Some horror games on your own can be downright terrifying, but when you're paired up with a pal, sometimes that need of having to rely on someone in a stressful and scary situation can make things all the more frightening.
The paranoia of having to rely on someone else to help when it hits the fan can make for exciting and frightening moments and a lot of great multiplayer horror games have caught on to this. There is a plethora of them out there and each one can send shivers down your spine and screams throughout your house. Even though it can often be difficult to find the gold within the huge piles of copy-paste clones, there are some brilliant ones worth checking out. So with that in mind here are some of the best horror games out there to play with friends.
Updated September 29, 2021 by Matthew Mckeown: Some time has passed since this list was last updated. Since then more great horror games to play with friends have appeared in the indie horror scene either in early access or recently leaving it with a full launch.
Although sometimes this can be a bit hit and miss, there are quite a few new releases out there that are showing great potential for tense gameplay and big scares with your pals. There’s also been a lot of massive updates, additions, and changes to the likes of Phasmophobia, Dead By Daylight, and GTFO that are worth checking out. Here are more of the latest best horror games to play with friends, so grab a group and get spooked.
If you've ever looked at those Ghost Hunter shows on TV and thought you could do a better job, then Phasmophobia by Kinetic Games should be at the top of your list. This first-person four-player co-op game pits you and your pal's Ghost Hunting skills against a range of spooky spirits and dangerous demons through a number of haunted locations. Although it's an early access game, it's still continually being updated with new features and mechanics.
For example, when the game first launched players could hide from ghosts in cupboards or rooms, but an update a few months later made it so the ghosts can open doors creating no place safe to hide. With constant feedback from their Community put into their updates, Phasmophobia is a great co-op horror game that has plenty of room left to grow.
14 Unfortunate Spacemen
If you're looking for something that brings John Carpenter's The Thing-Esque paranoia to the table then Unfortunate Spacemen should be on your radar. Developed by just one man (Geoff "Zagg" Keene) this free-to-play sci-fi horror game pits a group of astronauts against a shape-shifting alien.
Astronauts have to defend and repair an aging outpost whilst the Shapeshifters' role is to murder everyone around them without being detected. Unfortunately, there's no airlock to blast them out of if they're caught but Astronauts can wield all sorts of weaponry from pistols to flamethrowers and even Railguns to defend themselves. It's a fun exercise in terrifying video game body horror and finding out who in your friends you can trust, so if you enjoyed Among Us but wanted more fun mechanics to play with then try Unfortunate Spacemen.
13 Hide & Shriek
Even though they are incredibly cheap, sometimes there's nothing better than a big old terrifying jump scare in a video game. Most games use them as a way to keep the tension high but Hide & Shriek decided, what if we gave the player control over these.
Developed by Funcom, this free-to-play multiplayer game has two players compete against each other to complete a series of tasks against a timer with the extra goal of scaring each other three times to win. What makes it interesting is that you never see each other and scares are achieved by placing traps which will cause jump scares to happen to the other player's screen. So it becomes a great way of finding out how creatively creepy or sadistically scary your friends can be.
12 Dead By Daylight
Dead by Daylight is one of those games that's quickly becoming the B-movie monster of the week title as its roster of creeps and characters has expanded significantly since its original launch back in 2016.
This horror fest by Behaviour Interactive Inc puts four survivors against one killer that's set on hunting them down before they can all escape. The roster of creeps this game has is where it really shines, there's Resident Evil's Nemesis, Silent Hill's Pyramid Head, Ghost Face from Scream, Freddy Krueger, and even the Demogorgon from Stranger Things to name a few. With new cross-over creatures regularly cropping up it's a must-have for fans of classic horror movies and TV monsters as there's plenty to play with here.
A good horror game is one that can pull off a well-timed scare; a great horror game is one that keeps you at that constant point of paranoia where you don't know when it's coming, and GTFO certainly manages that in spade-fulls.
This early access hardcore first-person co-op game by 10 Chambers puts you and three of your friends against unrelenting hordes of mutants in a series of pitch-black underground laboratories. The goal is to get in, retrieve valuable data and leave without succumbing to the sound-sensitive monsters that lurk around every dark, fog-filled hallway. Any session in GTFO is a suspense-filled, high-stress situation that will stretch your teamwork capabilities to their limit.
10 The Blackout Club
If you've ever fancied yourself an amateur detective then grab three of your friends and check out The Blackout Club. This co-op survival horror game tasks you with uncovering the monstrous secret beneath a small town through a series of procedurally generated missions.
Avoid possessed sleepwalking townsfolk, use unique abilities and traps and run from The Shape, an ominous force that constantly hunts you and can only be seen by closing your eyes. It's a refreshing and narratively focused experience that provides a lot of replayability for you and your mystery-solving team.
Developed by Cheerdealers, Distrust is a procedurally generated survival horror game set in an isolated Arctic research base. Viewed from an isometric perspective, it's an interesting approach to horror that relies heavily on the dark isolation of long nights in the Arctic to really set the atmosphere and keep the tension high.
Your goal is to work together with your friends to escape, but along the way, strange anomalies, alien lifeforms, and an increasing loss of your grip on reality will hamper your progress. With multiple endings and each run being procedurally generated, Distrust is an exercise in teamwork and basic survival skills that's perfect if you prefer a more slower-paced horror game to play.
8 Killing Floor 2
If zombie-killing catharsis is what you're after then this six-player zombie slaughtering fps from Tripwire Interactive is what you need. Killing Floor 2 has you facing off against wave after wave of mutants, zombies, and other huge lumbering monsters with just one goal, survive.
With unique classes to choose from, perks, and a plethora of weapons at your disposal you and your friends should be able to make short work of any mutations that come your way. Plus with its 12 players Versus Survival mode, there's plenty of multiplayer monster mayhem to be had.
7 Dread Hunger
There's something about the Arctic Circle that makes its snow-covered landscape seem both alien and incredibly isolating. The team behind Dread Hunger has managed to make that horrifying feeling of being stuck without any rescue on the 7th continent a reality with Dread Hunger.
This eight-player survival horror game has you stranded on a ship that's blocked in by ice. Players have to find coal to burn in the engine to get the boat moving again but within your party are two traitors that can use dark powers to call on snowstorms and strange creatures to impede your progress. With roles changing around after every round, you never know who you can trust in Dread Hunger.
6 Sign Of Silence
If you find the forest at night a frightening place to be then Sign of Silence is worth considering. This four-player survival co-op game is set in the monster-infested outskirts of the tiny town of Danville and fresh off of a car crash, you and your friends have to survive and escape the town by any means.
In your way are a number of hostile cultists and nightmarish monsters spread out across a rather large map. With multiple options for escape and secrets to uncover about what went down in this isolated town, Sign of Silence is an adventure in terror that you can take on yourself or with friends.
Strap on your pith helmet and switch on your headlamps because it's time to go tomb raiding, no not like that. Forewarned takes a more archeological approach, think Rachel Weisz in The Mummy and you've got Forewarned by Dreambyte Games. Although it's not just one Mummy you're taking down, it's a whole crew.
Similar to Phasmophobia, Forewarned uses the same mechanics and ideas but with a few more interesting tweaks to the familiar ghost hunting team formula. You and your friends are still exploring procedurally generated tombs and tunnels to find evidence of what you're up against with gear that can be unlocked over time, but the curveball comes in the form of traps that can kill you, treasure to loot, and a fun "Mummy mode" for players that get murdered by whatever shambling bandaged corpse you get paired up against. Although a little rough around the edges, this Early Access gem has a lot of great ideas and plenty of room left to grow, so it's one to watch at least. Plus it’s available in VR.
Pacify has been around for a while, originally launching in 2019, it has been getting some great updates recently that have turned it from another one of those scary multiplayer games set in a haunted house, into a nightmare-inducing, tense teamwork game that’s an absolute joy to play with a group.
Set inside a haunted funeral parlor, the goal of Pacify is to subdue a monster by burning dolls in a furnace in order to escape alive. Sounds simple enough, but with three separate monsters to face in three different missions that scale in difficulty the longer you’re alive, it can be quite the tense and frightening time. The monster models are incredibly scary and will always make you jump no matter how many times you’ve seen them, and with solo, co-op, and a PVP mode available, Pacify has a lot to occupy your time with.
Despite its rocky start in 2017, Bigfoot by CyberLight Game Studio has just exploded back onto the Indie Horror scene lately with a fresh new look. This Early Access four-player co-op survival horror game where you chase down Bigfoot is tense, filled with great Cryptid hunting mechanics, and offers a pretty solid challenge for a group of friends.
Gameplay is taught with terror as you're tasked with taking down the infamous upright ape. The map is set in a dense, utterly massive backwood forest area that makes you question every shadow and jump at every twig snap as you set up traps and cameras in order to catch this mysterious beast. The big lad actively hunts you, taking down lone players in seconds and when he’s not charging you down he’s skulking in the distance, taunting you with roars. Bigfoot is set to leave Early Access before the end of 2021 and the developers have also promised more maps and content to be added upon full launch, so grab a rifle and get out there.
Devour is one of those games that kind of just appeared out of nowhere and caught everyone's attention overnight. Receiving nothing but praise from the indie multiplayer horror games community it seems this four-player co-op horror by Straight Back Games is the new “one to watch”. Although warning to Arachnophobes, a few minutes spent playing this might send you screaming from your computer.
This unique survival game involves you and your friends taking down a group of possessed cultists that are hellbent on sacrificing you to their demonic lord Azazel. The maps are suitably dark and foreboding, the gameplay is challenging yet fair to those with good teamwork skills and no two rounds are alike as items, ritual objects, and locked doors are randomized. With the difficulty ramping up the longer you’re alive, it’s a constant race against the clock to get out before the spider-spewing cultists can drag you to hell with them.
1 Lunch Lady
Sneaking into an abandoned high school with your friends to steal the answers to an upcoming test sounds like an easy job right? Well, the resident Lunch Lady would disagree it seems in this incredibly fun and frightening survival horror game from Manic Mice. This talented team has taken a simple concept (that you could argue originated in Slender) and gave it its own demonic spin.
Set in a cartoonish all-American high school, Lunch Lady’s empty halls and silent classrooms may be spooky, but they don’t hold a candle to the terror that is the resident caterer, she is truly horrific. This lumbering lady is constantly hunting you down, searching corridor after corridor, screeching like an inhuman monster. You need to find 10 test answers to escape and you have little to no way to defend yourself from her other than running, so rounds are kept tense and relatively quick. With new characters and updates regularly added, Lunch Lady is a sleeper hit you don’t want to miss.
NetEase called it a bug, but others called it a feature.