Horror gameshave grown over the decades, going from a mostly untouched sub-genre to a veritable wealth of games that touch on all the facets that make horror a respected genre in any medium. As the genre grows, it allows for more people to enjoy it through the various accessibility features that developers add.
However,certain phobiascan still make gaming difficult depending on the subject matter. Arachnophobia is a big one, making many games difficult to play with how often spiders come up as enemies in games. Horror games make this especially hard, often touching on the primal fear of creepy-crawlies. Thankfully, as someone who found even the Frostbite Spiders of Skyrim unnerving, I know of some great horror games out there are 100 percent spider-free.
You don’t often expect a horror game to be a period piece, but then again, you probably haven’t seen it done as well as Amnesia: The Bunker. You don’t have to know anything about the long-standing horror series to hop into this more modern sequel.
Set in the trenches of WWI, you have to move through the confines of a large bunker armed with a revolver with scarce ammo, all while being hunted by something known as The Beast. This beast has only four legs and is the only monster in the game, but it’s all you’ll need because it has plenty of tricks to hunt you down no matter where you go.
The entirety of the Amnesia series is spider-free. The Bunker is just the best place to start for fans new to the series.
The paranormal genre seems to be on the rise in recent years, and while some games feel like the classic approach to the genre, others do it so well that you’ll wonder why they didn’t do it sooner. The Mortuary Assistant is a game that feels like the next big step in the genre, with a fair amount of jumpscares, but none that feel cheesy.
It uses its first-person camera angles and sound design expertly. There are some religious and body-horror aspects to the game, but no horror facets that include spiders, so you’re safe from any unfortunate arachnophobia scares in this game.
While most horror games look to the monsters for the scares, sometimes the settings themselves carry the weight of a horror title’s eeriness. Soma is one of those games.
Granted, there areplenty of bioengineered monstersin Soma that will stalk you through the underwater halls of the labs. But the overwhelming presence of the game, like a BioShock game that doubled down on the horror, makes you feel claustrophobic at all times. It’s a setting that at every step of the story feels like it doesn’t want you there.
Often, horror games use monsters, or spiders, as we mentioned before, to scare their players. Other times, the horror comes from other people’s actions. Mouthwashing is a game that focuses on the latter. As a member of a crew of people hauling precious cargo through space, something goes awry and leads to the near-destruction of the ship and injuries to some of the crew.
Stranded, the following journey is both a look at body horror, and the horror that is other people. It has its own trigger warnings that you should be wary of, but space is no place for spiders.
For fans of the classic shaky-cam horror movies that want to play a similar horror game, youcan’t go wrong with Outlast. Despite a creepy, nearly run-down mental asylum being its setting, the asylum itself is surprisingly well-dusted.
The pest control person must still come by regularly because, despite the tortured patients and corpses littering the halls, it’s cleaner than you may think. As long as you don’t have a fear of hospitals or the dark, you’ll really enjoy this game that has made a serious name for itself since its first release. And then you can join in on thefun with your friendsin The Outlast Trials as well.
When discussing a long-standing horror series, it’s only a matter of time before you get to the Alien universe. While they’ve tried to jump the media gap from movie to game, none have been as successful as Alien: Isolation.
Tapping into the horror that made the original movies great, and with a plot by Warhammer icon Dan Abnett, the game has you nearly defenseless in a space station, hunted by the iconic xenomorph. It’s heart-pounding and creepy at the most random moments as the game learns your patterns and tries to fight back against you.
The xenomorph is quite humanoid, but be warned: It makes many skittering movements while on all fours that may still be unnerving for those with arachnophobia.
Psychological horror is a sub-genre that is usually safe from any sort of eight-legged monsters, and Layers of Fear is no different. It’s a look into madness, psychological trauma, and familial relationships, and, thankfully, nothing at all to do with arachnids of any sort.
Sure, there are cobwebs in many of the dark and dilapidated rooms of the manor, but no giant spiders haunt the halls. A potentially vengeful ghost, and lots of rats, but no spiders at all. Plus, there’s a pretty good storyline that wraps the plot together, too.
You can also try out Layers of Fear’s 2023 version, which is a remake of the original story and adds two other stories on top.
Sometimes to get away from things like arachnophobia, you have to dive wholeheartedly into another sub-genre of horror. Take, for example, the zombie-horror genre. It’s a veritable classic as far as video games go, and there are few games as of late that have done zombie horror as well as Days Gone. Sure enough, there are no spiders to be seen in this game.
Instead, you’ll be dealing with the hyper-aggressive Freakers, a bloodthirsty cult, and the regular maintenance of your motorcycle as you gothrough Deacon’s story. This is a great choice as it has a setting with a lot of nature, but none of the bugs and spiders you’d expect from a camping trip.
If you’re burnt out from the constant fantasy and horror game spider jumpscares, you may need to play a horror game with a fair amount of humor mixed in. If that’s true, there are few titles out there that set that tone as well as My Friendly Neighborhood.
What starts off as a normal maintenance job quickly devolves into something more sinister, but also kind of funny. Seeing the brightly colored puppets chase you down the halls is something both horrifying and somewhat whimsical. Plus, no spider puppets to be seen. Just a very large bird.
An older game than most on this list, Fear has solidified itself as a cult classic as a series, and you can see why, even with the first installment. Arachnophobes rejoice, there are no spiders to be seen throughout this game. The bad news is that the childish figure known as Alma stalks you across the halls and ventilation shafts of the game.
You aren’t defenseless. In fact, you have a solid arsenal of FPS weapons to defend yourself with. The bad news is they really only work on the paramilitary group that is hunting you down. It’s a creepy paranormal look into FPS games, but one that jump-started a generation.
