It’s Another Scary Game Feature, Charlie Brown! Yes, the Season of Samhain is upon us once again, All Hallows Eve, the only day when cosplay is legal in public. We’ve already had a glimpse at some of the Best Totally Free Scary Games you can get on PC, but what if you want to spend some Bloody Money? Yes we could just point out the Resident Evils, the Silent Hills, the Five Nights At Freddys’s, or, god help you, Minecraft, but we thought it’d be more interesting to check out the scary titles you can actually play with some pals – because horror is best experienced with others. Particularly if you’re a virgin and they all want to go skinny-dipping.
So pick a grave and make yourself comfortable while you wait for your friends to join you for The Best Multiplayer Horror Games on PC!
Last Updated: 07/02/2018
LEFT 4 DEAD 1 & 2
Developer: Valve Software
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: The best of the best, Valve shows all others how its done. Left 4 Dead is a masterclass in design and perfect horror. The sounds, the sudden appearance of a Smoker when you’re on your own, the entrance of the Tank and the mad panic he brings about, it’s all glorious, and the AI is the icing on the cake. The first game is a little purer in my opinion, with no melee weapons and more of a straight B-movie theme, but L4D2 has so much excellence going for it it’s hard not to love it. The only downside with the series is that it’s been 7 years since the last game. Play Vermintide if you want a modern version.
DEAD BY DAYLIGHT
Developer: Behaviour Digital
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: The type of game that makes you wonder why it hadn’t been done sooner, Dead By Daylight is a 4v1 asymmetrical multiplayer game where four people play the innocent victims and one player controls a hideous Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees-style murderer. The victims have to escape by activating generators to power an exit while avoid the killer. The killer has to take down and shove his victims on to horrible hooks as offerings to Dark Spider God Entity looming above. Matches are real heart-in-your-mouth moments as just spotting the killer can make you into a nervous wreck, let alone trying to escape it. I’ve never not had fun with Dead By Daylight, no matter how many times my heart stopped.
As an additional point, there are obvious similarities between Dead By Daylight and the upcoming Friday the 13th game, with the major exception that Friday the 13th is a bit more compelling for having an identifiable popular slasher killer like Jason in it. Unfortunately for that game though Dead By Daylight has just added the Halloween DLC that introduces Michael Myers to the game, complete with a new ‘Haddonfield’ map, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, and the awesome soundtrack by John Carpenter. The Friday the 13th team really have to step up their game now.
STARCRAFT II: DEAD OF NIGHT
Developer: Activision Blizzard
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: Newly introduced in patch 3.1.1, The Dead of Night brings the mega-popular StarCraft II Arcade mod to the main game. There’s no mention of whether Blizzard offered a payout or staff position for those involved in its original inception, but the numerous name drops to its legacy suggest some kind of agreement.
The Dead of Night serves as a strategy-survival game within the StarCraft II engine mixing up in-game models with new abilities. Housed up in a stronghold in the centre of the map, it’s up to you and your teammates to co-operate with each other to build up the base and micro-manage your units and supplies to fend off hundreds of encroaching horrors at night while heading out to destroy their hives by day. It may not seem like a terrifying ordeal, but wave after wave pile on the tension as your defences begin to crack under the pressure causing shambling monstrosities to seep in and kill your friends and shatter your ill-conceived safety nets. It was all going well until Frank decided to go make a bacon sandwich between waves.
And best of all, it’s practically free.
NO MORE ROOM IN HELL
Developer: No More Room In Hell Team
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: First released to critical acclaim in on Halloween 2011, the F2P survival simulator runs on the aged - but cost effective - Source Engine. With a sequel being announce in late 2016, it’s about time you grab a couple of friends to give this one a shot before it’s completely forgotten about in favor of its younger brother.
It’s gloomy, it’s moody and just about everything is ready and willing to tear you and your friends limb from limb in the name of a good meal. Taking its name from a classic piece of silver-screen writing, No More Room In Hell is a more polished version of the survival sims currently taking PC gaming by storm - expect there’s more zombies.
Rather than taking place in a large-scale open environment, however, this one takes a stage-based approach similar to Left 4 Dead. Focusing more on the strategy involved to survive, it’s a slower-paced mission to the extraction point where you’re not fight for the top spot on kills; you’re fighting to live another day.
Being a free title, the other upside is its ability to run on even the most basic machine thanks to the versatile Source engine. Horror is ugly. It matches.
HIDE & SHRIEK
Developer: Funcom
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: The joint newest game on this list, but unlike the other horror games on this list being 1v1 Hide & Shriek is more akin to Chess… if you could suddenly upend the table and shout “BLEUGH” in your opponent’s face at any moment, which would liven it up immensely. Both players take the role of an (mostly) invisible ghost and compete to get the most points. You get points two main ways: collect your own coloured Orbs and scare the bejeezus out of your opponent. You scour the interactive map, flinging open doors and cupboards searching for Orbs and power runes, setting traps, and all the while watching for some sign of your invisible foe. When you spot them you SHRIEK in their face, scare the life out of them, and get lots of lovely points. This could well become a YouTube favourite, provided everyone survives long enough to stream it.
WHITE NOISE 2
Developer: Milkstone Studios
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: Imagine Slender as an asymmetrical multiplayer game, with up to 4 people versus 1 monster trying to stop them from collecting 8 tapes scattered around a level. That’s the premise of White Noise 2. Monsters can be stunned with light but otherwise your only defence is to stay the ** away from them, especially when they start experimenting with powers like invisibility or switching your damn flashlight off. Suddenly turning a dark corner to have one scream in your face is a terrifying experience, and often having to work together is key – if you can even find each other. You can cry out for help, if you’re happy to let the monster know immediately where you are.
It’s still a bit clunky especially in terms of controls, could do with a few more maps and monsters, and I wasn’t sure how to set up a match with an AI monster, but it’s good scary fun.
KILLING FLOOR 1 & 2
Developer: Tripwire Interactive
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: Killing Floor was the first big competitor to Left 4 Dead and while KF2 is only in Early Access right now it’s looking plenty good – and scary. A series of minor objectives and waves of enemies take the place of L4D’s full exploration, and it’s debatable which one’s the more tense. L4D may be more unexpected, but getting trapped in a confined area with waves of ever-more-tough zombies is nerve-wracking. And the sequel is looking even better.
DEAD REALM
Developer: Section Studios
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: A similar idea to Dead By Daylight except less slasher killers and more creepy ghosts, werewolves and dolls. The humans have to find objects around the map and then get to a portal, and hide from the ghost player. The ghost player has to murder them all. It’s all made far scarier by the fact that the humans can’t properly see the ghost until it’s up in their face tearing it apart. It’s hide-and-seek essentially, except with 20% more murder. Dead Realm is still in Early Access but it’s already come a long way, with the latest update even bringing in weapons for the first time in new mode ‘The Hunted’. Somehow I don’t think that’ll make things less scary.
DEPTH
Developer: Digital Confectioners
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: Adjusting for inflation, what’s the most successful scary movie of all time? Nudging out The Exorcist by two places it’s actually Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s simple tale of a man with metal teeth who tries to kill James Bond. Or possibly a big shark that tries to murder people. Well, this is Jaws: The Multiplayer Game. As a person with a supposedly “irrational” fear of being eaten by sea monsters Depth pushes just the right button for me, with a team of underwater treasure hunters being picked off by sharks who can bust through walls. I couldn’t be more scared by this game, and Richard Kiel isn’t even in it.
F.E.A.R.3
Developer: Day 1 Studios
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: I was going to make this entry Call of Duty: Zombies, but didn’t as a) that’s not its own game, and b) F.E.A.R.3 is exactly the same but better and with more modes. ‘Contractions’ is basically the same as COD Zombies, as in you and your group must barricade your defenses and fend off waves of increasing powerful zombies, except with the added terrifying bonus of spooky ghost Alma wandering the halls and attacking anyone who looks at her for too long. Other modes turn players into ghosts and have them hunt down other players, or the amazingly titled ‘F**king Run’ which is like Left 4 Dead except for the wall of death forcing you to keep moving as quickly as possible. And there’s campaign co-op too, which is a whole new level of scary. Why isn’t this more popular?! It’s like every game on this list combined into one with the girl from The Grudge thrown in!
7 Days To Die
Developer: The Fun Pimps
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: 7 Days To Die is one among a huge number of survival horror games, however it stands out from the crowd on the merits of placing both constant immediate pressure on players while also robbing them of any real respite due to the countdown to which the title refers to. The game overall goes through the same beats as any other zombie survival game, however as in-game days pass and you reach 7, a sudden and massive attack by a huge horde commences, which requires extensive preparation. Playing with other players, either assisting one another for a coordinated defense, or hampering each other’s attempts to prepare for day 7 is quite an experience.
Friday The 13th
Developer: Valve Software
Why It’s Better To Be Scared With Others: Similarly to Dead By Daylight mentioned above, Friday The 13th is an asymmetrical horror game where a team of 6 teen counselors try to not get gruesomely chopped up by Jason Voorhees. The hockey-masked slasher is as terrifying as ever, and the game stays true to the source material with a bunch of nods to the films. The game also features a bunch of gory finisher moves for Jason, not unlike the fatalities from Mortal Kombat.
So that’s it! Those are the best proper multiplayer games on PC. Most of these are pretty cheap now, so you might as well pick them up. I hope you and the rest of your college buddies (including that cute cheerleader who likes getting her norks out) enjoy venturing down to the woods today, or going into that abandoned mansion, or diving into the water to hunt down treasure, or whatever you kids enjoy today. And your pals at GameWatcher will be there too. Watching you. Because that’s our hidden alternate name, you know… YouWatcher.
