Best Parody Horror Games, Ranked

Key Takeaways

• Parody horror games offer replay value with new elements each run, rich lore, or unique gameplay innovations.
• Games like Baldi’s Basics and Spirit Cleaning parody horror genres while combining comical elements with horror gameplay.
• Killer Frequency blends 80s slasher flick inspirations with interactive riddles and critical decision-making, offering a thrilling experience.

The best parody horror games offer something beyond a cheap laugh. Some games are highly replayable and offer something new with each run. Others pack enough story, character development, or lore for players to keep at it. More introduce innovations or different takes on horror gameplay that make them more than parodies of their genre.

Some may even argue that games like Killer Frequency and Doki Doki Literature Club are not strictly horror parody games. But these games imitate the style of their main inspiration, like 80s slasher horror and visual novels, to a comical effect. They do so while introducing, or before showing, the gameplay twists that made them unique.

10 Baldi’s Basics In Education

If Edutainment Was The Demon Game Parents Thought Diablo Was

Baldi’s Basics in Education aims to teach players the basics of education such as math and spelling. It’s also a horrific trap where angering Baldi will lead to their death. To escape intact, players must collect 7 notebooks around school while dodging Baldi and his friends to get out.

As Basically Games notes on their Itch.io page, Baldi’s Basics in Education is a sendup to endearingly mediocre 90s edutainment games. There’s zero educational value here save for quizzes players need to get right lest they incur Baldi’s wrath.

9 The Organ Trail

The Oregon Trail But Cholera Is The Weakest Threat

In The Oregon Trail, dysentery and cholera can end runs in a snap. Not so in The Organ Trail, where gastrointestinal problems are the least of the player’s problems. Zombie-inflicted organ loss and zombification are the ultimate threats in this Americana trek to Safe Haven.

The Organ Trail challenges players with balancing supplies and keeping their pack of five and station wagon churning, on top of fighting zombies. Towns will have supplies and trainers to prepare the party for random encounters that can end a party’s run.

8 Spirit Cleaning

PowerWash Meets Cute & Horrifying Anime Girls

Gamers like PowerWash Simulator for its relaxing, hypnotic gameplay. Spirit Washing combines its coziness with visual novel elements for a short, bittersweet experience. Players are tasked to spray off bloodstains and care for the ghosts in a gory house. The game switches between first- and third-person for cleaning and story snooping.

The game uses the infamous HQ_Residential_House asset, but its music and set dressing lend it a comfy aura. Spirit Washing’s quick pace keeps it charming too, and lends a feeling of tragedy to the ghosts.

7 My Friendly Neighborhood

Children’s Puppets Counting Corpses

Gordon O’Brian’s a grouch whose anti-social tendencies may soon get him sacked from his repairman job. His last hope takes him to an abandoned studio broadcasting the supposedly defunct puppet show The Friendly Neighborhood again. He soon finds out that the studio isn’t abandoned, and the puppets are definitely, horrifically, in working condition.

My Friendly Neighborhood has depth despite its horror parody premise. Gordon needs to manage his supply in true survival horror fashion and decide when to fight puppets or leave. The plot also turns its initial thesis on its head, giving the player an incentive to learn the real reason why The Friendly Neighborhood went back on air.

6 The Typing of the Dead: Overkill

Typing Parody Of A Typing-Based Parody

The House of the Dead (THOTD) is campy on its own thanks to its over-the-top voice acting and rule-of-fun style gameplay. Spinoff Overkill amps up the campiness to B-movie levels with corny one-liners, inexact locations, and hilariously gory setups.

The Typing of the Dead: Overkill marries the absurdity of Overkill with The Typing of the Dead, a typing game spin-off with the exact story of THOTD. It’s the sillier version of an already ridiculous game, though its typing mechanic presents a different kind of challenge from developing light gun reflexes.

5 Shadows Over Loathing

West Of Loathing Meets Cthulhu & Prohibition Noir

Shadows Over Loathing shunts the player into the dreary Ocean City after their Uncle Murray sent out for them. Uncle Murray’s nowhere to be found, but the artifacts at his antique shop thrusts the player toward a sinister apocalyptic plot.

As the eldritch noir successor to the comedy Western West of Loathing, Shadows Over Loathing serves more of the same humor in the stick figure turn-based RPG. This time, instead of Westerns, it lovingly lambasts tropes in cosmic horror and noir mysteries, while deepening combat and quest/side quest integration.

4 Slayaway Camp 1 & Slayaway Camp 2: Netflix & Kill

Scream & Friday The 13th’s PS1-Lookalike Baby

Slayaway Camp is a loving send-up to 80s slasher movies with an adorable serial killer in Skullface. The killer must calculate the optimal number of moves to slay victims on a voxel isometric map filled with traps and killer implements. Players can unlock killers to replace Skullface, though changes are purely cosmetic.

Slayaway Camp has a sequel called Slayaway Camp: Free 2 Slay. Instead of a single camp, Skullface slaughters across legally distinct movie parodies. Killers now have special powers and access to new killing implements such as rolling boulders and pressure plates.

3 Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion

Cutest Jump Scares & 1st Person Dungeon Crawler

Two things stand in Spooky’s way of being recognized as a frightening evil spirit: her cuteness and the player. The player slowly realizes this as they navigate Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion and survive the child ghost’s cohort of evil ghouls.

Aside from parodying jumpscare-based horror games, Spooky’s also built a fun narrative and world around the scant lore provided in the base game. Karimari Hospital and The Doll House tie together the base game’s scattered lore and turn gameplay away from puzzles to survival horror lite.

2 Doki Doki Literature Club

Tearjerker Visual Novel & Horror Parody

Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) follows the charming attempt of four high school girls and the player to establish their school’s literature club. In another game, they would have succeeded, and love would’ve bloomed between the player and a lit club member. But this is DDLC, a title where describing too much would give the game away.

DDLC blew up in popularity in 2017 for its refreshing take on dating sims but was dismissed by some for allegedly relying on shock horror. Yet DDLC endures for having good character writing and thought-provoking existential horror for a visual novel parody. The game’s subversions also work precisely because its first act perfectly sets up expectations for a typical visual novel.

1 Killer Frequency

Parody Love Letter To 80s Slasher Flicks

DJ Forrest Nash and producer Peggy already have their plates full running The Scream, a floundering radio show on station 189.16. Things get worse when they’re forced to juggle 911 calls from local townsfolk hunted by the serial killer, The Whistling Man. With police out of town to call for backup, Nash and Peggy must uncover the real identity of the town’s boogeyman.

Killer Frequency challenges players to solve riddles, gather clues, and find useful materials to help callers survive The Whistling Man. Every choice matters in this 1987-set slasher thriller, and one character’s death may spell doom for another. Fans of 80s slasher movies may find their knowledge of movie tropes helpful, but can also trick them into making a fatal decision.