Axe murderers. Vengeful ghosts. Killer clowns. They’re all horrifying, sure, but at least they’re horrifying in a way that we can understand. Meanwhile, cosmic horror villains are of an entirely different breed. Beings that defy comprehension, you can’t really call cosmic horror antagonists “villains” at all. They’re forces of nature. Eternal and immovable as mountain ranges. Planets. Stars. Are you a malicious “villain” when you accidentally step on an ant hill? Or are those poor creatures so beneath you that you didn’t consider them at all? Cosmic horror pits humanity against beings that make ants of us. How do you defeat them? Certainly not by pumping them full of lead like in a standard horror games – these 10 best cosmic horror games recommend a different approach.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Not what you were expecting for a first entry, were you? While The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask isn’t the go-to title when people are thinking up cosmic horror games, it’s the closest the franchise has ever come to the genre – and this game nails it. Set in a dream-like mirror world of the Hyrule we found in Ocarina of Time, silent protagonist Link has to stop an ancient evil spirit from causing the apocalypse in three days. An eldritch god that inhabits a mask has sown suffering across Termina, and intends to put the world out of its misery by dropping the moon out of the sky – killing everyone in the collision. Aside from the fact that a gibbering alien deity serves as the cosmically horrible final boss of this game, Majora’s Mask also pits you up against real aliens. Extraterrestrials known only as “Them” invade Romani Ranch, and if you allow the young rancher Romani to be abducted by them, she’ll come back rendered nearly catatonic by the unknowably horrors she experienced – classic hazard of the genre.
Bloodborne
From the studio that brought you Dark Souls, the dark fantasy game that dabbles in cosmic dread, comes Bloodborne – a hundred mile an hour cosmically horrible roller coaster ride. Set in a decaying Victorian city plagued by a, well, plague that turns people into beasts, you take control of a ruthless hunter tasked with exterminating the threat. As the game goes on, you gain a resource called “insight,” which allows you to pierce the veil into cosmic realms beyond. The city of Yharnam is ruled by a gothic healing church that worships eldritch divinities covered in tentacles and eyes, it’s basically H.P. Lovecraft coded Catholicism. Thankfully, unlike most cosmic abominations, these beings can be slain with sharp weapons. Lucky for you, this crushingly difficult game supplies plenty of those.
Control
One of the most underrated cosmic horror games (and games in general), Control takes place within the brutalist architectural confines of the Federal Bureau of Control – a government organization tasked with eliminating existential threats. After the facility is taken over by an eldritch entity called The Hiss, it’s up to you to defeat it with your awesome psychic powers and even more awesome shape shifting gun. It’s third person Bioshock meets Stranger Things meets Men In Black – a high octane thrill ride as head-scratching as it is heart pounding. But where did The Hiss come from? Why is it invading our world? When your higher ups are literal higher dimensional beings themselves, it’s best not to ask questions and let the qualified eldritch entities sort it out – your sanity will stay in tact that way.
Look Outside
An indie cosmic horror game that’s quickly becoming a genre classic, Look Outside is an Undertale style adventure about an unfortunate man who has the apocalypse knocking at his door. He can’t look outside though – otherwise it’s an instant mind-breaking, body-mutating game over As you attempt to make sense of the End Times, you’re faced with all manner of tentacled abominations that used to be your friends and neighbors. The RPG-style combat system lets you kill, avoid, or attempt to reason with your gibbering foes, and the games multitude of choices that lead to different endings. Be warned, if you choose the ending that lets you perceive the eldritch truth of the universe, you’re in for one of the most terrifying cosmic horror reveals in any medium. I still get nightmares about the true form of The Visitor, so you don’t have to.
World of Horror
Another indie-ish RPG, World of Horror is a lo-fi masterpiece that borrows from H.P. Lovecraft and horror manga master Junji Ito. Set in fictional Shiokawa, Japan in the fictional year of “198X,” the player is tasked with solving five mysteries that will allow you to unlock a lighthouse and find… Robert Pattison and William Dafoe? Close! Eldritch horror hiding within! A roguelike game, every action you take fills up the “DOOM meter” – when that meter reaches 100%, an elder god is summoned and the game ends. If that wasn’t bad enough, you also have to contend with evil spirits of Japanese myth, including the famous Kuchisake-onna or “slit-mouthed woman” – don’t look her up. In fact, don’t even look this game up. Make some tea, watch a fun little T.V. show, don’t bother yourself with the mind-breaking cosmic abominations found in this game. One play-through is insanity inducing enough, though the game offers multiple. Make the mentally healthy choice.
SOMA
The cosmic horror cousin of Bioshock, SOMA puts you in the diving boots of Simon Jarret – a car crash survivor who awakens in an underwater facility somewhere in the North Atlantic. As Simon explores the decaying halls of PATHOS-II, he encounters other forms of consciousness – hostile robots that believe themselves to be human. While the game’s claustrophobic underwater environment doesn’t feel expansive enough to contain cosmically horrible multitudes at first, the genre rears its insanity inducing head when you find out why Simon and a few other people are on PATHOS-II in the first place. Something happened to the world above, an event so monumental that it reshaped the course of human history forever. You’ve been warned.
Dead Space
One of the finest horror games ever made, Dead Space combines body horror, survival horror, and even cosmic horror at its controversial conclusion. The game takes place on a mining ship that has been overtaken by necromorphs – body-snatching alien abominations that turn human beings into masses of tentacles and teeth. An unfortunate engineer named Isaac is tasked with surviving the Ishimura and saving its crew – though his quest eventually leads him to discover the cosmically horrible origins of the necromorphs in subsequent games. The Dead Space games solve the Fermi Paradox – a real life thought experiment which asks “if the universe contains infinite potential for life, where is everyone?” The game’s answer? Life was out there, once, but just like the inhabitants of the Ishimura, it was consumed by something that defies comprehension.
Darkwood
Darkwood is Annihilation meets Dark Souls, a crushingly difficult adventure set in an ever-expanding forest full of monsters. Like the alien plant life of Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space, this forest is spreading rapidly across Poland, and a group of soldiers and government agents called “The Outsiders” are the only people brave enough to explore it. By crafting supplies and cooking up hallucinogens to learn new skills (yes, really) you are able to explore the forest by day and survive the onslaught of terrors that come at night. Featuring multiple endings based on your actions, Darkwood is a game worthy of multiple play-throughs – though your sanity might not survive the repeated ordeal.
Sunless Sea
Sunless Sea is a cosmic humor game, combining dry wit with a wet ocean filled with eldritch beings. This subterranean ocean, known as “the Unterzee” is vast and lonely – and exploring it with your tiny vessel makes you feel small as a, well, droplet of water in the ocean. The rogue-like game perfectly captures the feeling navigating a massive, alien and indifferent universe. Your task is to survive and collect enough resources to either become a famous explorer or retire with your oodles of wealth. But be careful, the eldritch entities that inhabit this sea are able to attack you both physically and mentally – if you don’t carefully watch your “Terror” meter, your mortified crew could mutiny against you, resulting in a game over. To be fair, if your “get rich quick” scheme involved taking me down into a subterranean ocean filled with underwater abominations, I’d probably mutiny against you too.
Outer Wilds
While the cozy space-campfire vibes Outer Wilds don’t appear to be cosmically horrible, give it a little time and you’ll feel the creep of insanity closing in. How much time? Exactly 22 minutes – that’s how long it takes for the in-game solar system to end and begin again. Your job is to investigate the system before its star goes supernova, hoping to find a way to reverse the process through clues left behind by an ancient alien civilization. The horrors in this game are environmental – black holes, exploding suns, the pull of gravity – natural phenomenon that are perfectly capable of inducing cosmic dread without relying on eldritch abominations to help out. Though trust me, those are there too. Just take a dip in the oceans of Dark Bramble and you’ll see what I mean.
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