Spooky springtime shenanigans
- by Ben Kerry
As some of you may have seen, SEGA and Creative Assembly just teased the next Alien: Isolation game as part of Alien Day 2026 – and we’ve chucked their short trailer up above for you to take a quick look at. It doesn’t show us much, but it does get us excited for what the team is cooking up, and we’re now in the mood to play some other horror games while we wait.
So, we’re going to talk about some splendid spooky specials — that are playable on Xbox — which are absolutely worth playing through before Alien: Isolation 2 arrives sometime in the future. Of course, you can also go back and play the original if you fancy it – it’s a fan favourite for a reason!
The first game we want to mention here is 2023’s Amnesia: The Bunker. The latest effort from Frictional Games harkened back to the team’s roots; focusing on one core enemy to scare the pants off you. The Bunker’s “relentless, AI-driven monster” is very reminiscent of the Alien in Isolation – it’s that foreboding sense of dread that terrifies you as much as anything else. It swaps out the sci-fi aesthetic for something of a more gritty affair, but there’s a lot of overlap between these games’ core ideas. Seriously, give Amnesia: The Bunker a whirl if you’re after that Alien-style thrill.
Another title we’ll talk about here is A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead from Stormind Games. This movie tie-in is more linear in nature than our previous comparison, but it still features a terrifyingly relentless enemy that you’ll learn to outmanoeuvre throughout your journey across the “new, eerily tranquil, post-apocalyptic landscape”. The Road Ahead has another similarity to Alien: Isolation; ‘Microphone Noise Detection’. Plug your headset in and you can toggle a setting that lets the monster hear you in real life – just like Isolation did all the way back in 2014 with a Kinect sensor! Now that’s a wild connection, eh?
Our final recommendations here come from developer Red Barrels – yep, it’s the Outlast series; specifically Outlast and Outlast 2. Again featuring a stalker-like enemy that just wants to see you dead, the first two Outlast games feel like cornerstones of the modern horror genre; they really are that good. The first game has you surviving a maze-like Asylum while Outlast 2 takes you on a more rural journey through “a town deep in the wilderness and hidden from civilization”. While we were mixed on the team’s more recent multiplayer effort, these first two single-player titles really are must-plays for horror fans. And, they’d lead you perfectly into Alien: Isolation 2 when it does arrive on Xbox!
While there are loads and loads of other fantastic horror games on Xbox, these are just some of our recommendations for a more Alien: Isolation-like experience ahead of the sequel’s arrival soon. Better yet, you can grab Amnesia and both Outlast games for very cheap on Xbox for the next couple of days – go take a look on the Microsoft Store if any of these tickle your fancy!
Excited for Alien: Isolation 2? Playing any of these other alternatives? Talk to us about horror on Xbox down below.
Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin’ in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he’s not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that’s far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.
