Our Most Anticipated Horror Games Of 2022

You have to see Atomic Heart in action to understand what makes this surreal open-world action/RPG so exciting. It looks like a moving art piece full of breathtaking scenery and grotesque mutants. Set in an alternate reality, during the “high noon of the Soviet Union,” you must mop up a mess created from a catastrophic event originating from a secret government facility. In other words, you need to kill some monsters.

The Callisto Protocol is being developed by Striking Distance Studios, which was founded by Glen Schofield and is staffed by several ex-members of Visceral Games which worked on EA’s Dead Space. This makes The Callisto Protocol a spiritual successor to the beloved sci-fi horror franchise. Interestingly, the title is also set in a far-flung version of the PUBG universe and revolves around an alien invasion at a prison colony on Jupiter’s moon Callisto. Sadly, we don’t know much more about the project at this point, but you had us at “spiritual successor to Dead Sp” – you didn’t even have to finish the sentence.

If a spider and Thomas the Train had Rosemary’s baby, it might look something like Choo-Choo Charles. In this open-world action game, you navigate a fog-covered island in an old train. As you complete missions and find scrap, you upgrade your train’s speed, armor, and the damage of its mounted machine gun. Why does the train have a mounted machine gun? That’s because an arachnid-like train monster is hunting you the entire time, and you don’t have a boot big enough to squash it.

Since the release of Dead Space 3 in 2013, EA’s iconic sci-fi horror series seemed like a … ehem … dead franchise. Thankfully that all changed last year when EA announced Motive Studio is working on a remake of the 2008 original. The new game retains the same basic concept: 26th-century engineer Isaac Clarke travels to a derelict mining vessel to look for its missing crew, only to discover that their bodies have become twisted into grotesque monstrosities. Motive says it’s willing to take some liberties with this remake. For example, Isaac won’t be a silent protagonist as in the original release, and we hope his screams drown out our own. 

Grab your boomstick and some friends and get ready to battle hordes of undead monsters – excuse us – evil dead monsters. Featuring a mix of co-op and PVP multiplayer action, teams of survivors must work together to explore and loot supplies as they work to seal a breach between our world and one full of hideous monsters. You can take to the battlefield as familiar characters such as Ash, Scotty, Lord Arthur, Kelly Maxwell, and Pablo Simon Bolivar. Better still, many of the original actors are reprising their roles, including Bruce Campbell. Hail to the king!

Tango Gameworks is best known for The Evil Within, which Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami directed. While Ghostwire: Tokyo takes inspiration from a few other places, this first-person adventure doesn’t look any less terrifying. After nearly all of Tokyo’s citizens mysteriously vanished, a group of otherworldly spirits take up residence. You play as a young man named Akito who develops supernatural abilities, allowing him to interact with this mystical world. Using a series of Kuji-kiri-inspired hand gestures, Akito can cast spells that send Tokyo’s new inhabitants packing.

In 2013, Red Barrels came out guns blazing with its debut title Outlast, which took inspiration from survival horror titles like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and told a tale about a freelance journalist’s investigation into a derelict psychiatric hospital. This spin-off takes a nod from episodic television series to further explore the franchises’ lore, centering on the test subjects who took part in a mysterious Cold War experiment. Spoiler alert: we’re guessing these experiments went horribly wrong.

Set in Italy in 1944, Martha is Dead is a first-person psychological thriller that explores the tragedies of war while blurring the lines between reality and superstition. This ghost story looks visually stunning thanks to developer LKA Games’ use of advanced photogrammetry techniques. You play a young woman dealing with tragedy who seeks answers to personal questions by exploring the dark truth behind local folklore. We don’t want to worry you, but based on the title, it sounds like things don’t work out for Martha.

In 2014, Endnight Games released a survival horror game called The Forest, where players fended off droves of cannibalistic body horrors within a heavily forested open world. This year, the studio plans to release a sequel that will have players gathering more supplies, building shelters, and hunting for their next meal while trying not to become someone else’s. We don’t have a ton of details otherwise, but based on trailers, horror fans should strap in before venturing into these warry woods and its monster-filled network of caves.

Vampires suck! But that’s why we love them. Hardsuit Labs’ long-awaited sequel to the cult 2004 RPG follows a brand-new vampire as they navigate a version of Seattle where werewolves, demons, and other monsters of the night have helped shape human society. Players create their own vampire and join one of many rivaling vampire clans. Throughout the adventure, you’ll also acquire and upgrade a variety of unnatural abilities such as levitation, bat summoning, and the ability to transform into mist.