The list of things of frightening things is long. Be it spiders, clowns, or thunderstorms, everyone has something they fear, and horror games do their best to wring every drop of terror from players. Jump scares, psychological horror, and that undefinable feeling that something is just oh so very wrong are hallmarks of the genre.RELATED:Games That Defined The Survival Horror Genre & Where You Can Play ThemHorror is a delicate thing, contextual and fragile, and many attempts to evoke it fall flat. Yet free indie games have an advantage other their big-budget horror competitors. They can tell stories just long enough to elicit their desired response, be it a single knowing shiver or a week of sleepless nights, casting one’s furtive gaze at the closet door.
10It’s Not Me, It’s My Basement
A horror game that would fit comfortably on theGame BoyAdvance,It’s Not Me, It’s My Basementis the story of a non-binary child named Embry who, with their parents away, is tasked with keeping the house clean and feeding the things locked in the basement. It isn’t anopen-world horror game,but it feels spacious and authentic.
Disconcerting experiences begin early, and the dialog with the shopkeepers (who are clearly worried about Embry but unsure how to intervene in their life) is simple and haunting.Embry is an endearing protagonist, which of course heightens the horrorbecause players fear at every step of the way that something will befall the character.It’s Not Me, It’s My Basementcan be completed in under an hour, but the story it unravels in that time is not to be missed.
9Haunted Cities V.4
Haunted Cities V.4by Kitty Horrorshow is a collection of four horror games:Exclusion Zone, Grandmother’s Garden, Lethargy Hill,andTenement.Varying from first-person to isometric perspectives, each is a different spin on lo-fi horror. All four games deserve a look, butLethargy Hillis arguably the stand-out.
It tells the story of a terrible house built by a witch, a story in which text spills unrelentingly out across the screen while the player explores.This is agame with a Lovecraftian side,and its creepy, fairytale-gone-wrong vibe is the perfect complement to its visuals. Its tale is likely to linger in players' minds long after they finish.Tenement, with its creepy urban exploration and occasional jumpscare, is another fine addition, with dialog that may feel uncomfortably relatable to some.
8You Left Me
Made in just 48 hours, Angela He’sYou Left Meis a horror/romance visual novel. The game’s subject matter, including suicide, is not for everyone, but its style should be. If the painterly, anime-influenced aesthetic, perfect animations and soundtrack do not convince players, the cyclopean cat and dad-joke-telling moon should.
The game is at turns funny, sweet, and deeply uncomfortable.Many games collapse under their own weight trying to balance such divergent elements, but inYou Left Meit is the very dissonance of the material that makes the work sing ina game where the protagonist is defenselessagainst the terror.
7No Players Online
A game by papercookies,No Players Onlineis a trip into 90s nostalgia. The player joins an empty capture-the-flag server in aQuake-like FPS, running around on the map while they wait for other players, until things take a sudden turn for the frightening.No Players Onlinedoesn’t needthe best jump scaresto be horror perfection.
The game can be completed in under half an hour and expertly capitalizes on nostalgia, and if that were the end of it,No Players Onlinewould still warrant mention. Instead, the game was alsopart of an Alternate Reality Game that had players reading Braille, deciphering Morse Code over a hotline, and venturing into the Belgian woodsto retrieve a note. Though players may no longer have access to that second layer of gameplay,No Players Onlineshould still be experienced for what it is and was.
6One Last Game
InOne Last Game,two people with only a loose idea of the rules play checkers in a warzone. This browser game takes only a few minutes and includes no dialog, yet its storytelling and immersion are incredible. With a few choice sound effects and facial expressions, Goose Ladder Games has created a horror game that somehow feels like both a post-apocalyptic dream and a historical reality.
Bombs fall, rattling the characters' tiny house and sliding checkers across the board, but the characters play stolidly on,as if on a death march. The plausibility ofOne Last Gameturns its simplistic visuals and controls into a devastatingly effective story in thissingle-location horror title.
5A Man Outside
A brief browser game in the vein of creepypasta, litrouke’sA Man Outsidedemonstrates the flexibility of the Twine software with which it was designed. Billed as a “vocab horror game,“A Man Outsideis about someone trying to study vocabulary at home but distracted by a shadowy man who keeps staring at them through the window.
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The story unfolds in text messages, glimpses out the window, and a flash card-style, multiple-choice vocabulary test. Thatthe game succeeds in making vocab study terrifyingis a testament to the creativity at hand and to its delicate development. Rather than nightmare monsters in an alien world, here one finds a premise altogether too real, and the horror is all the better for it.
40_AbyssalSomewhere
0_abyssalSomewhereby nonoise is a PS1-style horror game in which the player controls a rotted knight who awakens in a strange underworld and must explore its depths.The gameis highly atmospheric, due in equal parts to its crunchy, lo-fi sound design andPS1-era graphics.The imagination spins the simple forms and textures of0_abyssalSomewhereinto real terrors.
Its enemies are unsettling, and combat (though simplistic) is genuinely distressing, as it should be. The game makes excellent use of flavor text, too, providing just enough to build the game’s lore and deepen its atmosphere without drowning players. Because the game takes about a half-hour, it can be devoured in a single, eerie sitting.
3Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021
TheHaunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021is not a disc and is not for the PS1, but it was released in 2021, so its title is at least one-third accurate. This downloadable bundle collects 25 horror games modeled after PS1-era horror games.
For those in search of a spooky throwback experience or just a slathering of variety,Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021is the answer. From platforming and puzzles to survival and atmospheric creepies, if there’s a terror itch, this collection probably has a way to scratch it.Considered as a whole, there’s a legitimate argument for placingHaunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021amongst the mostunderrated horror games of the last five years.
2Doki Doki Literature Club
As deceptively sweet as a maggot-filled bonbon,Doki Doki Literature Clubis a psychological horror visual novel masquerading as a saccharine dating simulator. Spoiling the plot would do the game a tremendous disservice.
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What matters is this:Doki Doki Literature Clubis not what it looks like, is not for children or anyone sensitive to dark emotional subject matter, and is an absolute masterpiece.For players seeking a demonstration of the power of video games as interactive art, the search ends here.For those that just want to peel back the layers of something beautiful and touch the horror beneath, this is one of thebest horror visual novels.
1The Drowning Machine
Finished by Rabbit Run Games after the tragic death of one of its co-creators,The Drowning Machineis an explicit exploration of loss, grief, self-harm, and suicide. Its high-contrast, black-and-white style perfectly suits this stream-of-consciousness exploration of trauma.
The Drowning Machineis not a conventional horror game, butif the genre’s purpose is to emotionally unsettle rather than merely jump scare the player with zombies, then this game has more than earned its place.More importantly, the game deserves recognition both as an art piece and a profound gift from one friend to the legacy of another.The Drowning Machineis free, but donations benefit a trans lifeline in the co-creator’s honor.
