Silent Hill is, without a doubt, Konami‘s most iconic horror franchise. It’s unique, bizzare, terrifying and full of complex lore. With the recent release of the Silent Hill 2 Remake, it’s creating an itch that many players are looking to scratch.
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Fans of Silent Hill find themselves looking for more games with a similar vibe, style, or related mechanics. Thankfully, there are many games that share similarities in one way or another — whether fog is included or not.
One thing is for sure about these horror games, though: they’ll terrify players in ways they never thought imaginable.
10 Deadly Premonition
Camp & Creepy In Equal Measure
Deadly Premonition is a surprising horror game that centres on the human psyche — it controls similarly to classic Silent Hill games, which can be clunky in comparison to modern releases.
Despite it being badly rated, the game is actually great. The rating comes from the plethora of ideas and concepts explored in a way that’s at times convoluted, but that falls similarly in line with Silent Hill’s complicated lore.
The game has a similar vibe to old detective films and shows, such as Twin Peaks, with a mysterious open world to follow suit.
Playing as a detective to solve a newly developing murder case, Deadly Premonition offers grotesque scares and often-welcomed humour. It can borderline on being campy, but Silent Hill’s joke endings are no stranger to camp.
9 Amnesia: The Dark Descent
The Horror of Pure Madness
Anyone watching YouTube Let’s Play videos in the early 2010s would remember how prominent Amnesia: The Dark Descent was among indie horror titles.
The Amnesia series continued after this, of course, but the sequels don’t carry the same weight that the first installment had.
This game was up there with the likes of Slender: The Eight Pages and SCP: Containment Breach for one of the scariest games on YouTube, and for good reason. It’s genuinely scary.
True to its name, the protagonist, Daniel, wakes up with amnesia, but he distinctly knows that he’s being hunted. Having to escape a creepy castle with even more terrifying monsters, this game is full of suspense and horror, with a sanity meter to provide an extra challenge.
8 Cry of Fear
The Most Infamous Half-Life Mod
Originally, Cry of Fear was simply a mod for the first Half-Life game, but later was fleshed out into a full game. Thank goodness for that, too, since it ended up being an intriguing game with lots of terror driving the story.
Plus, depending on how thorough and detailed players are in their gameplay, there are a few different endings they can acquire, similar to Silent Hill’s multiple endings.
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The endings tend to be what a lot of people remember from the game, especially considering the jarring twist that the Bad Ending provides.
Some of the levels and monsters seem to be inspired by Silent Hill, especially when combined with the atmosphere.
The world and levels within switch at certain story beats. One minute, it’s a normal city, and the next, it enters a hellish landscape, descending into the nightmare world the same as Silent Hill’sOtherworld.
7 Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Preparation for Silent Hill F
Fatal Frame is an absolutely terrifying series, especially during its heyday in the era of the PlayStation 2. Fans tend to debate on which game is the best in the series, but often it’s credited to Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, with some of the scariest levels in all of gaming.
Fatal Frame is a ghost story, and a distinctly terrifying one at that. It’s focused on a lot of traditional Japanese horror, similarly to the new direction that Silent Hill F seems to be taking.
Silent Hill F will be written by the Higurashi When They Cry author, Ryukishi07. The horrifying trailer is practically nostalgic for the horror Fatal Frame provides, and builds the hype all at the same time.
6 Detention
Modern Horror Based in Folklore
An underrated indie classic, Detention, developed by Red Candle Games, is a freaky and surreal experience.
Taking place during the White Terror in 1960s Taiwan, the game follows two students, Wei and Ray, being trapped in their old high school. The game is a 2D platformer, taking the already nostalgic genre and flipping it onto a terrifying head.
Detention is a modern horror story through a traditional lens, incorporating folklore, mythology, and ancient religion into its atmosphere. It brings about an odd, uncanny nostalgia — the exact kind of horror that Silent Hill thrives on.
Oh, and of course, the monsters are absolutely freaky.
5 Siren
Terrifying, Notalgic PS2 Horror
Siren (called Forbidden Siren in the PAL region) is a brutal and unforgiving horror game with puzzles that rival even Silent Hill’s toughest. It was a classic PS2 horror title with an absolutely chilling atmosphere.
Siren offers a multitude of experiences through the various characters that can be played, but the difficulty of the game can make it tough to soak it all in. However, that makes the successes all the more rewarding.
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It’s no small feat beating Siren, it’s genuinely got that amount of difficulty — but the fear-soaked ambience definitely makes up for it. It’s creepy, unsettling, and makes players actually dread moving their character forward.
The story alone is wonderful, so a genuinely good horror experience on top of that makes the tough gameplay completely worth it.
4 Visage
What P.T. Could Have Been
Many fans mourned the loss of Silent Hills (also known as P.T.), when Konami unceremoniously canceled the project in 2015. It was, without a doubt, the scariest video game of all time, horrifying and packed with secrets still being discovered years later.
Visage took the ashes of Silent Hills and filled the void with a genuinely creepy horror game. It’s tense, atmospheric, and has nearly all the characteristics that players loved about P.T. in the first place.
In true Silent Hill fashion, Visage has multiple endings based on the player’s actions and is layered with endless clues and puzzles that need to be solved in order to understand the full picture. The mystery is dark, and once it’s unveiled, the horrors just compound from there.
3 Alan Wake 2
Horror With Endless Imagery
The first Alan Wake game was a unique and intriguing survival horror experience, but its sequel, Alan Wake 2, is a significant improvement in every way. It took everything that made the first game scary and fun, then expanded on it, improving the gameplay, the story, and, of course — the scares.
It’s dark, moody, cryptic, and full of imagery and questions that need to be answered. One glance at the game’s title screen, and players have a distinct idea of what they’re getting into.
The story and characters are immensely memorable, with the experience provided being akin to a shadowy, cinematic fantasia. Fans of Silent Hill would be thrilled with the Alan Wake series, but most especially with its far-more-terrifying sequel.
2 The Evil Within
From the Creator of Resident Evil
When Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil, announced The Evil Within in 2013, survival horror fans weren’t ready for the storm that was about to hit the genre. To this day, it remains one of the best horror titles for the PS3.
While it plays like a Resident Evil game, The Evil Within shares a lot of imagery and monster design that rivals Silent Hill’s. Most notably, its use of barbed wire and the design of The Keeper.
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The game’s sequel, The Evil Within 2, plays more like an action game, while the first installment is pure, unflinching survival horror. It’s bloody, it’s unsettling, it’s uncanny — it feels like trying to survive a literal nightmare.
Plus, for players trying to get the infamously difficult None More Dark achievement, it takes the nightmare to the next level.
1 Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
PS2 Cult Classic Centred Around Madness
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There is nothing more terrifying than going completely mad. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem seems to agree, by focusing the game’s central themes and gameplay mechanics around sanity. Most notably, this is done with a Sanity Meter.
Released as a Nintendo-exclusive horror game for the GameCube, Eternal Darkness became a cult classic among players. It was a bold game that took many risks, breaking the fourth wall and challenging players in ways that had never really been explored up to that point.
The horrors in this game are unmatched, with an immensely complicated story to follow suit. It’s an excellent experience for fans of Silent Hill, one that they’ll find themselves thinking about long after they finish the game.
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