(Image credit: Frictional Games/Creative Assembly)
A week ago, I asked PC Gamer readers to nominate the scariest PC games they could think of. I collected the top 16 submissions from that comment section (with some editorial discretion) and randomly seeded a bracket.
After a week of voting, we've finally got a winner. The scariest game on PC is...
🏆 Alien: Isolation 🏆
Some of you called it from the start, and Alien: Isolation plowed through its competition without much resistance, beating SOMA, Darkwood, Silent Hill 2, and finally Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Having a Xenomorph stalker is scary: reconfirmed. "Alien: Isolation completely destroys me, drenching me in sweat and causing me to take leave of my senses," Fraser wrote a couple years ago. It took him 10 years to get up the courage to finish it.
Our runner up is classic first-person horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which entered the final after a close battle with one of its younger siblings, Amnesia: The Bunker.
Solid arguments were made for the scariness of The Bunker, which Ted once said is the scariest game he's ever played, but The Dark Descent was a landmark PC horror game that lodged itself in a lot of our memories 16 years ago as a very scary thing that once happened to us.
Speaking to PC Gamer back in 2010, Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip said that their strategy was "to hint at things and then let the players build up an image in their head."
It was a worthy contender, taking out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and F.E.A.R. before slaying one of its own on its way to the final. But ultimately, it was a harrowing stay on Sevastopol Station that shook PC Gamer readers the most.
If you haven't played any of these games, it's a good time to pick them up. Alien: Isolation is $10 on Steam right now, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent is just $4.
Thank you to everyone who suggested games and voted! We also recently crowned the best RTS unit: a large tank.
