The best Escape Room horror games

Important takeaways

• Hag
  offers a horror-filled Escape Room experience with jumpscares and high stakes.
• The past within
  requires co-op players to solve mysteries and connect clues to uncover dark family secrets.
• Escape The Backrooms
  is a co-op game with a backroom theme and hostile mobs, emphasizing teamwork.

Just as fun as in real life escape room sounds, they're not exactly the most comfortable or faint-of-heart-friendly experience out there. Even if an escape room isn't explicitly horror-themed, there's just something about them that makes them a little too intense for some. They're edgy, spooky, mentally challenging, and often high-stakes—all of which can be a lot to handle when it happens in real life.

However, video games take on escape rooms is a perfect alternative that saves one from a lot of unnecessary stress and anger while keeping the sanctity of the experience intact. Adding the slight factor of horror elevates the entire experience to the perfect level of creepiness that requires players to use just enough of their brains and still come out the other side unscathed.

8 HAG

Plays like a B-rated horror movie with obvious jump scares and near-death situations

• Released: October 5, 2023
• Developer: Jason Silver
• Publisher: Jason Silver
• Platform: PC

HAG is a first-person puzzle game created for players who can handle a truly terrifying escape room experience filled with jump scares and visual horrors far beyond the usual “casual” scares. Even though the game itself is from a small indie developer, it definitely feels like a higher budget release with how atmospheric and downright terrifying its graphics and mechanics are.

The game traps players in a run-down house patrolled by an old woman – “Hag” – and her fearsome son, both known for dabbling in black magic and less-than-legal activities. Players must hide from the bull and her children while scouring the sick house for clues and escape routes, with danger lurking around every corner.

7 The past within

Rusty Lake's only co-op game focusing on the malevolence of Albert Vanderbloom

The past within is a Rusty Lake co-op point-and-click puzzle game featuring Rusty Lake's central characters, the Vanderblooms. This time, the Vanderbloom in question is the third-generation son, Albert Vanderbloom, known for his not-so-righteous appearances by his family.

It is primarily a cooperative game, The past within cannot be played alone, making it perfect for emulating a real escape room. Both players will basically just experience the game in different ways and must somehow connect the clues (from both the past and the future) to solve the mysteries given to them. They will eventually go through the two very extensive chapters of the game to reach a decisive outcome about Albert Vanderbloom's plan against both his family and the world.

6 Escape The Backrooms

A co-op back room themed escape room with multiple hostile mobs

Escape the Backroomsas the name suggests, is a Backrooms-themed co-op game that doubles as an escape room despite taking place in a supposedly infinite background. The game throws four players into several different Backroom-themed levels with a bunch of enemy units and gives them a number of different ways to escape.

What really makes this an escape room game is the simple mechanic that the only way everyone in the game will progress to the next level for sure is if everyone escapes together. It takes place as an actual escape room and collaboration is literally the key here – no pun intended. The proximity chat in the game definitely adds to the realism, and the twenty plus levels with their plethora of hostile mobs simply raise the stakes that much more.

5 The Legacy of Crimson Manor

Players get to explore and solve the mystery behind the death of a railroad mogul in his massive mansion

• Released: May 6, 2022
• Developer: MediaCity games
• Publisher: MediaCity games
• Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox Series X and Series S

The Legacy of Crimson Manor is a Victorian-themed first-person game for one player that takes place entirely in a dark and gritty Victorian mansion. It requires players to explore said mansion and eventually come across some unknown secrets about its owner. Unlike typical co-op escape room games, this one delivers a distinct story with non-linear progression and challenging puzzles that go beyond just “escape rooms”, weaving everything into a bigger, more immersive mystery.

Players take on the role of assistant to Hadley Strange, a wealthy, high-profile businessman with a huge mansion and fortune to his name. The business magnate, a seemingly normal person aside from his immense wealth, changes the course of history when he and his entire family die under mysterious circumstances, leaving his mansion to the player character. Now players must explore the hauntingly beautiful mansion and its 24 different rooms to piece together clues that reveal a much darker side to Hadley Strange and the cryptic abode.

4 Homebody

A Slasher movie that takes place in an escape room that everything happens in a video game

• Released: June 1, 2023
• Developer: Game Grumps
• Publisher: Rogue Games, Inc.
• Platform: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox Series X and Series S

Passive escape room games that give players enough time and patience to slowly work their way through their puzzles are a gem. They are perfect for a slow and intellectually demanding session that allows players to be thorough with their playthrough. But there's just something about the dynamics of video games that raise the stakes by throwing in a hostile mob or two. Homebody is a psychological horror puzzle game that does just that.

With players consistently having a serial killer on their backs, Homebody essentially forcing them to be very quick with their decision-making and puzzle-solving skills. Players play as Emily, a college student with a dark and tragic past that causes her to try to rekindle old bonds with her estranged friends. To do so, the group takes a vacation to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for them, their attempts at reconnection are left unfinished when the lights at the holiday home go out, and they are on the run from a relentless serial killer bent on picking them off one by one.

3 The room

A unique Escape Room that combines futuristic and antique themes

The room is a point-and-click game that offers a more conventional escape room experience that consists solely of hints and visual clues to solve the big mystery of the game. It does not have a particularly defined story and is mostly dependent on how far the players go or how many puzzles they solve.

Players are thrown into a dark attic room with a large, antique-looking safe in the middle, which they must solve with the help of some obscure notes from another implied player. The entire room consists of small clues that lead to opening the safe. A plot that at first seems innocent and fun enough takes a dark turn as the notes become more and more unsuspended, clearly suggesting that the former player didn't have a very good time figuring out the puzzles in the room.

2 The Tartarus Key

An eerily disturbing game that constantly makes you feel like you're being watched – maybe you are

• Released: 2022
• Developer: Vertical range
• Publisher: Armor Games Studios
• Platform: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox Series X and Series S

The Tartarus Key is an atmospheric horror puzzle game that focuses much more on exploration and plays on the concept of “being chased” without actively putting players in a run-and-chase situation. The game's atmosphere creates the unsettling feeling that the player character is constantly being followed and watched, drawing players into a state of creeping paranoia and anxiety.

The game opens with the main character, Alex Young, waking up in a dimly lit mansion that immediately gives her the creeps. She quickly discovers that the mansion is locked tight, with no easy way out. To make matters worse, she realizes that she is not the only “prisoner” of these mysterious kidnappers, and she is forced to face a tough moral choice: Should she try to save herself, or risk her own life to help the other prisoners she can hear?

1 Marling

2D horror with the most surreal characters

• Released: June 6, 2022
• Developer: Professional villains
• Publisher: Professional villains
• Platform: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC

Marling is a 2D horror escape room game that proves to be one of the most unique games on this list, not only related to its surreal (almost weird) graphics, but also its consistently changing maps. The story that accompanies its quirky graphics and mechanics is even stranger.

Players take on the role of a masked person equipped with a shotgun, who must survive a night in a highly volatile bar known as the Anglerfish. Very edgy and uncomfortable, the bar is a hotspot for the most unhinged creatures in the area. The player character must explore and find out what makes this bar so spooky and get to the bottom of its secrets…or die trying, which in this case is a fun little experience. IN Marlingdeath is the only way to save progress, and each time players are resurrected, the game changes, making each checkpoint feel like a completely new experience.