Best Co-Op Horror Games for PC

Why it's here: The game every other pick on this page is answering. One developer set the template: scavenge scrap off abandoned moons, hit the Company's quota, and let proximity voice chat turn each monster into a rescue or a clip, usually both. The job back on the ship is real content, not a waiting room: calling traps off the radar and opening doors from the terminal. The recurring complaints in Steam reviews are crashes, performance and the hunt for a working lobby. 97 percent positive from 510,629 lifetime Steam reviews, the highest share and the largest corpus on this list. Start here.

Why it's here: The one where the horror is your own crew's hands. You and up to five friends haul valuables out of haunted ruins with a physics grabbing tool, and getting a piano through a doorway is a harder problem than anything stalking you, since the monsters obey the same gravity the cargo does. A dropped vase costs the run's profit, not just the moment. The complaint that keeps surfacing in Steam reviews is clunky controls, which is also the entire joke. 96 percent positive from 421,145 lifetime Steam reviews, the second-largest corpus here. Take it if your group enjoys failing loudly.

Why it's here: Nothing else here hands you a camera instead of a weapon. Your crew rides a diving bell down to the Old World, films whatever is moving before the oxygen and the battery run out, then uploads it to SpöökTube and sits through the watch party waiting on views. Three-day runs, so a bad night is survivable. The recurring complaint in Steam reviews is thin content: too few maps and items, and the loop empties out faster than the price suggests. 94 percent positive from 163,015 lifetime Steam reviews. I would buy it for a weekend with friends, not a season.

Why it's here: The pick for a group that would rather map a place than fight it. Four of you walk thirty-plus hand-built backrooms levels, past the yellow wallpaper everyone knows into flooded and industrial ones nobody posts about, evading entities rather than killing them. This is the one pick here where the full clear is the real question, and I read that level list as genuine content over several sessions rather than padding. Steam reviewers keep flagging the entity AI, predictable enough to bleed the tension. 90 percent positive from 164,100 lifetime Steam reviews. Best taken a few levels a night.

Why it's here: If you want the scares straight, with no comedy underneath them, this is the one. One to four of you race a banishment ritual against a possessed cultist who gets faster the longer you take, with a UV flashlight as your only defence and randomised spawns so no run repeats. It is also one of two picks here with VR support. The complaint Steam reviewers return to is the Manor map specifically, called unbalanced often enough to read as a design fault rather than a difficulty preference. 90 percent positive from 88,095 lifetime Steam reviews. Learn the earlier maps first.

Why it's here: The serious one. Four prisoners drop into the Complex on the Warden's work orders, and stealth leads every expedition: you scout the room, agree the approach, and open fire only once the plan has already failed. Steam lists no single-player mode, and this and Content Warning are the two picks here you genuinely cannot attempt alone. The complaint reviewers return to is the absence of mid-mission checkpoints, hours of work lost to one mistake near the end. 84 percent positive from 66,652 lifetime Steam reviews, the lowest share on this list. For a fixed squad of four with headsets.

Why it's here: A ghost hunt for players who want it to look expensive. One to four investigators sweep cursed houses for the evidence that names the spirit, then leave before it decides to hunt, and the lighting and sound design carry more of the fear here than anywhere else on this page. The honest problem, and Steam reviewers say it plainly, is that this is Phasmophobia's structure with better visuals rather than a new idea of its own. 85 percent positive from 24,134 lifetime Steam reviews. Worth it if your group has already burned out on the game it is copying.

Why it's here: Deduction, not reflexes, is what this one tests. Your team of archaeologists reads hieroglyphs, artefacts and instrument readings inside Egyptian tombs to work out which Mejai is stalking them, and naming the wrong one costs the run. VR is supported here too. The recurring complaint in Steam reviews is empty public lobbies, so this is a bring-your-own-group game rather than something you drop into. 90 percent positive from 6,653 lifetime Steam reviews, one of the two smallest corpora on this list. For a group that likes homework.

Why it's here: The one that scales past four, and the only pick here built for eight. You take a submarine down to Pharma Corps' flooded labs to pull out the corpses and destroy the evidence, picking a small sub for one or two, the regular for four, or the large one for five to eight. Steam reviewers consistently flag that the game explains almost nothing, so the first session goes on working out what the controls do. 88 percent positive from 5,320 lifetime Steam reviews, the smallest corpus here. Save it for the night your group is too big for everything above.