As nights darken and Halloween beckons, October is the perfect time to close the curtains and settle down with a horror game. Bye Sweet Carole (out Thursday 9 October) is a beautifully animated narrative-horror set in the early 20th century. A young woman searches for her missing friend in a mysterious orphanage, which sounds like a perfectly safe course of action. The game’s aesthetic is reminiscent of 2000’s American McGee’s Alice, itself inspired by Alice In Wonderland. It’s also similar to puzzle platformer Little Nightmares III (Thursday 9 October), the latest in the popular series. It’s the first entry from Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games and it follows a pair of new protagonists exploring a nightmarish dreamworld. The original Little Nightmares rereleases on the same day in ‘enhanced’ form.

Anyone who’s finished Doom: The Dark Ages and wants a bit more could do worse than check out Painkiller (Tuesday 21 October), a reboot of the grisly 2004 FPS of the same name. It looks remarkably similar to id Software’s most recent Doom (to be fair, it’s been in development for years). Painkiller’s Polish developer Anshar Studios has form in the horror genre, having worked on Layers Of Fear, Observer and the Silent Hill 2 remake. The tortuously long-awaited sequel to a cult 2004 action RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (Tuesday 21 October) was initially set for release in 2020. Developer Hardsuit Labs and original Bloodlines writer Brian Mitsoda were then thrown off the project in favour of Still Wakes The Deep developer The Chinese Room. Previews of the resultant game have divided opinion between purists looking to recapture the original and those who think this could be an interesting new direction for the series.

Another sequel, Tormented Souls 2 (Thursday 23 October), is the follow-up to a 2021 game that was very much in awe of the original Resident Evil. There’s a real appetite for this sort of survival-horror throwback, buoyed by the recent success of the Resi remakes and last year’s Silent Hill 2 do-over. And speaking of remakes, Plants Vs Zombies: Replanted (Thursday 23 October) is a remaster of the hugely successful tower defence game from 2009. While its legacy has been somewhat sullied by poor spin-offs and an exploitative free-to-play sequel, the original still stands tall as a classic of the genre. As well as an HD repaint, players can enjoy local co-op and new game variants including a ‘hardcore’ mode.

Horror has a storied history in gaming and there are many classic titles well worth your time this month. Over the years since 2019, Capcom have been steadily remaking their Resident Evil back catalogue (together with new entry Village). Resident Evil 4 (2023) is the stand-out in a consistently strong series: it’s a suffocating assault on the senses and a practically perfect horror game in its most recent form. Capcom’s Resi-rection success eventually spurred rival Konami to get back into making games, with last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake by far the best way to experience one of gaming’s most famous stories. Another game feted for its strong narrative is 2015’s SOMA. Set in an underwater research facility, it’s an intensely creepy first-person adventure that explores notions of consciousness and humanity.

Arriving 13 years after the first game, Alan Wake 2 (2023) is a magnificent postmodern action-adventure about a novelist trying to escape an alternative dimension. It’s wonderfully unpredictable, hilariously self-referential and it wears its Twin Peaks heart on its bloody sleeve. Last but definitely not least, 2014’s Alien Isolation is one of the most terrifying games ever made. Players take on the role of Amanda Ripley, searching in vain for her mother (yes, that Ripley) on an eerie, seemingly abandoned space station. Total War developer Creative Assembly worked with a sizeable budget for this loving tribute to Ridley Scott’s Alien, and this nerve-shredding game of hide-and-seek featuring a (mostly) single xenomorph is a sustained horror experience like no other.