Most Artistic Horror Games

2 weeks ago 7

Most Artistic Horror Games Little Nightmares No One Lives Under the Lighthouse Silent Hill f Return of the Obra Dinn

Elena Chapella (She/Her) is a current Writer for DualShockers, formerly an award-winning journalist for local news stations and newspapers in central Indiana.

Elena is passionate about writing, playing Dungeons & Dragons with her friends, and, of course, playing video games.

When she's not writing, Elena is actually a high school teacher by day. She teaches students essential life skills for adulthood, including job readiness, financial literacy, and college preparation.

Video games are a form of art, and there's no arguing with me on the matter. Just look at titles like Ghost of Tsushima or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with some of the most stunning views gaming has ever seen.

Games have been a medium for artistic expression since their conception, acting as if it's cinema with a layer of interactivity. The best part about this expression is that it isn't limited to genre.

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In the horror sphere, artistic expression tends to only happen if it correlates with the game's themes and atmosphere, but the games that do implement it do so wonderfully.

There are plenty of stylized horror games out there, but these take the cake in the competition of artisanal beauty.

10 Little Nightmares

Through the Eyes of a Child

Little Nightmares Six Hiding From the Chefs In The Kitchen (1)

Little Nightmares is a game where you play as a child named Six, dealing with literal walking nightmares worse than what she can dream — and the art style of the game reflects the childish outlook that we're carrying with us. The sequels, Little Nightmares II and Little Nightmares III, follow the same style.

Not only are you childishly small in a world full of people that are colossally big, but you have to quickly solve puzzles (some of which are environmental) and run from evildoers in order to survive a world of hostilities. And trust, this world is unbelievably hostile towards you — it's similar to how it feels growing up in abusive environments.

The art style is childish and grotesque, with many of the monsters having some sort of uncanny quality about them (such as long, gangly limbs or a neck that stretches away from their shoulders). It's disturbing, unsettling, and just outright uncomfortable, pulling from deep, childish fears and manifesting them into things that would make adults squirm in their seats.

If we're ever playing a child in a horror game again, I hope that they have a similar, child-like approach to the art design like what Little Nightmares accomplished.

9 Detention

Historical and Poignant

Red Candle Games is known for telling incredibly poignant, thought-provoking stories, with a historical and cultural perspective to really drive that point home. Detention is one of their best known examples of this, a horror platformer with a uniquely pretty art style.

Taking place in 1960s Taiwan during the White Terror, with the whole country under martial law, there is a ton of commentary about family/generational trauma, power dynamics and abuse, and even suicide. As an American, we're not taught about the White Terror (or in all honesty, any Taiwanese history) in world history class, so it was equal parts educational and absolutely tragic — then again, tyranny and injustice is a tragedy in and of itself.

Unnecessary brutality from the government and the loss of freedom of speech are concepts that aren't just terrifying for us, they're the everyday reality for other people in different parts of the world. Yet, the art style is deceptively pretty, showcasing just how easy it is for evil and someone's hideous nature to hide in plain sight.

Plus, there is a ton of imagery from Taoism and Buddhism, which adds to the game's overall vibe and themes.

8 No One Lives Under the Lighthouse

Ready to Cry?

No One Lives Under The Lighthouse

If you end up playing a walking simulator horror game, you're in for either some of the scariest encounters of your life, or the saddest — in the case of No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, it's a little bit of both.

No One Lives Under the Lighthouse is a PS1-Style horror game that is filled to the brim with tension and atmosphere, not even taking into account the Lovecraftian horror that it does so well. With this OG Playstation style, there's a lot left up to imagination, just as there's much to the story left up to interpretation.

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The game is tiny but mighty, packed with content and ideas that really nail home that classic, survival horror feeling, but without overstaying its welcome.

It's only a two-hour game, too, so I won't spoil the surprise if you want to dive in and give it a shot for yourself. Believe me, you're in for an experience (and it's such a treat).

7 World of Horror

A Love Letter to Junji Ito's Works

If you're a fan of Junji Ito and his horror manga, you would love World of Horror, a game that's directly inspired by his art style and honors it in its graphics. At times, you'd catch yourself wondering if he was involved in the game's creation at all, because the art direction is that close to the source material.

World of Horror takes place in Shiokawa, Japan, while a deranged cult tries to bring the Old Gods to our world. You play between fourteen different characters, all with their own subplots, trying to figure out what's going on (and stop the cult) — naturally, there are multiple endings in this game to back it up.

The art style of this game is striking, using monochrome colors and early computer interfaces in order to achieve this unsettling image. You would think that something without color would be harder to make scary, but World of Horror seems to be scarier because of the lack of color.

Either way, the visuals are fantastic, with an equally entertaining (and terrifying) endeavor to follow suit.

6 FAITH: The Unholy Trinity

Atari Graphics and Rotoscoped Animation

When it comes to unique art directions, FAITH: The Unholy Trinity is one of the best examples in gaming, taking on Atari-style graphics and sound, alongside with rotoscoped animation for cutscenes. This makes the whole game feel outright uncanny, and it's perfect for the Satanic Panic that's trying to be conveyed here.

You play as a priest, returning to a house where you last failed to exorcise a young girl. This time, you're going to make things right, no matter what you have to do in order to make that happen.

Yet, the main thing that players remember apart from the rich story is the incredibly stylized design, integrating retro graphics with Catholic imagery, painting a picture that we haven't seen in gaming before or since. It really has no business to be as good as it is, but that's the trilogy for you: quality from every angle.

Love or hate the gameplay, you can't deny that this game is a work of religious art.

5 Darkwood

A Nightmare of Survival

After Darkwood 2 was recently announced, now is as good a time as ever to play the first Darkwood game. The premise is simple: you have to survive in the woods, with every little sound from this forest adding to your ever-increasing paranoia.

In terms of art direction, Darkwood takes a top-down approach, almost as if you're playing a D&D game, but with incredible lighting and a seeping darkness that comes from every direction. It's uniquely designed, and I honestly have yet to see another game that looks quite like this one.

Horror Games Better to Watch Than Play Until Dawn FAITH The Unholy Trinity Doki Doki Literature Club DDLC Amnesia The Dark Descent

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The survival elements in this game are as pure as it gets, with players having to manage their resources and strategize before committing to a decision, otherwise things would not end in their favor. This gets all the more challenging when you start to run into the different enemies that this game throws at you.

Either way, it's easily one of the best open world horror games out there, and it makes us all the more excited for the sequel.

4 Still Wakes the Deep

The Shape is Mesmerizing

When you first play as Caz McCleary and dive into Still Wakes the Deep (no pun intended), you aren't thrown into any nightmare sequences or any action-packed adventures. Rather, you open at one of the lowest points in your life, reading a letter from your wife about where your helpless life will be headed — it's desperate and hopeless, setting the tone for the rest of the game.

Yet, that's nowhere near the end of the tragedy that's about to unfold. In Still Wakes the Deep, you're an engineer on an oil rig, one that made the mistake of drilling into an Eldritch monstrosity called The Shape, which immediately retaliates for this action.

From there, you have to figure out a way to get off the oil rig and stay alive, all while being subjected to horrifying encounters beyond human comprehension. The Shape is one of the best examples of this, taking on a form that we can't understand, existing in a way that's equal parts mystifying and horrific, like a forest fire you can't look away from.

Often, we see Lovecraftian horror depicted as horrible, grotesque abominations that don't make any sense. Yet, Still Wakes the Deep remains faithful to this concept, all while asking: "What if the all-powerful monster was something beautiful instead?"

3 Layers of Fear

You're an Artist, After All

Before Bloober Team was thrown into the spotlight for how wonderfully it approached the Silent Hill 2 Remake (I'm continuously screaming, crying, and throwing up with excitement just thinking about the original Silent Hill Remake), they got a taste of this spotlight by popularizing the horror walking simulator with Layers of Fear. In 2023, it was remade to combine both the original and sequel, as well as smooth out the story overall.

In Layers of Fear, you play as a painter trying to create your magnum opus, yet you keep running into various mental barriers that stop you from achieving this. If you've heard of the term "tortured artist," there is no better example than the one you play in Layers of Fear.

Because of this, the art style of this game is a bit more realistic, but it focuses on the paintings and environments like you're walking through museum exhibits. This gives players equal parts beauty to appreciate, environmental storytelling to piece the puzzle together, and even a healthy amount of atmosphere to keep you on the edge of your seat.

While Layers of Fear's art style seems rather basic in comparison to the rest of the list, its emphasis on art and artistic expression simply cannot be ignored.

2 Return of the Obra Dinn

A Mystery in Open Water

return-of-the-obra-dinn-two-people-investigate-dead-body.jpg

If you love a good mystery, especially some good true crime, you'll absolutely love Return of the Obra Dinn. In it, you play as an insurance agent trying to figure out what happened to the Obra Dinn, an entire ship that went missing, including all the crew aboard. It's detailed and thorough, encouraging you to take notes in order to keep track of everything and make proper deductions.

Yet, this game is not only a gem for its storytelling and mystery, but also due to the distinct art style that it took on in order to tell this story. Pixellated and monochrome, it's easy for you to overlook some clues or details, and that's done on purpose — you have to work to figure this mystery out.

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It's a genuinely unsettling adventure, one that will leave players scratching their heads and eventually leaping out of their seats. There is a lot to unpack here, and the art direction just adds to the building tension that's present in the air.

Plus, the puzzles are so well-done, many are asking for a sequel, just to experience this game again.

1 Silent Hill f

The Most Stunning Horror Game to Date

Silent Hill f is, without a doubt, the most stunningly beautiful horror game I have ever played, and it's not even close. NeoBards, the development team, was told to "find beauty in terror," and the studio absolutely nailed it. Every single frame is equal parts grotesque and gorgeous, to where you truly don't know how to feel about what you're looking at.

In Silent Hill f, you play as Shimizu Hinako, a young woman in Showa Era Japan trying to navigate the oppressive environment laid out for her. Not only is the game an incredible commentary on the fears of marriage/losing yourself in marriage, conformity, abuse, and other feminine fears, but the beauty that was incorporated into the world only add to these themes. Red spider lilies, for example, symbolize death in Japan, which shows exactly how Hinako views marriage.

It's a masterpiece all around, but the visuals are just top-notch. You really haven't played any games like this, and likely won't again for a while — at least, until other developers are eventually inspired by this game and want to create something similar of their own.

Seriously, the fact that this game wasn't even considered for Best Art Direction for The Game Awards is absolutely criminal, because it's just that stunning.