Best Horror Games That Use Paranoia, Ranked

Horror games thrive on paranoia. The most effective horror games out there make players jump at their own shadow and imagine monsters in the corner of their room. But some games are notable for weaponizing paranoia in inventive ways that catch players off guard.

Some games on this list use found footage or the eccentricities of digital media to break down the barriers between reality and the game to give the scares an immediacy. Other entries have sanity meters that force the player to control their character’s sanity levels, adding an extra anxiety-inducing level to gameplay. These are the games that force the player to confront their paranoia.

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6

The Watson-Scott Test

Are You Playing A Game Right Now?

• Developer: Normal Wholesome Games
• Released: 2018
• Platform: PC

The Watson-Scott test is far from a perfect game. It can be slow, and the jumpscares can be a little ridiculous. But it makes the list because of the way that it plays with the form of an online quiz, building suspense and paranoia. Rather than an immersive, sprawling narrative, The Watson-Scott Test is a short, sharp shot of anxiety that makes the players question themselves in increasingly uncomfortable ways.

The soundscape is a huge part of what makes this game work. The sound design ratchets up the tension at exactly the right moments to create effective jumpscares. Like many of the games designed to provoke paranoia, it relies on the mood of the player and the atmosphere it creates. Play it in a dark room with headphones for the best chance of spooks.

5

Slender: The Arrival

Don’t Look At Him

Slender: The Arrival is not a game for everybody, but those who love it REALLY love it. Perhaps this is because of its link to the Slender Man mythos (for want of a better word). Games like Slender: The Arrival are common now. But when it was first released as Slender: The Eight Pages, the mechanics were less popular in video games. Basically, looking directly at the lurking Slender Man causes him to attack.

Players stumble around the countryside and various abandoned buildings looking for pages and avoiding accidently looking at Slender Man. So not only are players essentially being hunted, but they can’t see what is hunting them. The new content and higher fidelity graphics added to the anniversary edition only escalate the paranoia further.

4

The Sinking City

Watch Out For The Wylebeasts

The Sinking City is a third-person adventure game based on the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. It deals with madness in the cosmic horror sense, and the mental state of the protagonist is incredibly important. When Charles Reid is exposed to traumatic or Eldritch horrors for too long, he begins to hallucinate, and his vision becomes distorted.

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This paranoia mechanic means that the player is constantly evaluating how long to look at things, and it forces them to take a very quick survey of a dangerous area rather than lingering on it too long. As a result, players cannot examine the monsters for too long, heightening the mystery and threat that they pose.

3

I’m On Observation Duty (series)

Spot The Difference For Grown Ups

The I’m On Observation Duty series puts the player on surveillance duty for a haunted house, checking a series of security cameras for “anomalies.” Changes that range from a missing giant statue to an extra mug will occur at random intervals, and the player must identify and report them. Seems simple enough, right? Until the intruders start arriving…

Staring at the same footage of mostly static rooms until something changes is paranoia-inducing. Scrolling through security cameras to detect changes that may be infinitesimally small is a recipe for self-doubt and a creeping sense of dread. When too many anomalies have been missed by the player, the anomalies will take over and the game will end. To make matters worse, some details deliberately don’t make sense to throw players off the scent.

2

Simulacra

Don’t Listen To The Voice

• Developer: Kaigan Games OÜ
• Released: 2017
• Platforms: Android, iOS and Windows
• Website

Simulacra is a game about snooping through a missing person’s phone to find the horrific truth about what happened to them. Not only does playing Simulacra on a phone immerse the player in the experience, but it also uses contextual scares to heighten tension and anxiety. Apps glitch, images change and someone or something is watching.

Background noises that come out of nowhere or are timed in with moments to add an extra dimension to the scares. There is the sound of footsteps, hushed voices and even a knock on a door that prompts the player to contemplate what is going on outside the screen. The paranoia the average user experiences is utterly eclipsed by the experience Youtuber Jacksepticeye had, when an Easter Egg in the game told him his entire actual name.

1

The Amnesia Series

Stay Out Of The Dark

The Amnesia series is notorious for having vulnerable protagonists who struggle to cope with the horrific situations they find themselves in. This starts right at the beginning with Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which introduces a sanity dynamic which indicates when Daniel is experiencing paranoia, fear, or duress. He must stay in the light to avoid injury and death.

In Amnesia: Rebirth, the protagonist Tasi cannot stay in the dark for too long before she starts to panic. The long-term impact of this is that if she is exposed to the dark for too long cumulatively throughout the playthrough, she will begin to turn into a ghoul, locking the player into a bad ending. This leaves players frantically searching for matches, candles, and lantern oil, trying to use them sparingly.

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