Best Lovecraftian Games on Steam
Games about cosmic dread, unknowable forces, cults, madness, and ancient horrors.
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1Darkest Dungeon® - Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes against unimaginable horrors, stress, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark. Can you keep your heroes together when all hope is lost?
Jan 19, 2016
In this game, you can…
- watch a hero snap from stress and start refusing orders or even attacking teammates mid-fight.
- deliberately let the torch go out to change how battles work and gamble for better loot before looting a chest.
- come back from a failed mission diseased and traumatized, then send heroes to the tavern, abbey, brothel, or sanitarium to recover.
- bail out of a dungeon run mid-expedition, turning the rest of the crawl into a constant push-or-retreat decision.
- have a random miniboss like the Collector appear out of nowhere and wreck an expedition that was going fine.
- build parties where each character can only use certain moves from certain positions, so rearranging your lineup changes what anyone can do.
- lose heroes permanently, then recruit replacements and keep the campaign going with the town upgrades you managed to bring back.
2Lobotomy Corporation | Monster Management Simulation - A roguelite monster-management simulation inspired by the likes of the SCP Foundation, Cabin in the Woods, and Warehouse 13. Order your employees to perform work with the creatures and watch as it unfolds; harness greater energy, and expand the facility
Apr 9, 2018
In this game, you can…
- get a "healing" gift from a monster that later kills everyone who received it if they work anywhere else that day.
- rewind the day, the week, or the whole run while keeping your research and gear, then try the same disasters again with better knowledge.
- trigger a chain reaction where one monster escaping causes other monsters to escape until multiple threats are roaming at once.
- start with zero info on a monster, send an employee in anyway, and learn its rules by trial and error.
- extract weapons, armor, and trinkets from monsters, equip your staff, then send them into even worse monsters for more gear.
- accept monsters whose containment rules directly conflict, then build your whole facility around keeping incompatible requirements satisfied.
- recontain a monster that teleports across the facility, damages everyone in each room it lands in, and still use its escapes as part of your plan.
- choose between meeting your daily energy quota and risking employees on higher-stakes work to unlock better research and equipment.
3DREDGE - DREDGE is a single-player fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent. Sell your catch, upgrade your boat, and dredge the depths for long-buried secrets. Explore a mysterious archipelago and discover why some things are best left forgotten.
Mar 30, 2023
In this game, you can…
- blow your boat horn at night and get a horn reply from something you can't see.
- stay out after dark for rarer, pricier fish while the sea starts lying to you.
- dredge up a mysterious artifact, meet a Collector, and uncover how the mystery ties to your missing memory.
- dredge up relics and scrap from the seafloor to unlock new ship gear and upgrades.
- fit oddly shaped fish into your hold like a sliding puzzle.
- watch your sanity climb until the world fills with whispers, false lights, and hazards that might be real.
- circle a region dominated by a huge monster that defines where you can safely travel.
- go from a tiny tugboat to a faster, brighter, better-equipped ship by piecing upgrades together over time.
4SOMA - From the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent comes SOMA, a sci-fi horror game set below the waves of the Atlantic ocean. Struggle to survive a hostile world that will make you question your very existence.
Sep 21, 2015
In this game, you can…
- wake up after a brain scan in Toronto and realize you're now in a corroded underwater facility, with your old life possibly copied over.
- face an enemy you can't look at directly without dying, turning your own sight into a hazard.
- reach an ending that forces you to live with the consequences of what it means to copy a mind and leave another self behind.
- descend deeper and deeper through ocean-floor stations, each new area pushing you farther below the surface.
- meet talking robots and mechanized humans who insist they're people, even as everything around them falls apart.
- solve puzzles by physically grabbing objects, throwing them, pulling levers, twisting wheels, and opening heavy doors by hand.
- sneak past monsters with no weapons at all, using hiding, timing, and thrown objects as distractions.
- cycle through airlocks and watch the sea level rise around you as the station pressurizes, sealing you in.
- walk near deep-sea sites where huge angler fish lurk close by, adding a sudden, specific underwater threat.
5What Remains of Edith Finch - What Remains of Edith Finch is a collection of strange tales about a family in Washington state. As Edith, you’ll explore the colossal Finch house, searching for stories as she explores her family history and tries to figure out why she's the last one in her family left alive.
Apr 24, 2017
In this game, you can…
- find a memento in someone's room and get pulled into their last day as a fully playable vignette.
- work a repetitive fish-chopping job while a tiny fantasy maze grows on-screen until you're steering a full-blown royal ceremony.
- become different animals and hunt or fly as part of someone else's story.
- crawl through secret passages inside a giant family house to reach sealed rooms and hidden doors.
- play a family story inside a comic book, with the action and visuals locked to comic panels.
- watch the game's perspective and rules change from chapter to chapter, jumping from walking to mini-games and other control styles.
- use the way you move and interact as the main storytelling device, not just the narration or cutscenes.
- open a diary family tree after each tale and mark off relatives as their stories conclude.
6Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a first person survival horror. A game about immersion, discovery and living through a nightmare. An experience that will chill you to the core.
Sep 8, 2010
In this game, you can…
- avoid looking at monsters because staring at them triggers panic, so you survive on quick glimpses and peripheral movement.
- hide in darkness to avoid being seen, then watch your sanity drain until the world distorts and you can collapse.
- follow notes you wrote to yourself before erasing your own memory, including orders to go deeper and kill Alexander.
- start with no weapon and survive by running, hiding in closets, and staying quiet.
- slam a door to escape, then watch the monster smash it to pieces and keep hunting you.
- push and pull furniture to block doors, peek them open inch by inch, and drag objects into new hiding spots.
- solve puzzles by combing the castle for notes, scraps, and objects that tell you what to do next.
- download and play community-made horror campaigns, or build your own custom story and share it.
7SIGNALIS - A classic survival horror experience set in a dystopian future where humanity has uncovered a dark secret. Unravel a cosmic mystery, escape terrifying creatures, and scavenge an off-world government facility as Elster, a technician Replika searching for her lost dreams.
Oct 27, 2022
In this game, you can…
- finish most of the game without firing a single bullet by planning routes, sneaking past threats, and saving ammo
- watch enemies get back up later unless you spend rare resources to make them stay down for good
- tune radio frequencies to shut down a specific enemy, then keep moving before your supplies run out
- wake from cryostasis in a wrecked ship, step into a blizzard, and hunt for your missing partner on a dead planet
- carry only six items, so every hallway becomes a choice between ammo, healing, and the key you need next
- solve puzzles by reading propaganda, notes, and machine screens until the whole facility clicks into one big lock
- switch into brief first-person segments that cut into the top-down horror like invasive, dreamlike interruptions
- push through a final stretch where the sci-fi facility warps into a nightmare-within-a-nightmare and keeps escalating to the end
8The Room - A mysterious invitation leads to the attic of an abandoned house. In the room is a cast-iron safe laced with strange carvings and on top, a note from your distant companion. It promises something ancient and astonishing concealed in the iron chamber - you need only find a way in.
Jul 28, 2014
In this game, you can…
- use a strange eyepiece to reveal hidden markings, invisible clues, and a second layer of reality behind the shadows.
- open a cast-iron safe that keeps revealing another locked layer underneath, until the whole game is peeling back one impossible box.
- watch a normal-looking object unfold into a larger contraption, then warp into shapes that feel physically impossible yet still solvable.
- manually turn keys, slide panels, pull lids, and crank mechanisms like you're handling a real puzzle box.
- twist one dial and trigger a chain reaction: gears whirr, pieces rotate, a hatch slides open, and the new compartment is another puzzle.
- rebuild a seemingly simple inventory item early on, then carry it across chapters as it keeps unlocking new uses and meanings.
- rotate and zoom the contraption, then realize the solution was on the other side the whole time.
920 Minutes Till Dawn - 20 Minutes Till Dawn is a survival roguelite where endless hordes of creatures lurk from the dark. Craft an array of overpowering builds and eradicate waves of Lovecraftian nightmares. Will you be able to survive the night?
Jun 8, 2023
In this game, you can…
- stack freeze, burn, and lightning so burn detonations and screen-wide chain reactions start wiping enemies faster than you can track.
- build around emptying your clip, then cut your ammo to one so the on-empty effect triggers every single shot.
- reroll your level-up upgrade options once per level to force a specific build instead of taking whatever appears.
- manually aim and decide exactly when to shoot.
- hold down fire while the gun auto-reloads, forcing a steady loop of firing, repositioning, and surviving the swarm.
- evolve a weapon mid-run until it behaves like a different gun, changing how you play instead of just making numbers go up.
- beat a boss, grab its reward chest, and have that one drop completely reshape your build for the rest of the run.
- lean into summon builds where allies auto-attack while you focus on dodging and positioning, turning the fight into a moving swarm of your own.
10ICEY - ICEY is a 2D side-scrolling action game and a META game in disguise. As you follow the narrator's omnipresent voice, you will see through ICEY's eyes and learn the truth about her world. The narrator will constantly urge you in one direction, but you must ask, "Why? Why am I following his directions?“ Obey? Rebel?
Nov 17, 2016
In this game, you can…
- beat the first boss, then get dumped to a fake title screen with a "system reboot" like the game just crashed.
- keep disobeying until the narrator starts punishing you with self-aware detours, like a forced children's game or being told to buy another copy.
- dash into an incoming hit for a tight timing window, then instantly teleport to the attacker to counter from across the screen, even off projectiles.
- pick fights with an omnipresent narrator by ignoring his directions.
- take "wrong" turns to find secret rooms, unfinished-looking areas, developer emails, and hidden monologues.
- launch enemies, chain air combos, dash-counter through attacks, then end with a screen-clearing finisher you unlocked through upgrades.
- perfect-dodge into an instant execution, rip into a weakened core to heal yourself, then cash in generated crystals for a screen-wide blast.
- finish a normal run by obeying, or rebel into alternate endings, secret bosses, and cryptic text windows that assemble the real backstory.
