Highlights
- Hospital settings in horror games can be incredibly harrowing, whether it's a psychiatric hospital, asylum, or standard hospital.
- While hospitals can be overused in horror games, when done right, they can provide a game-changing and terrifying experience.
- These horror games showcase various hospitals with macabre set dressings, creepy denizens, decaying buildings, and haunting aesthetics, making them some of the scariest settings in the genre.
Hospitals are not always the most enjoyable place to be, but hospitals in horror games, well, those are genuinely harrowing. Whether they be a psychiatric hospital, an asylum, or just a standard hospital, these settings are sure to set you on edge.
However, hospitals can be overused in horror games. If done right, a hospital setting can be a complete game-changer for a terrifying horror game. From macabre set dressings to creepy denizens hunting you down to a decaying and derelict building, the following games showcase hospitals in the scariest of ways.
Updated on September 17, 2023 by Gabrielle Castania: With the heart of spooky season just around the corner, horror lovers are on the hunt for their next fix of hospital horror. We've updated our list of hospital-based horror games for the 2023 spooky season, to make sure you're getting the creepiest hospital horror you can.
13 Eyes: The Horror Game - Hospital
Eyes: The Horror Game is a unique, budget-friendly horror title that asks the players to explore various haunted locations set across different maps. Your goal in each is to avoid the creeping specter while collecting as much money as possible. The premise may sound simple, but the labyrinthian design of the maps makes it harder to stay poised.
One of the game's more iconic maps is the hospital. This foreboding location features multiple floors with many blocked paths and false exits. The overarching goal as you move through the hospital map is to avoid Charles the hospital warden, whose visage is likened to a phantom or the Grim Reaper.
12 Dead By Daylight - Lery's Memorial Institute
Although Dead by Daylight's numerous multiplayer maps are generally pretty scary, it's Lery's Memorial Institute that takes the cake when it comes to design, aesthetics, and sense of dread - it's not a map that you'll feel comfortable exploring.
This derelict location has served numerous purposes since its inception, each one grimmer than the last. What makes it harrowing is that, despite its abandonment, it looks and feels like plenty of machinations arise around every corner. From bloodied walls to static monitors to lackluster lighting, Lery's Memorial Institute is a location brimming with nightmares.
11 Alice Madness Returns - Rutledge Asylum
Rutledge Asylum is a unique hospital location in Alice Madness Returns that serves as one of the essential story locations. Without spoiling the story, let's just say that Alice ends up at Rutledge much to her behest after some potential fiery shenanigans.
Alice's psyche isn't exactly together, making her enter multiple nightmarish locations. However, it's at Rutledge where players learn about the misdeeds at the hands of the staff. This location might not be as outwardly terrifying as some others on this list, but it's the implications regarding Alice's decade-long stay there that make it a real monster.
10 Silent Hill 2 - Brookhaven Hospital
There is likely no survival horror game that is quite as iconic or revered as Silent Hill 2. Even decades after its initial release on the PlayStation 2, it still remains one of the very best survival horror games thanks to impeccable psychological gameplay elements, a tightly-knit story, and some amazing locations for players to explore as James Sunderland.
One such location is Brookhaven Hospital, essentially a mental institution, which has been featured throughout the series. However, it's the version in Silent Hill 2 that really takes the cake. Apart from its spooky appearance, it's the encounter with the infamous Nurses that makes this hospital a foreboding place for James to be.
9 Infliction: Extended Cut - Asylum And Hospital
Infliction: Extended Cut is a first-person horror game that sees the main character exploring various real-world locations. Infliction feels like a blend of P.T. and Layers of Fear with a story that is deeply disturbing both in terms of its real take on alcoholism, but also in how it deals with demons and possession.
For those willing to explore its creepy world, It's when it becomes an asylum horror game that really ups the ante when it comes to scares. This ethereal-feeling location is made even scarier because you have to use a camera to scry hidden messages, keys, and doors, with the former often written in blood.
8 Outlast - Mount Massive Asylum
Outlast is a terrifying first-person horror game starring Miles Upshur, an investigative journalist who finds himself at the infamous Mount Massive Asylum. This asylum houses the worst of mankind, from monstrous creatures to killer inhabitants. Miles arrives here to get the inside scoop on the terrible events that took place at the asylum.
Mount Massive is a foreboding structure that greets you as you drive up the eerie mountain road toward it, unsettling in the distance. Unfortunately for Miles, the inside of the asylum isn't any better. This place is literally rotting from the inside out, and Miles didn't think to bring a weapon to defend himself against the aberrations within.
7 Call Of Cthulhu - Riverside Institute
In a town where nothing is quite right, and you're an unwelcome visitor, the worst place to end up is their local psychiatric facility. In his search for the Hawkins family, Investigator Pierce stumbles across occult dangers and secret monsters. After being injury, he is brought to the Riverside Institute, where he is contained under the claims of mental illness.
By the time you escape, you've been pumped with drugs and left to stew in your delusional state. This hospital serves as a grim reminder that even in a world with eldritch monsters and bloodletting cultists, the most dangerous thing to your survival can still be bad people in a place of authority.
6 The Evil Within - Beacon Mental Hospital
The Evil Within was created out of the mind of Shinji Mikami, the brains behind the original Resident Evil. It should come as no surprise then that The Evil Within is brimming with scary locations. You only need to look at one of the primary locations that protagonist Sebastian Castellanos finds himself exploring; Beacon Mental Hospital.
Beacon Mental Hospital is a rundown, decrepit, and utterly spooky mental asylum that has been the breeding ground for Ruvik and Leslie Withers, two characters who are intertwined with one another. This asylum has it all, blood, corpses, hauntings, and plenty of tragedy.
5 Claire - The Unnamed Hospital
Claire is a pixel art indie horror game starring the titular character, Claire, who finds herself in an unknown hospital caring for her comatose mother. Stricken with grief and deep-seated pain, Claire must explore the seemingly abandoned hospital through a sort of dark otherworld.
This hospital is very reminiscent of locations from the Silent Hill series. As Claire explores with her dog Anubis, she stumbles upon creepy monsters that she needs to hide from while also contending with the changing environment. The question that remains throughout is, is this all in her head?
4 Silent Hill: Homecoming - Alchemilla Hospital
The opening area of this divisive Silent Hill series' entry takes place in Alchemilla Hospital. Alex Shepherd, our resident "hero" lands himself on a gurney, bloodied, confused, and ultimately terrified. It seems as if Alex has returned from war to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen, however, his time in Alchemilla Hospital shows him something else entirely.
Simply put, Alchemilla Hospital is one of the series' best locations due to a dark and ominous presence that lurks throughout. Alex does stumble across his brother within the hospital but instead of giving Alex comfort, it creates a new dose of confusion for him. This evil location helps to flesh out why Toluca Lake is an important part of Silent Hill.
3 Until Dawn - Blackwood Sanatorium
Until Dawn features incredible choice-driven gameplay that lends itself well to the horror genre. Starring a group of teens in a remote cabin, Until Dawn sets itself up for a lot of scares, but one of the game's best locations is Blackwood Sanatorium, found in the late game.
Blackwood Sanatorium was built over a geothermal hot spring, and it offered upper-class patients a more luxurious recovery. However, it eventually fell into disrepair and less glamorous individuals took up residence. Eventually, it was shuttered and is now home to true horrors for our protagonists.
2 Tormented Souls - Winterlake
One of the most recent games here, Tormented Souls, a throwback to early survival horror games, prides itself on its spooky mansion-like hospital of Winterlake. Winterlake feels like a blend of Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil with the eerie atmosphere of Silent Hill 2.
It's clear from the start of the game that some heinous deeds took place at the seemingly abandoned Winterlake mansion. This derelict building hides many dark secrets and plenty of denizens that seek to impale you around every corner. This labyrinthian location is sure to give you nightmares.
1 The Suffering - Abbot State Penitentiary
One of the most underrated survival horror games from the early 2000s is The Suffering. The Suffering stars Torque, a man who has been sentenced to death row on the charges of brutally murdering his family. Torque finds himself locked up at Abbot State Penitentiary at the start of the game and after some gruesome opening moments, must now escape.
While a penitentiary is certainly not a hospital, this specific location houses many clinic rooms with enough terrible machinations to act as a haunted hospital. The fact that each and every monster is meant to be a physical representation of a death row execution shows how twisted this setting really has become.