Horror Games That Become Totally Different Experiences With Headphones On

Horror games and sound practically go hand in hand. The tension and scares simply wouldn’t hit the same in silence or with flat audio. Some games opt for loud noises for a few quick frights, while others go a step further, using different sound techniques to elicit fear, build suspense, or even as a core gameplay mechanic. These games are further improved when wearing headphones, as players become fully immersed in the environment and need to use even the smallest cues to guide them past the dangers that await them.

Games like Amnesia: The Bunker do an excellent job of using sound as a primary device for eliciting fear, making both the player’s own sounds and those in the surroundings crucial markers for how close or far the monster may be. There are plenty of other games across a range of settings and stories that make use of the more intimate audio feel that comes from wearing a pair of headphones, with some using them as a tool for storytelling while others force players to use them to survive.

Alan Wake 2

Bending Reality Through Sound

• Headphones bring the emotion of the narrative to the forefront of the player’s mind.
• The distortion of reality becomes more jarring with a closer feel to the sound.

Alan Wake 2 brings a horror classic back into the light, using shifting environments and a chilling soundtrack to create a horror experience that leans heavily into atmosphere. By combining live-action FMV elements with more supernatural ones, the game becomes uncanny very quickly, blurring the lines between reality and fiction in a way that other horror games struggle to achieve. Visuals aside, the sound design does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of worldbuilding and immersion, ensuring that no moment feels empty and that players always feel on edge, even just from the music alone.

Adding in a pair of headphones allows the audio to fully envelop the player, amplifying the quiet whispers and distorted vocals of the Taken to make the horror feel more intimate and unsettling. By wearing a headset, simple moments of exploration become deeply tense, feeding into the sense of disorientation that keeps players just out of the realm of comfort and causes them to question whether they heard a noise behind them or if their mind is playing tricks on them.

Outlast

Heightening The Senses In The Absence Of Sight

• Sound becomes the player’s primary guide in the darkness.
• Even tiny noises are amplified due to the lack of clear vision.

Outlast has remained one of the scariest horror games of all time ever since its release, and a large part of that status comes down to how the game uses sound. For the majority of a playthrough, players will be completely surrounded by darkness, with only a night-vision camcorder to guide them through the horrors of Mount Massive Asylum. This forces them to rely more on their ears and to focus in on any tiny sounds that could alert them to an enemy hiding around the corner.

Wearing headphones while playing allows players to be fully transported into the world. Because they have no weapons or ways of avoiding death other than hiding, this creates a heightened sense of helplessness that feels far less impactful when heard through speakers. Also, the devs did a lot of work on creating realistic sounds that bring the gloomy corridors and exterior gardens to life. By placing the sounds directly in the player’s ears, they feel so lifelike that it is easy to forget that Outlast is a work of fiction.

Alien: Isolation

Every Sound Is A Cue For Danger

• Using headphones becomes crucial to tracking the Xenomorph.
• At times, it becomes a game of listening more than seeing.

Alien: Isolation builds its horror around unpredictability, using a single unstoppable creature that roams through Sevastopol Station in intelligent and unexpected ways. Visual cues are limited, and the alien’s presence is rarely announced overtly. Instead, players need to rely heavily on the smaller sounds in the environment, like metallic creaks or the rattles of a ventilation shaft, to give them an idea of where the creature is going to pop out next.

Headphones make every audio detail painfully vivid. They give each sound a three-dimensional feel, demonstrating how nimble the Xenomorph is and how many different locations it can appear from. Small noises become essential survival tools, but much like Amanda Ripley’s motion tracker, they also heighten the dread of being discovered. By switching out wider speakers for the more close-up audio experience offered by a headset, Alien: Isolation becomes incredibly tense and turns the battle for survival into a battle of tiny cues and subtle hints.

Darkwood

You Can Still Hear What You Can’t See

• Isometric perspective combined with dense darkness greatly reduces what players can see.
• Directional audio becomes important for avoiding danger and staying alive.

Darkwood’s top-down perspective may seem unconventional for horror, but it manages to keep players scared by playing with their senses in creative and unexpected ways. The world is consumed by fog and darkness, leaving most threats hidden beyond the player’s narrow cone of vision, which means that, oftentimes, they will need to use sound as their primary tool for navigating their surroundings.

With headphones, the experience becomes almost mentally unbearable, but in the best way. With a much more refined sense of direction, players can suddenly hear the dangers coming from any and all directions. There’s no comfort or escape from the darkness, as players are thrust straight into the heart of the horror and forced down many paths that they would probably rather avoid. The sound becomes so elevated that everything from a snapping twig to a distant crash becomes suffocatingly close, especially at night when players need to barricade themselves indoors, creating a true sense of claustrophobia in an otherwise fairly open experience.

Five Nights At Freddy’s 4

The Slightest Breath Could Be Your Doom

• Sound is a main mechanic, as players need to listen for even subtle breaths throughout.
• Headphones turn moments of pause into intense gambles that often lead to bigger scares.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 breaks almost every rule in the franchise’s playbook and strips away all the mechanical doors and camera mechanics, instead placing players in a children’s bedroom with nothing but a flashlight and their ears to protect them. The same formula remains of checking corridors and surviving the night, but this time, players need to listen carefully for any subtle sounds that could give away a nightmarish animatronic hiding in the darkness.

Because FNAF 4’s focus is almost entirely on sound, using headphones is pretty much a requirement. Without them, it can be hard to pinpoint which sounds are important and whether to close the door or not. Making sound so integral to the core gameplay experience also ensures that every single scare lands with even more intensity, as players are so focused on tiny noises that the huge screeches and screams become a lot more surprising when they inevitably arrive.