Summary
A horror game is only as good as its setting. It’s the set dressing that gives the scares their punch and defines a player’s time in the game. Long after finishing the game, the setting will likely stick around in the player’s head for days to come.
Luckily, there are loads of great horror settings in video games tailor-made to be iconic, whether it’s a send-up of old-school Americana or haunted mansions destined for infamy. This list is ranked purely by how iconic each setting is.
TheAlan Wakefranchise is constantly the underdog, and for good reason. The games are just plain weird, and completely unapologetic about bucking trends and doing the obscure or confusing thing over the simple path, but that idiosyncrasy is exactly what makes its setting unique, particularly Bright Falls.
While in the first game,Bright Fallsis a stand-in for Twin Peaks from the show of the same name,Alan Wake 2fleshes out this weird town to explore its Finnish associations, its creepy woods, and how it functions. It’s a really eerie place by the end, and very memorable for its players.
Space stations or spaceships are very common in video games. It’s hard to stand out from the crowd without being strange, but the Ishimura does nothing like that. Instead, it’s how realistic, mechanical, and industrialized the Ishimura is that makes it feel so lifelike and authentic.
As Isaac Clarke, players are tasked with putting their engineering skills to the test,fighting horrifying monstersthrough the cramped, steaming, and clanking corridors of a great steel husk and fixing it up. It’s like a city-sized second-hand car, and that feeling of wear and tear is crucial for making the Ishimura feel so distinct.
FromSoftware is incredible at building worlds that feel like they’ve got a lot of history, but no world they’ve created is as visually stunning and iconic as Yharnam, the Gothic Lovecraftian hellscape infested by monsters and visitors from other worlds.
As a visual city, Yharnam is unsurpassed. It exaggerates its Gothic aesthetics to such an extent that it almost feels nightmarish, and each of its streets feels carefully thought out to maximise mood, andtons of hidden areas to explore. It’s easily one of the best Gothic cities ever put to pixels, and remains FromSoftware’s crowning achievement in visual world design.
More than any other franchise, theBioshockfranchise is singularly defined by its settings. Rapture, the libertarian city at the bottom of the sea, is the first and still most iconic vision ofBioshock’s extended trips into alternative history sci-fi, and remains beloved by gamers to this day.
From the first moment players get a guided tour through Rapture’s skyline to its gutted, horrific innards, Rapture is a constant delight to be within. Its vision of 1950s hedonism gone wrong is incredibly unique, easily making it one of the most iconic horror settings ever, with some arguing thatthe franchise should return for its newest entry.
In the early 2010s, indie video games were having their moment, for the first time surpassing the popularity of big AAA studios, but no one could have predicted the frankly insane popularity of the cheap and cheerful horror gameFive Nights at Freddy’s that dominated horror gaming for that decade.
In the game, players control a security guard doing the night shift at the titular pizzeria, checking the cameras, testing lights, and trying not to get murdered by the animatronics. Though the player never leaves the security office, the setting has become indelible in horror gaming history,remaining one of the best entries in the whole franchise.
When the originalResident Evilgames were released, they were clearly inspired by American horror movies, but with a limited localisation staff, which led to some interesting American place names, most notably of all, the strangely named Raccoon City.
Yet, despite its weird name, Raccoon City’s modern metropolis was a key part of makingResident Evil 2andResident Evil 3click, seeing first-hand how a zombie apocalypse could cut through a populated city (and the many characters that never made it out). It’s become a hallowed place inResident Evillore, and a fondly remembered nest of strangely anonymous roads to horror gamers.
While Raccoon City may be the best-known city inResident Evil, no single setting can ever surpass Spencer Mansion in terms of being iconic. In many ways, the Spencer Mansion defined what horror gaming was for decades to follow, and many gamers still remember its exact layout today.
Setting a horror game in a mansion wasn’t new, but the team at Capcom filled every single room, corridor, and thoroughfare with as much personality as possible, with blind corners and tight spaces specifically designed to evoke as much fear as possible. It’s a frankly weird mansion that makes little sense, but that idiosyncrasy is exactly what sticks in the minds of horror gamers.
All horror games are made by their settings, but perhaps none more so thanSilent Hilland its eponymous town. While the games share some interconnected lore, more than anything, they’re united by this single fog-ridden location in one way or another.
Yet, despite that, Silent Hill is a very flexible setting. By its very nature, the streets, buildings, and tourist attractions warp to fit the tormented protagonist surviving its foggy streets. It’s the ultimate outward expression of interior psychological dread, and with its endlessly eerie allies, monsters, and strange sounds in the fog, it’s hard to imagine any more iconic setting in horror gaming.
