Every Dark Pictures Game Ranked: All 5 From Worst to Best

Five games. Five entirely different settings. Five casts of characters who may or may not make it to the credits — depending entirely on you. The Dark Pictures Anthology has now run for seven years across two seasons, and with Directive 8020 raising the bar higher than ever, the question of where each entry sits relative to the others is more interesting than it has ever been.

This is our definitive ranking of all five Dark Pictures games, scored across five categories — Story, Cast & Characters, Scares & Atmosphere, Gameplay Innovation, and Replayability — and presented in order from #5 to #1. Whether you're new to the series and deciding where to start, or a returning player trying to figure out what comes next, this is the full breakdown. Each entry links to its official merchandise collection at the Dark Pictures Gear Store, where every item is officially licensed through Sophisticated GEEK®.

Why It Ranks #5

Man of Medan has an incredible premise — five friends who stumble upon the real-life mystery of the SS Ourang Medan, a WWII military transport whose entire crew was found dead under circumstances that have never been fully explained. That setup is one of the strongest in the series. The problem is execution: the game was Supermassive's first attempt at the shortened anthology format after Until Dawn, and the production limitations show. The second half loses momentum badly, the Theatrical Cut and Curator's Cut dual-perspective system is clever but exposes how thin some scenes are when viewed twice, and several character decisions feel driven by plot necessity rather than genuine personality.

None of that makes it bad — Man of Medan is genuinely creepy in its first two hours, and the ghost ship setting remains one of the best physical environments the series has produced. It ranks fifth not because it fails, but because everything that came after it improved on what it started.

Full Man of Medan collection →

Why It Ranks #4

Little Hope is the most narratively ambitious game in Season 1 and probably in the entire anthology. Its central conceit — that the 17th-century witch trial victims haunting the present-day cast are directly connected to the modern characters through something more than setting — is genuinely clever, and the slow unravelling of that connection across a single night is the series at its most literary.

The problem is the ending. Whether you find it subversive or frustrating depends entirely on your tolerance for a twist that recontextualises everything you have done in a way that not everyone finds satisfying. Half the players who finish Little Hope think it's the best-written game in the anthology. The other half feel cheated. That division is itself a mark of ambitious writing — but it's also why it ranks fourth rather than higher. Its gameplay is also the most static of the four Season 1 entries, with fewer meaningful environmental interactions than what came after.

Full Little Hope collection →

Why It Ranks #3

The Devil in Me is the entry that finally made Dark Pictures feel like a proper video game rather than an interactive film. Every character receives a unique tool — a lighter, a camera with zoom function, a retractable grappling hook — that changes how you interact with H.H. Holmes' Murder Castle recreation and makes individual deaths feel mechanically distinct rather than purely narrative. The set-pieces built around those tools are the most inventive in the series: if you have ever wanted to feel trapped in a purpose-built death house, The Devil in Me delivers that with genuine craft.

Where it falls short is the third act. The story builds an excellent premise around the real H.H. Holmes case and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and the antagonist Du'Met is the series' most charismatic human villain — but the finale scrambles to resolve its threads and lands on ambiguity where resolution would have felt more earned. It is a strong entry held back by a slightly underbaked finish, which is particularly noticeable as a season closer.

Full The Devil in Me collection →

Why It Ranks #2

House of Ashes is the Season 1 game that almost everyone agrees on, which is rare for an anthology where every entry has passionate defenders. The 2003 Iraq War setting is the most grounded and politically textured backdrop the series has used — forcing a CIA team and their Iraqi Republican Guard adversaries into an uneasy survival alliance underground — and the script actually takes that tension seriously rather than using it as wallpaper.

The creature design is the best in the anthology: the vampiric Akkadian organisms are physically plausible enough to feel genuinely threatening rather than simply monstrous, and the underground temple environment is impeccably designed. Rachel King (played by Ashley Tisdale), Salim, and the rest of the ensemble cast are the most developed five-person group in Season 1 — you care about both sides of the conflict before the horror even starts, which makes the deaths land much harder.

It ranks second rather than first purely because Directive 8020 arrived and raised the ceiling. If you play the series in release order, House of Ashes will feel like the moment everything clicked.

Full House of Ashes collection →

Why It Ranks #1

Directive 8020 is the best Dark Pictures game because it is the first entry that feels completely confident in what the anthology can be. Every game before it was iterating — improving on Man of Medan's proof-of-concept, refining Little Hope's narrative ambition, expanding The Devil in Me's mechanical vocabulary, perfecting House of Ashes' cast work. Directive 8020 takes all of that and makes two changes that transform the format entirely.

The Turning Point system — which lets you rewind to key narrative junctions and explore alternate paths within a single playthrough — eliminates the biggest friction of the anthology format: the feeling that you need multiple complete runs to understand the shape of the story. It also does something subtler: it makes the weight of your original choices feel heavier, not lighter, because you can now see exactly what you gave up.

The real-time threats and first-person sequences replace the QTE scaffolding that held earlier games back, making the horror feel genuinely physical rather than reactive. And the script — aboard the colony ship Cassiopeia, twelve light years from a dying Earth — is the best-written thing Supermassive has ever produced. The question at its centre (is it acceptable to sacrifice billions to save five?) is the series' most morally serious, and the game earns every beat of it.

Full Directive 8020 collection →

All Five Games: Rankings at a Glance

Want to Go Deeper?

Each of these games has far more to offer than a ranking summary can cover. Our other guides go deeper into the specific stories, characters, and merch for each entry:

→ Dark Pictures Season 1: Full explanation of All Four Games — full breakdowns of Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes and The Devil in Me

→ Man of Medan — Dark Pictures Entry 1 — where the anthology began: five friends and a ghost ship

→ Little Hope — Dark Pictures Entry 2 — witch trials, three timelines, and the most divisive twist in the series

→ House of Ashes — Dark Pictures Entry 3 — ancient creatures and a forced alliance underground in Iraq

→ Devil in me — Dark Pictures Entry 4 — a documentary crew lured into a replica of H.H. Holmes' Murder Castle — and the Season 1 finale

→ Directive 8020: The Dark Pictures' Boldest Game Yet — deep dive on the story, Turning Point system, crew, and full merch collection

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many Dark Pictures games are there?

A: There are currently five Dark Pictures Anthology games: Man of Medan (2019), Little Hope (2020), House of Ashes (2021), The Devil in Me (2022), and Directive 8020 (2026). The first four form Season 1; Directive 8020 is the opening entry of Season 2.

Q: What order should I play the Dark Pictures games?

A: Because every entry is standalone, there is no required order. For new players we recommend starting with House of Ashes (the most polished Season 1 entry) or Directive 8020 (the best overall entry and a complete standalone story). For release order: Man of Medan → Little Hope → House of Ashes → The Devil in Me → Directive 8020.

Q: What is the best Dark Pictures game?

A: By critical consensus and our own scoring, Directive 8020 (2026) is the best entry in the anthology — the highest-rated, most gameplay-evolved, and best-written game in the series. Among the Season 1 games, House of Ashes is the most widely recommended starting point.

Q: Are the Dark Pictures games connected to each other?

A: Each game tells a completely separate story with different characters and settings. The single connecting thread in Season 1 is The Curator — a mysterious narrator played by actor Pip Torrens who introduces each tale. Directive 8020 begins Season 2 with a fresh start; The Curator's role in the new season has not yet been confirmed.

Q: Which Dark Pictures game is scariest?

A: That depends on your horror preferences. For creature-feature physical dread, House of Ashes is the scariest. For psychological and atmospheric horror, Little Hope. For body-horror and mechanical trap tension, The Devil in Me. For sustained cosmic dread, Directive 8020.

Q: Where can I buy Dark Pictures merchandise?

A: Official licensed merchandise for all five Dark Pictures games is available exclusively at The Dark Pictures Gear Store (store.thedarkpictures.com). All products are produced by Sophisticated GEEK® under license from Supermassive Games and ship worldwide from Denmark.

 

The Verdict

Seven years, five games, and the anthology is better now than it has ever been. Man of Medan proved the format worked. Little Hope proved it could be more than a horror movie. House of Ashes proved it could make you care. The Devil in Me proved it could genuinely innovate. And Directive 8020 proved that Supermassive Games, free to self-publish and take risks, can compete with the best the genre has to offer.

Wherever you start, every entry in this list is worth your time. And when you're done, the official gear for every game in the anthology is waiting at the Dark Pictures Gear Store, ship-from-Denmark, and built for people who take their horror seriously.