Free Horror Games on PC: The Best Free Downloads on Steam

If you want one long, free horror game, start with Cry of Fear. It began as a Half-Life mod and plays like a full survival horror game: a young man crosses a deserted Scandinavian town at night with scarce weapons while his mind comes apart, over more than eight hours. Poppy Playtime is the most played: its first chapter is free on Steam, an hour or less in an abandoned toy factory until the blue mascot Huggy Wuggy steps off his plinth and chases you through the vents. Doki Doki Literature Club is the other big name, a cheerful school dating sim that turns into psychological horror; it handles self-harm and suicide, so it is not for younger players.

For a longer story without combat, Paper Lily - Chapter 1 is a horror RPG of demons and puzzles that can each be solved in several ways, and Saihate Station follows two coworkers who wake at a station that should not exist. Higurashi When They Cry's first chapter is free too, the start of a long horror mystery in a village where someone dies every June, and Yume Nikki, from 2004, lets you wander a withdrawn girl's dreams with no words at all. Bad Dream: Fever is a hand-drawn point-and-click of about three hours through a city emptied by an ink plague, Hello Charlotte EP2 steers a puppet girl through her House, her School and a Trial while her mind comes apart, with warnings for self-harm and body horror. Project Kat is the free 45-minute prologue to Paper Lily, a seance at school after dark, and Trick & Treat sends a maid in a pumpkin hat through a cursed mansion on Halloween Eve with nine ways to die. PRICE is a 2D point-and-click horror puzzle in which a young musician wakes in a strange dark room and searches for his sister, Ann is a free tribute to RPG Maker classics like Ib, an art student trapped in her school at night, and Lucid Dream helps a little girl escape a nightmare laboratory by solving its puzzles. Love Alone Death asks whom you will spend your final moments with after humans vanish, and Traum, made in RPG Maker, watches an ordinary man's plans fall apart into something darker. At Home Alone Final follows a little girl alone at home while visitors arrive and the day bends out of shape, with several endings.

If you only have an evening, there is a deep pool of short free games. Indigo Park's first chapter is an hour of mascot horror in an empty amusement park. Fears to Fathom - Home Alone is the free first episode of that series. Psychopomp is a one-to-two-hour dungeon crawl among grotesque creatures, and Dagon, The Children of Clay, The Supper, Clap Clap and Lily's Well can each be finished in an hour or less. Unsorted Horror gathers five short stories about dangerous machines from the maker of Buckshot Roulette. Fingerbones, from Iron Lung's maker David Szymanski, is a half-hour walk through an abandoned bunker where the notes you find paint a disturbing picture. Krypta FM sends you out at night with a flashlight and a cheap digital camera to photograph signs of a cryptid around a Polish village in 2006, with nothing jumping out at you but the dark itself. Cube Escape: Paradox is the free first chapter of Rusty Lake's escape-room series: a detective wakes in a moth-papered room with no memory, a crow-headed man in an armchair and his own bloodied face on the television. Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion, the free original by Lag Studios, walks you through a thousand rooms of a haunted mansion where cute cardboard scares give way to monsters that hunt you. Zardy's Maze sends you into a night-time corn maze with an axe and a flashlight while a pumpkin-headed scarecrow stalks the paths, and the maze changes every run. The Designer's Curse is a free game in the mould of Amnesia: puzzles in a dark manor, creatures you cannot fight and a score by Mikko Tarmia, who wrote the music for Amnesia and SOMA.

Some of the best-rated free games are the shortest. Perfect Vermin has you smash office furniture with a sledgehammer against a timer while a news anchor between floors reveals what your work is really for, Bleeding Roots is a fifteen-minute walk through a grieving man's garden, Smile More makes you a government surgeon fixing citizens' faces into the one approved expression, and The Little Red Lie follows Red back into the forest where her grandmother died. Disturbed is a hand-drawn choose-your-own-adventure about a farmer whose land is failing, and Dinner with an Owl loops one evening in an owl-headed host's mansion until you break his spell. missed messages. starts when a stranger's phone airdrops you a photo and becomes a story about depression, suicide and self-harm, with four endings in under half an hour. the static speaks my name is ten minutes in the apartment of a man on his last night alive, and TELEFORUM is a found-footage visit to the widow of a journalist who died on air. Rental sends a young bunny into a beach cabin that is not what the listing promised, The Windows Are Gone moves you into a house you keep dreaming of after a tragic accident, and Samsara Room is a free escape room from Rusty Lake, the makers of the Cube Escape series.

If you would rather fight, Nightmare House began as a Half-Life 2 mod: a ghost girl follows you through a dark house and a ruined hospital full of undead you have to shoot your way past. Shrine and Shrine II are free retro shooters on the Doom engine, blasting through a Gothic, Lovecraftian world of grotesque eldritch enemies. Dark Deception's free first chapter is a chase instead: race through a hotel maze collecting soul shards while murderous monkey bellhops you cannot kill close in.

Two free games turn the tables. The Happyhills Homicide makes you the masked slasher of a small 1980s town, planning each of twenty kills while a detective closes in, and Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator starts as a cheerful pizza arcade game before leaving you in a FNAF office at night with salvaged animatronics creeping toward you.

For friends, No More Room in Hell is co-op zombie survival for up to eight players with scarce ammo and infectious bites, and SCP: Secret Laboratory deals each player a role in a containment breach, from prisoner to monster. SCP - Containment Breach is the single-player original of that idea, with a statue that moves when you blink. FNAF fans can try Ultimate Custom Night, which gathers fifty animatronics from the series.

If you have a VR headset, three free games are worth it. Propagation VR holds you in place on a dark subway platform while zombies and giant spiders come at you, and you reload by hand. SCP: Labrat puts you in an underground SCP facility during a containment breach, and it also plays without VR. The Bellows is a VR-only horror short of fifteen to thirty minutes, made to scare whoever wears the headset.

If you want something heavier, When the Darkness comes is a glitching walk through digital landscapes built to show what depression and anxiety feel like; it deals with suicide, so read its warnings first.

Start with Cry of Fear if you want a full game, Poppy Playtime if you want the one everyone knows, Paper Lily if you prefer a story, or Krypta FM and The Supper for something short and memorable.

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