Horror Games Holiday Gift Guide 2024
Our Horror Games Holiday Gift Guide 2024 will help you deliver delightfully festive fears with the best scary games of the year, and includes alternatives for those who've already played them.
Posted a month ago
A haul of horrors hardly sounds like the best present, but if you’re buying for a fan of horror games, then gut-wrenching terror is the greatest gift of all. In our horror games holiday gift guide 2024, we’ll run you through the biggest and best horror games of the year. Ideal for the people in your life too busy reminiscing about Halloween to hear Santa knocking on their door.
Each entry in our horror games gift guide includes advice on the kinds of terrors found within. Where possible, we’ve also recommended older alternatives for those who’ve already played the year’s biggest frights.
Silent Hill 2
©Bloober Team / Restart
- Great for: Fans of psychological survival horror and disturbing monsters.
The standout horror game of the year, Silent Hill 2 is a remake of a seminal PlayStation 2 survival horror game. It follows James Sunderland as he heads to the town of Silent Hill after receiving an invitation from his dead wife. What follows is a superbly unsettling, brutal, and emotional journey through the psyche of James and others trapped in the fog-ridden town.
You can read more in our full review, but what's important to know is that remake captures the eerie heart of the original while updating and expanding the gameplay and visuals. That makes it a great gift not just for those who played the original back in the day, but also any horror fan coming in fresh. Be warned, Silent Hill 2 deals with some very heavy themes. This is one for adult horror lovers only.
If your giftee has already played and loved the Silent Hill 2 remake, consider the digital-only Signalis instead. It’s a stellar sci-fi survival horror game that blends classic Resident Evil gameplay with a brain-warping narrative that draws deep and dark inspiration from Silent Hill. Check out our list of retro-themed horror games to learn more about it.
Still Wakes the Deep
- Great for: Anyone keen for first-person, linear, and narrative horror. Also Scottish accents.
Life aboard a North Sea oil rig in the 1970s sounds dangerous enough, and that’s before an otherworldly horror latches on and begins transforming the inhabitants into monsters. Still Wakes the Deep follows one man’s attempt to connect with his friends and escape the unfolding disaster. It’s a very linear experience that focuses on navigating the precipitous outer edges and claustrophobic innards of the rig, occasionally stopping to hide from twisted horrors. Combat isn’t a core focus, so consider it for fans of more cinematic, audio-driven horror experiences.
For an alternative, consider 2023’s Amnesia: The Bunker. It features similarly claustrophobic and lonely horror, but set against the backdrop of the Great War.
Fear the Spotlight
©Cozy Game Pals
- Great for: Horror newbies, teen horror lovers, and fans of retro-inspired visuals.
Finding horror games suitable for younger fans of the genre involves rummaging through a bucket of viscera and monster limbs in the hopes of finding something less nightmare-inducing. Is a simple skeleton or witch too much to ask for? Well, while you won’t find either in Fear the Spotlight, it features a Teen rating and a far gentler approach to its terror.
That softer scare factor applies in terms of both gameplay and gore. The retro visuals dampen rather than enhance the terrors here, and a slower focus on sneaking and puzzles make it a great option for those looking to dabble in gaming’s darker waters without being scared away for good.
One point to bear in mind: Fear the Spotlight is a digital-only release, so you’ll need to offer a gift card and recommendation or buy the game for your recipient when it comes time to unwrap this horror game gift. For alternatives, check out our lists of games with horror vibes that aren’t super scary, or family-friendly horror games.
Fear the Spotlight
Release Date: October 22, 2024
Digital Only
Until Dawn
©Ballistic Moon / Supermassive Games
- Great for: Groups looking for cinematic, QTE-heavy horror game “movie” nights.
The original Until Dawn holds up well enough that we’d still recommend it as a great horror gift to this day. But if you’re keen to give something cutting-edge, then this year’s PS5 remake should be the go-to option. It updates the visuals of the PS4 classic to better match developer Supermassive Games’ more recent offerings and introduces a few extra scenes as well.
Until Dawn is a cinematic horror game, with key decisions and reactions to on-screen prompts determining which members of the core cast live or die. Remake or original, Until Dawn remains a fight-filled feast that’s best played with a large group gathered around the screen and ready to scream together.
For alternatives, Supermassive’s smaller games in the Dark Pictures Anthology are the obvious next step. We’ve listed them all from best to worst here, though the developer’s other major release, The Quarry, is also well worth diving into.
Slitterhead
©Bokeh Game Studio
- Great for: Action-horror fans looking for something unconventional.
If you’re buying for a horror fan who prefers peculiar things, Slitterhead could be their grotesque cup of tea. This action-oriented horror game follows a supernatural entity that can possess humans to fight against slitterheads – hideous creatures that disguise themselves as ordinary inhabitants of the city setting. Think the monster of The Thing, but where the player is also a monster themselves. We did warn you that it was a strange one.
In Slitterhead, humans are largely disposable, intended to be swapped between and discarded during fights. It’s a strange, somewhat confusing, and sometimes messy concept. But that weirdness makes it a potentially great horror game gift for genre fans interested in trying out an avant-garde approach to action-horror game design.
Crow Country
©SFB Games / Restart
- Great for: Retro visuals and puzzle lovers longing for a classic survival horror era.
Another digital-only, retro-inspired release, Crow Country follows a woman named Mara as she enters an abandoned theme park and discovers it rife with unpleasant, juddering, and dangerous creatures. It’s a nostalgic throwback to the classic era of Resident Evil games, with item-shifting puzzles and clue-giving notes galore.
The music and effects can be unsettling, but overall, Crow Country doesn’t bring many jump scares to the dastardly dinner table, and it packs in plenty of humorous writing throughout. It only has a Teen ESRB rating, but we’d most recommend Crow Country as a gift for an old-school survival horror fan.
Crow Country
Release Date: May 9, 2024
Digital Only
Pacific Drive
- Great for: Alien/mystery enthusiasts with a penchant for survival games.
Pacific Drive isn’t strictly a horror game, but the mysterious walled-off exclusion zone in which it is set is filled with inexplicable anomalies that’ll keep any player far from comfortable. This is a vehicular survival game in which players must head out in a station wagon, scavenging supplies from buildings encountered along each route in segments of exploration. Getting out to explore on foot can reap rewards, but the car is also the only means of escape when strange events start to occur.
The Zone is as beautiful as it is strange and disconcerting, making for a unique horror-tangential gaming experience. Read our interview with composer Will Roget, II to get a better sense of its uncanny atmosphere.
That’s your horror game gifts sorted, but what about suggestions further afield? Head to our PS5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch gift guide pages for the biggest and best releases of the year. Oh, you want something even stranger? Then here: have a browse of our gift guide for video game cookbooks!