Yeah… Maybe ten (… possibly closer to twenty) years ago “spooky games” became popular because influencers loved to React to them so the vast majority became jump scare fests. Then PT’s demo came out and suddenly it was High Art to make a nonsense jump scare game and things never really recovered from that.

Others have mentioned Amnesia/Penumbra which… I loved them but I think they don’t get the balance quite right. And it is telling that a decade old game is still the go to recommendation. So I’ll give a few others:

I only ever played 2, but Alien versus Predator (2000) is on GoG for 6 bucks. And 2’s Marine campaign is still weirdly one of my gold standards. Because ammo wasn’t actually scarce at all and you got some pretty hefty firepower since it is very much more Aliens. But you also feel yourself rapidly becoming Private Hudson as you just get closer and closer to breaking while you walk through dark corridors and occasionally get a blip on your motion tracker. And when the aliens finally do break through that vent? It is less a jump scare and more just forcing you into full lizard brain mode as you react before feeling completely drained afterwards and realizing… you still have another couple kilometers to your evac point that is TOTALLY going to not explode as you get to it. It is a game that understands the scariest part in a Resident Evil is when you suddenly see a wall full of grenade and shotgun ammo and realize… there is a reason for that.

Some moments in Prey (the second one that is an immersive sim from Arkane) had similar vibes but that game is all over the place and the period between “every single coffee cup might be an enemy that takes out half my health in one swing” to “I am functionally immortal” is REAL short. And it is an Arkane game so you are penalized for doing the fun stuff.

For something from this decade (maybe?): I am not sure if I would call them “scary”, but look into A Plague Tale. The dark room and swarm segments have atmosphere on LOCK and it is the first game in probably decades that made me leave the bathroom light on at night because I kept waking up and thinking the wall was moving.

That said… if you want the emphasis on “upsetting”, don’t sleep on the retro aesthetic “ps1 horror game” revival. Mouthwashing came out semi-recently and has a LOT of content warnings (some of which are massive spoilers for the themes of the game) but very much captures the horror of being trapped on a ship with the kind of people who would get the kind of job where you are at space-sea for months or even years at a time.

But yeah, the “ps1 horror game” genre is very similar to modern horror movies from folk like Jordan Peele and Zach “Gallon of PCP” Cregger where they understand that the root of much of these scary stories and horror movies are dealing with the psychological stresses and fears of the world and crank them up to eleven. So if you vibe with the aesthetics, you can basically find anything to deeply unsettle you.