For this best halloween vr games list, we looked specifically for short form games that can be enjoyed on halloween. Every game in this halloween top ten is a great scare fest that should be good for at least an extra 20-30 beats per minute on a normal person’s heartrate!
For delicate souls who are easily scared these games may result in (un)expected results like screaming, crying “make it stop” or running into walls – prepare your play space accordingly!
Halloween bonus: most of the VR games in our halloween horror list are either inexpensive or have a free demo – Halloween doesn’t have to be expensive gamers!
#1 Affected : The Manor
Playing Affected – The Manor is like having a theme park live action haunted house experience right in your own house, but with huge special effects that could only happen inside of a game – making it a terrific horror experience. The quality graphics and sounds set a tense mood, with well designed indoor environments creating a very believable, immersive and unsettling scene.
Prepare to feel unnerved, unsteady and unsure in equal measure as you walk around the manor, never quite sure what horror the next room will bring. Affected The Manor tops our Halloween VR Top Ten as it’s also an excellent game to sit back and watch your family and friends freaking out this Halloween!
#2 The Exorcist: Legion VR
With each chapter providing up to 10-30 minutes of elevated heart rate, they are each just long enough to get the heart racing and your mind grasping for reality versus virtual horror. As if that wasn’t enough motivation to grab The Exorcist VR, consider that each highly polished episode is only a few bucks, and it is the most positively reviewed horror game on Steam.
In addition to being one of the most blood drippingly gorgeous VR games available, The Exorcist VR also benefits from some excellent sound design and effects that will really put you in the scene, seeing and hearing every little detail as if you are really there. A must have game, especially for Halloween!
#3 Face Your Fears
This VR jump scare fun house presents you with a number of horror scenarios, using the VR trick that the game knows exactly where you are looking to enable the perfect jump scare moment – so yeh, it is behind you!
Three of the horror experiences are played from the perspective of lying in bed – which works very well. Although most of the jump scares are triggered by looking in a certain direction, there is a hefty amount of tension and uncertainty crafted into this experience that will have all but the most stern of heart shouting out loud at least a few times!
The other experiences are more to do with fears other than horror, for example a fear of height, so for this halloween experience we recommend sticking to the three bedroom stories, short but most definitely not sweet!
#4 dreadhalls
Dreadhalls appears in every horror based top 10 list for a reason – intense fear. The graphics trail behind many other games in this halloween top ten, with uninspiring textures and a cuboid dungeon, but this is more than compensated for by the sheer terror it instills.
I found myself learning a new skill of running in one direction while looking in the total opposite, with my fear stricken face peering into the darkness to glimpse the chasing evil. A good example of gameplay over eye candy , Dreadhalls is an aptly named halloween essential.
#5 Brookhaven Experiment
Brookhaven Experiment – because it did not feel right not having at least one horror shooter in this list! The Brookhaven Experiment is an unusual game in this list – as one of the oldest titles, but one that commands a mid range entry fee, higher than many other horror games in this list.
The reason is simple though – The Brookhaven experiment is a great game. It’s a game that has that “just one more go” addictive quality, and it’s a game that despite its age still holds its own and looks impressive with crisp and realistic visuals.
A zombie wave shooter with a long list of horrific monsters to battle, with an equally impressive arsenal of weapons to do it with. What more could you wish for an a dark halloween night?!
#6 Nevrosa Escape
Nevrosa Escape is one of the best, most innovative horror escape room games; absolutely stunning graphics, puzzles that will torment you, and tension to make any halloween complete. Mensa students will complete before midnight, the rest of us are in for a longer session. Don’t want to buy? Download the prelude for free!
Things to like about this unsettling escape room puzzler include clever use of roomscale design to eliminate the need for any locomotion or teleporting and some of the best steam punk visuals you will see in any VR game. On the downside this is a rather short game – however that fits in perfectly with our short form halloween top ten list of games that can be completed in one sitting (up to 3 hours gameplay).
While not as horrifically frightening as the rest of this VR horror top ten, Nevrosa does a brilliant job of immersing the player in the game environment and between scratching your head over the clever puzzles, you will be quickly turning to see what’s shuffling around in the dark, just over there….
#7 Organ Quarter
This old school “silent hill-esque” horror that also tips its hat to Resident Evil, doesn’t fit our short-form criteria for halloween night gaming, but we just had to include it for being a quality horror game that is a “proper” game. So if you are on your own this halloween and want to enjoy a scary environment with more challenging gameplay and less jump scares – this is a no brainer that will provide you with hours of entertainment well past hallows eve into the days and weeks beyond.
To succeed in this game you will require to manage your inventory, manage your stomach through unsettling scenes, and manage to cope with some old school horror that doesn’t rely on jump scares, but does provide disturbing, addictive gameplay that refuses to let you put the controller down.
Always a sign of a good game, once you have completed these demonic locations, you may find yourself, shouting with a rebel yell – “more, more, more!“.
#8 Caliban Below
Caliban Below is a free 10 minute experience with no gameplay, but terrific story telling that fills the void for gamers wanting less “jump scare” and more “story” for halloween. Representing one of the best VR experiences available for free, Caliban Below also presents a terrific halloween experience which at 10 minutes long can be “enjoyed” by all of your halloween visitors.
The realistic visuals and game physics, complimented with impressive audio provide the foundations for an engaging and rewarding story which provide a compelling tale right to the end – and please make sure you do get right to the end of this story, it is well worth the journey!
This is another game in our halloween top 10 that we really wish had a sequel in the works – it is that good.
#9 Paranormal Activity
Prepare for an unsettling, unnerving experience. When a VR game comes with a Gore warning and an age restricted access, you know it has passed the first two halloween vr gaming tests. Quality VR title that deserves its place in any VR library (if you are over 18).
This is probably one of the most expensive games in our top ten halloween vr game list, and bang for buck it is probably a little bit over priced. However the paranormal activity franchise weighs so heavy at Halloween that we just had to include it in our list – sneaking it in at number 9.
The house environment is quite immersive, and there are some jump scares that probably will make you actually jump (or cower), so steady yourself for an un-nerving paranormal experience of the virtual reality kind because this is an immersive game for sure.
#10 Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion
Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion: HD Renovation is our bonus special surprise entry for the halloween vr gaming top ten list. One look a the screenshots will have you wondering how this apparently cute game can provide any horror? Play it. All 1000 rooms. Then come back and tell me cute can’t be scary.
What is enjoyable about this game is finding the horror homage sprinkled around the cute monsters in this game. It also presents the most friendly game in our top 10, possibly the one entry that can be played by even the most timid of halloween visitors while still being a legit horror game; laughs and terror in equal measure.
Suspense, scares, frights and laughs make for an unusual mix – but just perfect to round off our halloween VR gaming top ten!
BEST VR horror GAMES for halloween
tension
horror
jump scare
Something that was pleasingly apparent when curating this list of horror games suitable for a Halloween gaming session, is how the selection of good VR horror games really keeps growing, with new horror experiences available every Halloween. Creating immersive VR spaces has become a whole new arena and nowhere is it more shockingly immersive than in VR horror games.
Paranormal Activity VR and The Exorcist VR are both fairly recent titles that bring something new to the VR horror genre, and a new level of quality with immersive graphics and well designed scenes. There is still room in our top 10 for old school VR horrors such as The Brookhaven Experiment. Although it is a first wave VR title, Brookhaven still managed to make it into our 2019 top ten halloween VR horror games, thanks to its just-one-more gameplay, and enough scares to frighten the kids at halloween.
So, how many hours of VR horror can you pack into one halloween night anyway? This top ten is packed with quality VR gaming, tension, discomfort and even a few laughs just to round it off.
No laughs in our No.1 pick though, as Affected The Manor is a concentrated effort to un-nerve and disturb VR gamers with a immersive scare-fest!
We should clear up one thing though. What makes a horror VR game suitable for halloween? As explained in to intro, we specifically focussed on short form horror titles that would for example fill a void between knocks at the door, looking for candy.
The main focus of this halloween list therefore is to provide gamers with a curated list of horror games that could be completed in one sitting, on halloween.
It is for this reason you will not see some awesome VR horror games such as Alien Isolation in this list. While Alien Isolation is an amazing immersive and horror packed game, it does deserve to be played over time, savouring each scene and location and soaking oneself in the suspense filled space station atmosphere; not a game to be shoehorned into one halloween night.
It would be an impossible challenge to play all of these games in one night however, so set your budget – be clear about your fear threshold, and dive in to any of these ten titles for a halloween fright fest. There’s puzzlers, room escapes, shooters and horror experiences included, so pick your preference and enjoy the best horror VR has to offer.
Jump scares are hated and revered in almost equal measure amongst horror fans. From our best halloween horrors above, there’s a pretty good mix of games with and without jumpscares. If jumpscares are what you are after look no further than, Face Your Fears.
Face your Fears might as well be subtitled as “Jump Scare VR”, thanks to it’s almost total reliance on in-your-face heart stopping jump scare tactics.
Organ Quarter on the other hand is almost devoid of jumpscare – preferring to kill you more slowly with tension and terror.
The occasional jumpscare is perhaps to be expected in any horror game, but a total reliance on this technique can lead to a bland gaming experience. Some gamers with do not find them a fun experience at all.
What we can all enjoy however, is watching someone else get jumpscared out of their HMD! Here’s a jumpscare compilation, for your Halloween enjoyment.
Finally, whichever horror game you decide to play this halloween, share it on our VR Forums, or suggest it in the box above so that we can all suffer the same terror!
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