Skip to content
Where you playPlayStation 364 gamesChange
Show only games on

Every platform

One choice opens that part of the site: its own pages for every kind of horror. Pick several to see the games on any of them.

Clear

FMV Horror Games: Live-Action Horror to Play

FMV horror games put real actors on screen: filmed ghosts, killers and victims you watch, question or hide from. These range from the CD-ROM classics of the 1990s to modern live-action and found-phone horror.

The games

13 of the 17 games in this guide are not on PlayStation and are left out. Show them all.

  1. A patient sits on a green leather couch facing you, with the question box and patient list on screen PsychologicalThe Infectious Madness of Doctor DekkerType any question to a murdered psychiatrist's filmed patients and work out which of them killed him, in a Lovecraftian mystery.
  2. SIMULACRA key art: a dark-haired woman stands before a wall of phone screens showing apps, photos and chats, with pink streaks across them Multiple endingsSIMULACRAA lost woman's phone, with her video logs, texts and photos, and something inside it that grows stranger by the hour.
  3. The 7th Guest Remake key art: Stauf's Victorian mansion lit from inside under a purple, stormy sky with lightning Puzzle horrorThe 7th Guest RemakeThe 1993 puzzle mansion rebuilt, with the ghosts of Stauf's six guests played by live actors in volumetric video.
  4. Killing Time: Resurrected key art: a grinning zombie butler holding a knife and a plate, a zombie and a polka-dot clown on an orange and red swirl Action horrorKilling Time: ResurrectedA 1990s shooter remastered, where filmed ghosts show what happened on a cursed 1930s estate.

Full-motion video horror began on CD-ROM in the 1990s. Phantasmagoria filmed its whole story with live actors in a dead magician's mansion, and The 7th Guest's sequel The 11th Hour and Sierra's Shivers used filmed ghosts to tell what happened in their houses. Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within filmed a werewolf case in Bavaria with live actors over photographed locations, harvester put its cult and its 1950s town on film, Realms of the Haunting mixed filmed scenes with first-person adventure and shooting, and Kenji Eno's D made you solve a castle in two real hours with no saves. Killing Time: Resurrected remasters a shooter from the same era whose filmed ghosts show the story.

Modern FMV horror is often better. At Dead Of Night is the most played, a hotel at night where you guide Maya past a stalking landlord and talk to ghosts, and The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker lets you type any question to filmed patients to find a murderer among them. Dead Take uses filmed actors and corrupted clips in a Hollywood mansion, and The 7th Guest Remake brings back the 1993 mansion with its ghosts in volumetric video.

Found-phone horror is its own branch. SIMULACRA hands you a missing woman's phone, full of video logs and messages that turn strange, SIMULACRA 2 does the same with a dead influencer's wiped phone, and Sara is Missing does it free and in a short sitting.

Two more borrow the look rather than the format: Forbidden Solitaire wraps bloody solitaire in a fake 90s FMV CD-ROM, and HORSES, a controversial game refused by Steam, uses live-action sequences on a farm whose rules turn disturbing.

If you play one, play At Dead Of Night; if you want the classic CD-ROM feel, try Phantasmagoria or D.

Questions

What is an FMV horror game?

A horror game that uses full-motion video, filmed footage of real actors, for its story or its play, as Phantasmagoria, At Dead Of Night and Doctor Dekker do.

What is the best FMV horror game?

At Dead Of Night is the most played and among the best rated by players, and The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is the best known for letting you question its characters freely.

Are there free FMV horror games?

Sara is Missing is free, a short found-phone horror game.

Are FMV horror games on consoles?

Doctor Dekker, SIMULACRA and Killing Time: Resurrected are on PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, and The 7th Guest Remake on PlayStation and Xbox.

More horror games by kind

Other guides