These Horror Games Will Make You Fear the Deep Waters

We all have our fears. Some players are afraid of spiders, heights, or the dark, but there’s a large portion of the population with an intense fear of the ocean, known as thalassophobia. There are lots of reasons people are scared of the sea: the large body of water with no land or help in sight, the dark and frigid depths, or the unknown creatures lurking far below.

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These are only a few of just many reasons why the ocean is the best setting for video games. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a game about fishing or a first-person shooter—with the right presentation, the sea can turn it into a straight-up horror experience. So, pack a flashlight, because these examples are only going to get darker the deeper we descend into the scariest games about the ocean.

10

Maneater

Hunting Apex Predators

In Maneater, you assume the role of a shark, chomping into whatever you can catch in your jaws, wreaking havoc and devastation everywhere you go. Your only goal is to become the apex predator of these waters. However, though you play as a monster in Maneater, you’re not the only one out there.

Before you can become a mutated manhunter, you start as a pup and must climb your way to the top. To get there, you’ll have to hunt down and devour the other apex predators out there. And these waters are infested with hostile and disturbing sea creatures, from killer crocodiles to colossal sharks. Creepy as the game can get at times, Maneater’s sense of humor and mindless destruction help elevate the more unsettling parts.

9

Returnal

Undefined Terror

Being trapped on a planet is scary on its own. Being trapped on a planet and stuck in a time loop is just an utter nightmare. In Returnal, players follow Selene as she’s forced to confront the pain of her past while combating hostile entities to find a way to escape. On its own, the game is a strong and polished psychological horror that explores themes of dread and trauma.

Just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it, however, for an encore, the final biome takes players into the Abyssal Scar. Here, players must fight their way to the ocean floor and confront the source of what brought them here. Not only is the environment and creature designs disturbing, but the sound design makes being here unnerving. Because although you’re making progress, you know you’re getting closer to whatever’s down here, and it’s not going to be pretty.

8

Silt

Feeling Small in a Big Ocean

Silt is a surreal indie game. You awaken in the abyss of the ocean as an unnamed diver with the power to possess sea creatures. Explore sunken ruins filled with mystery, ancient machinery, and strange lifeforms. Though Silt’s gameplay mostly centers around avoiding hazards and solving puzzles, what it excels in is its art design.

The black-and-white style makes it feel like you’re swimming in a nightmare. The environments look and feel unsettling. The sea life plays a part in the horror as you’ll encounter creatures of different shapes and sizes. Compared to the huge environments and aquatic monsters, Silt does a grand job of making the player feel like a small fish in a large ocean.

7

BioShock

“Welcome To Rapture, the World’s Fastest Growing Pile of Junk.”

It feels like a sin not to place BioShock at the top of every list, considering it’s one of the best games of all time. When it comes to what makes this game so terrifying, players will usually talk about the Splicers, the claustrophobia, or the Big Daddies, but the ocean plays a huge role in BioShock’s setting and hazards. Because you’re not just trapped in a dead city, you’re trapped at the bottom of the sea.

Unlike other horror games, Rapture is not a city you can escape easily. The only way out is with a bathysphere or a sub. Meanwhile, the city is falling apart, and you experience tunnel collapses, seawater leaking through cracks, and flooded areas. The ocean might not be the overarching threat, but it has a strong presence throughout BioShock, which adds another layer of fear and tension.

6

Barotrauma

Prepare To Dive

Ever want to pilot a submarine? How about piloting one into the darkest depths that are infested with nightmarish sea monsters? Though it’s a 2D game, Barotrauma is a brutal survival simulator as you team up with other players to pilot a sub through an undersea experience. The good news is you can fight back against the sea denizens. The bad news is, so can they.

Some sea monsters you encounter will appear as giants that will strike at the sub’s hull. Others will be much smaller, but just as dangerous, breaking into your sub and infesting each deck. It’s going to be a fight inside and out of your sub, and the deeper you explore the abyss, the worse it will get.

5

Soma

The End of the World Under the Sea

From the creators behind the Amnesia series, Soma is utter sci-fi horror set in a dreadful future under the Atlantic Ocean. You’re on your own as you go from station to station in the search for answers. Unfortunately, each undersea base is in ruins and infested with mutated monstrosities. So, how can it get any worse? Well, the only way to travel between stations is by going out into the ocean.

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What’s ironic is there’s very little danger in these undersea sections, but that doesn’t make them any less frightening. You feel helpless as you move much slower in a sea that’s polluted with decaying machinery, strange black liquid substances, barnacles, and corpses. Besides the light from the base, you’re surrounded from all sides by perpetual darkness, and sometimes, you can see an enormous, mutated leviathan swimming over you. Also, there are Deep Sea Spiders too. Have fun with that.

4

Still Wakes the Deep

Tragic and Terrifying

Working on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean is dangerous on its own, but now, the drilling platform has awakened something lurking deep below, and it’s preparing to infest the whole rig and everyone on board. Still Wakes the Deep’s outstanding story and voice acting sell how utterly disturbing and doomed its characters are.

Playing as Caz the engineer, you’re thrown from one danger into another as you watch your crew turn into abominations. All the while, the oil rig is falling apart as the mysterious entity is slowly taking over. The overall game feels like John Carpenter’s The Thing, only set at sea. It’s a heartbreaking and heart-stopping experience from beginning to end, and best of all, it has a terrifying expansion story: Siren’s Rest.

3

DREDGE

The Horrors of the Deep

What’s so scary about fishing? It’s one of the most relaxing activities around. Unless you’re fishing in the world of DREDGE. Here, you’re not just entering dangerous territory. You’re entering waters that poured out from the mind of H. P. Lovecraft. As an angler, your job is to catch fish and sell off your load for funds to upgrade your equipment and vessel. However, the further you venture out, the more you realize there’s more than fish down there.

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Sea monsters of all shapes lurk in these waters, and they’re hunting you. Even when you’re alone, it never feels like it. The sounds and use of the fog will always have you on your toes. As if trying to survive the bloodthirsty terrors wasn’t enough, something sinister is happening as you soon begin uncovering mysterious relics connected to the dark arts, leading to a secret of true cosmic horror.

2

Iron Lung

A Hopeless Future

Though it’s a short game, Iron Lung makes every minute feel uncomfortable and chilling. Set in a dark future, the stars and habitable planets have disappeared in an event known as The Quiet Rapture. Now, the remnants of humanity search for resources and new habitats. You’re locked into a small one-room submarine and sent alone to explore the Blood Ocean.

The entire game is spent within the sub, with the player using their map to navigate and the camera to capture photos of the ocean outside. Despite the simple gameplay and limited perspective, it all blends into one absolutely frightening experience. Sometimes the best horror is what you don’t see, and from the photos you find, along with the sounds heard outside your vessel, there’s this lingering tension that something is following you, leading to one of the biggest jump scare endings in an Indie game.

1

Subnautica

Stranded on an Ocean Planet

It doesn’t matter if you’re afraid of the water or not. The idea of being stranded out at sea, alone, with no one coming to save you, is horrifying to everyone. Subnautica amplifies that horror by making it an entire ocean planet. Combine that with its catalog of terrifying sea creatures, and you have one of the scariest games ever. But it’s not just the sea life that makes Subnautica so unsettling.

It’s the atmosphere, darkness, and isolation that tie it all together. You’re alone, and the only way to survive is to explore, which means daring uncharted waters and going deeper. The game perfectly captures the tension of deep-sea diving into the unknown. Will you have enough oxygen? Did you bring the right gear? What will you find? Maybe it’ll be a ruined base to explore for secrets, or it’ll be a cavern crawling with hostile lifeforms, or even both. Anything can happen.

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