Summary
- Horror games owe much of their success to terrifying locations that immerse players in the experience.
- Pre-rendered backgrounds assist in creating cinematic moments without typical video game monsters.
- Specific iconic horror game rooms like the interrogation room in Resident Evil 2 elevate fear in players.
There's a reason why the games responsible for the big horror boom of the '90s, such as Alone In The Dark and Resident Evil, featured pre-rendered backgrounds. They allowed the artists and developers to convey a cinematic quality to every encounter with an enemy, then make them even scarier. Players felt like they were in the shoes of the main characters, instead of mere spectators.
Many of the scariest moments and elements from every great horror game in existence owe a lot to some marvelously horrifying locations. Here's a look at the best of the worst areas to enter in horror games.
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10 Mouthwashing: The Party Room/Operating Room
Partying Like There's No Tomorrow
Mouthwashing
- Released
- September 26, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Wrong Organ
- Genre(s)
- Psychological, Horror
The entirety of Mouthwashing takes place inside a relatively small spaceship, and most of its most memorable moments happen in the common main room. That's the room where the crew members will chill out and have their yearly birthday parties, which will continue even when things start to feel doomed for everyone involved.
Without spoiling anything, at some point in the game, this once-nice room will serve as the stage for the vilest and most brutal birthday party ever featured in a game. There aren't even any typical video game monsters involved in this one, but that doesn't make it any less horrifying.
9 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines — Ocean House Hotel
The Most Haunted House In Gaming
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
- Released
- November 16, 2004
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
- Troika Games
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is only a horror game in the sense that it has vampires and other monsters in it. For the most part, it features zero jump scares, and that's what makes the Ocean House Hotel even more striking. As soon as players step foot inside, the game goes from an RPG to a full-on horror experience.
The devs implement pretty much every single great jumpscare they learned from years of watching and playing horror classics. This mission is so scary that Vampire forums and Subreddits are filled with tips on how to hack the game just to bypass this area.
8 Silent Hill — The Labyrinth With No Escape
The Scariest Opening Set Piece To Any Game
Silent Hill
- Released
- January 31, 1999
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Animated Blood and Gore, Animated Violence
- Developer(s)
- Konami
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
The original Silent Hill begins with Harry Mason waking up from a car crash and looking for his daughter Cheryl in a foggy town. Everything is ominous, and a figure that might be Cheryl seems like it's trying to get away from Harry. Things only get worse from then on. The player is lured into a dark and tight corridor in what feels like a scene directed by a Hollywood A-list director, but it's all taking place in real-time gameplay.
Despite the groundbreaking camera angles, this is when players will probably want to turn back and find another child, but that's not possible. As they pull through, they find themselves in a maze of barbed wire and the guts of what must have been people at some point. Harry finds a disemboweled body stuck to a wall, and is then forced to run from a bunch of monsters, unaware that the only escape is to die just so he can wake up.
7 Silent Hill 4: The Room — The Titular Room
The Whole Game Should Have Taken Place There
Silent Hill 4
- Released
- September 7, 2004
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ due to Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes
- Developer(s)
- Team Silent
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
Silent Hill 4 is arguably the least interesting out of the original Silent Hill games made by Team Silent. However , that's because what takes place outside its titular main room dilutes the overall experience. The game's titular room, or apartment, is one of the best locations ever put in a horror game. Instead of being immediately horrifying, players get to see it gradually go from a suspicious place to one of the vilest, filthiest, most haunted places in entertainment history.
6 Resident Evil 2 — The Interrogation Room
An Interrogation From Hell
Resident Evil 2
- Released
- January 21, 1998
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Capcom
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
The Police Station from Resident Evil 2 is already one of the most iconic horror locations in gaming history, but there’s one part inside it that reigns over the rest of the place. That's a specific room with a mirror and no enemies inside — or in sight, to be more precise.
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At a certain point while navigating the interrogation room, something will jump through the glass to give players one of the greatest jump scares of all time. At the time, pre-rendered backgrounds weren’t supposed to break like that, but they did. It was a game changer, and a fantastic introduction to one of the game’s most iconic monsters, the Licker.
5 Silent Hill 3 — The Mirror Room
Beautifully Nightmarish To This day
Silent Hill 3
- Released
- August 6, 2003
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Konami
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
In a fantastic response to Resident Evil 2’s glass room, Silent Hill 3 did an even better "worst" room. Silent Hill 3’s mirror room seems normal at first, and is also devoid of enemies. But unlike the jumpscare with the breaking mirror, the mirror’s other side slowly shows the area around the main character deteriorating to the point of becoming pretty much hell, signaling that it’s time to get away from there. Not only does this area fit the themes of Silent Hill like a glove, but it remains an amazing display of atmosphere, artistry, and graphical prowess to this day.
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4 P.T. — The Hallway
Screaming Is The Only Way Out
P.T.
- Released
- August 12, 2014
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- Kojima Productions
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
It takes a true master of horror to turn the mundane into the most horrifying thing imaginable, and Hideo Kojima pulled it off despite his lack of experience in the genre. Corridors are liminal areas — places meant to take players to places where bad things will actually happen. Most of P.T. Is a corridor, so that’s where things will take place. This seemingly simple corridor works as a fantastic stage fpr some of the scariest events ever put in a game.
3 P.T. — The Bathroom
Claustrophobic & Full Of Dark Lore
P.T. Isn’t just a hallway. It also features a bathroom that’s somehow even more disturbing than the nightmarish liminal area taking players there. It’s the home of something players have named “sink baby,” one of the most inoffensive and yet most harrowing creatures players will ever come across. It’s also the place where players will get to put together most of the game’s story — and the story isn’t nice.
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The bathroom is tiny and dark, perfect to instill players with a dreadful sense of claustrophobia. That feeling doesn’t go well with knowing that the bathroom is one of Lisa’s (the Residing Evil entity residing within P.T.’s house) favorite haunting grounds.
2 Tomb Raider — The Pyramid, AKA Atlantis
It's Probably Best That It Sank
Tomb Raider
- Released
- November 14, 1996
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T For Teen // Animated Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Core Design, Aspyr
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure
Outsiders generally don't look at the Tomb Raider series as a horror game, but there are a lot of pure horror elements everyone will experience when playing the first two games in the original series. Despite her strength, athleticism, and guns, Lara Croft is always one mistake or unseen trap away from dying a spooky death.
No location makes that clearer than Atlantis, the final area of the game. The lush green environments in the early portion of the game are replaced by lava and walls that seem to be made of meat. Oh, and the wolves and bears from the first levels? They're now monsters as scary as anything seen in Resident Evil, which somehow explode when killed, as if players needed more jumpscares out of this one.
1 Resident Evil Village: The Baby's Room
He's Grown So Much
Resident Evil Village
- Released
- May 7, 2021
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
Resident Evil Village is one of the least scary games in the franchise, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The game has a lot going for it, with its fantastic environments populated by some of the most intriguing and enticing characters in the history of the series. The game's overall lack of scare factor becomes even more effective because it lures players into a false sense of safety when it brings them to the scariest area in Resident Evil history.
That's "the baby's" area. The defenseless players will have to play a game of hide-and-seek with the scariest entity out of all the Resident Evil games. It's even more twisted than it sounds. There's no denying that the recent slew of first-person Resident Evil games took inspiration from P.T., so it's kind of cool (albeit in a nightmarish way) to imagine that this is the finally fully grown version of the sink baby from P.T.
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