Folk Horror in Video Games

Folk horror is, at its core, the anxiety of modern life encountering deep, forgotten tradition. It thrives on the sense of isolation, the dread that comes from realizing the local rules - the "old ways" - are unknowable and dangerous to the outsider.

These principles translate seamlessly into gaming, forcing the player to confront entities and rituals born of the soil itself. The following titles stand as prime examples of how video games have mastered this unsettling, often ritualistic, strain of horror and dark fantasy.

The Ritual and the Outsider

The most direct interpretation of folk horror often places the player as a definite outsider entering a deeply self-contained system. Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly is a classic example. Set in the isolated, fictional Japanese village of Minakami, the game's horror is entirely derived from local tradition: the ritual of the twin sacrifice and the subsequent curse that creates a spiritual, inescapable darkness. The player must use the Camera Obscura to fight ghosts bound by this tragic, archaic folklore.

Similarly, Resident Evil 7 takes the familiar trope of the English pagan cult and transposes it onto the humid, isolated Louisiana bayou. While utilizing modern bio-weaponry, the horrifying Baker family and their estate function as a self-contained, rural cult built around a grotesque new "folk god" (the Mould). The player, Ethan, is the ultimate outsider, dragged into a world defined by the Bakers' horrific, self-made traditions.

We also have Deadly Premonition, in which FBI Agent Francis York Morgan is on the case when a young woman is ritually murdered The King in Yellow style.

In a more traditional British vein, The Excavation at Hob's Barrow grounds its folk dread in the English landscape, following an investigator drawn to a remote, windswept town where ancient burial mounds and local legends hint at an older, malevolent force tied to the soil, perfectly capturing that parochial, Wicker Man-esque dread.

Myth, Fable, and the Dark Forest

The genre expands to include games that actively explore and twist European folklore. These titles use the visual language of fairy tales to mask a core of darkness and ritualistic fear. In the Scandinavian-inspired world of Röki, the player navigates a frozen wilderness populated by creatures drawn from Norse mythology, turning classic fables into an environmental adventure where the line between myth and reality is dangerously blurred.

Echoing this Scandinavian focus is Year Walk, a deeply unsettling, cryptic horror adventure based entirely on the Swedish tradition of Årsgång—a dark ritual journey into the wilderness to glimpse the future. Its isolation and reliance on deep, regional superstition make it a masterpiece of interactive folk dread.

Bramble: The Mountain King takes the most visually arresting route, pulling Nordic fables—trolls, gnomes, and nature spirits—into a beautiful yet terrifying world. As a young boy, the player faces nightmarish, larger-than-life versions of familiar creatures, directly confronting the dark, sacrificial undertones present in much of Northern European folklore.

While not strictly horror, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons serves as a vital adjacent title, beautifully demonstrating the environmental isolation and mythic quest structure inherent in true folklore, traveling through a stunning but dangerous world defined by local legends.

Modern Myths and Communal Isolation

Some of the most effective folk horror games craft their own local mythologies or rely on specific cultural anxieties and isolation. Detention, a Taiwanese title, uses the White Terror era and the suppressed history of its setting to create a potent blend of political and folk horror. It leverages local mythological elements, religious imagery, and ritual paper art, intertwining personal trauma with the ghosts of cultural oppression in a beautifully unsettling narrative.

Alan Wake finds its footing in the American Pacific Northwest, a landscape rich with modern legends and local secrets. The "Dark Presence" that haunts the small town of Bright Falls is a localized, landscape-specific evil that draws its power from the creative process itself, turning the natural, isolated environment into a source of existential threat.

Also, while often categorized as a teen slasher, Until Dawn is saved by its core antagonist: the Wendigo. By pivoting the horror toward this specific, deeply-rooted North American Indigenous folk legend of a monstrous, cannibalistic spirit, the game achieves a moment of pure, terrifying folk horror where the isolation of the mountains becomes tied to an ancient, starving evil.

The Quiet Decay of Community

The last group of games focuses less on jump scares and more on the decay of a small, isolated community—a hallmark of subtle folk horror. Oxenfree is centered on a secluded island where the core threat is a supernatural entity accessed through radio frequencies. The story relies on the location's specific history and a local ghost story, turning a seemingly benign place into a prison defined by unresolved, communal trauma.

Night in the Woods, though visually cartoony, is a poignant exploration of the decaying American town. Its underlying plot involves an actual cult practicing dark, sacrificial rituals to appease a local, ancient entity—a profound and sad take on how desperation leads back to archaic beliefs.

Lastly, Everyone Has Gone to the Rapture encapsulates the ultimate expression of English parochial isolation. The player wanders through a perfectly rendered, empty Shropshire village, piecing together the final moments of the community’s rapture. The entity involved is abstract, but the horror is fundamentally about the land absorbing the people, turning memory, and the physical location itself, into the main source of terror. The closed community has ceased to exist, having completed its final, terrifying transition.

Folk horror is alive and well in videogames and there are many different interpretations of the genre. Have I missed any games? Let me know in the comments.