Macabre And Disturbing Video Games

Key Takeaways

• Macabre video games explore gruesome content from terminal illnesses to sexual violence, leaving players in a state of unease and dread.
• Games like What Remains of Edith Finch and That Dragon, Cancer tackle deep, emotional themes like grief and terminal illness through immersive storytelling.
• From murder simulators like Manhunt to horror games like Outlast, macabre games challenge players with disturbing content and dark themes.

Macabre video games are ones where death, despair, and other disturbing content feel inescapable and suffocating. While the horror genre is inevitably notorious for being the main perpetrator responsible for some of the most disturbing, morbid, and gruesome games on the market, macabre video games are not limited to one genre or style of gameplay. Several entries on this list are nothing short of appalling in terms of upsetting content, whereas others merely examine macabre subjects in beautiful and serene ways.

Be warned: the dark content in these games ranges from terminal illnesses, grief, and loss to body horror, sexual violence, and depravity. Whether subtle or blatant in their depictions of death and suffering, the most disturbing macabre games leave players with an unshakable feeling of dread.

This list features games with dark, triggering themes and gruesome graphics.

Updated on November 3, 2024, by Holly Dixon: Macabre games as a genre are not necessarily only about death and despair; they can discuss themes like life and hope, which is why games like That Dragon, Cancer also deserve recognition. While some macabre games are full of dread and darkness with little relief, like Dead Space 2 and A Plague Tale: Innocence, a rare few in the genre are brimming with charming character designs and cheerful yet wicked humor, such as Little Misfortune and Omori. The highly anticipated new remake of Silent Hill 2 is now available for fans to relive iconic terrors, and new, darker horror games are being released constantly, so horror enthusiasts can only hope that the genre keeps improving and growing, ideally getting more gruesome and inventive without becoming stale or predictable. Little Nightmares 3 and a sequel to the horror staple Alien: Isolation are promised for upcoming years, but there is certainly no shortage of disturbing content for gamers to enjoy.

22 What Remains Of Edith Finch

Contains: Grief, Death, Child Neglect, And Suicide

Not nearly as gruesome or gory as other entries on this list, What Remains of Edith Finch is a macabre walking simulator with an unrelenting depiction of death. The protagonist, Edith, returns to the Finch home, which is essentially a mausoleum dedicated and preserved in memory of the relatives who died there, due to a rumored hereditary curse. Although each room of the home is sealed off in memory of a different deceased family member, the decor makes it one of the coziest houses in gaming that feels as if its occupants are still present.

With every morbid tale, players mourn characters they have only just met but whose endearing personalities shine through undeniably. Players even fear (while traversing the more precariously built sections of the house) that Edith will fall to her own death and succumb to the family curse before their eyes. Despite criticisms for a lack of interactivity and autonomy, invested players will finish What Remains of Edith Finch with the disturbing feeling of having just attended the funerals of twenty relatives one after the other.

21 That Dragon, Cancer

Contains: Death, Terminal Illness, and Grief

No doubt a dreaded disease that plagues all ages, cancer feels particularly cruel and heartbreaking when a child is suffering from it. That Dragon, Cancer captures that sharp morbidity of a childhood tinged with illness in a two-hour immersive virtual experience from Numinous Games about five-year-old Joel Green. The gameplay switches back and forth from honest recreations of Joel’s memories in and out of the hospital to abstract, dreamy mini-game sequences that imaginatively paint Joel’s feelings, all rendered with faceless 3D models that can feel intimidating or wholesome.

Already tackling a deeply emotive topic, That Dragon, Cancer is particularly raw because the content is not fictional. Funded by donations from Kickstarter and created by Ryan and Amy Green, this game is a love letter to their son Joel. Players will discover the dialogue is entirely voiced by Joel’s family and features real recordings of Joel’s voice; they may also notice the real photos and letters from cancer survivors and their families in the background of the hospital, blurring the lines between the game and reality. This game forces players to face the difficult truth of a real child’s mortality head-on. Tragically, Joel passed away while the game was still being developed. Released on Joel’s birthday, That Dragon, Cancer is considered a memorial to Joel’s life, its credits brimming with photos of Joel at his happiest times with the family that loved him dearly.

20 My Lovely Daughter

Contains: Mass Killing And Human Sacrifice

• Platforms: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
• Released: March 8, 2018
• Developers: GameChanger Studio
• Genres: Simulation, Adventure

Although not the most visually horrifying game, My Lovely Daughter is a title with emotionally distressing gameplay. A cruel twist on typical parenting simulators, gamers play as a grieving father attempting to resurrect his daughter’s corpse utilizing the most sadistic methods possible. Using dark magic, the father figure creates dozens of living, elemental ‘homunculus’ daughters with real feelings, indulges in the pretense of raising them safely, and then mercilessly slaughters them to harvest their souls.

The gameplay necessitates players to nurture their homemade sacrifices for a set period of time and receive somber, frightened, and humanizing letters from the daughters they must later kill. Despite living a miserable existence, the daughters largely adore their creator, unaware of the player’s cruel intentions, resulting in a harrowing and heartbreaking gaming experience.

19 Omori

Contains: Suicide, Violence, Mental Health Struggles, And Murder

At first glance, Omori might be mistaken for a nostalgic top-down 8-bit game, with its colorful, creative maps and cutesy unique character designs. It is deceptively cheerful when players have a happy party of friends following them to battle bizarre, adorable creatures, but it is far from child-friendly. In many ways, Omori is a darker alternative game to play for lovers of Undertale, a wholesome pixel-art RPG, which bears many similarities, including multiple personas for the protagonist, quirky humor, and an emphasis on the power of friendship and kindness.

Players switch between controlling Omori while exploring a dreamy world called “Headspace” and Sunny when back in the “real world.” Dark themes become apparent as Omori faces dark hallucinations, and self-harms, kills his re-spawning friends, and encounters unnerving representations of Sunny’s real life, such as a black entity named “Dad” that states bluntly: “You’re not my son.” Without spoiling key plot points, Omori is an alter-ego created by Sunny to hide from the guilt and trauma of a terrible crime, and even the best possible endings all involve bloodshed or despair of some kind, making it a poignant, macabre take on a traditionally gleeful genre.

18 Welcome To The Game

Contains: Murder, Criminal Activity, Sexual Assault, Torture, Taboo

• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, macOS
• Released: June 15, 2016
• Developers: Reflect Studios
• Genres: Simulation, Indie Horror

Although criticized for an overly dramatic portrayal of the dark web, Welcome To The Game taps into the fear that online human depravity is only a few clicks away, leaving players feeling sickened with themselves for witnessing and participating. Players must scour the dark web in search of codes to access a live stream of a ‘red room’ while tackling hackers and evading kidnappers. The result is an eerie and, at times, frustrating experience, as players try to focus on their screens while feeling vulnerable to violent jump scares or creeping killers outside their field of vision.

To its detriment, the gameplay and graphics are clunky and unimpressive at times, and the antagonists are prone to cheesy, heavily recycled catchphrases. Welcome To The Game 2 took the original concept and stepped it up with improved visuals, even scarier villains, and the ability to roam more freely around an entire building rather than feeling chained to the desk and computer. At its heart, Welcome To The Game is about the terrifying details; players who take the time to read the twisted fictional web pages will uncover the heart of this franchise’s morbidity.

17 The Little Nightmares Series

Contains: Child Endangerment, Violence, Disturbing Images, Death and Despair

What makes the Little Nightmares Series haunting is its storybook-esque aesthetics, starring adorable tiny child protagonists that players desperately want to protect from the sinister gray darkness of their surroundings, even if the true little nightmares are the children themselves. In the first game, players must protect Six, a dangerously hungry little girl in a yellow raincoat who is trapped on an underwater vessel called the Maw. As she traverses the puzzles in this platformer game, the fantastical creatures Six encounters largely want to cause her harm, such as the carnivorous leeches or the long-armed janitor. Six comes across other listless children who are being kept prisoner and falls into a room of children’s shoes, implying a systematic massacre of innocents. Throughout her journey, Six loses her innocence, becoming more violent and hungry to cope in a harsh world.

In 2021, Tarsier Studios released Little Nightmares 2, which is actually a prequel, whereby Six is saved by a boy with a paper bag on his head called Mono. Six becomes Mono’s non-playable companion as their bleak adventure takes place in a school plagued by cruel bullies and scary teachers and in a hospital with evil doctors and headless mannequin patients. However, their main antagonist is the Thin Man, whom Mono is able to free. After Six heartbreakingly betrays Mono, he morphs into a new Thin Man doomed to repeat the cycle, while Six is driven by her hunger to go to the Maw, launching the events of the first game. The Little Nightmares series is most upsetting due to its bizarre, unnerving character designs, which hint mysteriously towards dark backstories that are rarely explained to the player. The last entry to the Franchise, Little Nightmares 3, is due to be released in 2025 by Supermassive, and will hopefully be as disturbing, bleak, and unsettlingly beautiful as its predecessors under Tarsier Studios.

16 Condemned: Criminal Origins

Contains: Murder, Torture, And Violence

Falsely accused of killing several police officers, Codenamed: Criminal Origins players attempt to clear their name as respected FBI agents by single-handedly chasing down serial killers without backup: a nightmare few want to face. Investigating in near darkness with a dimly lit flashlight, players are submerged in unpleasant crimes and faced with the dregs of humanity as they seek the cause for the escalation of mindless violence in the area.

Some aspects of Condemned: Criminal Origins‘ gameplay might feel outdated and in need of remastering, including occasional cheesy dialogue, character designs, crow-bar-swinging enemies, and limited fight mechanics for the PC. Flaws aside, this game is disturbing for its macabre content and sanity deterioration, forcing players to distinguish between what is real and what is a hallucination.

15 A Plague Tale: Innocence

Contains: Murder, Disease, Dead Bodies, And Violence

A Plague Tale: Innocence proves that even the most enthusiastic time-traveling historians would be horrified to live in a game world set in 14th Century France, suffering at the height of the Black Death. Revolving around a sibling duo attempting to cope with unimaginable illness, evading the violent Inquisition and swarms of ravenous diseased rats, Asobo Studio’s 2019 survival adventure game is bleak and unforgiving.

Set in haunting backgrounds of mass graves and fields of corpses, the title references the innocence of fifteen-year-old Amicia and five-year-old Hugo, which is trampled upon mercilessly throughout gameplay. Both struggle with trauma and guilt as Amicia is forced to repeatedly slaughter their enemies to protect her brother, and sensitive, sickly Hugo eventually commands armies of rats to savage people. Endearing moments of hand-holding, hugs, and lighthearted playfulness with the adorably polite Hugo serve as the only levity among a cast of sadistic characters. The 2022 sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem, escorts players from the filthy, festering streets of France to a brighter, scenic Mediterranean setting, temporarily distracting gamers from the gruesome, heartbreaking story of this sequel that surpasses its grim predecessor.

14 Manhunt

Contains: Mass Murder, Torture, And Extreme Violence

Rockstar Games first set a precedent for violent games in 1997 with fan-favorite Grand Theft Auto, but its most controversial 2003 releaseManhunt surpassed the company’s reputation for brutality. It is essentially a murder simulator where players star as the main killer in snuff films in order to save family members. Not only are players exposed to decapitations and mutilation, but they can also choose whether to execute enemies in either a violent or excessively gruesome way.

The game’s reception led to it being banned in several countries shortly after its release, and it is still not on the market for a lot of international gamers. In retrospect, Manhunt feels almost dated and underwhelming when considering the far more brutal, cruel, and visually gory games that have been released since. Although fans crave a remake, Rockstar’s Manhunt is still one of the darkest games ever. The only upside for any squeamish gamers is that the fuzzy graphics are very much a product of the early 2000s, without the traumatizing hyper-realistic detail of modern visuals.

13 Little Misfortune

Contains: Animal Cruelty, Child Abuse, Suicide, Alcoholism, And Death

Killmonday Studios created a satirical shock-horror fairy tale in 2019, Little Misfortune, about a polite little girl with an adorable giggle stumbling innocently through a world of taboos and cruelty, unaware that she will die today. Despite coming from a blatantly abusive home, Misfortune is a kindhearted eight-year-old on the hunt for eternal happiness as a gift for her miserable mother.

In this surreal horror game, even the narration is predatory, as the comments from “Mr. Voice” become increasingly unpleasant and cruel. Players may find the gallows humor either deeply offensive or hilarious; callous jokes are frequent, such as Misfortune asking “Should I hit him like a pinata?” after finding her neighbor hanging from the ceiling. Faced constantly with traumatic situations, from digging graves in a pet cemetery to frequent animal deaths, Misfortune maintains a hopeful, childlike perspective on the world, throwing glitter on everything upsetting and disturbing to transform it into something prettier. Spoiler: She will need a lifetime supply of glitter.

12 The Mortuary Assistant

Contains: Demonic Possession, Corpses, And Disturbing Imagery

Working in a morgue is enough nightmare fuel for most players. Adding a demon possessing corpses and sacrificing innocents simply takes it to the next level of terrifying. The morbid, graphic tasks of sewing the mouths of corpses shut and draining gray, emaciated bodies of blood in The Mortuary Assistant are made all the more unnerving by the constant threat of the pale-faced demon that players must trap and cremate in the ‘correct’ body.

Beginners may need tips to conquer this hopelessly repetitive night cycle that instills a truly unshakable feeling of despair. Players who prefer a tamer, sensitive, aesthetically pleasing simulation of working in a morgue should turn to the 2017 indie game, A Mortician’s Tale. However, those seeking an unnerving horror will thrive with The Mortuary Assistant.

11 Hatred

Contains: Mass Murder, Extreme Violence, And Genocide

Hatred is a 2015 shooter game that simulates genocide. Players take control of a suicidal, homicidal man (complete with a trench coat and a gravelly voice) to mow down strangers in the street and pursue small objectives to kill or destroy specific targets. Given the social context of mass shootings and gun violence increasing over recent years, games that simulate killing on a grand scale can feel in poor taste. Hatred was deemed controversial, sick, and disturbing to some, leading to its temporary removal from Steam, but others have since considered Hatred tame or not as violent as other titles on the market.

Apathy is the lifeblood of this game. Rendered in gray, black, and white, the visuals are as bleak as the gameplay, with the only flashes of color coming from explosions and blood, generally leaving players underwhelmed. The playable character introduces himself as nameless, claiming the only important thing is the atrocities he is about to commit, with no backstory beyond proclaiming hatred for the world. He is neither likable nor is he detestable, except for his hugely clichéd and grandiose one-liners that are devoid of any humanity or wit. The NPCs are also reduced to commodities only valuable for their capacity to have gruesome deaths. With players unable to meaningfully connect with either the killer or the victims, Hatred’s attitude towards killing quickly grinds down to feeling monotonous, detached, and pointless, somewhat like the game itself. That said, those looking for something truly disturbing will find Hatred to be right up their alley.

10 Agony and Succubus

Contains: Gore, Torture, Body Horror, Nudity, Sexual Content, Extreme Violence

Agony is a 2018 game from Madmind Studio, in which players are condemned to Hell as a Martyr and must approach the Red Goddess to escape back to the living. With bodies squelching under the player’s feet, fleshy demons torturing souls, and flies buzzing around bloody writhing corpses, Agony offers endless suffering for as far as the eye can see. Among frequent sexual and violent content, the game’s most disturbing elements involve blood-red screaming babies that demons build into walls by crushing them with rocks. Agony has often been criticized as being overly ambitious, buggy, and underwhelming, especially its final boss fight with Satan.

The 2021 sequel, Succubus takes the disturbing content a step further, as players embody a succubus and priestess of lust seeking revenge on those who wronged her. In this twisted game, the playable succubus heals herself by torturing innocents, specifically extracting fetuses from the wombs of pregnant mothers or explicitly ripping genitals from men’s groins. Agony and Succubus could take tips from Outlast in terms of planning out a landscape with unique horrors and antagonists to encounter without it feeling too predictable. However, both Agony and Succubus have great potential as horror games with brutal character deaths and disgusting scenes of violence that rival some of the darkest games available.

9 Dead Space 2

Contains: Gore, Violence, Eyeball Horror, Child Cruelty, Suicide, And Death

Dead Space 2 opens with protagonist Isaac in a mental health institution due to trauma from the previous game, followed by a necromorph violently splitting open the screaming face of Isaac’s rescuer. This triggers the first heart-pounding twenty minutes of gameplay, where Isaac sprints the halls in a straitjacket, unable to defend himself against pulsating, tentacled monsters attacking from every angle. The Dead Space franchise was launched by Visceral Games in 2008, predating infamous galactic horror games such as Alien: Isolation, which made stealthily creeping around spaceships evading nightmarish creatures a staple of the sci-fi genre.

Necromorphs are the series’ zombie equivalent with a twist, as players protect themselves from heavily mutated reanimated corpses via gruesome dismemberment. Although unique, disgusting death animations are present in every game, Dead Space 2 repulsed players with the universally dreaded level featuring Titan Elementary School. Players discover that masses of very young children have died and become necromorphs, resulting in haunting encounters with exploding babies that gamers must slaughter to survive and a crying toddler suffering in a working washing machine. Following the best-selling 2023 remake of Dead Space, a remake of Dead Space 2 was allegedly planned and then canceled by EA. Although it is disputed whether this rumor is legitimate, one thing is certain: A remake of the infamous Dead Space 2 needle and eyeball horror death animation would have been sickening.

8 Wolfenstein: The New Order and The New Colossus

Contains: Body Horror, Torture, Extreme Violence, Murder, Nazi Ideology, Concentration Camps, Child Abuse

Set in a dreadful alternate reality where the Nazis won World War II, MachineGames brought the 1981 Wolfenstein Franchise back to life for a third time, rendering unimaginable horrors with shiny, graphic details. The reboot did not shy away from the notorious atrocities that the Nazis committed, and built upon them with the sadistic actions of truly evil villains like scientist Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse and creepy female antagonist Irene “Frau” Engels. There seems no end to the depravity in Wolfenstein: The New Order and The New Colossus; players are forced to witness on-screen decapitations, dismemberment, and gruesome brain extractions that would give Dead Space 2 a run for their money.

Some of the most disturbing scenes involve Engels throwing a crying baby into an incinerator to burn alive in front of the parents, Adolf Hitler peeing, vomiting, and killing indiscriminately, and a fictional simulation of a concentration camp that many may find offensive, upsetting and unforgivable. Even protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz is not safe from vicious, inhumane treatment, as he is publicly executed in Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, only to have his head surgically attached to the body of a Nazi super soldier. The extreme cruelty in MachineGames’ Wolfenstein reboot makes for a punishing and harrowing gameplay experience for anyone who ever wondered how terrible the world would be if history had taken a detour.

7 Outlast

Contains: Torture, Extreme Violence, Murder, Cannibalism, Sexual Assault, And Taboos

In Outlast, players embody a reporter attempting to uncover the horrors within an asylum. Although a cliché premise for survival horror, the dialogue, themes, and gameplay are undeniably disturbing. As players creep around cautiously, the chillingly immersive asylum feels suffocating, and even the briefest encounters with patients and the one-liners they deliver are uniquely terrifying. Regardless of how hard players try to outrun and hide from countless older male antagonists, including necrophiles, cannibals, and murderers, Outlast‘s gameplay ensures that gamers not only witness heinous acts but become the victim themselves, such as when Dr. Trager captures and mutilates the protagonist.

Since its debut in 2013, Outlast has left an infamous bloodstain on the horror gaming industry, inspiring an accompanying DLC running alongside the original game, Outlast: Whistleblower, a haunting sequel set among a child-killing cult, Outlast 2, and a multiplayer co-op called The Outlast Trials whereby friends evade a disturbing cast of villains. The latter is set to have a “Second Season” of content in 2024. What stands out most in the Outlast franchise is the depth and morbidity of the disturbing backstories of each character in every title and the upsetting scenes and dialogue that accompany them. No matter which addition to the Outlast series players brave, they are guaranteed haunting characters and macabre horrors that they wish they hadn’t seen.

6 Alien: Isolation

Contains: Gore, Violence, and Frightening Sequences

Xenomorphs have been spine-chillingly horrifying since their debut in the 1979 horror SciFi movie, Alien, about a crew on a spacecraft being terrorized by celestial demons. If watching the outer space massacre wasn’t unnerving enough, playing the 2014 video game recreation of this timeless cult classic, Alien: Isolation is downright traumatizing. Shrieking, whimpering, and praying away the xenomorph jumpscares are the lifeblood of Alien: Isolation as fans are terrorized and stalked relentlessly around the dark spacecraft by stealthy, impossibly fast and blood-curdling xenomorphs.

These hyper-vigilant extraterrestrials can sense movement and the AI can even use the player’s typical hiding spots to find them faster. By enabling microphone detection, even the sounds of players breathing or moving in their own homes will have xenomorphs descending from air ducts. Worse yet, players with an addiction to fear can brave the Nightmare Mode difficulty, where the Alien’s AI is even more sensitive to hunting the player down and players are severely handicapped. Sneaking around the spacecraft fills players with dread as they attempt to avoid the horrifying, screeching jumpscares and violent, disturbing death animations. Alien: Isolation set a new precedent for horror gaming, becoming a role model for all that came after, and Creative Assembly has announced an Alien: Isolation sequel that fans can only hope will leave them with even more sleepless nights than the original game.

5 Silent Hill 2

Contains: Murder, Torture, Violence, Sexual Assault, And Disturbing Imagery

Infamous for its body horror and uniquely bizarre, gory monster designs, the Silent Hill franchise resides as one of the best horror series of all time. While some contributions to the series are deemed less scary than others, almost every Silent Hill game features deeply disturbing content in some form. The 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2 revisited the original game and majorly improved the graphics, with polished hyper-realistic character designs and more in-depth, sensitive explorations of the victims. However, the raw imperfection of the iconic 2001 version of Silent Hill 2 continues to stand out due to its storytelling quality, unforgettable psychological terror, and also the debut of the infamous monster, Pyramid Head.

The protagonist, James, searches the town and its nightmarish alternate realities for his wife Mary, having blocked out that he killed her mercifully before any haunting gameplay even starts. Notably, players encounter Angela, a tortured soul whose suffering manifests in a repulsive, fleshy monster called ‘Abstract Daddy,’ a distressing embodiment of the sexual trauma suffered in her childhood, which is scarring, to say the least.

4 Visage

Contains: Murder, Suicide, Violence, And Disturbing Imagery

When a game opens with murder-suicide and family annihilation and follows up with a homage to a legendary horror game, gamers know they’re in for a haunting ride. Visage is heavily inspired by Hideo Kojima’s canceled Silent Hill teaser, P.T., which went down in gaming history for its creepy cyclical tour of a suburban home accompanied by unsettling radio broadcasts and revolting apparitions.

Many argue that video games need to stop copying P.T. with poor imitations; however, Visage elevated the original concept and style of P.T. by introducing sanity levels that spiral out of control in the darkness and expose players to morbid visions of the house’s ghastly former residents. After uncovering multiple sickeningly bloody subplots and frightening visuals during gameplay, it is undeniable that Visage is the definition of macabre and disturbing.

3 Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Contains: Murder, Torture, Extreme Violence, And Self-Mutilation

While Resident Evil Village features some of the most beloved, well-executed characters and villains in the franchise, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard contains a few of the most disturbing moments in the Resident Evil series. This may come as no surprise, as a demented, contaminated cannibalistic family was always going to be at the heart of everyone’s deepest fears, especially when Resident Evil 7: Biohazard players themselves are on the menu.

Worse yet, Ethan Winters is introduced as a protagonist who survives being viciously stabbed and chainsawed and can magically regenerate and reattach limbs after they’ve been severed. This means players are destined to suffer all kinds of foul mutilations at the hands of the Bakers before the game’s end. When characters are resilient to the point of appearing undead, it certainly makes for a macabre and relentlessly disturbing experience.