As such, running into a zombie is frightening, but running into another player (as rare as it may be) presents you with a level of adrenaline you haven’t known before. Kill them, and you can scavenge all the resources they’ve collected. However, if they see you before you see them, they can send you into perma-death before you even know it, and you’ll have to start collecting resources from scratch again.
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2008 - Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead is another one of those games that isn’t really scary, but as the go-to co-op zombie shooter, it has to be on this list. You can play it with up to four players, and it has a brilliant AI that controls the hordes of zombies, a beautiful film grain effect, tons of carnage, and enough levels to keep you busy for hours. What more do you need?
Even today, any time we go to a LAN party or organize one, we almost always end up playing at least one mission of Left 4 Dead.
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2015 - Emily Wants to Play
On your last pizza delivery of the night, you go into a scary house. A little girl named Emily locks the door behind you, and she wants to play. You better play along with Emily and her dolls, because if you don’t, the jump scares will get you and you’ll have to start over. As the game progresses, you find out who Emily is and what happened to her and the house.
Moral of the story: if you’re delivering pizza late at night, don’t go inside the house.
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2011 - Dead Island
Dead Island is an open-world survival horror game where your goal is to survive the zombie apocalypse with four characters who are immune to the zombie infection. It’s full of crafting, quests, combat, and gore. Contrary to taking place in a dark scary city, though, the game instead occurs on a beautiful tropical island called Banoi -- a welcome change for a zombie game.
The game was developed by the Polish Techland and published by the German Deep Silver. Ironically, though, the game was officially banned in Germany for being too violent.
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2015 - Fran Bow
Fran Bow illustrates the story of a young girl who witnessed the murder of her parents, and who is now suffering from a mental disorder. Her only friend is a cat called Mr. Midnight, and together they try to find out who killed her parents.
The game is full of story, and tells it in a most disturbing, yet compelling way. It is presented in a 2D cartoon format, but nevertheless, it is still fuel for nightmares.
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2013 - Slender: The Arrival
Slender: The Arrival follows in the footsteps of the original free Slender: The Eight Pages, in which you explore a handful of abandoned areas. Your goal is to collect pages, activate generators, or other such demenial tasks.
Of course, the game mostly exists to bring a real-life product to the internet-created Slender Man character, so if you're itching for another game featuring the terrifying character, this might be the ticket.
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2014 - Five Nights at Freddy’s
During the day, the animatronic entertainers at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza are great entertainers, but at night they turn into wretched murderous savages. Rather than fixing them, the owner decided to hire you as a security guard from 12am - 6am to keep the place safe. But in fact, your real job is to stay alive.
The animatronic mascots try to make their way to the control room, where you keep an eye on them through a tablet with security cameras in each room of the establishment. Your only defenses are the iron doors on your left and right, which you’ll want to close before they get in and kill you.
Just be careful, every action you take drains your battery levels. Drain it to zero and you’ll sign your own death certificate.
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2017 - Prey
Prey is Dead Space on steroids. The game is set on a space station called Talos I, where you have to fight your way through the campaign, facing various enemies and solving puzzles along the way. These enemies range from rather innocent mimics that can mimic every-day objects (go figure), to the feared Nightmare, a name that fits the bill quite well.
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