Summary
From gothic castlesto the confines of one’s own mind,horror gamestransport players to a number of creepy locations. But there’s nothing like the primal fear sparked from the depths of the earth. Underground caverns, cramped and devoid of light, are claustrophobic nightmares that, in the real world, most people wouldn’t want to find themselves trapped in - never mind the added threat of supernatural horrors that come from video games.
The games below are some of the best horror titles that, for the majority of their runtime, keep players trapped beneath the earth’s surface where all sorts of creatures lurk in the dark.
Genre
Horror
After a research facility based a mile under the ocean floor goes quiet,Hidden Deepsees an expedition team being sent to investigate what happened and find the survivors. The game shakes up this formulaic but classic horror set-up by having the player lead the rescue team, granting them a number of tools, ranging from heavy mining machinery to an armory of weapons, that will help them complete their mission.
During their playthrough, players will explore sub-ocean caverns and abandoned facilities - all of which are filled with fleshy monsters that are right at homewithThe Thing.
Assuming the role of Dr.West,Subterrainforces players to navigate the cramped halls of an underground city on Mars that has become overrun with monsters. At a glance,Subterrainmight remind some players ofDarkwood,thanks to its similar top-down perspective where the player’s field of vision is limited by a cone. LikeDarkwood, the inclusion of this camera angle makesSubterrainall the more intense, as players, though they have a visual of the room, won’t always see an enemy coming for them.
Technomancy Studios’Cave Crawleris a short, little indie game that has players taking control of a drone, aptly named a “Cave Crawler”, as they explore a cave in search of a missing hiker. As is expected, all is not right in this cave, and the further players progress through it, the more strange happenings they’ll witness.
Cave Crawlermakes the most of its setting, confronting players with its claustrophobic and dark caverns by placing them in afirst-person camera angle. The camera choice is what makes the experience, as players become truly immersed, feeling as if they’re really crawling through those tunnels.
Penumbra: OvertureisAmnesiadeveloper Frictional Games' first and perhaps most underrated commercial release. Players assume the role of Phillip as he travels to Greenland after receiving a letter from his thought-to-be-dead father. Caught in the cold after arriving at the location in the letter, Phillip takes shelter in an abandoned mine filled with creepy crawlies and mystery.
Like Frictional’s other games,Penumbrais dripping in atmosphere, creating an environment that only feels claustrophobic and creepy, but cold too. While exploring the icy tunnels ofPenumbra,players are bound to feel the chill of goosebumps on their skin, for more reasons than one.
Underground is a term used a little differently in the case of Casper Croes’Alisa,as, rather than submerging players in dark caves, the game is set in aResident Evil-style mansion, called the Dollhouse, that itself is located underground. MeaningAlisaelevates the classichaunted mansion atmosphereby stripping away anything that might have given the player some semblance of freedom. There are no windows offering peeks at the sky or sections, after the opening, above the surface, for players to catch their breath.
Naturally, with a setting called the Dollhouse, protagonist Alisa - an elite royal agent - is forced to fight through doll-like monsters in her attempts to escape back to the surface.
Following a nuclear disaster,Metro 2033sees the surviving population of Moscow fleeing to the depths of the city’s metro tunnels for shelter. In the ensuing years, a semblance of a civilization emerges, with survivors being split across multiple factions and tunnels that have managed to create some form of order.
On top of the lightless, cramped, and starving conditions the people ofMetroalready endure, these tunnels are filled with mutated monsters and strange, supernatural anomalies, making life within them even more miserable. In this world, the player assumes the role of Artyom as he travels through and beyond the tunnels to save his people from an impending threat.
Sunless Seacombines an underground setting with another of video games' most frightening locations: the ocean. Set in theFallen Londonuniverse, where the city has been transported to an impossibly large cavern called Neath, players captaintheir own shipas they explore the Unterzee, a subterranean ocean swimming with horrors.
As the title suggests, the sun does not touch the ocean, making its waters black and inscrutable. Being constantly shrouded in darkness and not knowing what lurks beneath the game’s waters is an unnerving experience that one never quite gets used to, makingSunless Seaa tense play throughout its runtime.
Lost in Vivotasks players with descending into the sewers to find their dog after it falls down a drain. Rather than a high-octane action fest, theJohn Wickof horror games is a claustrophobic nightmare that will force players through winding labyrinths of dark tunnels, each haunted by some sort of twisted horror.
Visually,Lost in Vivoseems to draw a lot of inspiration from theSilent Hillfranchise, with a number of its levels being crusted with rust, caked in grime, or unsettling in their liminality.
Amnesia: The Bunkersaw Frictional Games diving beneath the earth once again to deliver one of gaming’s scariest releases in recent history. In the game, players assume the role of Henri Clement,a French WW1soldier who becomes trapped in a bunker with a monstrous Beast.
The suffocating, rat-infested interior of the game’s titular bunker is unnerving enough on its own, but the Beast is what truly makes this game stand out.Stalking the playerconstantly throughout the game, the Beast harks back to enemies like Mr. X fromResident Evil 2or the incredibly smart xenomorph fromAlien: Isolation, forcing players to keep their wits about them.
