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Games Like Outlast: Horror Where You Can Only Hide and Run

Outlast takes away your weapons and leaves you with a camcorder, a locker to hide in and your legs. The games below share that helplessness: you survive by hiding, sneaking and running from things you cannot beat, and several come from the studios that shaped the formula.

The games

  1. Amnesia: The Dark Descent art: a pale green stone hall in Brennenburg Castle with a carved fountain at its centre PsychologicalAmnesia: The Dark DescentThe game Outlast learned from: no weapons, a lantern, a sanity meter and monsters you can only hide from.
  2. Alien: Isolation key art: Amanda Ripley's face inside a space helmet lit green against black SurvivalAlien: IsolationOne alien you cannot kill hunts you through a space station and checks the lockers you hide in.
  3. The Outlast Trials art: test subjects with night-vision goggles strapped to their faces, one reaching upward and screaming, in a sickly green tint SurvivalThe Outlast TrialsThe same studio and the same Murkoff experiments, played alone or with up to three friends.
  4. Amnesia: The Bunker art: a soldier's hands, one holding a revolver, as a pale clawed creature reaches out of a dark tunnel SurvivalAmnesia: The BunkerA creature hunts you by sound through a World War I bunker while you keep the lights on.
  5. SOMA key art: a battered diving-suit robot with glowing lights beside a woman's face pressed to a wet glass window PsychologicalSOMAFrictional Games again: no weapons on a failing undersea station, with a story that turns the horror inward.
  6. Visage art: a veiled ghostly figure seen through a rain-spattered window in the dark PsychologicalVisageSlow first-person dread in a house haunted by the families who died there, with only light to protect you.
  7. Resident Evil 7 Biohazard key art: a sepia, ink-stained collage of a woman's face, the dark house and dead trees above it SurvivalResident Evil 7 BiohazardFirst-person horror where a family that will not die stalks you through a rotting farmhouse.
  8. The Mortuary Assistant key art: a close-up of a pale, rotting face with a bloody open mouth in a dark room PsychologicalThe Mortuary AssistantNight shift horror alone in a mortuary, finding a demon while doubting your own eyes.

The closest match is The Outlast Trials, from the same studio and set in the same Murkoff experiments, though it is built to be played with up to three friends. If you want more Outlast on your own, start with Amnesia: The Dark Descent: it is the game Outlast learned from, slower and darker, with a lantern instead of night vision and a sanity meter that punishes you for staying in the dark too long.

Frictional Games, the studio behind Amnesia, also made SOMA and Amnesia: The Bunker. SOMA keeps the no-weapons rule but moves to a research station on the sea floor, and its creatures matter less than its unsettling story. The Bunker is the most like a chase game of the three: one creature hunts you by sound through a World War I bunker while you keep a generator running.

Alien: Isolation is the best pick if Outlast's chases were your favourite part. A single alien that cannot be killed roams a whole space station, learns where you like to hide and checks the lockers, and saving costs you seconds you may not have.

For slower, more psychological dread, Visage puts you alone in a house where families died, with light as your only defence, and The Mortuary Assistant has you embalm bodies at night while a demon plays with your perception. Resident Evil 7 Biohazard is the furthest from Outlast's rules, since you do get weapons, but its first hours of hiding from Jack Baker in a rotting farmhouse are some of the closest thing to Outlast in a big-budget game.

If you only try one, play Amnesia: The Dark Descent for the roots of the formula, or Alien: Isolation for the most frightening hunter.

Questions

What is the closest game to Outlast?

The Outlast Trials, from the same studio and set in the same Murkoff experiments; for a single-player game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent or Alien: Isolation.

Are there games like Outlast I can play with friends?

Yes. The Outlast Trials is designed for up to four players and keeps the hide-and-run play.

Are there games like Outlast with no combat at all?

Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA and Visage give you no weapons; Alien: Isolation gives you tools that can only drive the alien off for a moment.

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