The best in portable scares
The term "mobile game" usually makes people think of names like Pokemon Go, Candy Crush Saga, and Fruit Ninja. These fun, light-hearted games pop with color, delivering happy gaming experiences to all ages. If that's the kind of mobile game you like, this is not the list for you.
Hidden among those cute and colorful mobile games are some truly scary experiences, from smaller studios' brand of indie creepiness to some of the most successful horror franchises in all of video games. If Dead Space and Resident Evil are the games for you, then there are plenty of frights to be had right in your pocket. Here are eight of the best mobile horror games we've found so far.
Lifeline
Imagine being stranded on a small moon out in space minutes after the spaceship carrying you crashed onto its surface. Now imagine you're the only point of contact for someone who suffered that terrible fate, with your texts of advice to the errant spacefarer the difference between life and death. That is Lifeline, and its ingenious use of tension through text messages is amazing.
Guiding Taylor the astronaut through the dark and spooky moon is a tense, stressful affair from beginning to end. It also plays out in real time, so you may send Taylor a suggestion and not hear from them until hours later. For 99 cents you'd be hard-pressed to find a better, more white-knuckle experience for your phone than this.
See it on iOS | See it on Android
Sinister Edge
Sinister Edge drops you into a dark house in the middle of nowhere with nothing to defend yourself with, and asks you to solve puzzles in a first-person view while avoiding a brooding man in a skull mask. It's essentially a haunted house experience in a mobile game, which makes it a fantastic slice of horror.
As if the game wasn't creepy enough, it features a VR mode with controller support for full immersion into this dank and creepy house. If you're looking for something to replace the lack of VR in Resident Evil 8, Sinister Edge will get the job done. Just don't expect any tall vampire ladies to appear, .
See it on iOS | See it on Android
Into the Dead 2
The zombie apocalypse trope is well represented on mobile , and one of the best out there is Into the Dead 2. Seven chapters with over 60 stages of first-person shooter action await those who want to brave this dangerous world, armed only with what you can find and joined by your loyal dog companion.
Into the Dead 2 does a great job of mixing up the zombie-slaying fun by adding special zombies to heighten the danger. Cutting through the hordes is a blast (no pun intended) and upgrading weapons as you play makes you feel super powerful. Into the Dead 2 scratches that zombie itch, letting you battle the hordes wherever you go.
See it on iOS | See it on Android
Bendy and the Ink Machine
Bendy and the Ink Machine is what would happen if your favorite childhood cartoons pulled you into their worlds and tried to kill you. The story of the defunct Joey Drew Studios--not to be confused with the real-life Joey Drew Studios that develops the game--is filled with grim surprises, from the audio logs chronicling the fates of the studio's staff to the ink-fueled monsters that lurk in its halls. This is not a game for the easily spooked.
Bendy and the Ink Machine's first-person horror brings a lot to the table with its tragic story told over five chapters, each offering around two to three hours of gameplay. That amount of content comes with a decent admission price--$6.99 on both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store--but there's plenty of bang here to justify spending the bucks.
See it on iOS | See it on Android
Alien: Blackout
Take the core concept of 2014's Alien: Isolation--a space crew trying to escape a claustrophobic derelict space station and the monstrosity within it--but instead of being the one running from the Xenomorph, you're guiding a group of allies through the ship. That's Alien: Blackout's core idea, and the tension it racks up during each stage is frightening.
All you see is a map of the area the crew is in, and you must guide them from start to finish without alerting the monster that hunts them. Slowly watching your crew move through the stage as the Xenomorph approaches is terrifying and exhilarating, even if we don't get to witness the Xenomorph's kills as they happen. The lack of violence that some would expect from the Alien franchise is, well, alien, but the rest of the game more than makes up for the loss. Better yet, the game only costs $0.99 on both digital storefronts with no extra microtransactions, making Alien: Blackout an absolute steal.
See it on iOS | See it on Android
Simulacra
When you first start up Simulacra, you're presented with what looks like the interface of an ordinary phone asking for a passcode to access. This is no ordinary phone, however, and before you can guess the code correctly glitches begin to appear, with a video of a traumatized woman looking for help. The phone and its secrets are your only resource, and you must figure out what happened and how to fix it. This simple concept quickly becomes one of the most harrowing games on mobile devices.
The beauty of Simulacra lies in its realism; finding a lost phone is not uncommon in today's age, but what would happen if you were greeted to the same kind of video? As you dig into the story and more details become available, the mysteries within pile up and before long you're playing this game from dawn until dusk. At $4.99 Simulacra is one of those games that only works on mobile, but man does it work great.
See it on iOS | See it on Android
Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery
Five Nights At Freddy's AR: Special Delivery brings the horror of FNAF to the real world, using a phone's AR capabilities to unleash the animatronics into the real world. Where Pokemon Go allows you to catch small creatures in the real-world, FNAF throws Freddy Fazbear and his pals at you and expects you to avoid them. It's enough to make a person miss seeing Pidget everywhere.
This freemium game offers a great take on the augmented reality game, putting you against the awful animatronics the franchise has become known for. The real world is scary enough without adding Freddy Fazbear and friends to it, but in Special Delivery's case we're willing to make an exception.
See it on iOS | See it on Android
Lost Within
We've talked about derelict spacecraft and lonely moons on this list so far, but let's not forget another classic horror trope: abandoned mental institutions! Lost Within throws you into a dark and deserted mental hospital teeming with ghoulish enemies, called Inhabitants, and instructs you to fight your way out.
Whether you want to makeshift weapons and blast through the hordes or prefer to stay low and stealth walk your way through the asylum, Lost Within can be played however you wish. The $3.99 purchase fee may sound high to those who are used to paying nothing for mobile games, but the unique experience this game offers makes the investment worth it.
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