A week ago, I asked PC Gamer readers to nominate the scariest PC games they could think of. I collected the top 16 submissions from that comment section (with some editorial discretion) and randomly seeded a bracket.
After a week of voting, we've finally got a winner. The scariest game on PC is...
🏆 Alien: Isolation 🏆
Some of you called it from the start, and Alien: Isolation plowed through its competition without much resistance, beating SOMA, Darkwood, Silent Hill 2, and finally Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Having a Xenomorph stalker is scary: reconfirmed. "Alien: Isolation completely destroys me, drenching me in sweat and causing me to take leave of my senses," Fraser wrote a couple years ago. It took him 10 years to get up the courage to finish it.
This article is brought to you by No More Room in Hell 2.
Our runner up is classic first-person horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which entered the final after a close battle with one of its younger siblings, Amnesia: The Bunker.
Solid arguments were made for the scariness of The Bunker, which Ted once said is the scariest game he's ever played, but The Dark Descent was a landmark PC horror game that lodged itself in a lot of our memories 16 years ago as a very scary thing that once happened to us.
Speaking to PC Gamer back in 2010, Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip said that their strategy was "to hint at things and then let the players build up an image in their head."
It was a worthy contender, taking out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and F.E.A.R. before slaying one of its own on its way to the final. But ultimately, it was a harrowing stay on Sevastopol Station that shook PC Gamer readers the most.
If you haven't played any of these games, it's a good time to pick them up. Alien: Isolation is $10 on Steam right now, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent is just $4.
Thank you to everyone who suggested games and voted! We also recently crowned the best RTS unit: a large tank.
