Best Open-World Games Where Exploring Is Scary

Open-world games are usually very inviting titles, full of wondrous discoveries and grand adventures. Some games, however, take a decidedly darker turn. These titles boast secrets and surprises that aren’t for the faint of heart.

Unpleasant surprises in open-world games can take many forms, from overwhelmingly powerful foes to shocking secrets that will make players view the world they’re exploring differently. Some games just set the perfect tone of eerie, ominous stillness, leaving players constantly unsure of what they’ll find. These open-world games make exploring their worlds a truly frightening proposition.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Weird West

Rockstar is infamous for filling its immersive open-world games with strange encounters and Easter Eggs. Red Dead Redemption 2 is no exception. Many of the Easter Eggs that players can find while roaming the Wild West are distinctly sinister. While the game’s main story is a grounded and realistic Western drama, these hidden secrets demonstrate that there’s much more to the frontier than meets the eye.

Suppose Arthur Morgan travels too far off the beaten path. In that case, he can experience memorable and frightening encounters, including a mournful ghost, a bloodthirsty vampire, and even a strange mutant corpse cobbled together from multiple different creatures. These eerie encounters will keep players on their toes every time they find a new locale.

Fallout: New Vegas

A Deadly Wasteland

Unlike many similar Bethesda games, Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas does not scale its enemy difficulty in relation to the player’s level. Enemies and monsters throughout the wasteland can be (and often are) much more powerful than the player character. This makes exploring the Mojave Wasteland a deeply engaging experience, where straying from the beaten path can have devastating consequences.

Fallout: New Vegas is home to some truly overwhelming creatures. Monsters like Cazadors and Deathclaws can cut a player down in seconds, and even standard human enemies can be overwhelming with the right gear and numbers. This helps improve the game’s immersion, but it also makes for some truly harrowing experiences for anyone traversing the map.

Minecraft

An Endless World

Minecraft is a lovely, vibrant game, renowned for its limitless building potential and expansive biomes. While playing Minecraft can be a peaceful and delightful experience, especially with friends, there’s an undeniably sinister element to the game as well. Exploring Minecraft‘s endless open world at night is a particularly harrowing experience, as zombies and creepers pour out of the surrounding wilderness to attack.

Recent updates have presented even more reasons to be scared of wandering Minecraft‘s world alone. The game’s expansive caves can now give way to the terrifying Deep Dark biome, patrolled by the terrifying Warden mob. Spelunking in Minecraft is already a tricky proposition, as the game’s caves are liable to feature long drops and treacherous lava pools that can end an excursion with unforgiving speed.

Pathologic 2

Fighting The Plague

Pathologic 2 is an infamously surreal game about combating the plague in a rural town, and its open-world mechanics serve to reinforce the growing sense of unease and dread that players must deal with as the outbreak worsens. One of the player’s greatest foes in Pathologic 2 is the passage of time; wandering around the game’s map consumes a truly perilous amount of that time, and can sabotage all the player’s efforts.

At the same time, players must explore the game’s map to gather resources and complete the objectives necessary to stay alive and (hopefully) find a cure. The game is a harrowing balancing act, and fans who want any hope of preserving the town and curing the deadly plague threatening it will need to go to extreme lengths and accept the losses they can’t prevent.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chornobyl

In The Zone

This open-world horror RPG takes players to the site of the infamous Chornobyl nuclear disaster, in an alternate reality where this crisis caused horrifying mutations and strange anomalies across the Exclusion Zone. This makes S.T.A.L.K.E.R.‘s map particularly treacherous to explore, as players must be constantly on alert, not only for human enemies, but for more otherworldly terrors as well.

As expected, the Exclusion Zone is also full of dangerous radiation. Players will need to stay on their toes for the slightest hint of radioactive activity, which can drain their health with devastating swiftness. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl is a deeply treacherous game at every turn, and players will have to be very well-equipped to stay alive.

Elden Ring

The Dangers Of The Lands Between

FromSoftware has a very well-earned reputation for intense difficulty, and Elden Ring is no exception. The sprawling open world of the Lands Between is home to some of the developer’s most challenging bosses, and even lesser minibosses and common enemies can quickly cut down any player who isn’t prepared for them.

The Lands Between contains no shortage of gorgeous, awe-inspiring dungeons and setpieces, but at every turn, players must be on guard. Dangerous creatures like dragons, trolls, and even surprise attacks from Margit the Fell are constant threats that can end a Tarnished with swift and brutal prejudice.

Dredge

A Simple Fishing Trip

Dredge is a deeply unsettling fishing game which sets players loose in the murky waters of an eerie little archipelago. The waters of this game contain some truly frightful fish, and the act of dredging them up from the deep becomes more and more harrowing as players explore the mystery surrounding this bleak setting.

Of course, like any self-respecting nautical horror game, Dredge also contains more than its fair share of giant ocean-faring monsters. These massive behemoths can emerge from the deep with little warning and swallow an unprepared ship with all hands in the blink of an eye.

Subnautica

In Alien Waters

Subnautica‘s first-person perspective helps players get deeply immersed in the vast alien ocean where the game takes place. This endless expanse of sea features some exceptional beauty; coral reefs are teeming with adorable alien fish and valuable resources to keep the player alive, and there are even peaceful titans for fans to drift between as they explore.

However, Subnautica can also get exceptionally frightening. As players venture into deeper and darker waters, more hostile creatures will emerge from the depths and attempt to devour them. Players will always remember their first encounter with the notorious Reaper Leviathan, a bloodthirsty titan who will carve up their submersibles and devour them in seconds. These and other threats lurk throughout the game, waiting to snatch up unwary divers.