10 Games To Play If You Love Five Nights At Freddy's | Game Rant
Video games are able to engage audiences in many different ways and even though they can provide a great sense of escapism or adventure, there are also people who turn to video games because they want to get the life scared out of them. The horror genre is incredibly popular in film, but horror video games become intimidating in an entirely new way due to how they deeply immerse the player into the fear.
Five Nights at Freddy’s has become a successful horror franchise that exploits the scares from a creepy amusement park. Five Nights at Freddy’s knows how to get under its audience’s skin, but there are plenty of other titles that create a comparable level of fear and channel a similar energy.
10 The Park
The Park centers around a mother's pursuit for her missing son who's lost somewhere within an amusement park. As the mother searches through the park she processes memories of her child and the contemplative title definitely owes a lot to the Silent Hill series in this respect. Some may easily reduce The Park to a fancy version of a "walking simulator," but its story and creepy setting are incredibly effective. It's a draining experience and one that reiterates the importance of humanity in a horror game.
9 Boogeyman
The advent of VR gaming still hasn’t caught on with everyone, but there’s been exceptional use of it with horror video games. Boogeyman is a VR horror title that’s simple in nature, but it lands the concept so well thanks to its immersive nature. The player is a young boy who’s afraid of the Boogeyman coming into his room at night and their only line of defense is their flashlight, which has a limited battery. Players must listen for noises and figure out when they’re under attack, but every attempt of the Boogeyman to attack is a nightmare.
8 In Silence
In Silence is a really creative take on a multiplayer horror game. Most of the players control normal humans who want to survive, whereas one person plays as a vicious monster known as a Rake. The Rake is blind, but has hypersensitive hearing.
The game illustrates this by the Rake's vision being almost completely black, but more of the picture fills in depending on how much sound the other characters make. This limited tunnel vision perspective brings Five Nights at Freddy's to mind and it also allows for some scary multiplayer fun to be enjoyed at the same time.
7 CarnEvil
There are many different ways to experience the terrors of a murderous amusement park and Midway’s arcade classic CarnEvil decides to take the approach of a lightgun rail shooter. CarnEvil is exceptionally violent and bombards the player with grotesque visuals and a morbid sense of humor that brings Five Nights at Freddy’s to mind. The rail shooter approach is so effective in CarnEvil because it creates a real sense of anxiety and creates a feeling that’s comparable to trying to escape from an amusement park. CarnEvil is a standout horror title from the ‘90s, but it deserves a modern comeback.
6 Outlast
Outlast is another brilliant horror game from the modern era that is reminiscent of Five Nights at Freddy’s when it comes to gameplay and presentation, but it’s completely different when it comes to its story and horror inspirations. Outlast focuses on an investigative journalist whose most recent work takes him to an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Outlast is experienced in first-person, but it creates even grander scares with how most of the game is cast in darkness. The player must rely on the night vision of their camcorder, which naturally creates tension in the gamer.
5 Illbleed
The Dreamcast’s lifespan was sadly far too short, but in this brief time the Sega console was the home for many top tier games, some of which have never been released anywhere else. Illbleed is an obscure gem that takes the slasher genre structure and applies it to a bunch of teenagers who visit a suspicious amusement park.
Each of Illbleed’s levels represents a different brand of horror. It’s also very ahead of its time with how characters can die and its “fear meter” concept, which monitors various health factors of the character as they experience scares.
4 Daylight
Daylight is an interesting horror game for Windows and the PlayStation 4 from Zombie Studios and the publisher Atlus. Daylight is set within and around a scary hospital as the player tries to piece together the institution's dark past. Daylight embraces the first-person perspective angle to its horror and it strips the player of any weapons and instead gives them means of light to ward off the game's shadow people enemies. Daylight isn't perfect, but it has a lot of good and frightening ideas as well as environment layouts that are randomly generated, which keeps gameplay fresh.
3 Until Dawn: Rush Of Blood
Until Dawn from Supermassive Games is one of the most satisfying horror titles of the last decade and it beautifully embraces the atmosphere and aesthetics of '80s horror cinema. Until Dawn: Rush of Blood is a VR spin-off of the series that shifts the setting from an eerie mountain retreat to a deadly carnival. Much of Rush of Blood's hinges on a disturbing roller coaster and the change of pace is so effective it's just a shame that Rush of Blood isn't the official sequel to the title.
2 Amnesia: The Dark Descent
The Amnesia series has become one of the most consistent and terrifying modern horror series. Each title in the franchise features genuinely frightening scares and monsters that will make the player want to rush to turn off the console. Amnesia: The Dark Descent features an environment that’s quite different than Five Nights at Freddy’s, but the game offers the same first-person immersion and sense of danger as the player explores a mysterious location where it feels like danger can be around any corner. It’s very easy to play Five Nights at Freddy’s and then shift over to Amnesia.
1 Silent Hill 3
There’s still lots of debate on whether Silent Hill 2 or 3 is the superior entry in the series, but Silent Hill 3 definitely has the advantage when it comes to the setting. Set within the Lakeside Amusement Park, Heather Mason’s desire to find her father and escape from these disturbing monsters makes exceptional use of an abandoned amusement park. Silent Hill 3 takes many amusement park staples, like roller coasters, cuddly mascots, and even an innocent carousel and warps them into nightmare fuel that would even give the Freddy’s characters pause.
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