It wasn’t until this week that a whiff of fresh fall foliage finally blew through my nose, prompting me to pick up a pumpkin on the way home. It’s scary to think that we only have a week left until Halloween, when ghouls and ghosts roam the dead ends in search of candy. If the holidays are creeping up on you too, it’s not too late to prepare for a few last-minute scares.
Many gamers rate video games based on the number of days, months, and years they will play after their release. Fortunately, horror games seem to be the exception. A genre that rewards a release at the right time. And while TP is hard to find, there are plenty of other short and sweet scares to send shivers down your spine. Here are thirteen little haunts, ranging from 20-minute screams to three hours of nightmares, to cram in before the Halloween goblins get you.
Children of clay (2025)
What Balazs Ronyai is Children of clay accomplished in minutes would be humbling games that span days. Similar to that of Mr. James A warning to the curiousyou study a strange little figurine in a dimly lit living room. Intimate and misguided, you will refer to your notes to decipher the secrets of the relic, while the shadows close in on you.
Paratopic (2018)
Jessica Harvey Paratopic is a Lost highway-like a waking nightmare. You switch between three perspectives, a hitman, a smuggler and a bird watcher. As you experience their moments in real time, from chatter to highway drives, you’ll find your surroundings begin to unfold. Revealing alarming creatures, cursed video tapes, and a conspiracy you may just be nibbling at the edges of. If you have never met Paratopic before, or asking for more, the remake/remix Overdub was released last month.
Anatomy (2016)
Speaking of tape and oppressive atmospheres, Kitty Horrorshow’s seminal Anatomy is a study of the kind of fears only possible in a video game. You’re in an empty, dark, and eerie house, with only white noise and old recordings to keep you company. As you begin to understand your relationship with this space, it will twist and subvert around you. The game itself gets rid of its rivets. Daring you to last long enough to see what’s in the basement.
Devotion (2019)
Created by Red Candle Games, Devotion is a story about how potential, disappointment, and the resulting superstitions can make a family’s demons real. You explore the Du family’s humble apartment, tracing their brush with fame when the daughter enters a singing competition. Unable to cope with unrealized fame, the family turns to a cult for guidance. It’s unclear how much of this new spiritualism is snake oil, but their downward spiral has left a psychic stain unpleasant enough to resonate in their home. Critically acclaimed, the game was removed from Steam due to images believed to offend Xi Jinping. Fortunately, Devotion was made available on the developer’s website.
Untold Stories (2020)
Years before Silent Hill: Fall of the Citydevelopers No Code (now Screen Burn) got goosebumps with this collection of interface-related creepers. Booting up a desktop computer to play “The House Abandon,” a retro text adventure, you soon discover that the events of the game are encroaching on your computer room. In 2020, this effective climbing plant was grouped into Untold Storiesa comprehensive anthology of other tales of bad things happening across a variety of screens.
Clock Tower (1995)
As the nascent survival horror genre itself took shape, the enigmatic Human Entertainment ventured into unchartered territory on the Super Famicom. Inspired by Dario Argento giallo like Phenomena And Deep red, Clock Tower follows four orphans who rendezvous at the Barrows estate, hoping to find a new home. To their unpleasant surprise, the arrangement was a horrible trap, and it’s up to you to discover the secrets of the house, save your friends, and outrun the “Scissorman” to survive the night. There are many ways to play this classic and a number of unbalanced sequels, but for those most comfortable on modern hardware, WayForward has released a faithful remaster in 2024.
The darkness under my bed (2021)
This one just has a look that will get on your nerves. An adventure game rendered through photographs of a cavernous expanse of dolls, dioramas, and dust bunnies, you’ll direct a drone through a maze built by a boy to trap objects hiding under his mattress. As the maze expands and the grimy spots become more and more disturbing, you get the feeling that this kid may have managed to trap something.
Water womb world (2020)
Yames has released a number of short, gratuitous, and disturbing horrors over the years, but this underwater test of faith is a good place to start. You play as a devout and religious scientist, hoping to merge his faith and practice by scouring the seabed for angels. In the darkness of the trench you will confront divinity and wager how much you are willing to allow into your flesh.
Home Safety Helpline (2024)
It should be clear by now that there are many horror games that involve watching computers on your computer. While Home Safety Helpline puts some distance between you and those in danger, that doesn’t mean you won’t have residual ghosts. You work in a call center for people facing… unusual circumstances on their end. Search your index for cryptics and vines and do your best to help the person on the other line. A paper, please, for the kind of calls Art Bell might receive at the end of the world.
Ecstatic (1994)
While the path of survival horror was ultimately defined by resident Evilthere is a version of the story where everything is close to the original Alone in the dark. Goofy, but deliciously wacky, Ecstatic is about a medieval village under siege by werewolves, trolls and your huge ellipsoid ass. Fight, solve puzzles and survive in this short but relentless retro oddity. And as the crow flies, Ecstatic and its sequel will see the release of modern ports tomorrow.
Horse Master (2013)
A Twine game of all time, Horse Master considers you an aspiring horse master. From the first pages you may think that you are just going to breed, ride, control horses. All the extra clicking and your chat with the horse salesman starts to feel real the moment you’re in the saddle, because your idea of what this horse is, and who will ultimately be in charge in this situation, opens its toothy maw wide open.
Inside (2016)
As we wait very, very patiently for what Playdead has been cooking up for a decade, why not take a look back at why you’re showing up on day one. You play a young boy in a world that has become dark. Navigating the shadows, you will need to find a passage past hostile inhabitants, pale creatures and unseemly mind control experiments. Frequently imitated. Never competed. This classic then captivated gamers, many of whom were still trying to unravel its ornate mysteries.
The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival (2020)
Okay, maybe not all of these games require you to lose sleep. Created by A short hikeThis is Adam Robinson-Yu, The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is a multiplayer pumpkin carving simulator. With up to 20 people, you can recreate a trip to the field, a haunted hayride, discover fall secrets and of course, carve your own jack-o-lantern. But there is a trap! Like the activities offered there, this game only takes place once a year, as the servers leave with the season. Happy Halloween!
Gn tech
