Inside the secret psychology of horror games – and why we can’t help pushing play

The sound came first. In a San Francisco Bart train tunnel, Don Veca took his recorder and captured a train’s metallic roar – “like demons in agony, beautifully ugly,” he remembers. That recording became one of the most chilling sounds in 2008’s Dead Space.

“We dropped that screeching, industrial noise at full volume right after the vacuum silence – creating one of the game’s most jarring sonic contrasts,” Veca, who made horror history as the audio director for the Dead Space games, recalls. “Our game designer hated it – but the boss loved it. Over time, it’s become iconic.”

Now, almost two decades after Dead Space first terrified players into clutching their controllers, horror game designers around the world still chase that same feeling. So, how do they keep on finding new ways to scare gamers – and what makes us keep pushing start on the horror?

The sound of fear

Ask anyone who’s worked on a great horror game, and they’ll probably tell you the same thing: true fear starts with what you hear.

Veca says it begins in the mind. “It starts with psychology – not the fear of what is, but of what might be,” he says. “Real horror isn’t a mugger with a gun. It’s the shadow behind the door, the silence that lingers too long, the certainty that something is coming … but you don’t know when, or what.”

That unpredictability became the theme for Dead Space’s sound design. “We built tension like a slow tide,” Veca says. “Something could happen … something might happen … and then nothing – just a kitten in the kitchen. You laugh, the adrenaline fades, and three seconds later: claws, blood, screaming!”

Jason Graves, the Bafta-winning composer behind the score for Dead Space and 2015’s Until Dawn, agrees. “Sound and music prepare the player to be scared – it’s all about the buildup, the tension, and then the release when something jumps out at you.”

Graves even treated the score itself as a kind of infected organism. “In Dead Space, something has infected the crew and turned them into monsters, so I ‘infected’ the orchestra,” he says. “Unusual techniques, tapping instruments, no keys or chords – just clusters and tension.” When the player thinks it’s quiet, it might be 60 strings each playing any note they want, very softly. It becomes a living, dissonant room tone – always shifting, unpredictable.”

If you doubt how much sound matters, Graves offers a test. “My daughter tried Until Dawn and kept freaking out,” he laughs, “I told her to mute it – and then she got through it fine. If the picture’s off but you still hear something, that’s what our brains are wired for. The monster under the bed, the fin on the water – your imagination fills the gaps, and that’s 10 times scarier than anything we can show.”

The human element

For cult game developer Swery – real name Hidetaka Suehiro – fear has never been about cheap shocks: it’s about the human condition. He began questioning what truly scares players when his mentor, Resident Evil creator Tokuro Fujiwara, once asked him: “What is fear in a game?”

“I was in my 20s and naively answered, ‘Game over,’” Swery recalls. “He replied, ‘Then are games without a “game over” not scary? Is a haunted house where you can’t take damage not scary?’ I was at a loss. Ever since, I’ve been continually searching for the answer.”

That curiosity became the foundation for 2010’s Deadly Premonition – a surreal small-town horror which blends absurd humour with existential dread. “Before crafting fear, we set a clear goal: build the town and its people,” he says, “I even wrote the story after the town existed.”

“At the centre of horror there is a human being,” Swery adds. “That human, carrying an inner diversity and suffering, is fragile, and can be defeated by evil … that’s everything.”

Though it’s in monsters that our fears are visualised, for Thomas Grip, game director of critically acclaimed 2015 deep-sea horror Soma, horror is also less about villains and more about what it says about being human.

“I think it’s a different kind of scary,” he says. “There’s no big twist or constant jump scares. The whole idea is that it forces you to ask uncomfortable questions: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be conscious? What sort of life is worth living?”

Forget gore and surprises in the dark – in Soma, it’s more about using silence and philosophy to get under your skin. “The key to any horror story, no matter the medium, is that the audience fills in the blanks themselves,” Grip says. “If your story is just, ‘Here’s something scary, be scared,’ it’s not that interesting. The best horror makes you think about something deeper.”

The unknown – and twists on the familiar

Something else to play on is the fear of the unknown, and unease often comes from what isn’t shown. “You shouldn’t spell everything out,” Grip says. “The player only gets glimpses, and their imagination fills in the rest – their own fears, anxieties, and whatnot. That’s where the real fear comes from.” Even the monsters in Soma reflect that idea. “The key is familiarity,” he says. “The best monsters are ones where you think, ‘Something’s off here …’ and the more you look, the worse it gets. People react strongly to things that look infectious or unhealthy. It triggers a primal fear.”

In 2021 viral indie horror hit Poppy Playtime, with its factory of cute, murderous toys, fear takes a brighter shape. “Nostalgia carries vulnerability. When we think of childhood, we think of safety – and twist those things, the reaction is visceral,” Zach Belanger, CEO of Poppy Playtime studio Mob Entertainment, says.

“That’s what makes Huggy Wuggy so effective. We ask, ‘How can something feel both lovable and wrong at the same time?’” he adds, of the game’s fluffy baddie.

In 2025’s psychological horror Loop//Error, the images themselves are made spooky by suggestion – leaving detail to the imagination in the form of a blocky, black-and-white pixelated art style. “Using pixelated visuals and the deliberate absence of colour creates unfamiliarity – your mind projects things that aren’t really there,” solo developer Koro says. “It’s like remembering a nightmare: blurry, incomplete, but emotionally sharp.”

“The fear in Loop//Error doesn’t rely on horror cliches,” Koro adds, “It comes from human depth. From watching a mind collapse under its own weight, and realising that the scariest place to be trapped is yourself.”

The interactive factor

Finally, there’s another element that makes horror in video games so impactful: you have to take part yourself.

“In a game, you’re not watching someone else flee – you’re in it, and that’s why it feels good: your heart races, but you’re still in control,” says psychologist Kieron Oakland, a specialist in cyberpsychology at Arden University.

Daniel Knight, creator of 2020’s ghost-busting multiplayer game Phasmophobia, agrees. “Games put you inside the fear,” he says, of the horror game which took Twitch by storm on its release. “When you decide to open a door or step into a dark room, the fear is yours. You’re responsible for what happens next.”

Grip also believes the genre endures for this reason. “In games, you make the decision to walk into danger,” he says. “That makes it personal. The fear comes from you being the idiot walking into the dark tunnel.”

After all, scary movies ask what you’d do in the dark. Video games make you find out.