After my daughter broke her leg a couple of weeks ago, I’ve found myself staring into the dark corners of my own mind more than I’d like. Struggles with mental health often feel like being dragged toward something invisible, something you can’t explain to anyone else and I think that’s whats drawn me deeper into Lovecraftian fiction and horror games. There’s a strange comfort in reimagining trauma and anxiety as cosmic forces: vast, ancient entities that twist reality and gnaw at the edges of sanity. If you’ve ever felt that way, you’ll find something familiar in the games below. This is a list of the ten best Lovecraftian games ever made, beginning with the brilliant, blood-soaked nightmare of Bloodborne, and the quiet dread of Dredge.
1. Bloodborne
Nothing captures the soul of Lovecraft’s mythos quite like Bloodborne. FromSoftware took the familiar gothic feel of its Soulsborne lineage and cranked the existential horror to eleven. Yharnam, the cursed city at its core, is not just filled with monsters—it is infected with knowledge too dangerous to understand. You begin by hunting beasts, but as the game unfolds, it becomes clear that reality itself is fraying. Great Ones loom beyond the veil, watching, whispering. Every level, every transformation, every insight feels like a step deeper into something you shouldn’t be seeing. The combat is fast and furious, but the true battle is with understanding. It’s a beautiful, decaying nightmare, and it never stops evolving. Bloodborne isn’t just a top-tier Lovecraftian game. It’s the benchmark.
2. Dredge
At first, Dredge feels gentle. You’re a lone fisherman sailing between islands, repairing your boat, and selling your catch. But as night falls, a quiet madness stirs. The ocean turns hostile. Lights flicker on distant shores that shouldn’t be there. And what you drag from the deep begins to look… wrong. This is cosmic horror through subtle design. The game doesn’t scream. It whispers. It lets you build a routine, then slowly corrodes it. Even your boat becomes a place of uncertainty, where the inventory system feels like a desperate struggle for control. Conversations with locals hint at something much older, something stirring beneath the waves. Dredge turns a peaceful premise into an anxiety simulator with elegant pacing and a heavy atmosphere. It’s not bloody or brash, but its quiet horror lingers longer than most games that shout.
3. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
Eternal Darkness was ahead of its time. Before sanity mechanics were trendy, it broke the fourth wall to mess with players in ways that felt truly unhinged. You might see your TV volume drop, your save file “delete,” or your character walk into a room where blood pours from the ceiling. It was unsettling in the best way. The story spans centuries, from Roman soldiers to WWI medics, all connected through an ancient book and a struggle against alien gods older than history. What made it special was how it turned sanity into a shared experience. You weren’t just watching your character go mad—you felt like you were too. The environments were smartly designed, the voice acting excellent, and the pacing surprisingly tight for such an ambitious narrative. Few games have matched its creative courage since.
4. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia is about fear you can’t fight. You’re trapped in a decaying castle, alone, unarmed, and stalked by things that defy logic. The game forces you into darkness, but staying there too long erodes your sanity. Even light feels temporary, fragile. What makes Amnesia terrifying isn’t the monsters—it’s the anticipation of them. The sound design constantly tricks your brain into thinking something is right behind you. And as the mystery of your forgotten past unravels, the horror deepens. It doesn’t rely on gore. It relies on atmosphere, tension, and the fear of losing your mind. The minimalist UI and lack of combat force you to experience every moment in full. It’s a suffocating, brilliant game that helped define modern horror and still hasn’t been topped in how it plays with dread.
5. The Sinking City
The Sinking City drops you into Oakmont, a flooded city clinging to sanity by a thread. You play as a private detective plagued by disturbing visions, drawn to investigate a case that spirals into cults, ancient gods, and reality slipping sideways. The city feels alive in the worst way—streets disappear underwater, people speak in riddles, and strange creatures crawl through alleys. The open-world structure isn’t perfect, but it supports the atmosphere well. The game shines when you’re piecing together clues with its deduction board, or stumbling into buildings that feel like shrines to something you can’t name. Oakmont itself is the star—a rotten place, soaked in grief and madness. It’s not just inspired by Lovecraft. It lives and breathes that influence with confidence. If you’re willing to forgive its mechanical flaws, there’s a strong and unsettling story worth diving into.
6. Conarium
Inspired by At the Mountains of Madness, Conarium is a first-person journey through cold, alien spaces. You explore an Antarctic base touched by ancient power, solving puzzles and uncovering memories that may not even be yours. There are no guns or real enemies, just warped architecture and a creeping suspicion that your mind has been altered. The game’s greatest strength is in how it evokes dread through space and silence. You’re never sure what’s real or imagined. Hints of other dimensions bleed through frozen corridors. The visuals are surreal but grounded, and the sound design is just eerie enough to keep you on edge. It doesn’t scream for your attention. It just quietly presses against your sense of normalcy until you crack. For fans of slow, atmospheric horror, Conarium is an elegant example of how less can absolutely be more.
7. Call of Cthulhu (2018)
This modern reimagining of Lovecraft’s most iconic story puts you in the shoes of Edward Pierce, a weary PI sent to investigate a suspicious death on the island of Darkwater. What unfolds is a descent into cults, ancient sea gods, and a sanity meter that slowly unravels what you’re seeing. While the game can be uneven in places, its atmosphere and dedication to the mythos are strong. Books whisper when you shouldn’t be reading them. Murals seem to shift. People lie with smiles that don’t reach their eyes. The more you uncover, the less stable reality feels. By the time you reach the end, you may not even trust your own choices. Call of Cthulhu captures the paranoia and unease that makes Lovecraft’s work feel timeless. It’s imperfect, but it’s worth the trip.
8. Darkest Dungeon
In Darkest Dungeon, your greatest enemy is despair. The game tasks you with leading bands of adventurers into cursed ruins and ancient evils. But stress, trauma, and fear eat away at them. They’ll panic, develop phobias, lash out at allies, or just break entirely. This is a game where insanity is mechanical, not just narrative. The visuals are dark and heavy, drenched in thick lines and muted reds. The narration cuts deep with every decision. There’s no happy ending here—only survival, and sometimes not even that. It’s brutal, methodical, and unflinching. The horror isn’t just in what you fight, but in how the fight changes you. If you want to see what it feels like to lead people against something truly unknowable, and watch them suffer for it, Darkest Dungeon delivers that in spades.
9. Moons of Madness
Moons of Madness brings cosmic horror to space, and somehow makes it feel even more claustrophobic. You play as an astronaut on Mars, but nothing feels right. Shadows stretch the wrong way. Hallucinations break the edges of your helmet. As you investigate the facility’s secrets, you uncover links to cults and alien forces with very familiar names. The game’s pacing is slow and deliberate, leaning on atmosphere and unease. The sci-fi setting helps it stand out, but it never lets go of its horror roots. Mars becomes a prison, and the sky feels more threatening than the ground. There’s no safe corner, and every system malfunction feels like a bad omen. Moons of Madness might be more grounded than others on this list, but its blend of technology and terror creates something truly eerie.
10. The Last Door
The Last Door is proof that you don’t need flashy graphics to deliver terrifying horror. With simple pixel art and minimal dialogue, it tells a haunting story about memory, trauma, and a hidden force stretching across lifetimes. Each episode peels back another layer of a secret society, childhood horror, and a presence that should not exist. The game relies on your imagination to fill in the blanks, and that’s exactly why it works. It feels intimate. Quiet. Personal. The soundtrack is chilling, the pacing tight, and the sense of dread constant. There are no boss fights or complex mechanics—just a story that digs under your skin and refuses to leave. It’s a rare thing, a game that whispers rather than shouts, and still leaves you unnerved by the final scene.