Dying Light

Dying Light taps into what makes horror games so irresistible. It’s got a scarcity of resources, infected humans transforming into zombies, and the fear of nighttime adding anxiety on top of it all. And while most gamers would argue the best horror games are linear curated experiences in nature, Dying Light uses its open-world to ramp up the horror in ways only it could. Threats aren’t fully scripted and can come from pretty much any direction in the map. Similarly, scrounging for resources takes on a new life given the large dynamic environments. Dying Light 2 would take the parkour of the first one and really polish it up while adding a paraglider for faster traversal. Though fans still largely prefer the darker tone of the first game over the more colorful style of the sequel.

Days Gone

Want to simulate what it would be like to outrun and outgun an ocean of zombies out in an open field? Well, Days Gone is the closest thing to that experience on the gaming market – yet nothing could prepare us for the sheer size of hordes that the game would bless us with. While it would have been amazing to mow down zombie hordes using pick-up trucks or even a combine harvester, Days Gone limits its vehicles to primarily bikes. Still, the bike controls are quite smooth and ramming into zombies is a fun, though less ideal, way to squash their huge numbers. The icing on the horror cake are the stealth sequences, which make for some terrifying moments when swarms get alerted. Now if only we could finally get a sequel that gives us more vehicles to mow zombies down with.

The Evil Within 2

The world design of The Evil Within 2 may not be as open-ended as the previous games on this list, but it makes up for it in its tightly crafted narrative. Sebastian Castellanos’ mind is still reeling from the events of the first game, but he still has to rescue his daughter, Lily within the surreal Union labyrinth. The stakes are more personal here than in the first game, amplifying the psychological aspect tenfold. The semi-open world design adds some interesting side stories and secrets to discover, nicely contrasting the more claustrophobic sequences. Oh, and the bizarre, surreal world can even be experienced in first-person thanks to a 2018 update to the game.

Sons of the Forest

Being stranded on an island full of cannibals has to be one of the more harrowing concepts in horror, and Sons of the Forest executes it frighteningly well. The size of the island and its predominant forest biome is four times larger than the first game. The larger layout both helps the player and hinders them with helpful NPCs and a host of new terrors lurking in hidden corners of the map.

Ghostwire: Tokyo

After developing The Evil Within, Tango opted to go fully first-person with Ghostwire: Tokyo. The more intimate perspective combined with a supernaturally shifting environment enveloped in fog gave it a unique brand of horror. The game’s developer describes battles with the phrase ‘karate meets magic’. You’d think being adorned with such supernatural abilities neuters the sensation of helplessness a bit, but no, the many occultic monstrosities populating the possessed Tokyo are enhanced with even more terrifying abilities than the player character, making for an unpredictable and haunting journey.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

Stalker 2, actually the fourth game in the series, was first announced way back in 2010. Typically, games with development hell history turn out poorly, but Stalker 2 nailed the post-apocalyptic premise and gameplay the series had been celebrated for prior. The limited inventory space and sparse resources within the Exclusion Zone make for a true survival experience. Add on a hunger and sleep meter and some reality-altering anomalies within the open-world and you’ve got a game sure to raise players’ blood pressure.

Dead Rising

This 2006 game may be the oldest on this list, but it’s also one of the most iconic in terms of open-world horror. Willamette Parkview Mall makes for a fantastic locale to combat hordes of flesh-hungry zombies. Part of the endless charm of the series is the sheer variety of weapons available to smash zombie brains with. The first Dead Rising hosts 250 weapons ranging from useful shotguns to fun props such as Mega Man’s Megabuster. The horror aspect, while less severe than others on this list, still comes into play when dozens of zombies close in on a defenseless and unaware Frank.

State of Decay 2

The State of Decay series has quickly become one of gaming’s most immersive zombie survival experiences. There’s few games that can match the feeling of building outposts and combating zombies together with other co-op partners quite like State of Decay 2. The series has always been primed for co-op, yet the first game lacked any multiplayer, being a purely solo affair. Besides the four-player co-op, the additional facilities and utilities, as well as a far more diverse map made for an improved gameplay loop. The improved open-world may have sacrificed some of the memorable story moments the first had, but the series is certainly headed in the right direction, giving us optimism for State of Decay 3.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus is another game that uses its semi-open world structure well. The Volga, Caspian Desert, and Taiga regions feel so distinct from each other, as opposed to the largely monotonous regions of previous games. But the game still hones in on those narrow tunnel corridors that the original did so well. The Metro series also evokes a peculiar sensation of dread with the semi-frequent hallucinations and horrific mutant creatures aptly named The Dark Ones.

Dead Island 2

Dead Island takes a more arcady and fun approach to its horror, though getting overwhelmed by zombies still provides some tense jump scare moments. The sequel partitions up its open world into regions, helping to make each area distinct. What really makes Dead Island 2 stand out from the rest is the environmental interactions. Most objects lying around can be used as weapons, and a number of hazards such as electric and fire can be used against zombie hordes.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

Combining a spaghetti western wild west setting with a zombie apocalypse probably hasn’t been done in games before Red Dead did it with Undead Nightmare. It’s such a unique fusion of disparate elements, yet feels so satisfying and fun to experience. The addition of classic folklore monsters, from Chupacabras to Sasquatches, is just the cherry on top of a well blended horror-tinged desert of the Red Dead franchise.

Project Zomboid

Project Zomboid takes a unique twist on survival horror. It’s not about how you survive, but how you die in this game. Players are fated to get eliminated by a single slow zombie bite, yet the game manages to make this process rewarding and, above all, fun. The unlimited nature of sandbox mode puts all the tools in the player’s hands, giving control of the zombie population, weather patterns, and loot. It’s a top-down 2D game though, so if you’re just in the mood for a cinematic and graphically intensive horror experience, others on this list will have to substitute.

Once Human

One of the most recent entries on the list, Once Human prides itself on its community-focused gameplay. Players can craft and build base camps meant to serve as a home base within the game world. Hunger and sanity needs to be kept in check lest players lose their loot with a respawn. What helps separate Once Human from other multiplayer survival games is the wild creature design. I mean, there’s a walking bus monster that players can use for transportation for crying out loud. Once Human isn’t lacking in creative  charm.

Beyond Hanwell

Surprisingly overlooked despite its quality, Beyond Hanwell lets players loose in the rainy streets of Westminster London amid an outbreak of mutant anomalies. The sound and music in particular really create an unsettling atmosphere, which is further aided by the environmental details of within the first-person perspective. Your primary source of self-defense is a pistol and some other light weapons, but a bigger aspect of the game is simply exploring the old buildings for notes and objects that help uncover the mystery.

The Sinking City Remastered

Fans of Lovecraftian horror should check out The Sinking City if they haven’t already. It’s filled with a variety of weird monsters beyond the familiar mortal coil, and even features a mental stability meter that diminishes as you learn new truths. The semi-open environments help fill out the background lore of Oakmont well, and the motorboat is just plain fun to traverse the waters with.

The Sinking City Remastered is definitely a demanding game in terms of the raw horsepower required to max out its visual effects. On my system – an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32 GB of GDDR5 RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT – I was obviously not able to max out the graphics while still hanging on to a reasonable frame rate. With everything cranked to its highest and FSR set to native anti-aliasing, the game would crawl along at between 30 and 40 FPS. However, just the act of switching FSR to Quality mode and disabling ray tracing instantly doubled my frame rates.

"Overall atmosphere and the investigative gameplay is one department where The Sinking City didn’t really need much in the way of improvements, and the remastered release makes this clear by making minimal changes in this regard."

The higher-resolution textures, as well as support for modern features like FSR/DLSS – depending on your graphics card – as well as frame generation means that The Sinking City Remastered can certainly have moments where it looks absolutely gorgeous.

However, there are still some places where the game can look quite rough. Characters, for example, are expertly modelled and animated, especially in conversations. However, just about every instance of facial hair on a character ends up looking like a cartoonish mess of coloured blobs. This is despite the fact that some of the smaller nuances of a character’s model tends to have had great attention paid to it. A perfect example is protagonist Charles Reed, whose eyes are red because he hasn’t been able to get a proper night’s sleep for quite some time. This is communicated purely through visual storyetlling, and never gets brought up in a bout of exposition-laden dialogue.

Overall atmosphere and the investigative gameplay is one department where The Sinking City didn’t really need much in the way of improvements, and the remastered release makes this clear by making minimal changes in this regard. The city of Oakmont remains one of the most interesting takes on a world inspired by the horror stylings of H. P. Lovecraft, melding together elements from several of his stories into one larger tableau that is an absolute joy to explore.

"The Sinking City Remastered can certainly have moments where it looks absolutely gorgeous."

The setup to the story is about as Lovecraftian as you can get; private investigator Charles Reed is drawn to the city of Oakmont because of repeated nightmares he has been having where he starts hearing strange voices calling him to the depths as his ship is stranded in some sort of limbo between the ocean and the sky, while a gigantic leviathan floats overhead.

Things don’t get much easier for Reed once he lands at Oakmont, however. Outsiders aren’t really trusted much in the city, which happens to have its own problems with water levels rising, strange monstrous creatures showing up, and the Grand Families taking part in their own political machinations. Reed is able to discover that many at Oakmont are seemingly having the same nightmares and visions as him, which culminates in him getting his major case: figure out what happened to an expedition that was exploring the connection between the flood that ruined much of Oakmont, and the visions that many are having.

It’s a fairly classic Lovecraftian setup and leans in quite hard on what has essentially become Frogwares’ forte at this point: investigative gameplay. As Reed, you have to take on cases, find clues, and figure out what’s happening. To help you with this, Reed is equipped with a supernatural ability called the Mind’s Eye, This ability lets him him track more mundane things, like the trail of someone that was running away, as well as more complex things, like giving Reed the ability to recreate scenes from the past that he must put together in chronological order.

"It’s a fairly classic Lovecraftian setup and leans in quite hard on what has essentially become Frogwares’ forte at this point: investigative gameplay."

The investigative aspects of The Sinking City Remastered are the parts that shine the brightest in what ends up feeling like an otherwise dull gem. Much like a real-world private investigator would have to do, Reed will need to find clues at the local newspaper’s archives, talk to the police to try and get access to their records, talk to witnesses, discover smaller clues, and ultimately connect all the dots in his head to get a clear picture of what’s going on.

While investigations can often feel like intricate puzzles that are really fun to solve, the other main part of the gameplay in The Sinking City Remastered – the combat – still feels like it shouldn’t have been there at all. Every now and then, you’ll have to get into a fight, be it against other people, or more commonly, against otherworldly horrors that can eat up your sanity just as quickly as they eat up your health. To take them on, Reed can get his hands on a number of weapons, from a simple pistol to start out with, all the way up to a rifle, a shotgun, and a submachine gun.

While the controls don’t quite feel as janky and awkward as they did in the game’s original 2019 release, the changes made in the remastered version don’t really help justify their presence in the game much anyway. Combat encounters can swing wildly in difficulty, where some feel like they were simple point-and-click affairs that were only there to eat into your precious piles of ammo, or incredibly difficult fights where your enemies end up feeling like bullet sponges.

"The investigative aspects of The Sinking City Remastered are the parts that shine the brightest in what ends up feeling like an otherwise dull gem."

The unfortunate thing is that the combat often tends to interrupt some of the more fun parts of The Sinking City Remastered, and it tends to be a bit of a pace killer when you’re hot on the trail of a suspect but have to be distracted by this strange creature that you either have to kill, or sneak around while hoping that it doesn’t see you. The game manages to keep its creepy, tense atmosphere just fine most of the time, and combat feels like a completely unnecessary addition to the game.

The progression system feels similarly unnecessary. As Reed continues his investigations, he will inevitably earn experience points, which eventually translate into Knowledge Points that can be used up on unlocking new passive abilities. These tend to be fairly simple, like giving Reed more health, the ability to carry more bullets, or flat damage increases for some weapons. The lack of anything that might aid the investigative gameplay stops the progression system from feeling like it was a natural addition to the game. Rather, it feels incredibly tacked on.

The Sinking City Remastered fixes quite a few of the issues we had with the original release; most of the visuals have been improved by leaps and bounds over what we last saw in 2019, and the overall movement and combat doesn’t feel nearly as awkward as it used to. However, there are still places where the game lacks some polish, be it the awkward facial hair on characters, or the completely unnecessary combat and stealth sequences. Despite this, however, The Sinking City Remastered is once again one of the better games out there that manages to tackle the horror themes of H. P. Lovecraft.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Developed on Unreal Engine 5, the remaster includes enhanced environments with more details and objects, a full lighting overhaul, reflection improvements and 4K textures. Upscalers like Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR are also supported alongside Temporal Super Resolution. You can also leverage the new Photo Mode for screenshots.

Of course, those who own the original on previous-gen consoles and PC can upgrade to the remaster for free. As for the future, The Sinking City 2 is in development, and Frogwares has plans for the franchise. In a press release, publishing director Sergiy Oganesyan said, “We plan to do big things with The Sinking City, starting with the sequel and then beyond.

“So, after our rather well-known struggles with the original, it feels amazing to have this positive moment be part of the game’s twisted history and for us to be the ones to fully decide it. Making it free to all our existing fans is our way of giving back to them for having supported us all this time through thick and thin.”

The Sinking City was first launched in 2019 and focuses on private investigator Charles W. Reed, who suffers from disturbing nightmares. He arrives in Oakmont to unravel their meaning and is caught up in a plot involving the Great Old Ones. Check out our review of the original here.

A trailer isn’t available, but you can check out various screenshots below. On top of all the benefits from the jump to Unreal Engine 5, The Sinking City Remastered will feature “enhanced” locations with more details and objects, 4K textures, better reflections, and support for DLSS, FSR and TSR. And, of course, there’s a Photo Mode to help players capture all this beauty.

There’s no release date, but stay tuned for official gameplay of the remaster in the coming months. As for The Sinking City 2, it has four days remaining on its Kickstarter and amassed nearly $473,000 in crowd-funding, over four times the original goal.