As a Gen Xer, I feel fortunate to have had my life's story intertwine with the history of videogaming, from the popularity of the black and white arcade games such as Pong and Space Invaders all the way to the current consoles (which for time capsule posterity are the Sony PS5, the Nintendo Switch 2, and the Microsoft Xbox God-only-knows-what). But as it's currently 2026, the nostalgia goggles are currently honed in on the period of gaming from thirty years prior, which was kind of a golden age of point and click gaming.
The internet was still the new kid, and I think a lot of us underestimated just how much of a monster it was going to be in the future. But because of the rise of the internet, there was a huge zeitgeist push for everybody to own a PC, which for me was a $1700 investment (ah, the old Packard-Bell, on dial-up). On the consoles you were vehemently Sony or Nintendo, you couldn't play both sides, but on the PC we had what may have been one of the last vestiges of the nerd monoculture; the games were limited enough that the clerk at GameStop or Circuit City would likely have played the game you took a chance on purchasing.
And a lot of the games were something special. Perhaps it was the lack of polish which made them feel raw, but you really got immersed in something. And with games on CD being the new toy, we got a surplus of horror themed stories to delve into and experience in a way that we hadn't on the SNES or a decade earlier on the C64. So as a little Halloween treat this year I want to take you on a strange journey through seven of the point and click adventures that gave my soul a sense of unease, and one that really, really tried.
7. Zork: Nemesis (1996)
The Zork series has been around since PCs were programmed in BASIC and floppy discs were actually floppy. The old Zork games were text-based theater of the mind and were imbued with a comforting sense of humor to offset the feeling of isolation. Zork: Nemesis went in a different direction, delivering a grounded (if gratuitously theatrical) story for the player to uncover. Oh, spoilers ahead for any game listed in boldface.
What it's about:
A botched alchemy ritual has left the four alchemists involved in a semi-lucid stasis and attracted the attention of the being known as the Nemesis. It's up to the player to recreate the pure elements of fire, earth, air, and water and combine them into the fifth element (a full year before the movie) to resurrect Alexandria Wolfe, a gifted young violinist who is the key to the fifth element. It's revealed in the endgame that the alchemists were trying to sacrifice her in order to gain immortality, and the Nemesis was her young lover who killed the alchemists in a rage.
Why it's scary:
Eh. Out of all the games on this list, Nemesis is the least unsettling, but I had to include it because it's so well done and it doesn't get a lot of love among Zork aficionados. The game does a solid job of presenting the different set pieces as feeling massive, even if you're limited to what you can explore and interact with. It's not made entirely clear, but you're actually playing a character in the world of Zork sent to investigate the missing alchemists, and that simple element subtly makes you feel a little more heroic and less trapped than some other entries on this list. The various machines you encounter strike a nice balance between magic and science, giving the adventure a feel that's both intuitive and expansive. In short, Nemesis feels like part of a much larger world that you wouldn't mind visiting.
6. Faust: Seven Games for the Soul (1999)
Out of all the games here, this is the one you're least likely to have stumbled across. By 1999, the Myst influenced point and click adventure game was experiencing some oversaturation and the B-tier games were beginning to flood the stores. Indeed, Faust is probably the most flawed game on this list, with a handful of unintuitive puzzles and a few pixel hunts just to advance the plot, but as rough as the cut is it's still a gem.
What it's about:
You're handed a character to play as, named Marcellus Faust. You have no memories (always a convenient origin point), and you're instructed to explore a mysterious amusement park called Dreamland by an imposing demon of a man named Mephistopheles. Meph says that he and "the Boss" are in a disagreement over what is to be done with seven souls who all were residents of the park, kind of like a family of circus sideshow performers. The seven plot threads intertwine to the point where the narrative somewhat folds under its own weight and the original premise is abandoned, but the journey getting there leaves an impact. Redemption is complicated, and the game is comfortable with the messiness.
Why it's scary:
Mephistopheles. His portrayal is well-written, brilliantly acted, and dare I say, deserving of a much better game than he got. I don't know who his voice actor is but is performance is the one I'm always going to compare characterizations of the devil to. He frequently flip-flops between companion and antagonist, funny in one scene, dangerous in the next. Meph's demon is quietly contemplative, always sizing up the situation like Jigsaw. Factor in the eerie atmosphere and the creepy dream-like soundtrack and you've got a game that just feels like something is truly at stake.
5. Sanitarium (1998)
I'm going to throw around the fancy word 'isometric' on this one because Sanitarium uses an isometric perspective, which is to say you're playing from a third-person perspective, moving the character named Max around on a grid of a map. Click a spot and Max moves towards it. Click on a character and Max strikes up a conversation.
What it's about:
Max wakes up in the titular sanitarium with his head bandaged up. The other patients are running loose and there's no sign of any staff. As Max explores the asylum his mind creates alternate realities as the memory of who he is and the mystery of how he wound up in the asylum try to re-emerge. If that wasn't enough of a nightmare, it slowly dawns on Max that someone is trying to kill him.
Why it's scary:
What? being locked in with the lunatics isn't unsettling enough for you? There's a tree that possesses children, a murderous squid, an alien hive, and a poor guy who gets sent to the crematorium. It's complicated. Sanitarium is supposedly getting a rerelease this year on current consoles and I really hope it attracts a new audience. For that reason I won't spoil the mystery here. Let's just say there's a criticism about the pharmaceutical profession that sadly has not been rendered irrelevant over the past thirty years.
This is it, the grandfather of CD ROM games. Myst, which came out five months later was arguably the more influential game, but to discuss horror PC games without mentioning The 7th Guest would be like summarizing American animation and ignore Disney's Snow White. The 7th Guest isn't the best horror game or the best puzzle game, but somehow it cracked the combination of the two in a way that hadn't been seen before.
What it's about:
Six guests are invited to the mansion of eccentric (read: murderous) toy maker Henry Stauf to play his games in hopes of having their greatest wish fulfilled. They might be ghosts, they might be flashbacks, you might be dead; the game can't really make up its mind. It's a B-movie plot that really doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but if you can withhold the questions and just roll with it there's a lot of fun to be had.
Why it's scary:
"Feeling...lonely?" For most of the game you have no idea who you are in relation to the occurrences you're witnessing, you're just stuck in the house, doing things. The apparition-like cutscenes do little to alleviate the sense of isolation since you can't interact with anyone. In short, you're trapped. And it feels like Old Man Stauf is watching you, ready at any moment to get you. The fact that the game doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense only adds to the chaoticness that purgatory must feel like. You'll have questions, but the game doesn't humble itself to answer any of them. But who cares? When the ride is this fun, answers merely get in the way.
3. Shivers/Shivers II: Harvest of Souls (1995/1997)
I'm cheating by cramming two mostly unrelated games into one slot, but what can I say? I love both games. This series takes the puzzle/horror combo of The 7th Guest and goes the next step in terms of polish. In both cases you're trapped in a location and the puzzles serve as combination locks to allow you to access new rooms and/or gain new information. There's mysteries to be solved.
What they're about:
Shivers is set in a Ripley's Believe it or Not type museum where your friends have locked you in on a dare. Soon you discover that malevolent spirits roam the halls, and it's up to you to contain them. Shivers II moves the action to a ghost town where the members of your band have disappeared along with the townsfolk. And there's a masked figure called Darkcloud stalking you.
Why they're scary:
An empty museum and an empty town; this is Scooby-Doo territory except you're completely alone. Apart from the isolation (which is always a running theme in these games) and the occasional jump scare to keep the paranoia up, there's something to be said about the human compulsion, in games at least, to be a hero; that driving force reminding you that something needs to be done and nobody's going to do it but you. It would be more conducive to survival to simply spend the entire evening curled up in a ball in the middle of the room, but the call of fixing a problem proves too great. It's always a risk to keep moving forward, but the need to see it through outweighs self-interest. That's scary.
2. Amber: Journeys Beyond (1996)
Speaking of risk taking, the role of the paranormal investigator is such a solid trope in fiction; you already have a daredevil type whose motivation explains itself, they're basically clinically insane for the greater good. And that good is usually about convincing a confused spirit to move on from a 'tether' so to speak. An in fiction, spirits can be pretty opinionated.
What it's about:
In Journeys Beyond, your friend Roxy is one such daredevil, who has gone forth into a house with multiple hauntings, by herself, to try out untested equipment involving astral projection. You find her in a comatose state with the headpiece running. It's up to you to resolve the issues of three apparitions in order to rescue Roxy.
Why it's scary:
The haunts, for lack of a better word, are haunting, and they make their presence known well before you even don the AMBER headset; not all of them have the best of intentions. Brice was a mentally unstable gardener who killed the girl of his unwanted affections because the bees told him that she was going to be abducted before hanging himself, that's a particularly nasty piece. Then there's poor Edwin, the boy who fell through the ice in the lake and spends his afterlife worrying about how mad his parents are going to be. But the one who left the biggest impression on me is Maggie, the wife who waits for her husband to return from World War II and was already living her life like a ghost before the news came of his death. The game connects haunting to trauma, which is arguably what ghost stories have always been about.
Honorable Mention: Phantasmagoria (1995)
Phantasmagoria (fun word by the way) had a reputation before it hit the shelves of pushing the envelope of shock value and gore. The brain child of Roberta Williams, known primarily for the King's Quest series, Phantasmagoria featured live actors, a script of over five hundred pages, and a choir of 135 singers. This was a big production, packaged into a record setting seven compact discs.
What it's about:
Adrienne Delaney and her husband Don move into the old "Carno" mansion, previously owned by a stage magician whose five wives disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As Adrienne explores the mansion, she accidently sets loose a malevolent force that possesses Don, slowly driving him insane. Every character who comes to the mansion besides Adrienne is killed, including the cat (boo).
Why it's scary:
Um...the gameplay is trite. Trite? Am I using that word correctly? Let me look it up. Yes, trite. There's a whole lot of wandering around and turning on appliances waiting for something to happen going on. By the time we get to the flashbacks of Carno murdering his wives we're on like disc 5 and the suspense has long since hit its expiration. There's a rape scene which is supposed to be disturbing but it's so tacked on and awkward it comes across more as a pitiable exercise for the poor actors. As for the gore, something about it just doesn't work. They clearly had an effects budget, sure, but everything about it kept pushing me out of the production. I used to act in student films, mostly horror because it's the genre young filmmakers seem to gravitate towards. This game feels like that. It's really trying, but it just doesn't have the experience under its belt to stick to the landing.
1. The Dark Eye (1995)
No tour of darkness would be complete without a visit to the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, and The Dark Eye delivers a love letter in full claymation glory. Less game and more interactive story, The Dark Eye takes you through a handful of Poe's works including The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and Berenice (one of his lesser known works). Adding to the legitimacy of the story is a flawless voice performance from author William S. Burroughs, who delivers an underplayed tranquil fury in his renditions of "Annabel Lee" and The Masque of the Red Death.
What it's about:
Set presumably in the 1800s, your character is visiting the dilapidated seaside home of your uncle Edwin (also voiced by Burroughs). Also visiting is your brother Henry and your cousin Elise. In a short timespan Henry asks Edwin for Elise's hand in marriage, is refused, Elise takes ill and dies, Henry is murdered by Edwin's butler (for some reason), and your character goes insane from the fumes of Edwin's paint thinner. It's really an excuse plot to get to the hallucinations of Poe's macabre tales.
Why it's scary:
Well for one thing, the uncanny valley of the claymation figures. For another, there's Burroughs, whose gravelly voice should be soothing but comes across more as a tyrant with nothing to prove. Then there's Poe's stories, which you experience from the points of view of both the victim and the killer, and there's nothing you can do to change the outcome. When Montresor murders Fortunato, all you can do is watch yourself do it, or watch it happen to you. But for me the eeriest element is the slice of life from the 1800s where literally nothing happens a majority of the time. In our fast-paced always-connected modern lives that might sound like a sweet dream but it really comes across more as a seething cauldron of angst where you speak loquaciously, wander barren hallways, obsess over what is and isn't proper, and essentially have NOTHING TO DO. That's enough to really drive a soul into madness. It raises the question of how secure is sanity really? If the intelligent mind is under stimulated, where does it have to go except into madness?
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