A lot of video games take quite a bit of time to complete. There are games we can sink dozens of hours into and still not discover all the secrets or complete all the quests. And then, some games can be finished in a couple of hours. While some short games are fun for a little while, they leave little to talk about. Still, some tiny gems are worth checking out.
When it comes to short games, there are games in just about every genre that you might imagine. The horror genre has recently seen a ton of shorter games; here you can check out the best short horror games out there.
Updated on October 7, 2024, by Dennis Moiseyev: The best horror game experiences are those that are well-paced and short, providing you with an unrelenting atmosphere that grips you from beginning to end in a single playthrough.
Also, time is something everyone could probably use a lot more of, so shorter gaming experiences are sometimes even more preferred in busy day-to-day lives. Below we’ve added some more horror games that you can beat in a relatively short amount of time.
BioShock
There is nothing quite like a dystopian city under the sea. Once your plane crashes and you descend to Rapture, BioShock pierces its splicer hooks in you. You get delivered to the doorstep of a world where the highest of society turned into power-mongering abominations. The limits of science expand, and you become its next experiment.
BioShock, a first-person shooter by nature, focuses on visceral combat with its weapons, plasmids, and intricate story. Rapture has long since had its glory days, leaving you to wander in the wake of its wars and progress. While not every moment is terrifying, the atmosphere built and dark traits of its characters elevate Bioshock to new heights…or depths.
Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
- How Long To Beat: 10 Hours
You wouldn’t expect a hand-drawn visual novel to match the chills and thrills of a 4K Triple-A experience. However, Death Mark delivers plenty of heart-palpitating frights that will burn mind-shattering images into your brain.
The novel focuses on a protagonist whose unknown supernatural contact gives him an odd mark on his wrist. Unfortunately, he’ll die unless he finds the ghost that marked him. There are six chapters, each with two endings. Your choices in all six chapters will determine the final ending. While each chapter takes around an hour, you’ll find plenty of reasons to revisit each.
F.E.A.R.
Fear is the original horror shooter and is touts one of the longer completions on this list. You are part of a First Encounter Assault Recon team hunting down a paranormal entity. Alma Wade influences the game’s events, killing your team from the shadows and conveying hallucinations.
While the first-person shooter nature of the game might detract from the horror atmosphere, the development team went to great lengths to craft a narrative and pathway to maximize scares despite your character’s abilities.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its barrels helped cement PewDiePie as a popular YouTuber back in the day. Thankfully, Amnesia has plenty to offer outside of these infamous barrels. Invisible enemies, darkness, and losing your grip on reality will plague you as you try to remember who you are and why you are stuck in some castle.
Sporting more adventure-style gameplay sets Amnesia apart. It’s not about fighting enemies or blowing them up. Instead, more often than not, there is a puzzle to solve, a plank to cross, and a lamp to light. You’ll need the right tools to quickly make your way through the castle and solve the mystery.
Until Dawn
Until Dawn is an interactive horror game originally launched on the PS4 and follows a group of friends grappling with grief. One year after the disappearance of two close friends, a group of companions reconnect at a mountain retreat. Unfortunately, the friends become unwilling targets of a mysterious villain that seems to have it out for them.
The game has various possible endings depending on the player’s choices throughout the game. Players can either make it out of the cabin with all the characters alive, no survivors, or somewhere in between.
There’s also now a 2024 remake of Until Dawn available on PS5 and PC.
The Casting Of Frank Stone
- How Long To Beat: 6 Hours
The Casting of Frank Stone is shorter than Until Dawn and The Quarry, but still a supermassive improvement in length over some of the Dark Pictures installments, pun intended. Playing through the story will get you one concrete ending, which may see all of your characters dying or some of them surviving, but unlocking all branching paths to get every ending and achievement will take you some more time.
With the Casting of Frank Stone, Supermassive merges its choice-based horror storytelling with Behaviour Interactive’s Dead by Daylight universe. The game centers around the haunted Cedar Steel Mill and a spooky mansion, with the key mystery centering on the titular killer, Frank Stone. The chapters are also split between the past in 1980 and the present in 2024, where the timelines seem to bleed into one another.
Resident Evil 3 Remake
The Resident Evil 3 remake is one of the shortest Resident Evil games in quite some time. However, while many fans lament the game’s concise length, speedrunners and horror enthusiasts looking for a quick and scary playthrough are usually left satisfied.
The game follows Jill Valentine through Raccoon City as the monstrous Nemesis hunts her down. There are plenty of terrors throughout the cityscape, including new and old zombies. RE3’s gameplay focuses heavily on action. Still, well-crafted cutscenes and encounters create an uneasy atmosphere as Nemesis could be around any corner, waiting to pounce.
Amnesia: The Bunker
Not only is Amnesia: The Bunker the best Amnesia sequel in the series, but the game can also be experienced much quicker. The setting of this installment takes you inside a bunker during WW1, where you’re looking for your brother in arms while facing off against a mutated creature known as the Beast in a close-quarters game of cat-and-mouse.
This is probably the most claustrophobic horror environment yet in the series and the gameplay is unbelievably suspenseful. You’re going to feel like those six hours can’t go by any faster in your attempts to escape from the bunker.
Doom
The original Doom ropes you in with the sweet promise of slaying demons level after level. But, unfortunately, no one tells you that exploration and completion might leave you fearful for your life. The concept of Hell and its demons invading anywhere is enough to set the tone, but Doom wants to hide some things away, waiting for you to fall into its trap.
Secrets constitute a significant part of the series, with hidden powerups, weapons, and enemies abounding. Walking up to a random wall and spamming buttons could introduce you to demons you would rather not have seen. While Doom’s original horror has lessened with time, it is worth a quick playthrough to battle monsters and find out what frights might be for you.
Killer Frequency
Killer Frequency is a reasonably simple horror game made at a game jam over five days, which is pretty cool. And because this game is so unique and creepy, it makes the remarkable story of how it was created even more special.
In this game, you travel back to the 1980s and assume the role of a talk radio host who has to take calls from different people in peril. Each person is in serious trouble and needs your help, but to help them out, you must use clues around your studio to find answers that will keep them safe.
Outlast
Outlast is a horror game in which you take on the role of a journalist contacted by a whistleblower working at Mount Massive Asylum. The whistleblower alerts the journalist to dark and inhumane asylum experiments that must be uncovered immediately.
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The game is focused entirely on finding evidence and taking footage of Mount Massive as you try to find out what has happened there and make your way out of the facility. DLC set before the game’s events was also released, and both are pretty short but worth playing.
Blair Witch
- How Long To Beat: 5 Hours
Blair Witch is a survival horror game that launched in 2019 from Bloober Team, the developer behind Layers of Fear, The Medium, and the remake of Silent Hill 2. This game is set in 1996, two years after the events of the classic found footage film from 1999, and is every bit as scary as the movie was.
It forces you to explore the woods using your video camera, cell phone, flashlight, and dog to uncover the mysterious secrets of a missing nine-year-old. And there will be some terrifying creatures lurking about that you’ll have to ward off, as well as some interesting mechanics going on with your camera.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man Of Medan
Man of Medan is the first in The Dark Pictures Anthology interactive survival horror series launched in 2019. This game plays best with someone else, either locally or online; each player controls a different character in the adventure.
The game presents an unfinished story by a character named The Curator. The Curator’s tale is about a group of friends who go ocean diving; once they get out on the water, things start to get strange, and the decisions you make will change the story and its characters’ fate.
Still Wakes The Deep
- How Long To Beat: 4.5 Hours
Still Wakes the Deep is a short and sweet Lovecraftian horror adventure set on an oil rig in the North Sea. You are an electrician named Caz McLeary, who left his family behind to work on the Beira D on the run from the law, and things don’t go so well on the day of your firing. The rig tapped into an otherworldly growth from the sea, which is now turning all those infected by it into body horror monstrosities.
Caz must work together with the remaining survivors to try and help everyone off the rig, but not everyone meets a happy ending in this game. It’s incredibly immersive and gripping, not to mention cinematic, and filled with excellent Scottish voice acting, so the short length is perfect for playing it all in one sitting.
Doki Doki Literature Club!
Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that may seem bright and fun, but fans know it’s far from that. This game is free to play and has become a popular horror game since it came out.
The story follows a high school student who joins his school’s literature club and gets to know its four different members. Although the game may seem may feature bright colors and adorable characters, there’s much more terror beneath the surface. It’s best to go into this game knowing as little as possible!
Reveil
- How Long To Beat: 3.5 Hours
Circus horror is what you’re in for in the indie hidden gem called Reveil. You’ll become protagonist Walter Thompson, whose psyche you’ll be exploring. He’s woken up to find his wife and child missing, and their disappearance might have something to do with the Nelson Bros Circus he once worked for as a stage builder.
The story is told in a narrative walking simulator fashion, with some puzzles thrown in between. The environments can be pretty trippy to navigate, and the whole experience is brimming with atmosphere and high-quality graphics and visuals.
Lake Of Voices
- How Long To Beat: 2.5 Hours
Lake of Voices is a short visual novel set on, as you guessed it, a lake. Your goal is to make it across this lake, but you will need to make some important decisions to keep yourself and others alive.
From the start of the game, you’re made aware that you won’t be able to save everyone though. The studio behind Lake of Voices, GB Patch Games, has also developed romantic (dating sim) visual novels, so you can expect to see some light romance in Lake of Voices as well.
Five Nights At Freddy’s
- How Long To Beat: 2.5 Hours
The first Five Nights at Freddy’s game launched in 2014, and since then, the series has added many sequels, fan-made games, and books. Although playing all of them and diving into the lore could suck up a lot of time, the first game was a pretty quick and frightening horror game.
In this game, you take on the role of a night security guard at a pizza restaurant inspired by Chuck E. Cheese. You must keep a sharp eye on the animatronics because they wander the restaurant at night and are very dangerous.
Choo-Choo Charles
- How Long To Beat: 2 Hours
What if Pennywise’s true spider form took the shape of a train? That’s the kind of nightmare fuel you’re in for with Choo-Choo Charles. This short horror game can be beaten in just two hours and a full completionist run can still take you only three-and-a-half hours; maybe for the best, because this creature will give arachnophobia to those who don’t already have it.
The objective of the game is simple yet terrifying. You’ll need to collect three eggs as part of a summoning ritual for the final part of the game to defeat the spider train entity. But before that, you’ll have to survive special appearances from Charles along with the cultists protecting the creature’s eggs, all while completing quests for NPCs wherever your train takes you next.
The Mortuary Assistant
If you thought your job was bad, wait until you play The Mortuary Assistant. This point-and-click adventure/embalming sim puts you in the shoes of Rebecca, a newly hired assistant at a local funeral home. But, unfortunately, her boss, Raymond, left out one crucial job requirement on the listing: she must exorcise demons.
In short, The Mortuary Assistant is a whodunnit of bodily possession. First, Rebecca must identify the name and markings of the demon haunting the funeral home. Then she must find the dead body housing the demon and burn it, thus banishing it and saving herself from its possession. Each playthrough is randomized, keeping the experience fresh.
