Highlights
- Horror games with child protagonists up the ante, pushing boundaries and breaking traditional horror rules.
- games like
DreadOut
cleverly incorporate Indonesian mythology and modern gadgets for a unique experience. - From
Mr. Hopp’s Playhouse
to
Little Nightmares,
child-centered horror games offer a different and chilling perspective.
With the release of globally renowned games like Outlast, Amnesia, Dead by Daylight, and Silent Hill, the horror genre took off like no other. It became an industry staple and was the reason why major publishers started to incessantly come up with horror games. The rationale for this was quite clear — giving fans a channel to experience the most games/”>unhinged, traumatizing, and grotesque moments, straight out of their worst nightmares, while being nestled comfortably in their gaming chairs.
But some developers push the boundaries of horror by making children the central characters in their games, teetering on the edge of breaking an unspoken horror rule: don’t kill children. The thing with child protagonists is, they’re young, and pretty clueless most of the time. So having them as main characters of a horror setting cranks up the stakes exponentially, as opposed to adult main characters with their life experience and considerably better judgment skills. While most of this is just on paper, the idea that kids — little humans who find ‘monsters under the bed’ scary — have to now face said monsters head-on, is exactly what makes horror games with them as main characters a whole lot scarier.
8 DreadOut
Steam All-Time Reviews: Mostly Positive (77%)
- Platform(s): PC, macOS, Linux
- Release Date: May 14, 2014
- Developer: Digital Happiness
DreadOut is a 2014 Indonesian survival horror game that fully captures the essence of a low-budget B-grade horror movie as a deliberate stylistic choice. It’s a dark one, and does a great job of staying true to its origin by cleverly incorporating Indonesian games/”>mythology into its gameplay. The game’s novelty stems from its controls and playability, in the sense that the primary interaction with the game world occurs through the use of modern-day gadgets like cameras and smartphones. Completely appropriate considering how the main character, Linda, is a high school student with an abundance of such items.
The story is just as creepy as it looks. It follows a group of unlucky high school students who get stranded in an old abandoned ghost town in the middle of nowhere, right at the beginning of their vacation. Linda and her friends have to navigate their way out of said town using only their smartphones. Problem is, this town is far from ordinary and is possibly haunted by the most sinister spirits known in Indonesian folk and myth.
7 Lucius
Steam All-Time Reviews: Very Positive (80%)
- Platform(s): PC
- Release Date: October 26, 2012
- Developer: Shiver games
Children-centric horror games are already pretty terrifying as is, but their creepiness increases tenfold when said child protagonist becomes the source of all malevolence and chaos in the game’s setting, basically becoming both the antagonist and the protagonist. Lucius depicts this particular trope perfectly—a menacing little 6-year-old kid going around his rich dad’s manor and killing everyone because a certain evil spirit told him to.
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The game isn’t for the fainthearted. It has a lot of gore and blood, and some very disturbing themes surrounding murder, and should be approached with caution. Nevertheless, despite being released in 2012, and not having the best graphics, it’s an absolute delight for horror game lovers and gives them a taste of not being the hunted one for once.
6 Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach
Steam All-Time Reviews: Very Positive (86%)
- Platform(s): PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Stadia
- Release Date: December 16, 2021
- Developers: Steel Wool Studios, ScottGames
2014’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, the first installment of one of the games-all-five-nights-at-freddys/”>most iconic horror franchises ever, is another classic that can be held responsible for the long-lasting hype behind horror games. The series’ ninth installment, Security Breach, deviates from the original point-and-click model and goes for straight-up survival/stealth horror gameplay—and makes it work very well. The game revolves around a kid named Gregory who gets trapped inside the infamous Fazbear Pizzaplex and has to fight off everyone’s favorite dreaded animatronic mascots.
Security Breach is essentially what a game would look like if developers of major franchises let their intrusive thoughts win. It’s a free-roam game that gives fans a chance to experience FNaF beyond the bounds of its conventional established system. This ultimately gives it a more personalized gameplay and lets the players connect with the previously very 1-dimensional characters. It even turns the titular antagonist, Freddy, into a good guy, who helps Gregory evade other animatronics instead of being a murderous possessed menace who’s out to get everyone.
5 Among The Sleep
Steam All-Time Reviews: Very Positive (88%)
Among the Sleep is a horror game that features a literal games-child-protagonists/”>crawling toddler as its main character. This kid cannot even talk, but has to brave through moments so scary they’d reduce most grown-ups to tears. It’s the vulnerability of his situation, his limited mobility, and the stark size difference between him and everything else that leaves players in absolute disarray.
The kid in question is a toddler, David, celebrating his second birthday with his mother. He unexpectedly gets a sentient teddy bear as a present from an unknown person and instantly takes a liking to it. However, later that night, things shift to a more sinister ambiance when David wakes up and realizes Teddy’s gone. He goes out to look for him and comes across other very non-human and strange creatures along the way—not all of them friendly.
4 Limbo
Steam All-Time Reviews: Very Positive (92%)
Limbo
- Released
- July 21, 2010
- Genre(s)
- Platformer
Limbo is a critically acclaimed 2D platform game from 2010, recognized games/”>as one of the best games ever made. It’s not officially categorized as a horror game, but has a backdrop of eerily unsettling simplicity that makes it nothing short of one. The game barely has any ‘eye-catching’ art or landscapes and is in fact fully developed in grayscale, accompanied by subtle sounds and audio cues, and a very prominent absence of traditional background music.
Players get to experience a sort of helplessness and uncertainty vicariously through the lens of a lost child. The protagonist, known only as “the boy,” wakes up in a strange, isolated forest and sets out instantly, driven by the sole purpose of finding his sister. What complicates things is the fact that the forest is fundamentally alive and will do whatever it can to keep the boy from attaining his goal.
3 Mr. Hopp’s Playhouse
Steam All-Time Reviews: Very Positive (93%)
- Platform(s): PC, Android
- Release Date: October 7, 2019
- Developer: Moonbit
Mr. Hopp’s Playhouse is an indie free-to-play side-scrolling game that, unlike Limbo‘s intense existential dread, offers a games-like-poppy-playtime/”>more conventional horror experience. It follows a fairly regular and generic storyline that involves a big bad haunted house, possessed toys with the ability to get bigger, and a kid trying to get to her parent’s room.
The main character, Ruby, is a toddler who owns a creepy-looking rabbit doll known as Mr. Hopp. She doesn’t like the doll very much, and usually prefers to keep him away at the far end of her room. Her intuition is proved right when, one night, Mr. Hopp vanishes from his usual spot and begins to terrorize Ruby.
2 Little Nightmares
Steam All-Time Reviews: Very Positive (94%)
Little Nightmares
- Released
- April 28, 2017
- Developer(s)
- Tarsier Studios
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror , Puzzle , Platformer
Little Nightmares, despite being another side-scrolling puzzle game, is one of the most unnerving entries on this list—and that’s precisely what makes it so good. It establishes this surreal equilibrium between cutesy and disturbing and does a great job of making its visuals feel like a fever dream.
The game, at its core, is a nod to the concept of ‘Kids vs. Adults,’ where the adults are monstrous-looking, gluttonous beings with a penchant for violence, and the protagonist, Six, remains a child driven to make some heart-breaking decisions in order to survive. There are also plenty of other unsightly enemies and puzzles that Six must traverse for the sake of reaching her objective, and none of them are pleasant for her.
1 Fran Bow
Steam All-Time Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (97%)
Fran Bow is a 2015 Swedish adventure puzzle game that sets itself apart from the other games on this list because of its subtle incorporation of an intense psychological layer alongside conventional horror elements. It grapples with some considerably heavy topics revolving around trauma and mental health and still manages to have some of the most aesthetically pleasing and dynamic gameplay possible for a hand-drawn 2D game.
The game revolves around Fran, a 10-year-old girl who goes through games/”>some significant and unfortunate events that change the course of her life forever. In order to escape them, she and her cat, Mr. Midnight, set out on a dangerous journey laden with some of the scariest and most evil creatures imaginable to a young kid.
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#Horror #games #Children #Main #Characters
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