The Best Lovecraftian Games For Horror Fans

H.P. Lovecraft is famous for a notorious brand of cosmic horror, which he mastered so thoroughly that it ended up as a separate genre named after him—Lovecraftian horror. What made his monsters stand out is that they are beyond human comprehension; anyone who sees them or tries to understand them ends up going mad or dying.

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Video games have tried to adapt his stories and put that cosmic dread on full display for gamers. Survival horror is an easy genre to pick from, but you can’t fight what lies beyond your understanding. Therefore, the best Lovecraftian horror games rely not just on the gameplay and story but on their atmospheres, too.

Updated on January 2, 2025 by Dennis Moiseyev: No matter the time of year, there’s always some room for Lovecraft and all the horrifying creatures that originated from his imagination, which developers love to take advantage of and continue adapting seamlessly into games or putting their own spin on cosmic horror. Plus, winter is calling and so are The Mountains of Madness, of which there are a few games based on it here, along with plenty more!

Alan Wake And Control Series

• 	Alan Wake	Alan Wake 2	Control
  Platform(s)	Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS5, PS4, Xbox 360, PC, Xbox One	Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS5, PC	Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, Switch, PS5, PS4, PC, Xbox One
  Released	2012-02-16	2023-10-27	2019-08-27
  Developer(s)	Remedy Entertainment	Remedy Entertainment	Remedy Entertainment
  Publisher(s)	Microsoft	Epic Games	505 Games
  Engine	havok, proprietary engine	Northlight Engine	Northlight Engine
  System	Xbox, PC, PlayStation	Xbox, PC, PlayStation	Nintendo, Xbox, PC, PlayStation
  OpenCritic Page	https://opencritic.com/game/10047/alan-wake	https://opencritic.com/game/15022/alan-wake-2	https://opencritic.com/game/7858/control
  OpenCritic Rating	Strong	Mighty	Mighty
  Top Critic Rating	77	89	84

Although Alan Wake can be considered its own original supernatural story with heavy influences from David Lynch and Twin Peaks, there are still plenty of Lovecraftian elements, especially in the sequel. Extradimensional travel, the Dark Place, the Overlap sequences, the Dark Presence of Scratch, and all the eerie enemies that come from an alternate dimension and are tied to Alan’s story are some examples.

Then, there’s the shared universe with Control. Control is even heavier on the Lovecraftian themes. You’re inside the building of a fictional government agency called the Federal Bureau of Control, where there’s an outbreak of entities from another dimension known as Hiss possessing the personnel. You take calls from distorted alien-like voices known as The Board and battle a few weird Lovecraftian-style bosses.

The Thing Remastered

The Thing is based on the original novel ‘Who Goes There?’ by John W. Campbell, which was turned into a ’50s movie that was eventually remade by John Carpenter in 1982, and this game is a canon sequel to the classic Carpenter rendition. The story is as straightforward Lovecraft as it gets. A shapeshifting alien crashlands its ship into the Antarctic ice and an unlucky team of researchers unleash it on themselves.

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In The Thing video game, you’re in charge of a military squadron sent to investigate the US station and Norwegian station after the events of the movie, where your team quickly gets acquainted with the alien presence. It’s not your average survival horror, however. The game is authentic to the film, so gaining trust in your squad and helping each other out to assuage suspicion is one of the clever systems the game includes.

Home Safety Hotline

Systems

Released

January 16, 2024

Developer

Night Signal Entertainment

Publisher

Night Signal Entertainment

Engine

Unity

Home Safety Hotline is not like most other Lovecraftian horror games. It’s not a 3D action adventure nor even a 2D side-scroller game, but rather a horror-themed analog simulation game where you play a fictional Home Safety Hotline operator taking calls about people’s issues with monsters posing a threat in their home.

Your goal is to offer the best service to these poor homeowners who are dealing with unknown deadly creatures of all shapes and sizes, including plenty of Lovecraftian and mythological ones, through the HSH Responder Software computer interface. There are even options to toggle phobias, should you want to ease some of the horror and unnerving aspects of the game.

The Casting Of Frank Stone And Dead By Daylight

• 	The Casting of Frank Stone	Dead by Daylight
  Platform(s)	Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5	Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, Switch, PS5, PS4, PC, Stadia, Mobile, Xbox One
  Released	2024-09-03	2016-06-14
  Developer(s)	Supermassive Games	Behaviour Interactive
  Publisher(s)	Behaviour Interactive	Behaviour Interactive
  Engine	Unreal Engine 5	Unreal Engine 4
  System	Xbox, PlayStation	Google, Nintendo, Xbox, PC, PlayStation, Mobile
  OpenCritic Page	https://opencritic.com/game/17237/the-casting-of-frank-stone	https://opencritic.com/game/2844/dead-by-daylight
  OpenCritic Rating	Fair	Fair
  Top Critic Rating	68	70
  Critics Recommend %	36	46

Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical horror game that carries an aroma of Lovecraft with its cosmic horror beast known as The Entity. This spider-legged creature wreaks havoc across worlds and puts various licensed and original Killers into its dimension to engage in deadly trials, where Survivors get sacrificed to it. The Casting of Frank Stone delves deeper into the lore and is an interactive horror game from Supermassive.

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The Casting of Frank Stone delivers the most perfect Lovecraftian themes, visuals, and atmosphere. The events are divided between Gerant Manor in 2024 and the eerie Cedar Steel Mill in 1980, following two separate casts of characters whose stories collide in unique, multidimensional ways. The new mechanics in this Supermassive title are wonderful to see, and the later parts of the game ooze Lovecraft’s greatest hits!

Menace From The Deep

While 2024 brought the GOTY-nominated and fan-favorite Balatro to the mainstream roguelike deckbuilder genre, Lovecraftian fans also got Menace from the Deep, a roguelike deckbuilder based entirely around Lovecraft’s mythos. The art style and enemy designs will have you instantly drawn, even if you may not be a fan of this type of game design.

In between your card-based battles with eldritch nightmares, the storytelling also entails dialogue conversations in illustrated visual novel-style cutscenes and some of the roleplaying elements of Disco Elysium. Like all classic Lovecraft tales, the backdrop is the 1920s and the game features an occult group and a monolith called the ‘Heart of the Sea.’ And even traveling here is based on a card system here.

Worshippers Of Cthulhu

There are casual and cozy city builders, post-apocalyptic dystopian city builders like Frostpunk, and then there’s Worshippers Of Cthulhu, a city builder where you are the one leading the Cult of Cthulhu, engaging in cosmic horror occult worship, and building out the landscape and town to your own unique Lovecraftian vision.

Like Frostpunk, Worshippers Of Cthulhu also manages to build a great atmosphere into its city-building world, with ghoulish green colors and visual effects that are reminiscent of other games associated with the Cthulhu Mythos and dark fantasy elements. You also have the Necronomicon mechanic, which you use to summon creatures, and you can also mark your followers.

Still Wakes The Deep

Still Wakes the Deep is truly one of the finest interpretations of H.P. Lovecraft in a video game or otherwise. It’s set on a Scottish oil rig in the 1970s, with the drill digging up something otherworldly from the sea not meant to be discovered. What ensues is an infection that transforms your crewmates into tendril-maneuvering monstrosities and its biomass overtaking parts of the rig.

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The atmosphere seamlessly captures the perilous and claustrophobic environment of an oil rig, which is what ultimately makes this Lovecraftian adventure worth playing, as well as the authentic voice cast whose performances really grab you. Even by the end, you’re still left in the dark about this mysterious being that claimed the Beira D, which is one of the most important Lovecraft notes to hit.

The Shore

Systems

Platform(s)

Microsoft Windows

Released

February 19, 2021

Developer

Ares Dragonis

Publisher

Ares Dragonis, Dragonis Games

Engine

Unreal Engine 4

Like Still Wakes the Deep, The Shore is an atmospheric first-person horror game that deals with Lovecraft mythos and involves the sea, and it impressively started as a solo project from developer Ares Dragonis. In this Lovecraft-inspired tale, you play a father who goes in search of his daughter and stumbles upon otherworldly terrors.

While the walking simulator gameplay is one of its biggest detriments to the experience, filled with only minor puzzles and combat, the unique creature designs and environment art easily outweigh any of the negatives. You’ll never be as immersed, intrigued, and scared in a Lovecraft game quite like this one.

Edge Of Sanity

Edge of Sanity is a Lovecraftian gem inspired by Cthulhu Mythos. It’s a 2D survival horror game set in the Alaskan wilderness during the 1960s, where things have quickly turned into eldritch nightmares, and there’s crafting, resource management mechanics, and a progression system moving by days. You play Carter, an employee of the mysterious scientific body called the PRISM Organization, which is researching dangerous and otherworldly things that have resulted in devastating consequences.

For a 2D game, the atmosphere, sound design, creature design, and environments are well-crafted and make the gameplay incredibly scary and suspenseful. There’s plenty of Lovecraftian mystery, and the snowy backdrop of Alaska and the ‘madness’ affecting you from traumas make it reminiscent of ‘At the Mountains of Madness.’ Your protagonist’s dialogue is often hilarious and also one of the best parts of the game.

The Sinking City

Now that Frogwares won back the sole rights to The Sinking City and released an update patch with key bug fixes and optimizations for the PC version, it’s the perfect time to support this game and the developer. It’s the most Lovecraftian open-world atmosphere you can achieve in a video game setting, with all walks of the Cthulhu Mythos represented, especially ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth.’

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Similar to Alone in the Dark, Call of Cthulhu, and Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes games, you play a private investigator searching for answers in the 1920s backdrop of Oakmont, a city with water levels mysteriously rising at an unprecedented rate. Oh, and you might have some run-ins with the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

Sherlock Holmes The Awakened (2023)

Frogwares is a Ukrainian developer clearly influenced by Lovecraft and well-known for creating new cases for Victorian London’s finest detective, Sherlock Holmes, to take on. So the answer is Sherlock Holmes The Awakened, a game that combines the studio’s two passions and pits Holmes against a cult worshiping eldritch horrors, which received a remake in 2023.

The graphics and visuals have gotten significant improvements from the original, with the puzzle and investigation mechanics kept largely the same. It now also serves as a sequel to Sherlock Holmes Chapter One. And while Sherlock Holmes typically shouldn’t be so scary, this game’s eerie Lovecraftian direction truly makes it one of the most haunting.

Edge Of Nowhere

Systems

Platform(s)

Microsoft Windows

Released

June 6, 2016

Engine

Insomniac Engine

Two fun things to know about Edge of Nowhere. One, it’s a VR game exclusive to the Meta Quest (formerly Oculus Rift) made by Insomniac Games, the dynamic storytelling studio behind the Ratchet & Clank series and Marvel’s Spider-Man games. Two, the game’s setting and narrative are directly inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness.’

That’s right, a VR ‘At the Mountains of Madness,’ one of the most immersive ways to experience this Lovecraft story that has you face unimaginable horrors and survive the harsh Antarctic environment. Even cooler is that, unlike most VR games, this one keeps the player character third-person.

Call Of Cthulhu

Every Lovecraft fan should absolutely know this highly underappreciated game, Call of Cthulhu, which launched in 2018. After Dark Corners of the Earth, it’s the truest rendition of Lovecraft’s universe in game form, now available on all platforms, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint.

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Depressed and troubled private investigator Edward Pierce is tasked with heading out to investigate the case of a dead family on the mysterious and secluded Darkwater Island, where he finds a connection to something supernatural.

This game has everything Lovecraftian: a tortured main character at the brink of going mad, RPG skill trees inspired by the original Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper game, chilling monsters, and references to works like ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ and ‘Pickman’s Model.’

Scorn

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Scorn

Systems

Released

October 14, 2022

Developer(s)

Ebb Software

Publisher(s)

Ebb Software

Engine

Unreal Engine 4

Although the gameplay might fall short of expectations, Scorn is an H.R. Giger and H.P. Lovecraft love letter to the genre. From the art direction to the world, weapons, and level design, you’d think H.R. Giger returned from the grave to give everyone one last piece of his art. Everything in this game is stunning biomechanical greatness, which can both enthrall and creep you out at the same time.

The game focuses largely on solving puzzles, which are done in a truly gross and disturbing fashion, and there is some FPS combat with creature encounters sprinkled throughout. However, the main element of this game is taking in the exquisite Giger-Lovecraft atmosphere and grotesque visuals.

Signalis

Signalis is a sci-fi horror masterpiece from the two-person team at rose-engine and publisher Humble Games. It’s both cyberpunk and Lovecraftian, taking place in a dystopian universe of space colonization, where there are android servants called Replikas and their human counterparts called Gestalts. You play a Replika named Elster, who is searching for her Gestalt partner, Ariane Yeong, and experiences dreams.

The search takes a sinister turn, as most of the Gestalt workers on the interstellar mining facility have been murdered, seemingly by Replikas that have turned rogue and are now also after Elster. The pixel art aesthetic works effectively, and the inventory system and gameplay evoke the classic Resident Evil vibe. There are also plenty of references to Lovecraft throughout, such as The King in Yellow, The Festival, and Leng, the game’s planetary setting.

Dead Space (2023)

Systems

Released

January 27, 2023

Developer(s)

EA Motive

Engine

Frostbite

Dead Space takes the Lovecraftian madness and body horror directly to outer space, specifically on the planet-cracking ship USG Ishimura that uncovered what’s known as a Marker from the planet Aegis VII. This Red Marker, or Marker 3A, is tied to the Church of Unitology, which worships these obelisks like a cult, and it’s responsible for turning the ship’s personnel into the terrifying Necromorphs.

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Unknowingly walking into the lion’s den aboard the USG Ishimura is protagonist Isaac Clarke and his team, who get a warm greeting from the Necromorphs upon their arrival, and the rest of the game becomes gory, bloody, and unnerving survival with plenty of twists. Dead Space is truly one of the greatest horror games of all time, and the 2023 remake gives the original a visual and graphical upgrade.

Perennial Order

Following in Bloodborne’s footsteps, Perennial Order is a challenging Souslike set in a Lovecraft-inspired fantasy world full of ‘plant horror’ and other eldritch monstrosities. It’s a boss rush game with an automatic one-hit death mechanic, featuring some of the scariest boss battle designs due to its brilliant use of lighting and rain.

It’s a labor of love for the horror and Soulslike genre, which is clearly reflected in the art and design, and what’s even more impressive is that Perennial Order comes from a small team of four people with only one artist and one animator among them. If you enjoy the tough combat of Soulslikes, don’t miss out on this eldritch-themed opportunity; plus, you can enjoy it with a friend in co-op.

Forgive Me Father Series

Systems

Released

April 8, 2022

Engine

Unreal Engine

Developer

Byte Barrel

Publisher

Fulqrum Publishing

The boomer shooter genre has grown more and more popular and received many innovative new titles over the years, thanks to the ’90s greats that inspired them. One particular developer, Byte Barrel, thought, why not let Lovecraft be a part of this genre? This is precisely the goal of Forgive Me Father and Forgive Me Father 2.

This series has the supernatural sci-fi horror and gore characteristic of Doom and Quake but with a twist on the enemy design and art style being done in a hand-drawn comic book aesthetic. The environment design, weapons, and enemy variety also amazingly evoke the familiar details of Lovecraft’s stories.

Dredge

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Dredge

Released

March 31, 2023

Developer(s)

Black Salt Games

Engine

Unity

Dredge is a seemingly normal fishing simulator at first glance, but the longer you spend on the sea, the more it appears that things aren’t quite right. In Dredge, you can pull up fish that have been mutated by the eldritch energy that poisons the water, dredge shipwrecks for lost goods, and uncover the secrets of the sea.

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This Lovecraftian exploration encourages you to discover and interpret the story for yourself and fish up all the secrets that you can get your hands on.

Dreams In The Witch House

Systems

Released

February 16, 2023

Developer

Atom Brain Games

Publisher

Bonus Stage Publishing

Engine

Adventure Game Studio

‘The Dreams in the Witch House’ isn’t the most famous Lovecraft short story, but it has gotten previous adaptations in film and television, most famously an episode directed by Stuart Gordon in Masters of Horror and an episode directed by Catherine Hardwicke for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. Well, this is the first in the video game realm.

Developed by enthusiasts Atom Brain Games, this reimagines the story as a pixel art point-and-click adventure around Arkham, where the Miskatonic University is a central location amid a larger world, considering the protagonist Walter Gilman is a math pupil. You also have the sound design courtesy of Troy Sterling Nies, known for his work on The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s movie adaptations and radio dramas.