10 Scariest Games To Play On PS5 This Halloween

Halloween is just around the corner, and for those who enjoy being scared out of their gourd, nothing puts horror fans in a spooky mood quite like playing or replaying their favorite terrifying games in the PlayStation 5 catalog. From zombie apocalypses to deep-space necromorphs and biophages to supernatural summer camps and everything in between, there’s no shortage of gory and terrifying PS5 games to check out this October.

Players can immerse themselves in these gruesome and haunting stories to experience the jump scares, monsters, murderers, blood, guts, and ghosts that are sure to get them in the Halloween spirit. Whether looking for fresh scares or wanting to relive some old ones, the PS5 has a massive collection of great horror content available. These are the top 10 scariest games to play on the PS5 this Halloween season.

10 The Quarry

Supermassive Games

The Quarry is a dramatic survival horror game developed by Supermassive Games that throws players into a slasher film scenario at Hackett’s Quarry. With all-star cast members such as David Arquette, this is a Halloween must-play that follows a group of camp counselors who get stuck there for an extra day at the end of the season due to one member’s tomfoolery.

Try to survive the night against deranged hillbilly hunters, ravenous werewolves, and a psychotic murderer.

While the goal of this game is for everyone to survive to the end, that is a pretty difficult task without using guides. For optimal scares, just let decisions play out and be surprised – and possibly horrified – by the consequences of those choices. There are over 180 possible endings, and everything players do will impact who survives and who faces a bloody demise.

9 The Callisto Protocol

Striking Distance Studios

The Callisto Protocol from Striking Distance Studios is a science fiction survival horror game set in 2032 on one of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto. Just when protagonist Jacob Lee thinks he is going to retire from his career in long-haul space-trucking, his ship gets hijacked by bio-terrorists, crash lands on Callisto, and he gets thrown in jail. Jacob goes through a series of terrifying quests in order to survive and avoid turning into a biophage mutant.

From some of the same developers behind Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol delivers similarly frightening and gory gameplay in the form of dismembering mutant limbs – headshots alone won’t take down a biophage. If that isn’t scary enough for you, the story will eventually lead players to an extreme religious cult where they will learn the origin of the biophage outbreak and start to understand just how bleak things have become on Callisto.

8 A Plague Tale: Requiem

Asobo Studio

For fans of a more macabre experience, Asobo Studio’s A Plague Tale: Requiem, the sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence, offers a different type of horror story centered in medieval France during a bubonic plague outbreak. While it won’t give the same jump-scare adventure as others on the list, it’s off-putting, unsettling, and will give players the creeps as they fend off disease-ridden humans and hordes upon hordes of disgusting rats.

While it isn’t a classic horror experience,
A Plague Tale: Requiem’s
eerie adventure through the black plague will likely make anyone’s skin crawl.

As a sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem brings all the great features from the original and has a great story that is full of enraged survivalist beekeepers, human sacrifices, cultist slave-owners, and many, many rats. While it isn’t a classic horror experience, A Plague Tale: Requiem’s eerie adventure through the black plague will likely make anyone’s skin crawl.

7 Silent Hill 2 (2024)

Bloober Team

Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake is a complete modern overhaul to the classic and releases as a PS5 console exclusive just in time for Halloween, so horror fans may want to swoop this up after its recent release. Whether experienced with playing the original back in the day, or having never visited the haunted town of Silent Hill and are curious what lurks in the shadows, the modern updates are bound to make this already-nightmarish adventure even more terrifying.

Silent Hill 2 follows James Sunderland in the town of Silent Hill as he deals with the tragic loss of his wife. This game is excellent at throwing players into an eerie and dark atmosphere as strange things start happening around town. The six possible endings and updated graphics and gameplay will make fans eager to play through Silent Hill 2 multiple times to uncover its many mysteries.

6 The Casting Of Frank Stone

Supermassive Games

Another interactive horror drama installment from Supermassive, The Casting of Frank Stone is a branching narrative that follows four amateur filmmakers making a horror film called Murder Mill about a notorious killer, Frank Stone, in the 1980s. There’s just one problem: Frank Stone’s spirit doesn’t want them to.

The suspenseful gameplay involves jumping back and forth between timelines to the modern-day versions of each character, and uncovering what exactly happened at the abandoned Murder Mill after all. Prepare for a bloody time full of characters being impaled on hooks, alternate realities, time travel, cultists who worship an ominous “Entity,” and more.

5 The Last Of Us Part 1 & Part 2

Naughty Dog

Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Part 2 are two of the scariest post-apocalyptic shooters out there, and with the TV show ramping up for its second season, horror fans will want to revisit these. A deadly Cordyceps fungus has infected the general population, and Joel and Ellie have a secret that could save all of humanity. Unfortunately, their journey across the country is riddled with cannibals, raiders, cultists, and, of course, infected.

The Last of Us Part 1
and its follow-up in
Part 2
redefine what a zombie game can do.

The gameplay here is as nail-biting as the plot, and players will need to be sneaky if they don’t want to get bitten – or shot, or eaten, or stabbed. With a truly immersive story and beautifully crafted environment, The Last of Us Part 1 and its follow-up in Part 2 redefine what a zombie game can do.

4 Returnal

Housemarque

Housemarque’s roguelike PS5 original Returnal is an infamously difficult and hauntingly unsettling game that follows ASTRA Corporation pilot and explorer, Selene, after she has crash-landed on a strange planet. She begins to experience vivid, disturbing visions and finds that she is stuck in a death-loop sequence sending her back to her ship each time she is killed.

The mysterious planet is infested with deadly extraterrestrials known as xenomorphs, and Selene starts to realize that these ominous visions she’s been having reveal more about her than she is ready to understand. With a new Ascension update that offers more backstory for Selene, as well as a whole new area called the Tower of Sisyphus, Returnal is a solid choice for fans of horror who want to revisit the game, or who want a new exciting challenge.

3 Dead Space (2023)

Motive Studio

PS Plus members will be happy to know that Motive Studio’s Dead Space remake is free as a monthly PlayStation Plus game in October, and is a necessary addition to anyone’s Halloween playlist. Packed full of jump-scares, Dead Space will have players bracing around every turn for fear of a random Necromorph appearing out of nowhere to slash them to bits before they get a chance to dismember it.

Dead Space follows Isaac, a starship engineer who was assigned to investigate the USG Ishimura only to discover that the ship is overrun by mutant humanoids called Necromorphs. The game was given a complete modernization and overhaul, now touting better physics, graphics, game mechanics, and even more gore than the original. Don’t fret, though, if the graphic nature is too much, the remake also has a gore-blocking feature in its accessibility menu.

2 Alan Wake Remastered & Alan Wake 2

Remedy Entertainment

Both Alan Wake Remastered and Alan Wake 2 from Remedy Entertainment offer their own unique and intricate psychological horror experience and can both be enjoyed from the PS5 catalog. The titular protagonist, Alan Wake, a best-selling crime fiction author, ventures into a creepy and dark world full of dangerous shadow creatures that want to kill him – or are these just hallucinations? Beware of the ominous silhouetted figures creeping in the corners and the claustrophobic passageways that will make players feel like they’re about to be crushed.

Alan Wake Remastered updated many of the game mechanics and graphics for the PS5, and it is also structured differently than the second game. However, both Alan Wake games are a daunting and often disturbing ride, well worth it for fans of psychological scares and mind-bending plot twists.

1 Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Capcom

In what might be the scariest VR experience in all gaming, Capcom’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard will seriously make players afraid to walk around their own house. Players will find themselves wanting to rip off their PS VR headsets as they take on the first-person POV of Ethan as he investigates the Baker family’s abandoned rural estate in Louisiana in search of his missing wife.

RE7
is entirely playable without a PlayStation VR headset as well, and even without the added immersion, it’s considered among the franchise’s most terrifying installments.

Resident Evil 7 is full of monstrosities known as Molded, and Ethan is an unskilled fighter who has to grab weapons and consumables from around the estate in order to fight them off. It is one of the franchise’s more unique installments in that it uses the first-person camera, and is built to optimize a horror-focused VR experience. It doesn’t get much scarier than Resident Evil 7, so it’s a perfect PlayStation 5 game to enjoy during a spooky Halloween season.