Summary
Good horror gamesexcel at making players feel helpless. While most action titles and RPGs let players empower themselves with weapons and special abilities, horror games go the opposite direction, casting the protagonist in a truly hopeless situation and forcing them to struggle to survive and find a way out.
One of the easiest ways to accomplish this hopeless feeling is by making the player completely defenseless.Some of the scariest horror games don’t have any weapons,or any sort of combat at all. The protagonist is left entirely at the mercy of the terrifying forces trying to end them, and the player must struggle to survive the onslaught without any way to fight back. Here are some of thebest horror games without weapons.
The originalFive Nights At Freddy’sis a game that needs no introduction. This indie darling exploded in popularity thanks to its simple but unique premise and the haunting designs of its terrifying animatronics. The title has since spawned a massive multimediafranchise encompassing several gamesand even a major motion picture.
One of the reasons the game works so well is the sheer helplessness of the player character. The doors of the protagonist’s tiny office provide only a weak, temporary defense against the lumbering animatronics, and players must carefully keep tabs on the whole restaurant in order to stay alive. With no real way to fight back against these horrible machines, the player is a sitting duck for five harrowing nights.
PC, macOS, Linux, iOS
Genre
Horror, Puzzle
I’m On Observation Dutyis a bite-sized horror experience which has spawned a respectable series of sequels, all based around the same hair-raising premise. InI’m On Observation Duty, players 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 supernatural phenomena as they happen and report them on the spot.
This simple but high-stakes gameplay loop leads to high tension and paranoia spiking intensely over the course of the game’s brief playtime. 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.
Even among other games in the horror genre,The Mortuary Assistantis a particularly macabre experience. As the name suggests, the player character is caught working in a mortuary late at night when they are attacked by a horrifying demonic entity. The player must struggle to stay alive while finding out how to banish the demon before it’s too late.
While the game is rather short, a robust randomization element keeps its replayability high. Different hauntings and spectral events will occur on each playthrough, preventing the game from growing predictable or stale. Each and every visit to the mortuary will provide uniquely terrifying demonic encounters, which the player is all but helpless to resist.
The shocking twist at the heart ofDoki Doki Literature Clubis the stuff of legends now, but when it launched, it took the gaming world completely by surprise. This gripping psychological horror game hides its deeply disturbing content behind a seemingly innocent visual novel about romance and poetry, only tolure fans into the true horrorlurking beneath.
Doki Doki Literature Clubdelivers on 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 any enemies in the traditional sense, butDoki Doki Literature Clubwill likely still have fans on the edge of their seat from the first reveal of its true nature all the way to the end.
The horror genre’s continued attempts to frighten players in new and unexpected ways have led to some truly imaginative games, andIron Lungis one of the strangest. This game casts the player as a prisoner on an alien moon adrift in an ocean of blood, sealed into a tiny, windowless submarine and forced to explore the stygian depths.
The protagonist’sonly means of interacting with the outside worldis a slow, old-fashioned camera that will give them brief, time-delayed snapshots of the deep waters outside. These blind flashes of insight into an otherwise incomprehensible sea, coupled with the intense claustrophobia of the player’s tiny submarine, make for a sense of helplessness and dread that is almost unparalleled in the genre.
Immortalitymay 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 archival footage from three unfinished films, all starring a mysteriously disappeared actress named Marissa Marcel. By browsing through the footage, players can attempt to piece together what happened to her, but it swiftly becomes apparent that there’s something much darker going on beneath the surface.
The secrets ofImmortalityare much better experienced than summarized, but they take the game to some truly unnerving places. This is far from a conventional horror video game, but it will lead to just as many sleepless nightsby the time the mystery is solved.
Phasmophobiaexploded in popularity in late 2020, when it served as a seasonally-appropriate way to get scared with friends online. This game casts up to four players as professional ghost hunters, traveling to haunted locales and collecting spectral evidencein order to identify a ghostbefore it murders them.
Players can subdue and ward away the game’s hostile spirits through various means, but they can’t fight back against them directly. Typically, if a player sees a phantom face to face, it’s already too late. Players must proceed carefully and contend with faulty equipment and meddlesome spirits in order to stay alive and earn their keep.
Amnesia: The Dark Descentis, in many ways, the gold standard for helplessness in horror gaming. This survival horror game casts players as a man without his memories lost in a dark and crumbling castle, infested with horrors beyond comprehension. At no point does the game offer the player any concrete way to fight back against these abominations, forcing them to rely on stealth and evasion if they want to stay alive.
The oppressive atmosphere of madness and dread that pervades every second ofAmnesiahas made it an icon in the horror genre, and provided the blueprint for several sequels. For all the dread these later games have caused,Amnesia: The Dark Descentremains one of the most iconic survival horror games out there.
This nightmarish game, from the creators ofAmnesia: The Dark Descent, transports players to a derelict research station at the very bottom of the ocean. This terrifying facility is populated by shambling robotic horrors and hideously 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 horrifying, unstoppable killing machines.
Much like its sibling gameAmnesia,SOMAspirals swiftly into despairand dread as players learn how the facility came to be destroyed and how Simon ended up there. This game deals with dark and tragic themes concerning the fate of the human race and the nature of digitized consciousness, and its philosophical implications are almost as troubling as the horrors that stalk its waterlogged halls.
The infamousP.T.is the stuff of video game legend, both because of how deeply, incredibly frightening it is, and because it’s lost to modern gaming forever. This brief game served to set the stage for an upcoming entry in theSilent Hillfranchise, created by the illustrious Hideo Kojima, but unfortunately, the game was canceled, and the playable demo was removed from stores.
When it was available,P.T.was a revolutionary title. It trapped players in an endlessly repeating hallway, looping back on itself over and over again while players evaded the attention of a malevolent spirit and puzzled over deeply sinister environmental clues to sort out the game’s dark past.Silent Hillscould have been a truly unforgettable game, but fans lucky enough to playP.T.were still able to experience the hopeless feeling of being trapped forever in a madman’s nightmare.
