9 Deep South Horror Games

Platform: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Developer: Pieces Interactive
Setting: 1930s Louisiana

If your horror games tastes lean Gothic with a side of Southern decay, Alone in the Dark (2024) brings it in spades—haunted mansions, cryptic cults, and a bayou-drenched atmosphere that feels like it’s sweating ghosts.

Set in 1930s Louisiana, this reimagining of the 1992 classic drops you into Derceto Manor, a psychiatric facility that’s seen better (and far less cursed) days. You play as either Emily Hartwood or Edward Carnby (voiced by Jodie Comer and David Harbour), unraveling a mystery that dips deep into cosmic horror.

Rotting grandeur? Check. Swamp-soaked mystery? Absolutely. That creeping feeling something’s very wrong with the wallpaper? Oh yeah.

Creature designs by Guillermo del Toro collaborator Guy Davis seal the deal. Sure, the game stumbled in reviews, but its atmosphere? Pure Deep South nightmare fuel.

Vibe check: True Detective Season 1 gets possessed by a forgotten god and left to fester in a vintage asylum.

8. Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise

Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC
Developer: Toybox Inc., White Owls Inc.
Setting: Le Carré, Louisiana

If the first Deadly Premonition was a beautiful mess, this one’s a full-blown breakdown in the Louisiana heat.

You’re back with FBI Agent Francis York Morgan, this time flipping between a 2005 investigation in Le Carré and a 2019 FBI interrogation that feels more like therapy with ghosts. The town leans hard into Southern Gothic weirdness—creepy locals, a nightmare-inducing red drug, voodoo undertones, and just enough heat haze to make you question reality.

Also: York travels by skateboard. No, it’s never explained. And yes, it’s perfect.

Clunky framerate? Absolutely. Broken pacing? Sometimes. But for a surreal detective story soaked in tone and teeth-gritting strangeness, there’s nothing else like it.

Vibe check: True Detective had a heatstroke, borrowed Twin Peaks‘ hallucinations, and never asked, “Should we?”

7. Outlast 2

Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch
Developer: Red Barrels
Setting: Rural Arizona (but spiritually, it’s Deep South horror)

Outlast 2 doesn’t walk you into horror—it hurls you in screaming. You’re journalist Blake Langermann, dropped into the backroads with nothing but a camcorder and a prayer after your helicopter crashes near a doomsday cult’s turf.

Sure, it’s Arizona. But this game checks all the Southern horror boxes:

• Preacher-led fanatics quoting scripture with machetes in hand
• Rotting wood and gutted churches
• Sin, salvation, and a whole lot of screaming

And you? You’re unarmed. Hiding in cornfields. Running from people who think burning you alive is a favor.

The game also flips between the cult-ridden backwoods and PTSD-fueled flashbacks to Catholic school. It’s a ride.

Vibe check: Texas Chain Saw Massacre joins a doomsday cult and invites The Exorcist over for dinner.

6. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2023)

Platform: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, PC
Developer: Sumo Nottingham / Gun Interactive
Setting: Rural Texas, 1970s

This one speaks for itself. A multiplayer survival horror game that drops you into grindhouse hell. Either you’re the prey—scrambling through trap-rigged houses and cornfields—or you’re the family, hunting everything that moves.

Two sides. One objective: don’t die.

It’s not flashy. It’s dirty, sweaty, and desperate. The maps are tight, the tension is suffocating, and the chainsaw? Always closer than you think.

Vibe check: You’re lost, the sun’s setting, and a chainsaw just fired up behind you. Survive if you can.

5. Haunted Mansion (2023)

Platform: Disney+
Developer: Walt Disney Pictures
Setting: New Orleans, Louisiana

This reboot surprised people in the horror games genre. It ditches camp for Southern Gothic and delivers a ghost story with more bite than expected.

A mother and son move into a haunted New Orleans mansion and call in a crew of spiritual weirdos to help. You’ve got:

• A ghost tour guide with baggage
• A washed-up priest
• A medium who’s just done
• A historian on the verge of quitting

Together, they take on the mansion’s lore and its most notorious ghost, the Hatbox.

It’s spooky, stylish, and soaked in Southern mood. It’s also the most Haunted Mansion has felt like an actual haunting.

Vibe check: Scooby-Doo grows up, moves to New Orleans, and inherits a jazz-haunted nightmare.

4. Hunt: Showdown 1896

Platform: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Developer: Crytek
Setting: Louisiana Bayou, 1896

Monsters. Guns. Heatstroke. Hunt: Showdown is what happens when survival horror gets dropped into a swamp and handed a double-barrel.

You’re a bounty hunter in the late 1800s, hunting literal nightmares while watching your back for rival players doing the same.

Every bullet counts. Every noise matters. One bad step, and you’re buzzard food.

With its 1896 update, the game doubles down on its bayou terror, turning the South into a grim frontier crawling with curses and corpses.

Vibe check: True Detective meets Resident Evil with a bloodied map and a death wish.

3. Shadow Man (1999)

Platform: N64, PS1, Dreamcast, PC (remastered available)
Developer: Acclaim Studios Teesside
Setting: New Orleans & Deadside

Shadow Man is voodoo apocalypse in digital form.

You’re Michael LeRoi, a man caught between the world of the living and the land of the dead. His weapon? The Mask of Shadows. His mission? Stop the end of the world—by hunting down serial killers and lost souls across New Orleans and a place called Deadside.

It’s twisted. It’s tragic. And it’s dripping with that slow Southern decay.

Vibe check: True Blood meets Hellraiser in a fever dream fueled by grief and gunfire.

2. South of Midnight

Platform: Xbox Series X|S, PC
Developer: Compulsion Games
Setting: Prospero, Deep South

South of Midnight doesn’t scream at you—it haunts you.

After a hurricane tears through Prospero, Hazel Flood is left to pick up the pieces—literally and spiritually. Creatures lurk in the woods. Family secrets whisper through the trees. And folklore? It’s not just stories here. It’s real.

The art style feels handcrafted and off-kilter, like it’s been pulled from a forgotten Southern myth. The soundtrack bleeds blues and gospel.

Vibe check: True Detective meets Coraline by way of a Southern ghost story your grandmother almost told you.

1. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Platform: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, PC
Developer: Capcom
Setting: Dulvey, Louisiana

This is the one that brought Resident Evil back to its roots—and then dug deeper. Way deeper.

You play as Ethan Winters, just a guy looking for his wife. Instead, you find the Baker family, the swamp’s worst-kept secret, and a house that feels like it’s breathing. Mold. Gore. Madness.

You don’t just survive this place. You crawl through it, and the Deep South setting just makes it so much worse.

Vibe check: Blair Witch Project meets Deliverance, dipped in rot and lit by a flickering porch light.

The Deep South: Where the Horror Games Stay Scary

Horror games hit different when it’s Southern.

It’s slower. Heavier. Less about what jumps out and more about what’s been waiting. These games understand that—the stories buried under floorboards, the things passed down through generations, the swamps that remember everything.

Whether it’s folklore, grief, or full-on madness, Southern horror sticks to your skin. These games don’t just scare you. They stay with you.