Cosmic Horror, Ancient Gods, Forbidden Knowledge, and Other Terrible Reasons to Never Leave the House

There are plenty of horror games that contain monsters.

There are plenty that contain cults.

There are even plenty that contain enormous tentacles emerging from somewhere they absolutely should not be emerging from.

But Lovecraftian horror is different.

The fundamental idea behind H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror isn't simply that something scary wants to eat you. It's that the universe is vastly older, stranger, and more terrifying than humanity can comprehend—and the things hiding beyond our understanding probably don't even consider us important enough to eat.

We're ants.

Cosmic ants.

Possibly delicious cosmic ants.

And video games are an especially effective medium for Lovecraftian horror because they don't merely let us watch somebody discover forbidden knowledge.

They let us discover it ourselves.

We open the door.

We read the book.

We investigate the suspicious noise.

We stare into the abyss.

And then, because apparently we never learn anything, we walk directly toward the tentacles.

Over the years, developers have produced everything from direct adaptations of Lovecraft's stories to games that simply capture the philosophy of cosmic horror. Some are explicitly part of the Cthulhu Mythos, while others create their own universes filled with ancient entities, incomprehensible dimensions and existential despair.

So grab your lantern, your sanity meter, and whatever remains of your common sense.

Here are The Top 10 Lovecraftian Games of All Time.

10. Conarium

The game that makes Antarctica look like a terrible vacation destination

If you've ever read Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and thought, "I'd love to experience that place personally," Conarium is here to prove that you should probably stop having thoughts like that.

Released in 2017, Conarium is heavily inspired by Lovecraft's Antarctic novella. You find yourself in an Antarctic research facility with very little understanding of what happened to you, where everyone else went, or what exactly the researchers were messing around with.

Because apparently scientists in horror fiction have never encountered the concept of:

"Maybe we shouldn't."

The game focuses heavily on exploration, atmosphere and mystery rather than constant combat. That's important because Lovecraftian horror works best when the player doesn't immediately know what they're dealing with.

Conarium understands this.

The Antarctic setting is bleak, isolated and deeply unsettling. The further you explore, the more you discover about the experiments and the ancient forces involved.

And eventually you begin to realize that the expedition wasn't merely a scientific investigation.

It was a very bad idea.

Conarium is one of the more direct examples of video games translating Lovecraft's cosmic horror into interactive form.

Why it's Lovecraftian: Ancient civilizations, forbidden knowledge, Antarctic isolation and the horrifying realization that humanity has wandered somewhere it doesn't belong.

Best played: Alone, preferably during a snowstorm.