Horror video games can be an incredible source of visual inspiration. Unlike films, games allow you to move through unsettling environments, investigate small details and experience atmosphere at your own pace.
From abandoned buildings and dimly lit corridors to strange landscapes and environments that seem to change around you, horror games show how lighting, colour, space and environmental details can make even an apparently ordinary location feel threatening.
This section explores what artists can learn from the visual language of horror games and how those ideas can inspire your own eerie artwork.
Environmental Storytelling in Horror Games
Some of the most memorable horror environments tell you something before a character ever explains what happened.
An abandoned room, damaged furniture, personal belongings, or marks left on a wall can all suggest a story. Artists can use the same principle to create images that feel as though something happened before the viewer arrived.
The aim isn’t necessarily to explain everything. Leaving some details unanswered can encourage the viewer to examine the artwork and form their own interpretation.
Lighting and Limited Visibility
Horror games frequently restrict what you can see.
Dark corridors, weak artificial lighting, fog, flickering lights and small illuminated areas can make the space beyond them feel much more significant.
For artists, this demonstrates that you don’t have to show everything within a scene. Controlling light and shadow can direct attention towards important areas while allowing other details to remain uncertain.
Abandoned and Decaying Environments
Hospitals, houses, industrial buildings, underground spaces and forgotten outdoor locations appear frequently throughout horror games.
What makes these environments effective isn’t simply that they’re dark. Peeling surfaces, damaged objects, overgrowth, dirt, ageing materials and signs of previous occupation can all make a location feel as though it has a history.
Studying these environments can provide useful ideas for adding texture, deterioration and atmosphere to your own drawings.
Isolation and Empty Space
Sometimes the absence of something is what makes an environment unsettling.
Large empty rooms, long corridors, deserted streets and distant structures can create a strong sense of isolation, particularly when the viewer expects something to appear.
Artists can experiment with scale, negative space and the placement of small figures or objects to create a similar feeling within a static image.
Unsettling Creature and Character Design
Horror games have produced countless approaches to disturbing character and creature design.
Some rely on obvious anatomical distortion, while others are effective because they remain recognisably human or animal with one or two carefully altered features.
Studying silhouette, proportion, posture, movement and surface texture can help you understand why a design feels unsettling and give you ideas for developing original horror characters of your own.
Surreal and Impossible Environments
Horror doesn’t always follow the rules of the real world.
Rooms can repeat, corridors can lead somewhere impossible, familiar locations can gradually change, and ordinary architecture can become increasingly distorted.
These environments are particularly useful inspiration for artists because they show how perspective and familiar spaces can be deliberately manipulated while still giving the viewer enough visual information to understand the scene.
Using Horror Games as Artistic Inspiration
Taking inspiration from horror games doesn’t mean copying their characters, environments or screenshots.
Instead, look at the visual decisions behind the experience. Consider how lighting directs your attention, why an empty room feels uncomfortable, how environmental details suggest a story or what makes a particular creature silhouette immediately unsettling.
Those principles can then become starting points for something completely different.
As new guides are created for Dreaded Designs, this section will explore different ways horror video games can inspire eerie art while helping you develop your own ideas and visual style.
