Play Shaw's Nightmare Online

You wake up in a nightmare with just a knife—static hisses, shadows move, and everything wants to gut you. Scrounge weird weapons, hold your breath when things growl nearby, and pray you don’t bleed out this time.

Developer: Jason Shaw

Genre: First-person shooter

Released: 1995

File size: 1.55 MB

Game Overview

Shaw’s Nightmare is one of those weird, unsettling MS-DOS games that sticks with you. You play as Shaw, who dozes off reading a book—until everything goes wrong. Your headphones start blaring creepy static, muffled screams, and then… silence. Next thing you know, you’re sucked into some nightmare dimension where everything wants you dead.

No guns, no backup—just you, a knife, and whatever weird weapons you can scrounge up (a rapid catapult? A camera gun?). The first time I played, I panicked when that scout boy showed up. Stabbed him on instinct, and suddenly the whole place knew I was there. The growls that followed? Yeah, not great. You’ll spend the rest of the game scrambling, hiding, and probably dying a lot. It’s janky, tense, and oddly atmospheric for something this old.

If you like obscure horror with a side of desperation, this one’s worth digging up.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".