Although horror isn’t the biggest or most prolific genre in gaming, 2024 is still bringing some major releases within the genre, with big and spooky titles like The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered that kicked off the year and the upcoming remake of Silent Hill 2 set to launch in 2024. Following the well-received horror remakes and sequels of 2023, which included games like Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, and Alan Wake 2, 2024 is seeing the release of smaller original titles along the lines of Dredge and Amnesia: The Bunker, with genres ranging from more action-oriented survival horror titles to more exploration or text-based games.
As the year progresses, more games will be revealed, announced, and even launched that were not known about early in the year. For this reason, this list will receive periodic updates. Many upcoming 2024 horror games have received trailers to show off gameplay but have not given a specified release date. Some games which have been given dates for the year may end up being delayed, as was seen in 2023 with Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, both of which are now expected in 2024.
Many majorly popular or long-awaited titles, like The Last of Us 2 Remastered, and The Outlast Trials, were released in the early part of 2024. Notably, many of the horror games released within the first few months of the year are ports, remasters, or, in the case of Outlast Trials, a full release after a lengthy Early Access period. Meanwhile, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was expected to launch in the early part of the year and has now been delayed to September 5, 2024.
The biggest release of the first quarter was The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, which brought the game to the PlayStation 5 along with enhanced visuals and a new roguelike game mode, No Return, which allows for a larger variety of playable characters than the main game. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, is similar to The Last of Us in that it strays much closer to action with a horror aesthetic, but could still be a game to look out for, especially for those who are fans of developer Don’t Nod’s past work (Life Is Strange, Vampyr, Jusant).
The list of horror games which released in Q1 2024 is as follows:
Past the first quarter of 2024, only a handful of horror games have received definitively confirmed release dates, with the biggest name likely being Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. Others are likely to provide more traditional scares, including Post Trauma, a third-person horror game from developer Red Soul Games that takes heavy inspiration from the classics of the genre. The few trailers currently released for the game show off a combination of puzzles, fixed camera angles, exploration, and combat that bears heavy similarities to classic Silent Hill and Resident Evil games. Currently, however, the game doesn’t have a confirmed release date outside of Spring 2024.
Still Wakes the Deep, from developer The Chinese Room, more recently had its release date nailed down in June, and takes the form of a first-person game about exploring a mysteriously wrecked oil rig. Unlike some of the other horror games set to release in 2024, Still Wake the Deep features no combat, leaning solely on exploration and survival, making it similar to some of The Chinese Room’s previously released games, like Amnesia: Machine for Pigs and Dear Esther.
Despite being pushed back by several delays, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl developers now sound fairly confident in their latest release date of September 5, 2024. Typically, this period and the start of the fourth quarter, just before the spooky holiday time of Halloween begins, can fill up rapidly with horror games wanting to make themselves available for fans of the genre to get the most out of the season. Currently, however, there are only a few games anticipated in the third quarter of 2024.
No horror games so far have been confirmed for the last quarter of 2024, with most currently announced games having unspecified 2024 release dates. This includes titles from major studios like Supermassive Games’ (Until Dawn, The Quarry) upcoming The Casting of Frank Stone, which was previously announced at the 2023 Game Awards, and the somewhat contentious Bloober Team (Layers of Fear, The Medium) remake of Silent Hill 2, along with several less-known titles like Dark Fracture and Hollowbody. Many of these games, especially those from smaller studios, currently have their console release statuses unconfirmed.
Outside the higher-profile releases, Slitterhead may be interesting to Silent Hill fans – developed by Bokeh Game Studio, Slitterhead has the benefit of being worked on by the director and creator of the original Silent Hill, Keiichiro Toyama, and seems to feature similar third-person gameplay, albeit with a greater focus on action. Other games, like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, however, are somewhat less promising, with Bloodlines 2 in particular having faced a notoriously difficult development cycle, which has caused the game to be heavily delayed from its original 2020 release date.
The following table lists the game with unconfirmed release dates (or assumed to be releasing, in some cases) in 2024: