Ooey, gooey, adventure horrors led by female protagonists, set in strange worlds just begging to be investigated and thoroughly explored. (In some, you’ll have to get stabby or land a curse.)
Across these titles, you’re often coming in looking for someone or something. A friend, sibling, or partner. Maybe just answers.
Your protagonist will come across grotesque bosses, hostile architecture, and environments that feel like they were designed just to piss you off… familiar?
No one is coming to save you. You have to figure it out all by yourself, no matter how weird everything gets.
So go on, get moving because girl… WTF is this place?
Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – ✅Verified)
Coming off the heels of the hit Deep Sleep series by Scriptwelder, this title expands on the eerie dreamscape that made the earlier trilogy a cult favorite.
This time, the nightmare isn’t confined to a bedroom or a single looping space. It stretches into something much larger and quite possibly much worse.
Your character Amy wanders through a maze of forgotten corridors, decaying rooms, and half-remembered spaces that feel like fragments of someone else’s dream.
Searching for answers while trying to stay one step ahead of whatever may be following you through the dark gets unnerving really fast.
Fans of the original trilogy may spot easter eggs and other quiet nods from the earlier nightmares. The dim lighting, creeping dread, puzzles, and point-and-click exploration all return here in full force.
Silly Polly Beast
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – ✅Verified, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S);
Despite the name, the monsters here are not feeling particularly silly.
As Polly, you quickly realize that being stuck in a haunted orphanage surrounded by weird beasts is not ideal.
This action horror throws you in a bizarre otherworld filled with demons. The environments shift between side-scrolling and top-down perspectives, keeping you at the right kind of disoriented.
It’s a stylish shooter wrapped in an eye-catching art style, like a children’s storybook that took a turn for the worse and landed in the underworld.
The longer you stay, the more everything starts mutating into something larger, weirder, and more aggressive. You will spend most of your time fighting through these monsters while finding the nearest exit.
Greek Tragedy
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – Playable, Switch 1/2, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S);
Also appearing in the PSX-style horror games list, this title begins with the mundane setting of a university campus at night.
Student Amy is thrown deep into survival horror mode when her boyfriend sends her a cryptic email telling her to meet him.
This blends elements of environmental storytelling with low-poly visuals that create a satisfying mix of nostalgia and occult weirdness.
Also… what was that about a gas leak? And masked men sprinting down the hallways like it’s their job to end you? And where the hell is campus security?
Amy has to investigate and escape, preferably in whatever order gives her the best chance of surviving.
Tormented Souls 2
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – Playable, PS5, Xbox Series X/S);
The first edition of Tormented Souls brought fixed-camera angles, complex puzzles, and a deep commitment to that nostalgic survival horror energy.
Now Caroline Walker reawakens for round two, where she once again finds herself pulled into a nightmare. It isn’t about just surviving anymore; she’s actively searching for answers about the mysterious forces that seem determined to reshape her life.
The sequel expands the story with new locations, threats, and mind-boggling puzzles that further push her into the unknown.
Resource management remains important, meaning every bullet, item, and questionable tool could spell her survival, or else she becomes monster food.
Hollowbody
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – ✅Verified, PS5, Xbox Series X/S);
Like many dystopian settings, this world is already in terrible shape long before your character, Mica, arrives.
Set in a quarantined exclusion zone, you search for your missing partner inside a city that was abandoned after a mysterious catastrophe.
The streets are empty. Buildings are collapsing. And the silence is loud enough to feel suspicious. Something happened here, and it clearly didn’t end well.
You probe crumbling apartments and forgotten corners of the city while slowly piecing together clues about what caused the disaster.
All the while, creatures roam the ruins, and blood is splattered across homes, clearly aligned with its strong atmospheric storytelling.
This survival horror also appears in the fixed camera horror list.
Withering Rooms
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – Playable, PS5, Xbox Series X/S)
Imagine being a girl in a frilly Victorian dress trying to survive a mansion that hates your guts. Tough luck.
Each night brings a barrage of new enemies, secrets, and sections of the house to venture through. The house behaves like a living labyrinth that reveals itself the longer your character Nightingale survives.
Also, if your character dies, all your items vanish. The mansion keeps them. Saving is possible but limited, which adds that extra layer of panic when everything is attacking you.
It feels like a classic that’s been rewired with modern ideas. Its atmosphere and challenging progression have earned it a dedicated fanbase that’s soon about to be rewarded with a sequel titled Withering Realms.
This title, along with the next two, appears in the terrifying and tender list of emotionally gripping horror games like Little Nightmares 3.
Gylt
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – ✅Verified, Switch 1/2, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
This is a little less shapeless chainsaw monster in the hallway and more oof, ahh, ouch, my heart.
The story follows your character, Sally, on your way to find your missing cousin in a distorted version of your hometown.
As Sally, you have asthma, which understandably keeps your stamina low, making the stealth sections feel a bit too real. Trying to sneak past monsters while wheezing your lungs out? Don’t even complain, you literally have no breath for it.
Your journey through this warped world explores themes of loneliness and the anxieties of growing up.
A kind of horror close to reality where you definitely shouldn’t forget your inhaler.
Beyond the Darkness
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – Playable)
Millie, a young girl, takes serious horrors head-on to find her missing family.
Navigating a janky dreamscape shaped by fragments of her memory, she descends into dangerous environments guided only by light.
There is no combat here, only movement, observation, and puzzle solving. Objects carry emotional weight. And creatures appear less like enemies and more like horror filtered through a child’s introspection.
Turning back isn’t an option anymore. The deeper she goes, the darker the lessons become. Will Millie’s magical lamp illuminate the answers she has been looking for? What hope lies in the darkness?
Bye Sweet Carole
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – Playable, Switch 1/2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S)
A magical kind of nostalgia hits differently here, with its hand-drawn fairytale visuals that somehow wandered off the page and into something a little more evil.
As Lana Benton, you step straight into an animated world reminiscent of classic films.
It feels warm and familiar, yet behind the curtains of the soft storybook charm is a tale with horror elements that blend cinematic storytelling with interactive sequences.
A horde of misshapen bunnies will attack, and it’s very important that you fight back. A ghostly figure in a top hat also lurks behind you as you try to solve the mystery behind your missing friend.
Solve puzzles, avoid threats, and piece together the truth of Bunny Hall orphanage.
House of Necrosis
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck – ✅Verified)
Paying homage to the first Resident Evil, its name says a lot about the terrors you’ll get yourself into.
In this PSX-style horror, you are an investigator where items, traps, enemies, and other entities are waiting for you in an expansive, dark dungeon territory.
Exploration unfolds across a grid-based system, where movement happens tile by tile, aka: indecisive girlies, to the back. Step forward, and the darkness steps towards you, too.
A thoughtful, methodical horror where there may be a pause before every action, but that only means the weight shifts heavily on you, in this unfriendly nowhere where you only have yourself.
Plan, don’t panic. And when it all fails, just put a hex on your enemies!
Through puzzles, exploration, combat, stealth, or sheer determination, these female protagonists are the only thing standing between fragile order and complete, unhinged nonsense.
Someone has to deal with the horrors, and fortunately, it’s her.
