You gotta love horror games with mysterious, haunted mansions. They work so well. You enter the estate, or wake up in a calm part of it, only to find hordes of traps, the undead and a bevy of haunted horrors waiting to overwhelm you.
It’s still a preferred setting for horror games, action-adventures, and for its parodies — so here are some of our highlights.
Released in 1980, set in an abandoned mansion, Mystery House for the Apple II was one of the first video games with actual graphics.
The mansions in the first two classic Alone in the Dark games had something terrible in every corner. For me this was the ultimate horror series of my childhood.
The Colonel’s Bequest: A Laury Bow Mystery is an early Roberta Williams adventure game, with stunning atmosphere and graphics for a 80s adventure game.
The 1995 Japan-only Super Famicom horror game Clock Tower had large, terrifying setting in the Barrows mansion.
Trapped in an abandoned manor, the surviving Alpha team members in the first Resident Evil has to explore the building and the secrets of the Umbrella Corporation beneath it.
A couple buys an abandoned mansion of 19th-century magician named Zoltan Carnovasch in the psychological interactive horror game Phantasmagoria. What could go wrong huh?
The evens in the 3DO first-person shooter game Killing Time take place in an Egyptian-themed estate on Matinicus Isle.
The horrors of the Brennenburg Castle and its depths are awaiting to be explored in Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Dr. Fred Edison’s mansion in Maniac Mansion is probably the most famous one, with a strange meteor in its backyard.
You arrive to Dr. Nero Neurosis’ castle to fix computers in Brain Dead 13 but the not-so-serious game will soon be about escaping.
It wouldn’t be fair to forget Final Fantasy VII‘s Shinra Manor in Nibelheim, which has quite a few secrets to uncover.
Japan-only horrors, old adventure games, there are plenty of other mystery mansion games out there. Hit the comments with your picks!
Pictures: jeremypamyupamyu, Sierra Chest, anklerocker, AmnesiaGame, FF Wiki, HardcoreGaming101
Comments
14 responses to “The Most Terrifying Mystery Mansions In Video Games”
Despite your opinions on Resident Evil 5, the Lost in Madness DLC was pretty spookifying.
Eternal Darkness?
Or was that not a mansion? Don’t know, never played it
I’ve always though that if I get filthy rich I would build a replica of ED’s mansion. Loved it.
The Mansion from Timesplitters: Future Perfect. That was pretty creepy.
Let’s not forget old man Stauf’s haunted mansion in The 7th Guest!
Any list of scary video game mansions is worthless without the 7th guest. 😉
Does the Shalebridge Cradle count as a mansion?
An abandoned Orphanage and a Mental Asylum rolled into one, whats not to love?
Counts in my book. The attic door slamming was a high point. As was the fact that the entire entry part of the map was set up as being extra spooky, yet did not actually contain any opponents.
Jet Set Willy
The Tzimitze house in VTM: Bloodlines would be hard to beat, the walls were made of living flesh! May not count as a mansion though but the Malkavian Primogen’s mansion with its hordes of insane ghouls would rate pretty high on the creepy scale
Project Zero / Fatal Frame is probably the only horror game I’ve ever played which has actually got my heartrate up with suspense.
Ghosts appearing and disappearing all the damn time, you could hear heart thumping in the game, and all you had to defend yourself was a camera!
Not much of a mansion (game says it is and I guess it’s pretty big for such a small race of people), but getting blown up just for refusing to pay someone is pretty terrifying 😛
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sTJ2irHVJg (yes, this is mostly a joke post)
Whoops, accidentally replied to dknigs.