There was once a time when video game horror, long before livestreaming and digital storefronts, physically lived in your house. Lurking inside plastic jewel cases or large cardboard boxes, all waiting to scare the pants off you with nothing more than a shiny disc.
The CD-ROM era of horror through the 1990s and 2000s was certainly a strange one, with experimental gameplay, themes, art styles and sound design, it felt that developers were really trying to learn what made us scared. It was a time of risk, surreal nightmares, cosmic horror, and even interactive poetry.
While some games became classics of the genre, others were lost to time, and those are the games we are interested in here. So join us while we take a look at the ten most haunted, obscure and fascinating horror games ever burned onto a CD-ROM.
1. Dark Seed
A 1992 adventure game, Dark Seed was deeply inspired by the works of H.R. Giger. Giger had become well known thanks to his work on the Alien series, and his biomechanical artwork had become popular in the 80s. While Giger didn’t create new artwork especially for Dark Seed, his work was officially licensed and used as inspiration for the game.
You step into the boots of Mike Dawson, possibly gaming’s first advertising executive protagonist, as he moves into a new home which sits atop a portal to a nightmarish other world. Dark Seed uses a real time system where puzzles had to be solved in a timely manner — dilly dally for long and you could find your game locked in an unwinnable state.
The environments alternate between the mundane real works and the grotesque “Dark World,” filled to the brim with Giger’s biomechanical horrors — part flesh, part machinery, all Giger.
Dark Seed has earned a cult following over the years, largely thanks to its visual identity. However, the game did receive mixed reviews for its difficulty and unforgiving design. Still, the partnership with Giger gave the game its unique look and artistic credibility, and was one of the first times a renowned, real world artist lending their visual flair to a video game.
Dark Seed received a sequel in 1995 which is more well regarded than its 1992 counterpart, but the original remains a landmark in experimental horror adventure design. Dark Seed is remembered as both flawed and fascinating, surreal, unsettling and pushed the boundaries for horror gaming.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to play Dark Seed today, as it is not available on digital stores. The only legitimate way to play it is to get hold of an old copy of the game and start working out how to get it running on a modern system.
2. The Dark Eye
Developed by Inscape in 1995, The Dark Eye is a surreal first-person adventure game inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The game sees players take on characters from three of Poe’s stories, tied together with an original plot that binds them into a single grim narrative. What sets The Dark Eye apart from other horror games of its time is its visual presentation: the environments are richly detailed, and the cutscenes use stop-motion claymation that gives everything a grotesque, uncanny quality.
Players navigate eerie rooms and unsettling locations, piecing together fragments of stories that always lead to grim conclusions. Instead of traditional puzzles, the gameplay focused on exploration and atmosphere, leaving players to absorb the sense of dread and doom that clung to every moment. Narration was provided by counterculture icon William S. Burroughs, which added to the strange, oppressive tone. It’s such a unique and fascinating game, embodying ’90s surreal art and the peak of video game design experimentation.
As you can probably guess from the description above, The Dark Eye was not a financial success. It simply couldn’t break through in a market dominated by puzzle-heavy Myst clones and flashy FMV titles. But it has since gained a cult reputation as one of the most unique and unsettling experiences ever released on CD-ROM.
It is certifiably one of gaming’s most daring experiments, and a nightmare pressed onto a disc. It’s easy to play today, with physical copies hard to find, but thanks to ScummVM it is still possible to experience this weirdo.
3. Amber: Journeys Beyond
Myst was a major PC hit in the early 90s, so it’s not surprising that other developers tried to craft their own Myst-alike. But while many companies aimed to make games that were similar to Myst in terms of style and tone, as well as gameplay, Amber: Journeys Beyond aimed to do something a little different.
Released in 1996, Amber decided to do away with abstract worlds and replace them with ghosts. The game focuses on Roxy, a paranormal investigator who has constructed a device to communicate with the dead. Roxy is tasked with investigating a North Carolina house, using her ghost hunting technology to uncover the history of the spirits that remain there. Gameplay revolves around exploring the house and piecing together the stories from clues, photos and supernatural goings on. Its pace is slow by design, drawing players into its unsettling setting. Amber has great atmosphere, eerie sound design and light, subtle ghostly appreciations relied more on suggestion than shock.
Despite strong word of mouth, Amber: Journeys Beyond was as close to an indie level game way back before ‘“indie gaming” was even really a thing. Released by a small studio, it never saw massive distribution. It sold modestly and quickly slipped out of print, making it a fairly rare game to find out in the world. Amber is one of the most underrated horror adventures of the 90s, a solid example of storytelling that balanced mystery, tragedy and empathy. It truly is a lost classic of 90s PC gaming. Its scarcity has only added to the mystique for the game, with collectors and preservationists citing it as a game that deserves a proper re-release. Amber represents the quieter side of 90s CD-ROM horror, a ghost story with patience rather than spectacle.
4. Sanitarium
Any 90s PC gamer will have seen the cover to Sanitarium, even if they never owned the game. The cover with the eye looking out from inside the bandages? Classic.
Sanitarium is a 1998 point and click game. However, you wouldn’t think that to look at it. Instead of the ‘theatre stage’ view of normal point of view of almost any point and click game, Sanitarium has an isometric camera viewpoint that’s not too dissimilar to Disco Elysium. Sanitarium focuses on Max, who wakes up in a sanitarium – I bet you never saw that coming.
Following a car accident, his head bandaged and his mind in pieces. Max treads the line between reality and delusion, as one chapter will see you moving around the sanitarium, while another might find you somewhere totally different. The main focus is on dialogue trees, inventory puzzles and exploration. Instead of gore or jump scares, there’s a general sense of unease running though Sanitarium, and its pre-rendered graphics still hold up fairly well today.
While Sanitarium did not sell well, it has become a cult classic amongst PC horror hounds. Its willingness to explore taboo themes such as disfigurement, insanity and trauma helped it become known as a slightly more mature title, at a time when ‘mature’ games were all about murder and boobs. It was praised by critics for its storytelling and imaginative set pieces and it’s a huge shame it isn’t talked about more in the sphere of narrative driven horror.
For adventure game fans, Sanitarium was a truly ambitious title, one of the last before the genre went into decline in the early 2000s. Even decades later when Sanitarium released on GOG, new players found themselves captivated by this long lost point and click horror title. Sanitarium is proof that horror is as much about the mind than it is about the monsters.
5. Nocturne
The mid to late 90s saw a boom in the survival horror video game genre. The genre would become known for cinematic camera angles, inventory management and creepy locales. These could be found in the earliest examples of the genre such as Alone in the Dark, and were carried over to the heavy hitters such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. But the PC was not to be outdone by its console counterparts, and this led to 1999’s Nocturne.
Players take on the role of “The Stranger,” a trenchcoat and fedora sporting agent from a shadowy government organisation called Spookhouse, who were tasked with taking out supernatural threats in 1930s America. Nocturne spans four episodes, each with a different threat and vibe: werewolves in Germany, vampires in Chicago, voodoo cults in New Orleans and a spate of zombies in a small wild west inspired town.
Nocturne is a moody, pulpy monster-hunting adventure that blends an eerie atmosphere and Universal monster movies with hard-boiled detective fiction. Heavy shadows, dramatic light and spooky music all worked to deliver a great game that was pretty ambitious.
Nocturne debuted at a time when PC gaming was coming off the boil somewhat, so it never sold in large numbers, but it does have a legacy. The game engine was later used for the Blair Witch Volumes, a trilogy of three games based around the movie franchise. For years fans have called out for a sequel, remake or remaster, given the unique mixture of gothic style, 30s noir and supernatural horror. It’s clunky by today’s standards, and let’s face it: as much as we love tank controls they aren’t always great. But Nocturne is still fondly remembered as a bold PC horror exclusive. Today, it enjoys a cult status, but it’s currently not legitimately available anywhere, aside from physical copies.
6. Clive Barker’s Undying
The 90s were popular for two generally PC related gaming traits. First one: games having a real persona’s name in their title. Think Sid Meier’s Civilization or Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. Then there’s the single word FPS games, such as Doom, Quake, Blood, Hexen and so on and so forth. Here, we have one that combines both in Clive Barker’s Undying.
In 2001’s Undying, you play as Patrick Galloway, an army veteran and occult specialist, you explore a cursed Irish estate, which you blast and spell-cast your way around. Using the fairly new and revolutionary Unreal Engine, environments range from sprawling mansions to shady graveyards, to gothic nightmare dimensions. The narrative is steeped in Barker’s trademark style, family curses, twisted siblings and eldritch horrors beyond human understanding. The pacing built tension, with great ambient sound design, unsettling monsters and shocks to keep you on edge. Undying managed to blend action with dread, not something every action horror game has achieved.
Undying received critical acclaim, but it did not perform as well as EA had wanted it to, and no follow up was ever made. Despite this, it is still cited as one of the scariest FPS games ever made, and its blend of magic and first person action influenced later games that would also experiment with hybrid combat. Even today few games have come close to replicating Undying’s haunted grandeur. It is often remembered as a forgotten classic, many calling it Clive Barker’s most successful foray into the world of video games. Although it never achieved the mainstream recognition of the likes of American McGee’s Alice with horror gaming circles, Undying is revered as a masterpiece of design.
Even today, players seek out Undying, and lucky for us, it’s available on GOG.
7. Still Life
Still Like is a 2005 point and click whodunnit mystery game, mixed with aspects of detective noir and psychological horror. Players step into the role of FBI agent Victoria McPherson, who is investigating a series of “Seven-esque” killings in Chicago.
The game expands to a dual narrative flashing back to a case her grandfather worked on in 1920s Prague, which mirrors the killings she’s currently tracking. Gameplay consists of crime scene investigation, interrogation and classic point and click puzzle solving.
While there’s plenty of 90s inspired puzzling here, the tone is anything but your traditional point and click game, and while there is humour, it is mostly sidelined for a more serious tone. Murder scenes are grim and unflinching with graphic depictions of mutilation and torture, much darker than the lighter tone the genre is often known for. Still Life looks gorgeous, but again the tone is dark, and it relies on dark cityscapes and oppressive interiors.
It might surprise you to learn that Still Life was also released on the Xbox (a point and click game on Xbox? In 2005?! Get outta town), but this did not help its sales. While it received praise for its story and tone, it was far from a mainstream hit. Puzzles could be very hit or miss, with Still Life all too often falling into the “obtuse puzzle trap” far too many of its European peers also did at the time. The game’s ending was a sore point, and it gave the impression that we had already met the masked killer, but in the end, the killer escapes, leaving his identity a mystery.
Despite these flaws, it has a cult following of fans who love the darker aspects at play in Still Life. There was a loosely connected sequel in 2009, but the original remains its most memorable entry, cementing one of only a few games to really embrace serial killer horror. Today, Still Life stands as one of the last attempts to revive the dead point and click genre, and did a solid job of doing so. Its legacy of atmosphere, grit and bold narrative choices is one that keeps players unsettled long after the credits roll.
8. Scratches
Developed by Argentine developer Necleosys, 2006’s Scratches is a first person point and click horror adventure that trades jumpscares for atmosphere and slow burning dread.
You play as Michael Arthate, a novelist who retreats to a remote mansion in the English countryside to focus on his new book. Far from a relaxing stay, he discovers that the old house holds a dark secret, as he explores corridors with creaky floorboards and shadows around every corner. The mansion and its surrounding grounds are explored via static, pre-rendered screenshots, not too dissimilar to the likes of Myst, but with a gothic tone.
Scratches build tension through strange noises echoing through the halls, wind groaning from outside and your phone becomes your only link to the outside world. The sense of isolation is thick here, and the atmosphere is enhanced by the moody sound design and minimal music. Each discovery makes the house feel genuinely alive.
Scratches is a game with a modest scope, but despite this, it has become a cult hit among fans of psychological horror. It dropped in 2006, as CD based games for PC were slowly coming to an end, just before the era of digital stores really took off. Its subtle storytelling and deliberate pacing is divisive. Some find Scratches far too slow, while others love the masterful environmental horror. A director’s cut was released a year later and expanded the experience with a new chapter and enhanced visuals.
Today, Scratches is remembered for its claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere, and proved you don’t need screaming monsters around every cover or buckets of blood to be scary. It’s an eerie, unforgettable ghost story up there with the classics, and a farewell to the age of boxed PC point and click adventures.
Scratches also spawned a spiritual successor called ASYLUM by its lead designer, Agustín Cordes. Entering development in 2009, it had a 2013 Kickstarter and planned for release in 2014. It finally released in March 2025, and has ‘Mostly Positive’ reviews on Steam — better late than never eh?
9. Penumbra: Overture
Frictional Games is today known as one of the masters of horror gaming, and Amnesia has become known as one of the greatest horror series of all time. But before all of that came a game that laid the groundwork for their later efforts.
Penumbra: Overture is a 2007 horror game that combines physics based puzzles with claustrophobic tension. The game follows Philip, who travels to a remote area of Greenland after receiving a letter from his dead father. Dead relatives: why do they always use archaic forms of communication? I guess because they’re dead?
Beneath the ice, Philip discovers a labyrinth of abandoned mines filled with weird experiments, horrific creatures and a heavy sense of isolation. Penumbra’s greatest strength is its physics system, you manually turn calves, open doors and swing weapons all using the mouse. This created a grounded system that made every action feel more real. Instead of bombarding the player with combat encounters, however, Penumbra built its terror through sound design, great atmosphere and the creeping sense of dread as to what’s around the next corner.
Penumbra: Overture was originally planned as part one of a trilogy, but after a sequel in Penumbra: Black Plague, the trilogy was finished off with an expansion called Penumbra: Requiem. Despite modest sales, the impact of Penumbra was enormous, and Frictional Games took all the experience they’d learned on Penumbra to create Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which became one of the most influential horror games of all time.
Penumbra is fondly remembered as a cult title, but is largely forgotten by horror gaming, though its impact is massive. Fricional’s focus on vulnerability, environmental storytelling, and a dread filled atmosphere over out-and-out violence became hallmarks of the modern indie horror genre. Today, Overture stands as a fascinating transitional game between classic CD-ROM horror and the first-person indie horror games that we know of today. The sense of loneliness and realism make it a definitive game in the evolution of PC horror.
10. The Path
For my money, this is possibly the most interesting game on this list.
The Path is one of the strangest and most unsettling horror experiences of the 2000s. Inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, The Path sets you one task: go straight to grandma’s house and stay on the path. But The Path’s true game revolves around you disobeying it, straying from the path into the woods and exploring dream-like woods, encountering unusual locations and encountering mysterious “wolves,” each a metaphor for something darker.
You choose one of six sisters to venture down the path, and the aim of each sister is to encounter and wolf. There is no combat, no traditional puzzle solving, no real objective apart from going to your grandmother’s house (and that’s a fake objective). The Path is all about exploration and interpretation. It is deliberately slow, abstract and haunting; the dark fairytale and dream-like imagery with symbolic encounters designed to evoke emotion rather than deliver scares in the traditional sense.
The Path divided critics and players when it was released in 2009. It was dismissed by some as pretentious and aimless, while others saw it as a bold experiment that challenged the idea of what a video game could be. It was one of the first games that players would often deride as a “walking simulator.” It became an example of “art games” pushing away from jumpscares and combat towards psychological reflection and symbolic storytelling. Its influence can be seen in later narrative driven indie games that prioritise mood, theme and player interpretation of traditional game mechanics.
The Path was released digitally initially, and I can tell you personally, The Path hits differently when you purchase it from some weird indie website and download this strange dreamlike game. But The Path did also have a small run of limited edition CDs that were released in certain regions, a little finale for the CD-ROM era that preceded it.
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