Great horror is all about ambiguity. Running away from an ill-defined threat that you can barely see is terrifying. Seeing a monster fully rendered and well-lit in high definition is not. So when it comes to being creepy, indie games arguably have a leg up on the competition. Pixel graphics can be used to create scenes that are both beautiful and uniquely unsettling.
Early polygonal graphics, à la the Playstation 1, can plunge players deep, deep into the uncanny valley. Players looking for a different horror experience are urged to check out this list of awesome indie horror games. Turn down the lights, burn a candle, and get ready for some unique scares that can't be had anywhere else!
10 Night Of The Consumers
Retail is hell. Customers often forget there's a real person on the other side of their relatively unimportant transactions. In Night Of The Consumers, the player is a retail worker struggling to perform their job in a store filled with zombie-like customers. We can hardly imagine a scarier premise.
The presentation of the game is charming. Its music is perfectly composed to induce stress. The customers' stilted animations and jarring polygonal faces add to the game's overall sense of unease. They wander around restlessly, asking ever more inane questions. Familiarity with the layout of the store is the player's most reliable weapon against the materialist hordes. The game is more frustrating than horrific, but that seems appropriate.
9 Iron Lung
This relatively short game has the player explore an ocean of blood on an alien planet in a rusty, unreliable submarine. It's an exercise in claustrophobia since the player can't view outside their vessel, and likely wouldn't be able to see anything even if they could. The goal of the game is to navigate via GPS coordinates, taking pictures of various sights around the floor of the blood ocean.
The fact that the player can only view the ocean depths via grainy photographs is an ingenious design decision. It works well to build an atmosphere of isolation, dread, and anxiety. It also undoubtedly made the game much easier to develop.
8 Baldi's Basics In Education And Learning
Some writers see comedy as an anathema to horror. The two can never go together according to them — they're mutually exclusive. It's not true. Actually, if they're both handled correctly, comedy and horror can go together like bread and butter. Just look at Twin Peaks, Cabin in the Woods, or Shaun of the Dead.
The humor in Baldi's Basics builds a false sense of security, so when the scares do come, they're absolutely chilling. The horror clashes with the childlike graphics and atmosphere, adding to the game's weird, uncanny vibes. It manages to be truly terrifying using only the most basic tools and graphics. It's an entertaining time, just don't let an actual kid near it.
7 Mundaun
Mundaun is a psychological horror game with a unique aesthetic. Toting a pencil-drawn look, its character models (and some, but not all of its environments) are uniquely gorgeous. The player takes on the role of Curdin, who is visiting the titular town in the alps to look into the death of his grandfather. What seems like a simple trip quickly devolves into an occult horror show.
Mundaun is a treat for the eyes and ears, and a weird journey into a fascinating setting. The beauty of the Swiss Alps is undercut by their severe isolation. As with other games on this list, Mundaun is a passion project developed by a one-man team. It's a bit rough around the edges but still worth experiencing.
6 Faith
Released in 1982, the Intellivoice Voice Synthesis module added voices to Intellivision games. It was a good idea, but the technology just wasn't there yet. The results were downright terrifying, sounding like the cries of tortured robots. However, in 2017, a game developer had the idea to use this type of voice synthesis software for a more appropriate purpose: horror.
Jarring robotic voices combined with a few great animations and some early Atari nostalgia to make Faith a great, genuinely creepy experience. We don't want to give away too much of the plot, so here are the bullet points: the protagonist is a priest, he's exorcising a demon, and things get weird.
5 Barotrauma
In this unique horror/simulation game, a group of players is tasked with manning a submarine on a haunted moon of Jupiter. This simple premise hides a suite of in-depth mechanics for submariners, their vessel being their main line of defense against alien horrors. Teamwork is vital if the players wish to survive.
Barotrauma is an excellent horror game where small mistakes can cascade into game-ending threats. It may not be the scariest game on this list; having real teammates around does help alleviate some of that. But it's still worth playing, especially for those who enjoy Lovecraftian submarine rides.
4 Darkwood
Since time immemorial, man has been frightened by the wilderness. God only knows what lurks out there, in the spaces where humans scarcely step, where things are dark and quiet. Darkwood makes great use of this chilling setting. Visibility in its beautifully pixelated environments is always limited. Even during the day, trees threaten to blot out the sun.
Darkwood uses its ambiguous world to build an atmosphere of dread without relying too much on jump scares. It also has a unique survival-horror quality to it, which is fun. The player needs to seek shelter and board houses at night, to avoid the onslaught of monsters. It's a difficult game and one that's worth playing just to experience its atmosphere and characters.
3 World of Horror
World Of Horror is a rogue-like inspired by the works of manga author Junji Ito and horror author H.P. Lovecraft. It has spot-on black and white pixel graphics which recreate his iconic style of line drawing. Nearly every frame of the game is a treat for the eyes. The gameplay and music are also great.
The RPG-style gameplay pits the player character up against a particular old god, with the goal of thwarting the entity's dark desires. To achieve this goal, the player must complete five randomly generated investigations, unraveling weird conspiracies and fighting off cool monsters. A rogue-like game is perfect for a Lovecraftian horror like this, where death is cheap and a bit of luck may be needed.
2 Subnautica
Subnautica is a survival game that takes place on an isolated ocean planet, 4546B. It's easy to forget that this beautiful game started off as a clunky indie project. Over the years, it's evolved into an extremely popular survival-horror game. Players take on the role of Riley Robinson, a stranded contractor for the Alterra mega-corporation. Over the course of the game, the player will build bases and submarines as they explore the ocean and try to avoid terrifying leviathans.
Subnautica uses terror very effectively. Its gameplay is scary, but not overly frustrating. Leviathans are territorial, meaning they'll often come in for a big attack before backing off. The real fear comes from wondering what could be lurking out in the dark waters.
1 Pathologic
Pathologic is a brutally difficult experience. It's also an amazing experience. Taking place from three different perspectives across three player characters, it's a survival horror experience where one of the biggest challenges is just figuring out what's going on. The plot is a rich tapestry, and the town itself is so weird that playing the game isn't unlike a fever dream. Just how it should be.
There's so much to say about Pathologic, which is a huge and ambitious game, that it can't all fit into this entry. It tackles unique situations in gaming: curing plague victims, bartering garbage to survive, harvesting organs to refine into medicine, and so on. It may not be for everyone, but those who get into it will really get into it. Pathologic isn't just a horror game, it's a work of art.