Summary
Horror and comedy make a surprisingly great pairing and their eccentric hybridity reaches ever greater heights in video games. While the tone and style of horror and comedy can vary widely, there’s a surprising amount of dark humor to be found in even the scariest games.
Whether it’s mowing down mindless zombies with friends or trying to survive the outlandish camp of exaggerated villains, there’s plenty of fun to be had, especially for those with a dark sense of humor.
Both multiplayer and single-player games will be considered for this list.
In horror movies, the monster seems to get a lot of joy out of the mayhem they wreak, andCarrionseeks to replicate that joy inglorious and terrifying pixel graphics glory. Playing as a monster let loose in an underground facility the player’s simple goal is to wreak havoc on those poor unsuspecting humans.
What makesCarrionfunny is its over-the-top and wildly entertaining ragdoll physics system. The player’s main power involves picking humans up and swinging them around like a ball on the end of a rope resulting in comical violence that makes it easy to imagine why horror movie monsters find all this terror so delightful.
There’s plenty to be afraid of in the world ofDayZ. Whether it’s the fearsome wildlife, the hostile other players, or the many glitches that plagued the game on release, there’s always something to dread. However, the game’s multiplayer-first mentality offsets the horror elements with a lot of laughs.
Inevitably, other players can deliver thrills and laughs alike. Forging unlikely alliances, seeing naked survivors sprinting across fields, and brutal but hilarious betrayals of newfound friends keep the game lighthearted enough to fight the never-ending undead horde.
WhileDead by Daylight’s premise of fighting for survival against horror cinema’s most fearsome antagonists (and surely many more killers to come) should inspire fear, its mechanics that encourage trickery and clever plays from both monster and survivors make for a lot of laughs.
There is something intrinsically funny about a group of survivors trying to outwit a terrifying monster and have them stand thwarted like a tempestuous toddler. Similarly, trapping the survivors as the monster can lead to moments of absurd violence that horseshoe from the horrific directly into the hilarious, fueled by an active voice chat of friends.
On its surface,Phasmophobiashould be absolutely terrifying with itshorde of terrifying ghosts. Players take the role of ghost hunters investigating haunted dwellings to determine what kind of spectral being is haunting its walls. Procedurally generated settings and scares keep players constantly on their toes.
However,Phasmophobiais part of a new breed of cooperative horror games that, through slightly janky mechanics and an emphasis on proximity voice chat, infuses player hijinks with the absurdity of what they’re doing, leading to genuinely hilarious moments where grown adults let out screams quickly followed by bouts of laughter.
Any horror fan knows that on the surface, horror films are all about the scares, but in actuality, a lot of horror has baked-in comedy elements. No part of horror embraces camp comedy more than the slasher film.
Until Dawntakes the slasher formula of infusing horror with comedy and brings it to the world of video gameswhere the player needs to make a series of ever more important choices. In one moment, the player is forced to survive against a terrifying killer, and in the next, the characters are delivering zinging one-liners laced with camp that can’t help but force a smile on the player’s face. It’s a sincere love letter to comedy-horror cinema.
Where some games treat the zombie apocalypse with a degree of seriousness,Left 4 Dead 2leaves all that on the floor and embraces the absurdity of the situation, especially with mechanically in-depth cooperative play that allows a player to slaughter undead hordes with their pals.
With a host of over-the-top core characters cracking one-liners, comedic ragdoll physics in the face of the game’sscariest special infected zombies, and a rapid-fire set of visual gags in every map, it’s hard not to take delight inLeft 4 Dead 2’s clear and constant sense of humor.
More than any other game seriesDead Risingunderstands the fundamental compatibility between horror and comedy. Playing as Frank West in an undead playground of an abandoned mall,Dead Risingleans into the absurdity of the situation with glee.
Dead Rising’s comedy comes in many forms. Whether it’s the absurd over-the-top characters that populate the world,the hyperbolic gorefests many of the weapons deal out, or the comedic armaments Frank can use to dish out undead-directed violence, there’s no shortage of laughs in a world that’s gone to hell.
Out of all the popular horror video game franchises, no other understands the overlap between camp humor and genuine horror quite like theResident Evilfranchise. The recentResident Evil 4 Remakeis a perfect example of this understanding made manifest.
The Remake,despite some major story changes, retains Leon’s corny one-liners, antagonists that look like they’re out of a carnival rather than a horror game, and a comical melee system delivering massive kicks that send hordes of enemies flying while still delivering genuine scares.Resident Evil 4 Remakeis the platonic ideal of horror and comedy’s delicate but complementary balance.
