Over the years, game trailers have evolved from their early forms in the late 90s and 2000s. They’ve become an important part of the industry, offering an exciting glimpse into the gameplay and story of a particular title and a method for developers to showcase the projects they work tirelessly on.
Horror game trailers must especially hit on specific notes. They should be shrouded in mystery, set up an ominous and foreboding ambiance, feature unnerving music thrown in with harsh sound, and scare you in just the right moments. There’s a bounty of brilliantly executed horror games with unique trailers, so here are some of the best and most effective.
10 Martha Is Dead Reveal Trailer
Martha Is Dead is a relatively new psychological horror game that surprised everyone when its trailer arrived in 2020. It features marionette characters conversing with speech bubbles and a haunting Italian song, M'ama o non M'ama, playing in the background. It jumps from the marionette sequences to the real world, and you begin to see that something is chillingly off and that the period is WWII.
There's a lot of emphasis on dolls in this trailer through the way it's presented, and then the scene in which a doll is being ripped apart piece by piece before a woman's severed head appears. It signals that the marionette sequences may be a unique storytelling device utilized throughout the game. The narration is also creepy and entices you to discover more.
9 Visage
The 2017 gameplay trailer for Visage demonstrates how far horror games have come. Every in-game shot feels immersive and cinematic. The moments that are bound together are puzzling, mind-bending, and disturbing. The music and overall tone have a tinge of unease. It checks all the marks for psychological horror.
The trailer seamlessly balances its cinematic gameplay parts with reveals of its mechanics, ghostly figures, stunning environments, and reality-altering sequences. It does give a lot of stuff away, but you're still left bewildered as to what you just witnessed.
8 Madison Launch Trailer
One of the most frightening trailers a horror game could have is Madison. It opens with a camera shot inching forward through a wall crack to a TV news report in the other room. Near the hole rests an instant camera, and the report says it has finally found a new owner, the voice distorting and repeating itself. Then, cutting to a bizarre shot of that camera flashing and a demonic entity appearing before you.
And what follows is a series of disturbing events, camera shakes, and jump scares. One thing established is that the camera will be a crucial part of the gameplay since it affects the environment, and the demon appears each time you use it. This trailer presents quite an original concept and invites you to engage in the mystery surrounding the camera.
7 Layers of Fear Launch Trailer
Horror explored through the artist is front and center in the trailer for Bloober Team's Layers of Fear. The trailer focuses on a partially painted canvas serving as the primary source of the main character's inner conflict. It seems as though there's a struggle to complete the artwork.
There are colorful psychedelic transitions that distort the world around you and have you already questioning what is actually real. There's also an endless hallway sequence with a creepy child running across the screen, reminiscent of a scene from Insidious. The story pulls you right in from the trailer and gives off classic aromas of Amnesia.
6 Resident Evil Village
After a change in direction for the seventh entry in the Resident Evil series, fans were eager to see what else would await them. The next installment's 2020 PS5 Showcase trailer delivered on this, disclosing further story details and new gameplay. The trailer establishes Resident Evil Village as a direct sequel to Biohazard that continues following the story of Ethan Winters.
It’s filled with compelling elements, such as Chris Redfield kidnapping Ethan, an old lady spouting off prophecies in some remote village, strange insignias, villagers performing rituals, and a storybook section with a Coraline-esque art style. The most exciting reveal, however, was a closer look at the new werewolf enemy type.
5 The Quarry
The Quarry is another horror game that weighs on your choices from the developers at Supermassive. The official announcement trailer was released three months before its launch and achieved its goal of generating intrigue and unease. Camp has ended, yet the counselors must remain another night at Hackett’s Quarry.
It sets up a lot of supernatural mystery with vague mentions of being hunted by others and the sinister Hag of Hackett’s Quarry. It also pays homages to horror cinema like Evil Dead, with a POV of an invisible force moving through the woods, and Friday the 13th with a shot of a lone character looking around paranoid in a lake. Its biggest surprise is the cast, loaded with big names and horror vets like David Arquette, Lin Shaye, Ted Raimi, and Lance Henriksen.
4 The Callisto Protocol
Since it was announced in December 2020, The Callisto Protocol has become one of the most highly-anticipated games among sci-fi horror fans. The State of Play 2022 trailer does a much better job of seamlessly interweaving the cinematic elements with gameplay than its first reveal trailer. It opens with a shot of Callisto's surface overlooking Jupiter and a transport ship docking at a prisoner outpost.
The atmosphere is grim, and an unsettling score intensifies in the background as shadowy figures lurk about the prison. From there, it's dead on with the tone of Dead Space, revealing an extensive look at the weapons, creepy environmental set pieces, a variety of horrifying creatures, and gory death scenes. It holds your attention all the way through and has you sold on the suspenseful thrills you’ll have.
3 The Medium
Bloober Team put their perseverance in pushing the creative limits of the horror game genre on full display when The Medium trailer dropped at the 2020 XBOX Showcase. Immediately, it gives off a huge Silent Hill vibe with the premise, atmosphere, and art style. It felt especially promising since many were left disappointed with the canceled Silent Hills PT game.
Then, it hit viewers with a new and stunning gameplay mechanic, the ability to play simultaneously between two worlds — the spirit realm and the real world. And it teased a grotesque creature attempting to capture you within the spirit realm. The trailer exceeds at grabbing your attention while not unraveling any of the mystery and leaves you wanting more.
2 Until Dawn Launch Trailer
In 2015, Supermassive Games unveiled their first endeavor into the realm of horror, Until Dawn, which featured a choice-based twist. The trailer presents scenes of a group of friends reuniting at a snowed-in lodge, but not all is well. A strange masked killer is stalking each of them, and there’s lots of peril with characters fleeing situations and falling to their deaths.
It expertly misleads players into thinking this is more oriented as a slasher when it flips the script and delves into another horror genre. Also, the fluttering butterfly signals that the primary mechanic will revolve around the butterfly effect, so you’ll encounter lots of choices that majorly affect the outcome of how the story proceeds.
1 Alien Isolation
A new trailer for Alien Isolation debuted during the 2014 E3 conference, and it was a treat for fans of Alien and the survival horror genre. After a brief message saying the footage is a work in progress, it cuts to a panning shot of a large spacecraft orbiting around the notorious planet LV-426 as eerie atmospheric music plays. A voice narrates that the situation is dire and believes there's something else aboard, which pairs with visuals of body bags and grisly images.
Then we have a tease of the Xenomorph creature, followed by the introduction of the game's mechanics that appear as title cards “Run”, “Hide”, and “Survive”, followed by in-game footage of those actions. It’s a perfect trailer because it conveys essential gameplay ideas and items you’ll be using, and introduces just enough footage without giving anything away.