Much like horror movies, horror JRPGs can provide the average gamer with good scares, whether or not they have production values on par with mainstream cinema.
Squaresoft's Parasite Eve on the Sony PlayStation were among the earliest horror JPRGs, following the trend of non-RPG horror games like the Resident Evil series that still continues today.
This article aims to explore the best story offerings modern horror JRPGs have to offer that will be sure to thrill even the most hardened gamer, perfect for the Halloween season.
12. PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
iOS | Windows | Android | Nintendo Switch
Paranormasight will give you paranormal sight into how one will go to resurrect the dead and the Seven Mysteries of Honjo indigenous to Japan. Late in the twentieth century in the Sumida Ward of Tokyo, officer worker Shogo Okiie visits Kinshibori Park in the middle of the night with his friend Yoko Fukunaga to look into the aforementioned mysteries. They in turn are connected to a Rite of Resurrection, with spooky events starting to happen, with others like detectives investigating deaths, a high-schooler looking into her classmate's suicide, and a woman who wants vengeance for her lost son, getting in on the action.
Players investigate the Seven Mysteries, with the game having been developed with the support of the Sumida City Tourism Division and others to recreate the city of the time to give a lifelike experience. Those who delve into the game will encounter many interesting and suspicious characters and will need to be careful about how they go about, lest they face sudden death. Multiple perspectives will be experienced to unveil new information, with players having their own set of curses to deploy at the right time, or else be cursed themselves. Paranormasight is overall sure to provide players a cursed but memorable time navigating a Tokyo suburb.
11. Ann
PC
Developer Rong Rong's love letter to horror RPG-maker games, Ann promises chase scenes and death puzzles galore that will make your heart pound, and where if you don't succeed, try, try again. An art student named, you guessed it, Ann, finds herself trapped inside a school when she violates one of its rules, and tries to get out with the help of a supportive security guard so she can bust out and not have to stay there the rest of her life. Despite the developer’s name, Ann is definitely a right-right when it comes to a good horror RPG experience.
Ann features different endings depending upon the player’s actions, such as whether she decides to listen to Hana, the boss of souls in the school. The titular character interacts with various objects and obstacles that are typically blocked paths she needs to overcome. She has no health bar, so everything can kill her in one hit, but fortunately, players can save their game anytime to compensate for what would typically be a cheap RPG mechanic. As players explore the school, they’re sure to have one scare after another especially if they’re careless and constantly die, but it will always keep their hearts pounding to the end.
10. Yomawari: Lost in the Dark
Nintendo Switch | PlayStation 4 | Windows
Prepare to get lost in the dark in, well, Yomawari: Lost in the Dark when a young girl wakes up in the middle of a dark forest with no knowing of how she got there exactly in the first place. When trying to find her way out, she encounters someone who tells her she’s cursed, and that she needs to wander her town’s streets at night and recover her memories to break her amnesia. However, evil spirits constantly lurk in the darkness, with the girl needing to run, hide, and shut her eyes to survive and break her curse.
Lost in the Dark occurs in the same world as other entries of the series, including Midnight Shadows and Night Alone, but luckily, newcomers to the franchise can dive right in and experience the game’s horrors for themselves. Players will experience eerie sound and shadowy environs for gruesome ghosts and terrifying situations that will scare unprepared gamers. Armed with your flashlight, you’ll reveal specters while listening to your heartbeat and close your eyes to avoid their evil gazes, all accounting for a horror game experience like none other.
9. Corpse Party: Book of Shadows
PlayStation Portable | Windows
Get ready to party in Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, which serves as a sequel, prequel, midquel, and alternate universe tale to the first game, a horror adventure developed by MAGES (not the magical kind, mind you). The anthology game builds upon the events of its predecessor, exploring or reexploring past incidents, characters, and perspectives, letting players escape many of the deaths that had previously occurred and lead to new (but not always better) outcomes. Book of Shadows provides enjoyable point-and-click gameplay for fans of the original game ready to dive further into the franchise’s lore.
Before, during, and after the events of the first Corpse Party, in both the canon and alternate universes, the students attending Kisaragi Academy, Byakudan Senior High, Paulownia High, and Musashigawa Middle Score, had plenty of cursed experiences with Heavenly Host Elementary than usual. The anthology explores examples of certain events, such as what would have happened when each student went into the Sachiko Ever After ritual fully aware of what was going to happen with them. Coupled with mature content like excessive violence and gore, not to mention nudity and profanity, Book of Shadows should definitely not be overshadowed by other games for players seeking a true horror game experience.
8. Nyakori's Rabbit Doll
Microsoft Windows
A girl with a cat's ears and tail loves to eat and sleep while cuddling her beloved rabbit doll, only to wake up and discover that no one's made dinner for her. Nyarutoru must avoid endless obstacles and lethal traps to find the secrets of her innermost memories as she searches for her partner Nyakori, who also has a rabbit doll. Throughout the game, players can switch between Toru and Kori, with each having their own plane of reality, and the things they do have an effect upon one another.
Depending upon how players go about the game, they can encounter different endings, two bad, one normal, and the last “true.” While many riddles and puzzles come in the player’s way as well, those who are not good at them can simply pass. The After Story DLC adds another character, the jet-haired Yuri, who can project the world into three planes to get different perspectives of the world and jump from one to another. Given that the base game and its extra content are beatable within a few hours, they’re sure to provide a short but sweet horror experience for any video gamer.
7. Attack on Titan 2 - A.O.T.2
Nintendo Switch | PlayStation 4, Vita | Windows | Xbox One | Stadia
Prepare to stage another attack on titans with the video game sequel based on the first fifty chapters of the manga that the first two seasons of the anime adaptation cover as well. Players experience the events of the animanga from a customized character’s perspective that battles and interacts alongside prominent characters from Hajime Isayama’s series. The player’s character begins as a child, joining the 104th Cadet Corp to defeat the Armored Titan in retribution for killing their parents following the breach of Wall Maria.
The protagonist the player creates has the same backstory as Erin Yeager, whom they also interact with throughout the game when not in combat outside the walls fighting the Titans, alongside other luminaries from the animanga. The final mission of the base game features and original ending that’s noncanonical to the anime and manga, with the Final Battle DLC further covering chapters 51 to 90 of the latter. Those who don’t have the patience for reading manga or sitting through the anime will, in the end, find the video game adaptation to be a good substitute, full of horror and violence.
6. Mary Skelter: Nightmares
PlayStation Vita | Windows | Nintendo Switch
Jack and Alice attempt to go helter-skelter and escape from jail with the help of Blood Maidens in Mary Skelter: Nightmares. As it turns out, the whole city they were in has been absorbed by an evil being called the Jail, which has been unleashing monsters called Marchens. Prior to his attempted jailbreak, Jack lived a life of suffering and torture in a crapsack world where dreams, hope, peace, and all humanity was long for ages. Alice is a member of the Blood Team, rescuing Jack with a pair of giant bloody scissors in hand, a surefire hint at the game’s violent content.
The tower in which this dungeon-crawling RPG occurs was inspired by twisted fairy tales, with Jack, Alice, and the Blood Maidens cutting through the Nightmares inhabiting it. Everyone can go on a Massacre mode to slice and dice their way outside with the Blood Maidens’ diverse arsenal of abilities and their ability to exploit enemy blood to exploit their weaknesses. Overall, given the gratuitous violence of both the characters and the mechanics (and the name of the Blood Maidens alone hints at the game’s violent nature), Nightmares is sure to provide a bloody good scary time.
5. Yog-Sothoth’s Yard
Steam
Get ready to play in Yog-Sothoth's Yard when you inherit an ancient village with plenty of shadowy debt, managing a hotel with the help of characters like Death, a dragon, a spirit hunter, and a bioroid maid. Mysterious guests will come and go with their own strange events, with players needing to gather wealth through means like mining, adventuring, alchemy, and managing their restaurant while heeding Oracles to plan their moves. However, consulting said Oracles for want of money and success can decrease the player’s sanity level.
The player can design their luxurious hotel’s rooms for their central staff, while needing to be mindful of the guests wandering the courtyard. They can further harvest ingredients from the nearby forest and experiment with indescribable animals and plants for food, alchemy, or a combination of both. Overall, one could consider Yog-Sothoth’s Yard to be sort of a video game equivalent of the Hotel Transylvania film series, albeit with more mature content, which certainly isn’t a bad thing.
4. The Test
PC
Prepare to put your skills to The Test in Randumb Studios' horror game where you answer several questions that reveal inward truths. Many of these questions will make even the most toughened gamers uncomfortable, but knowledge comes with sacrifice. The developers bill it as a social experiment and an atmospheric, psychological simulation with horror elements that can really unlock your mind. Players will largely have no idea what to expect when going into the game, which is probably a good thing.
The Test creates an eerie atmosphere with its curious mix of questions that will definitely make the most experienced gamer rethink many things they would have otherwise overlooked in their life. As one can finish the game in as little as fifteen minutes, there’s definitely some room for lasting appeal, especially if the player doesn’t like their first result, and as the questions may in some regards be hard to answer, they could very well go through it again. The game is dirt-cheap as well, so what are you waiting for?
3. OMORI
macOS | Windows | Nintendo Switch | Xbox One | Xbox Series X/S | PlayStation 4
When the purple moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's Omori, where you explore a strange world to discover a forgotten past. The game spotlights themes like anxiety, depression, psychological trauma, self-harm, and suicide, which easily sets it apart from most other games. The eponymous protagonist wakes up in White Space, a void he’s lived in for as long as he remembers, afterward visiting the world of Headspace where he meets his friends, with whom he browses a photo album with their shared memories.
Throughout the game, the player alternates between the Headspace where they control Omori and his party, and the real world, where they control only Sunny at first. The rock-paper-scissors battle mechanic where happy beats angry, angry beats sad, and sad beats happy, hints well at the game’s emotional state. With different endings depending upon the player’s actions, Omori is sure to tear at the player’s heartstrings given its offbeat nature as an RPG and tackling of tough psychological issues.
2. Corpse Party (2021)
PlayStation 4 | Nintendo Switch | Xbox One | Windows
Get ready to celebrate in the remake of the original Corpse Party where a friendship ritual gone wrong takes highschooler Ayumi Shinozaki and her friends to an alternate reality. The spirits of elementary school children threaten both their lives and their sanity, with their only chance of survival and escape being to uncover the horrific details behind the murders of said students. The game’s 16-bit-style visuals with its explicit descriptions and heart-thumping aural design will definitely have players’ imaginations running wildly with nightmarish visions.
Every choice the player makes throughout the game will have an impact on the narrative and its characters’ destinies. Along with the main five story chapters and fourteen Extra Chapters, the remake adds two Extra Chapters to give players a look into new characters and relationships. Headphones will especially enhance the horror experience alongside the gruesome violence, blood and gore, suggestive themes, and explicit language, sure to appeal to RPG fans tired of the typical norm.
1. FATAL FRAME / PROJECT ZERO: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
PlayStation 4,5 | Nintendo Wii, Switch | Xbox One | Xbox Series X/S | Windows
Get ready to put on a mask and celebrate the lunar eclipse in the fourth entry of the Fatal Frame series, set on Rougetsu Island, where Ruka Minazuki was held captive for unknown reasons. Still inflicted with amnesia years after being rescued, Ruka and the two other girls that survived return to the island to find out the truth of why exactly they were held there in the first place. The subtitular mask is central to the storyline, with players battling uncooperative specters with the Camera Obscura to deal deadly photographic damage.
The detective that rescued the girls in the first place, Chōshirō Kirishima, is in pursuit of suspected serial killer and kidnapper Yō Haibara. Ruka discovers that she is suffering from Moonlight Syndrome, which affects her memories and identity, being spread by touch and vision. Ruka and her party members also collect pieces of a ritualistic mask that can allow them to guide spirits into the afterlife. Many ghostly twists abound throughout the game, with the Rite of Descent having the potential to cure Ruka of her illness. In the end, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is sure to lift the spirits of whoever experiences it.
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