The best horror games without weapons

Key insights

• The best horror games create a strong feeling of helplessness in players by depriving them of weapons and defenses.
• The scariest horror games portray the player as the hunted rather than the hunter, facing overwhelming odds.
• Helplessness in horror games is achieved by players being completely defenseless and having no weapons or combat options.

Good horror gamesare characterized by making players feel helpless. While most action titles and RPGs allow players to empower themselves with weapons and special abilities, horror games go in the opposite direction, throwing the protagonist into a truly hopeless situation and forcing them to fight for survival and find a way out.

One of the easiest ways to achieve this feeling of hopelessness is to make the player completely defenseless. Some of the scariest horror games have no weapons, or any kind of fight at all. The protagonist is completely at the mercy of the fearsome forces that seek to destroy them, and the player must fight to survive the onslaught without being able to defend themselves. Here are some of them best horror games without weapons.

10 Five nights at Freddy's

A week full of pain

The original Five nights at Freddy's is a game that needs no introduction. This indie darling skyrocketed in popularity thanks to its simple yet unique premise and the immersive designs of its terrifying animatronics. The title has since spawned a huge multimedia franchise, spanning several games and even a major motion picture.

One of the reasons the game works so well is the sheer helplessness of the player character. The doors of the protagonist's tiny office provide only weak, temporary protection against the cumbersome animatronics, and players must keep a careful eye on the entire restaurant to stay alive. With no real way for the player to defend themselves against these terrible machines, they are left stranded for five harrowing nights.

9 I'm on observation duty

Anomaly Hunting

I'm on observation duty is a bite-sized horror experience that spawned a respectable series of sequels, all based on the same hair-raising premise. In I'm on observation dutyPlayers take on the role of a surveillance officer who must investigate a mysterious house using a series of surveillance cameras. The only way to survive is to immediately observe supernatural phenomena and report them immediately.

This simple but risky gameplay loop leads to high tension and intense paranoia over the course of the game's short playing time. Fans looking for more excitement can look to the game's many sequels, but the first game alone will provide a solid evening of pure terror.

8 The undertaker's assistant

Doomed among the dead

Also among other games in the horror genre, The undertaker's assistant is a particularly macabre experience. As the name suggests, the player character is caught working in a morgue late at night when he is attacked by a horrific demonic creature. The player must fight to stay alive while figuring out how to drive away the demon before it's too late.

Although the game is rather short, a robust random element ensures high replay value. Different hauntings and spectral events occur during each playthrough, preventing the game from becoming predictable or boring. Each and every visit to the morgue will bring unique, terrifying demonic encounters that the player will find difficult to resist.

7 Doki Doki Literature Club

Appearances can be deceiving

The shocking twist at the heart of Doki Doki Literature Club is now legendary, but when it came out it took the gaming world completely by surprise. This captivating psychological horror game hides its deeply disturbing content behind a seemingly innocent visual novel of romance and poetry, only to lure fans into the true horror that lurks beneath.

Doki Doki Literature Club delivers some surprisingly deep and heavy themes about the nature of relationships and even the constraints of the video game genre itself. There is no combat in the game and not even enemies in the traditional sense, however Doki Doki Literature Club It's likely that fans will still be in suspense from the first reveal of his true nature to the end.

6 Iron lung

The unimaginable depths

The horror genre's continued attempts to scare players in new and unexpected ways have resulted in some truly imaginative games Iron lung is one of the strangest. In this game, the player takes on the role of a prisoner on an alien moon, adrift in an ocean of blood, trapped in a tiny, windowless submarine and forced to explore the Stygian depths.

The protagonist's only means of interacting with the outside world is through a slow, old-fashioned camera that gives him short, time-delayed snapshots of the deep waters outside. These blind glimpses of an otherwise incomprehensible sea, coupled with the intense claustrophobia of the player's tiny submarine, create a sense of helplessness and fear that is almost unprecedented in the genre.

5 immortality

The Secret of Marissa Marcel

immortality may stretch the definition of what a video game is, but it's still a remarkably creative horror experience that fans of the genre won't want to miss. The game is presented as a collection of archival footage from three unfinished films starring a mysteriously disappeared actress named Marissa Marcel. As players search through the footage, players can try to figure out what happened to her, but it quickly becomes clear that there is something much darker going on beneath the surface.

The secrets of immortality are much better experienced than summarized, but they take the game to some truly unsettling places. This is anything but a traditional horror video game, but until the mystery is solved it will cause just as many sleepless nights.

4 Phasmophobia

Ghost hunting with friends

Phasmophobia It grew in popularity in late 2020 as it served as a seasonally appropriate way to get scared with friends online. In this game, up to four players take on the roles of professional ghost hunters who travel to haunted locations and collect spectral evidence to identify a ghost before it murders them.

Players can defeat and fend off the game's hostile ghosts in various ways, but they cannot defend themselves against them directly. By the time a player sees a phantom face to face, it is usually already too late. To stay alive and earn a living, players must tread carefully and deal with malfunctioning equipment and intrusive ghosts.

3 Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The depths of madness

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is in many ways the gold standard for helplessness in horror gaming. In this survival horror game, players take on the role of a memoryless man lost in a dark and crumbling castle, haunted by unimaginable horrors. At no point does the game offer the player any concrete way to defend themselves against these abominations, forcing them to rely on stealth and evasion if they want to stay alive.

The oppressive atmosphere of madness and fear that permeates every second amnesia made it an icon of the horror genre and provided the blueprint for several sequels. Despite all the fear these later games caused, Amnesia: The Dark Descent remains one of the most famous survival horror games ever.

2 SOMA

A nautical nightmare

This nightmarish game from the makers of Amnesia: The Dark Descenttransports players to an abandoned research station on the ocean floor. This terrifying facility is populated by shambling robot horrors and hideously mutated humans and fish. The protagonist, Simon, must figure out how he got there and how to escape before he is slaughtered by the game's terrifying, unstoppable killing machines.

Similar to its sibling game amnesia, SOMA quickly falls into despair and fear when the players learn how the facility was destroyed and how Simon ended up there. This game explores dark and tragic themes surrounding the fate of humanity and the nature of digitized consciousness, and its philosophical implications are almost as disturbing as the horrors that lurk within the flooded halls.

1 PT

A lost legend

The infamous PT is the stuff that video game legends are made of, both because it's so profound and incredibly frightening, and because it's forever lost to modern gaming. This short game served to set the stage for an upcoming start to the season silent Hill Franchise created by the famous Hideo Kojima, but unfortunately the game was canceled and the playable demo was removed from stores.

When it was available, PT was a revolutionary title. It trapped players in an endlessly repeating hallway that kept looping back on itself as players avoided the attention of a malevolent spirit and puzzled over deeply sinister clues in the environment to solve the game's dark past. Silent hills It could have been a truly unforgettable game, but the fans were lucky to be there PT could still experience the hopeless feeling of being trapped forever in a madman's nightmare.