Cosmic horror is a subgenre that goes back over a century, but even now, there’s still a lot of debate about what exactly cosmic horror is. Oftentimes, I think people mistake set dressing for genre. A Lovecraftian aesthetic does not necessarily mean that a piece of media falls under the banner of cosmic horror. Sometimes people get hung up on the cosmic bit, taking it too literally. Cosmic horror does not necessarily need to involve space, though it often does. What is space, if not a void-like God stretching on into an endless nothing we will never be able to comprehend?
“The basis of all true cosmic horror is violation of the order of nature, and the profoundest violations are always the least concrete and describable.” —H.P. Lovecraft
To me, cosmic horror is more about the feeling it gives you. While I think the quiet terror of known unknowns is at the center of what makes cosmic horror work as a genre, there’s still that certain ‘It’ factor that needs to be there to pull the experience together. That feeling of your brain running up against something…and not being able to convert it from abstract to concrete.
Not because the story is unclear, not because you’re confused. It’s just unable to be processed or understood in a meaningful way by the human mind. It’s like when you try to imagine a very large sum, like one trillion dollars. Numbers of that size mean nothing to humans, outside of the sociopolitical context. We’re not built to think about numbers that big. That push back, that resistance when you try to make that tangible in your mind? That’s cosmic horror, baby.
Here are some games stuffed with things we’re not built to think about.
Dredge (2023)
A few years back, Worms masterminds Team 17 tagged with Black Salt Studios to make a cute little fishing adventure game. You’ll spend your serene seaside days improving your boat and equipment, and exploring the five archipelagos available in Dredge‘s open world. Then, at night, it transforms into a psychological horror game, filled with sea monsters and other aberrations fit to haunt any hardworking fisherman, and managing your panic meter becomes essential.
As the game continues, your fisherman gains supernatural powers, and becomes entangled in the stories and lives surrounding the five archipelagos and its most terrifying monster, the Leviathan. There are multiple endings as well, which keeps players coming back for another round. To me, the psychological horror element of this definitively cosmic horror game is one of its strongest storytelling elements, eclipsed only by its fabulous dialogue writing. But! I don’t want to give any big spoilers. Play Dredge, it’s great, and seriously—keep an eye on that setting sun.
Bloodborne (2015)
From Software’s magnum opus, Bloodborne, first comes across as a Victorian, gothic horror. However, as the game goes on and you’re drip-fed the lore of Bloodborne’s world, the true horror slowly makes itself known. Or rather, just how little you know makes itself known. From Software has always preferred an indirect style of storytelling. You can go through Bloodborne and pretty much ignore the visual clues and lore drops. You have to seek it out. And the more you look, the more terrifying it becomes.
Bloodborne is a masterclass in ambiguity in world-building. It will never really give you enough to confirm any certain theory, but It gives you just enough evidence to draw your own conclusions, all of which will not come close to the true scope of what is happening to the ancient city of Yharnam. The horror of finding your limit of understanding and being unable to push past it is an element of the game that, while optional, makes the experience of playing all the more human.
Pathologic (2005)
Few things have ever made me feel as powerless as Russian survival horror game Pathologic. Now, when I say Pathologic, I mean both the original and Pathologic 2, its significantly improved and reimagined remake. A lot of the fuel behind the horror of cosmicism (the philosophy that birthed cosmic horror) is the idea that our fates are utterly out of our control, so small and insignificant as we are. Pathologic talks a lot about determinism, about free-will, and who has it and who doesn’t. Even ignoring that, the mere presence of the Polyhedron—an inexplicable reality and physics defying structure towering above the steppe town where the story takes place—is enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
In this Russian novel of a video game, you have a role, and you will find yourself helpless but to play it. This town on the Ghorkon River has become overrun with an awful plague, and you play as one of three healers trying to save the town. Pathologic is…not what I would call a fun game. At least not in the traditional sense. Most people, upon realizing the torture they’ve signed themselves up for, play for an hour or two before uninstalling it. Still, it sucks you in nonetheless. Pathologic is the hardest game I have ever played, but it’s also one of the most thought-provoking games I’ve ever played.
No, I’m Not a Human (2025)
Here’s another Russian game, although No, I’m Not a Human is much, MUCH easier to play. Though, to my delicate constitution, No, I’m Not a Human is scarier than Pathologic in a number of ways. For all its horrors, Pathologic has a somewhat quirky and amusing tone to much of its dialogue. Not so much with NINAH. We could talk about the haunting score, or the daringly unique and unsettling art style, but I want to focus on the plot itself, the set dressings of the end of the world.
In No, I’m Not a Human, the sun has become hostile to life. It is impossible for humans to be out in the sun for any length of time without dying to the intense heat. This, naturally, causes the world to fall into chaos. You are a man living in a cabin alone outside of a city. No clue where or when, and that feels intentional. While the sun incinerates society metaphorically and literally, things…awful things…are starting to make themselves known. They’re called Visitors, and they could look just like you or me.
No one seems to truly understand what they are. Some say human corpses, reanimated to serve a death god. Some say they’re just humans infected with a disease, or a brain parasite. Some say they’re aliens. There are many theories in-universe and in the real world about what exactly they are, and what’s heating up the sun. No, I’m Not a Human will scare the shit out of you, maybe give you some nightmares, and really make you rethink getting cremated. Depending on what ending you get, it may be more cosmic horror-y or less, but you’ll find the same paranoid, helpless fear crawling up your spine either way. I won’t spoil too much—just go give it a play.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010)
Okay, confession time: I’ve always struggled a little bit with horror games. For a long time, I had a bad habit of throwing controllers, closing my eyes, screaming, etc. I’m easily startled, okay? I’ve got some prey instinct thing going on. Which is why my decision to pick up and play Amnesia: The Dark Descent about eight years ago was baffling. Published by Swedish game development studio Frictional Games, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is oft mentioned in lists of the best psychological horror games of all time, and rightly so. To me, it felt like a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, a game that also had a Sanity meter, which Amnesia is famous for.
In Amnesia: The Dark Descent, you play as Mayfair-born amnesiac Daniel. You find yourself in a castle called Brennenberg in Prussia, circa 1839. Other than your first name and where you come from, you only really know one thing: something is hunting you. Daniel finds a note he left to himself explaining how he wiped his own memory on purpose, and is being pursued by the ‘Shadow’, a horrific eldritch abomination not of this world, whose influence can be seen in the form of fleshy, acidic growths throughout the castle. Your old self gives you instructions to enter the Inner Sanctum and kill Alexander, the baron of the castle. As you follow Daniel through the castle, you’ll learn more about its history, and Daniel’s own past. And you’ll be terrified pretty much the whole time, which is perfect for spooky season!
SOMA (2015)
One day, you’re a brain-damaged man mourning the loss of the love of your life, going for a brain scan to see if a doctoral student can help you. The next, it’s 2103 and you’re stranded in a hellish underground facility with Cronenberg-esque machinery/flesh combos that speak as though they’re authentically human. Meaning…they feel pain. And that’s just where the horror starts. The fear of the unknown, the lack of understanding of how such a thing could happen, or how the f*ck you ended up 100 years in the future, haunts each step just like the menacing, mutated constructs that stalk you through the Pathos-II Facility.
That’s hardly where the horror ends with SOMA, another terrifying creation from Frictional Games. Many claim that SOMA has one of the most disturbing endings in the entire horror genre. It asks naked and painful questions about what makes us human, and it doesn’t provide you an answer. It plays with subjective reality and memory, especially since you’re seeing everything through the eyes of the protagonist Simon, who, again, has brain damaged so bad he’d been given less than a year to live before going to his mysterious brain-scan. This is all backed with some of the most skin-crawling environmental sound design I’ve heard since, well, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. SOMA in particular I really don’t want to spoil too much, so this is another case of, “Go on, get! Go play it!”
Horror is a genre that takes all kinds. Video game horror especially. There’s a home for fans of any kind of scares, from grindhouse nightmares to psychological thrillers that make you question everything, especially yourself. My favorite is cosmic horror. I seek out narratives that will stick with me in the long-term, that will haunt me answers I’ll never truly have. If you dig that vibe, any of the games on this list should hit the spot.
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The post 6 Cosmic Horror Games to Haunt Your Nightmares This Fall appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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