It goes without saying that we’re currently enjoying the best run of horror video games since the PS2 era. The past few years have seen a resurgence of the genre, thanks in part to nostalgia for a time when survival horror was at its peak. The result is cutting-edge remakes, retro throwbacks, and new experiences that find new ways to send shivers down our spines.
Things are so good in the horror space that last year, for the first time, IGN introduced a Best Horror Game category for its annual awards. And it was pretty easy to bring it back for a second year, so picking Spook in 2024 was good. We were treated to the uncomfortable, claustrophobic terror of Steel Walks the Deep and its infected oil rig; the gruesome saw-ish challenge of The Outlast Trial; Silent Hill 2’s blubber team’s impressive recreation and mouthwashing’s terrifying twists and turns, among others.
But only one can be crowned the best horror game of 2024. What did the IGN team judge to be the most worthy? Let’s take a look at the results…
honorable mention
Thanks to the wide array of experiences experienced during the current horror game renaissance, the IGN team voted for a wide range of 2024 releases. While not receiving enough votes to secure runner-up status, we’d like to give honorable mentions to two additional games.
The Chinese Room from Steel Walks The Deep developer is a fantastic narrative horror set on an oil rig that has been infected by a creature like The Thing. It’s enjoyably Scottish in tone, drawn in the depressing shadows of 1970s Britain and fueled by the fear of the unknown in eldritch literature. It’s much more interesting than its walking sim basics, too, with exciting chase set-pieces and terrifying stealth encounters.
We also have to tip our hat to Slitterhead. While our reviewers ultimately struggled to fall in love with it, several IGN team members enjoyed its idealistic approach to Bodysnapper-style onslaught of scenes. The latest game from original Silent Hill director Keichiro Toyama certainly has its fair share of unusual presentations, but there’s something fundamentally appealing about its core concept. Scavenging corpses and advancing your investigation into Lovecraftian monsters using various people dressed in human skin suits is unlike anything we’ve ever done in a horror game before. In an industry that increasingly plays it safe, Slitterhead isn’t afraid to embrace the eccentric.
Runner Up: A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
The strength of the original A Quiet Place movie is its simple premise: a world where you must be silent to survive. A snapping pulse or a rustling snack could be your downfall. On paper it’s not only a good elevator pitch for a story, but a great video game driving mechanic. And so, somewhat surprisingly, we landed a pretty good movie companion game in A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead.
As you’d expect, it’s an exciting survival game with a stealth system. Accompanied by the same alien creatures seen in the movie, you must carefully navigate through levels filled to burst with noisy objects. Every open drawer and door is a risky move, lest the scream of a hinge alert the beast. Adding even more stress to the situation is that your protagonist suffers from asthma, meaning that difficult tasks like climbing over obstacles can push you closer to a noisy respiratory attack that will summon your predator.
Developer Stormmind Games obviously had a limited budget for the project, and so the road ahead is often a bit rough around the edges. Its cat-and-mouse gameplay isn’t quite the Alien: Isolation successor you’d expect (see last year’s Amnesia: The Bunker for a better alternative). But even so, it’s a great testament to the idea of how perfect a quiet space is through video games.
Runner Up: Country of Crows
Much of the horror genre’s recent success can be attributed to developers looking back at previous generations and finding ways to recreate those original scares. That’s exactly what’s going on at Crow Country, an indie spookfest that pays homage to the 1990s PlayStation classics Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Low-polygon visuals, limited inventory space, overhead cameras, and foot-anchored shooting all capture the timeless essence of early survival horror.
But it’s the fresh ideas injected by developer SFB Games that elevate Crow Country above and beyond a simple exercise in nostalgia. Being able to rotate the camera a full 360 degrees brings a modern edge to a traditionally fixed-view formula, and similarly the ability to aim weapons freely enhances an otherwise old-school shooting system. These in turn allow the puzzles and battles of Crow Country to feel anew, by rotating the camera to find new clues and items, or lining up a headshot to quickly neutralize an oncoming monster.
Although it channels some of the edgy atmosphere of its retro inspirations, Crow County isn’t afraid to have a little fun. Set in an abandoned theme park, there’s a degree of whimsy that cuts through the darkness, while protagonist Mara always has a comic line up her sleeve to bring some levity. The result isn’t exactly comfortable, but there’s a certain comfort to be found in Crow Country – a kind of nostalgic embrace.
Runner-up: Face wash
Mouthwash is the 2024 facial horror hit This is one of those games that comes with the admonition “don’t read anything, just play”, so if a twisted narrative adventure that exposes the depravity of human nature is that kind of thing you go for, you’ll want to stop reading, Steam in a new tab Want to open and press the buy button now.
But to justify Mouthwashing’s position as the IGN team’s second-favorite horror game of the year, we need to go into detail, so here we go. On the surface, developer Wrong Organ has created a simple walking simulator in which you run between different rooms of a crashed spaceship, completing basic tasks. There’s very little in the way of classic horror game mechanics – you won’t find any zombies to shoot, enemies to hide, or resource management here. But as the story progresses, you find yourself falling down an increasingly harrowing rabbit hole. What happens when a stranded freighter crew faces little hope of survival? Discretion becomes a precious, diminishing asset.
A narrative triumph, Mouthwashing Drops reveals terrifying newness at just the right moment on its ever-building tension curve. And as the layers are peeled back, you begin to see not only your crew mates in a very different light, but also your own hero. It’s a horror story where force-feeding your deranged captain with painkillers whets the appetite for a late-game main course. It’s as disgustingly delicious as it sounds.
Winner: Silent Hill 2
It’s safe to say that Blubber Team had no guarantees for a remake of Silent Hill 2. Team Silent’s timeless survival horror classic was thought to be almost impossible to remake. Others were wary of Bluebar’s abilities after The Medium (itself an overwhelming homage to Silent Hill) and a very up-down back catalogue. But when we finally installed Silent Hill 2 on our consoles — a game that’s simultaneously shiny and rusty — it was instantly clear: Blubber didn’t just get Silent Hill 2, it spoke fluently.
Silent Hill 2 follows in the footsteps of last year’s Dead Space as a remake that stays almost entirely faithful to the original game while adding modern enhancements in a tasteful manner. It has all the fear-inducing, exciting exploration features of the original – it’s basically a game about exploring creepy buildings from room to room and digesting the terrifying secrets within – only this time you can do it all using a 3D camera and modern over-the-shoulder. Combat Result is an experience that feels like a throwback to the peak of survival horror in its design, but is thoroughly modern in its execution. For many people, including most of the IGN team, this is the exact sweet spot that a remake should aim for.
Staying so close to Blueberry’s original formula means Silent Hill 2 isn’t as transformative as, for example, Capcom’s Resident Evil 2, which rethought the entire game from the ground-up. As such, we know this can be considered a controversial choice. Should a faithful remake be considered for a year-end award when so much creative work was done by different people in different decades? While that’s a worthy question, it’s undeniable that Bluebar’s efforts on this project are a valuable addition to the horror canon, making a true titan accessible to modern audiences. Its heavy, dark story remains as timeless today as it was in 2001, and that fear-inducing exploration loop is a reminder of the timeless qualities of good game design. As such, Silent Hill 2 was the best horror game we played in 2024, and this modern vehicle deserves recognition for such a triumph, regardless of its roots.
Matt Parslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.
