13 Best Horror Games On Xbox Game Pass To Keep You Up At Night

Zombies aren’t the scariest thing in the world these days, thanks in large part to how many movies, shows, and games rely on the undead. But enough of them, spitting acid at you or attacking your friends in the middle of a dark forest is still scary. And Back 4 Blood, a co-op shooter very similar to Left 4 Dead, will let you experience that fear alone or with pals

While Telltale eventually drove their The Walking Dead formula into the ground, the first couple of seasons of episode adventures did a fantastic job of capturing the comic book franchise. The world is mostly taken over by zombies, and you are one among a small group of survivors, trying to protect a child called Clementine from the incessant undead threat. With your decisions having significant consequences that played out across entire seasons, it was Telltale’s branching narrative format at its finest.

Sure, we’re getting a new remake of the original Dead Space. That’s great. But if you want to experience (or replay) the original Dead Space trilogy, they are all available on Game Pass. Borrowing heavily from Aliens, the Dead Space games have you struggling to survive on enormous spaceships, overrun by zombie-like necromorphs, while constantly having the shit scared out of you. While I know many love Dead Space 1 and 2, I’d recommend giving 3 a chance too. It’s not as good as those first two entries, but it’s still a creepy adventure through a snowy hellscape.

While I prefer the sequel, both The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2 are scary survival-horror games that will probably remind you of Resident Evil 4. That’s not a random coincidence, either. Shinji Mikami, who was the director of multiple Resident Evil games including RE4, directed the first game and was an executive producer on the sequel. Like RE4, Evil Within mixes third-person action with scary situations, creepy locations, and puzzles.

I know some folks dislike Doom 3 for valid reasons. But as its own thing, and not a sequel to Doom 2, (which it is, but in name only…) I think first-person shooter Doom 3 is fantastic! Its use of shadows and darkness is excellent, hiding demons and other threats behind the darkness. Doom 3 also has some disturbing (in a good way!) sound design. And if you want to really get scared playing Doom 3, I highly recommend playing the VR port of the game released on PSVR earlier this year.

Playdead’s follow-up to Limbo proved an even bigger success with their Shadowy Child Stumbles To The Right format. Inside tells the esoteric tale of a child trying to escape from (maybe?) some sort of gruesome facility, while being horrendously murdered by impossible-to-predict attacks. Yes, it’s Rick Dangerous for the new millennium. There are some truly iconic scenes, most especially that one with the yellow chicks, and of course the incredibly divisive ending.

How scary can one alien be? You just hide and run to an exit. Good luck. Alien Isolation is different than basically every other game based on the popular sci-fi franchise. You aren’t fighting off waves of xenomorphs using assault rifles or playing as the Predator. Instead, you are just one person, stuck on a desolate space station filled with deadly androids and one really nasty and equally deadly alien creature. You can hide, you can run, but it will find you and it will scare the shit out of you.

This isn’t as intense or scary as some of the other games on this list, but American Nightmare is a perfect, bite-sized shooter with just the right amount of creepy bad guys and eerie worlds to explore. Creepiest of all is Mr. Scratch, a doppelganger of Wake, in a hefty echo of Stephen King’s The Dark Half. This is a more action-focused approach to Alan Wake, although the beleaguered writer is still aiming his flashlight at the game’s monsters in order to be able to fight. If you loved Alan Wake or the more recently released Control and you haven’t played American Nightmare, give this one a spin. And say hello to Mr. Scratch for me, the bastard.

Love horror games and scary movies? Love asymmetrical multiplayer games? Well folks, I got a perfect game for you: Dead By Daylight. Four players take on the role of survivors trying to hide and complete objectives. Meanwhile, one player takes on the role of a killer trying to stop and murder them all. This game has seen frequent updates since it was released back in 2016, adding new characters like Michael Myers from Halloween and Ghostface from Scream.

Sure, the Zombie Army series is not exactly the most highly esteemed run of games. They’re about shooting zombie Nazis, you see. But the point is, you don’t pick up a new Dean Koontz and expect to read Tolstoy. The bizarre result of a spin-off from the Sniper Elite series by Rebellion, Zombie Army has gone on to become its own thing, and importantly, it does a mighty fine job of it. Zombie Army 4 certainly doesn’t win any prizes for originality, but if you’re looking for a good, daft time shooting at baddies, it delivers.

When you first think of Prey, it might not immediately strike you as a horror game. That clean, empty space station, the tidy offices and their coffee mugs and whiteboards. But then at a certain point, those exact coffee mugs and whiteboards are suddenly sproinging to life as the twisted Mimics, and you’re jumping out of your skin as you race for safety, heart beating, turrets toppling, and yeah, no, this is definitely a horror game.

In a lot of ways this game is just “Okay, but what if we added more zombies and guns to Minecraft?” But even with that somewhat stale setup, 7 Days To Die succeeds at using the open world and crafting of Minecraft while also elevating its zombie action. You don’t just need to survive, you need to somehow build a place to call home while an endless horde of undead tries to bash their way into your shelter. Getting lost in the woods, knowing you might lose hours of work, makes an already scary and tense situation worse. Play with some friends to help make things easier.

It’s hard to think of a better example of a game that takes the term “psychological horror” more literally. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a game that explores the terror of psychological illness, and captures a sense of dread that can make it a brutal experience to play. While horror exists in the world around Senua, it also lives within her, and while you’re playing, in you. This is a truly challenging game, not just in its combat, but in its effects on your psyche as you play.