I have a soft spot for scary games made for kids.
Videogames as a medium are not strangers to horror. The market is full of well-designed, really scary games. Anything from classic games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill or Rule of Rose to more modern gems like Dead Space or Amnesia are fantastic examples with tons of fans across the globe.
But there are other kinds of media with “horror” in it that is targeted to a different kind of audience. Book series like Goosebumps or television shows like Courage the Cowardly Dog are a way to introduce scary stuff to kids in a palatable and enjoyable way.
My first time encountering something like this in a videogame was the original Luigi’s Mansion for the GameCube.
Luigi’s Mansion is designed with a kid’s funfair “haunted house” look and feel in mind. While there are no jumpscares in it, there definitely is a creepyness which enhances the atmosphere of the game. For example, there’s this section where all the lights in the mansion go out, and there’s an unnerving quiet while Luigi walks around the darkened hallways, muttering and whimpering and trying to survive the ghosts that spawn all around. It’s a standout moment in the game, and the creepiest part of it for a lot of people.
There are a lot of other games with a scary aesthetic to them. It’s been a popular motif since very early on, and lots of kids games have them. Kingdom Hearts has Halloween Town, Mario has had Haunted House levels since forever, Digimon World has Grey Lord’s Mansion, Sonic the Hedgehog has had a few halloween-y levels… Spooky-themed levels or characters have been a staple of too many games to count.
Another way to expose children to horror themes is how the The Legend of Zelda franchise approaches it. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has an infamous dungeon called The Bottom of the Well, where children all over the world got spooked by the end-boss being out-of-the-blue creepy and gross. The sequel to Ocarina, though, took things to the next level. While it’s a fun and hopeful game at its core, there’s also a contrast of deep sadness and eeriness that makes it a unique experience. Just the premise is a good example: “it is predicted that on the dawn of Termina’s festival, the Moon will crash into Clock Town and obliterate all life”. If nothing else, kid-me would be freaked-out by the ever-present grimacing Moon inching closer with each passing day.
But not only old games have taken horror as a setting. 2026’s Mina the Hollower is a homage to GameBoy Color-era Zelda games crossed with a Victorian horror setting and atmosphere, with cartoon-y horror enemies and locations sprinkled around. UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE take the “creepy-pasta” concept that became popular for older games and uses it to enhance their meta-narrative. “Mascot horror” is a sub-genre of horror games where the horror comes from “mascot” characters –game mascots like Sonic the Hedgehog or Bubsy the Cat –being full-on slasher-type entities, popularized by games like Five Nights at Freddy’s.
One of the most popular and maybe unexpected games that could be classified as “scary” is Minecraft. Extremely popular with children, I think most of us who have played the game have been scared by the eerie cave sounds, being pursued by zombies at night, or a sudden death via Creeper explosion. Even people who have hundreds of hours in the game will still be startled from time to time by these elements.
In my case, while I loved the “spooky” themed levels and games, there was one time I got so upset I stopped playing a game altogether. When I was a kid, we rented Pikmin 1 from our local video rental store, and since I was young and didn’t quite understand the mechanics, night-time came and all my Pikmin died in the end-of-day cutscene. Needless to say, I got quite upset and we returned the game without playing it again. Today, Pikmin is one of my favorite franchises but kid-me would not want anything to do with it for at least another ten years.
What about you? Are there any games that scared you as a kid? What’s your favorite age-appropriate scary game?