There are all different types of horror to be found in the horror game genre at large. Creatures, solitude, horrific body horror, and plenty more can promise all kinds of frights.
One type of horror that is often present is that of claustrophobia. Plenty of games use tight spaces to scare you and make you want to run or fight back against whatever the game throws at them. It can be hard to notice a game uses it until long after it happens though. Let's take a look at some of the best examples of games that use claustrophobia to their advantage.
10 Five Nights At Freddy's
Everyone loves a good themed restaurant. Until you're trapped there overnight as a part of a security job gone wrong. The small cubicle-like security office in Five Nights At Freddy's is creepy enough without the animatronics coming to get you.
As you pan from one security feed to another, you're all too aware of just how little space you'll have to hide if one of them does manage to get the drop on you. It may not be a cave or submarine, but the theme of the game makes that tiny room seem to shrink.
9 BioShock
Life under the sea sounds like it could be idyllic, and for the people of Rapture it was. For a time anyway.
BioShock brings you to Rapture long after its fall from grace. While the splicers and Big Daddy's are your primary worry, the game is far from shy to remind you that you're in a city under the sea. Water leaks through the tight and often winding corridors, and it isn't unheard of to see a whole section of the city crushed as the sea-pressure becomes too much for the steel walls.
8 SOMA
Nothing good can come from a bio-lab deep down on the ocean floor, and that is the entire point of SOMA.
Throughout the game, you are all too aware of how tight the confines of the labs are. Especially when you have to duck around a corner to avoid whatever amalgamation of machine and flesh is hunting you down. You'll yearn for wide open spaces after just a few minutes trapped under the sea.
7 Alien: Isolation
The Alien series is one that taps into all sorts of separate horror genres. At the forefront is body horror and even monster horror, but the psychological horror of claustrophobia isn't too far out. Nothing gets your heart rate going like crouching under a desk in the middle of a space station as a xenomorph stalks the halls right outside the office you're in.
That's a lot of what you'll be dealing with throughout the game. The tight confines full of furniture and materials makes for a lot of places to hide, but it also means there's nowhere to really run if you're unlucky enough to catch the alien's attention.
6 Dead Space
The USS Ishimura is a sizable planet-cracking spaceship with many floors for living, working, and relaxing. Why is it then that Dead Space makes it feel so small?
The Ishimura is the perfect feeding ground for the necromorphs. There are so few places to run, and fewer to hide. There are countless times you'll be wishing a room was just a little bit bigger as you put your back to a wall to distance yourself from the creatures lumbering towards you.
5 Outlast
No one wants to be stuck in an asylum after dark, much less one that has been experimenting on its patients. Yet, that's just what happens to you in Outlast.
The narrow halls and medical bays of Mount Massive are cluttered with supplies, furniture, and sometimes corpses. Only able to sprint and hide, you become all too aware of the space around you and just how fast one of the horrors stalking you can catch up to you.
4 Layers Of Fear
Mansions are often sprawling houses full of architecture and with huge rooms filled with ornate furniture. That being said, the mansion in Layers of Fear turns that all on its head.
Whether they're apparitions or psychotic episodes, the scenes that appear before the protagonist warp the house into an inhospitable and confining place. There are plenty of times you'll be looking for a place to run and hide among the narrow hallways and locked doors as something horrible is staring at you a few feet away.
3 Amnesia: The Bunker
The horrors of the First World War are aplenty. It only gets worse though for the protagonist of Amnesia: The Bunker.
Trapped inside a military trench-bunker, a creature is hunting you with cruel intent. The only thing you have to protect you is your trusty revolver and your wits. The dark bunker doesn't make it easy, with plenty of low-ceilinged rooms and sharp turns to get lost in. Sure, you're protected from artillery, but that's the least of your problems in this game.
2 Iron Lung
A faraway planet, an ocean made entirely of blood, and a horrible mystery. The only thing that you have going for you is the safety of your incredibly tiny submarine.
Iron Lung practically embodies claustrophobic horror. There is nowhere to escape to, and the only way to safety is by exploring the bloody sea from inside the cramped sub. You get to see the world beyond through the screens in front of you, but the game constantly reminds you how little space you have to work with.
1 The Mortuary Assistant
If you want to have a long illustrious career in the funeral science field, then The Mortuary Assistant is not the game for you.
It starts off fine, with a good-sized building to meander through going about your nightly duties. But, once everything starts to fall apart, you will definitely be wanting to fling the doors of the mortuary open and run out into the night. This game does a great job of making a simple building feel constricting as you try to survive the night.