At this point you've likely heard of Haunted PS1, a broad community of creators making indie horror games — usually low-poly or PSX-style, as the name suggests. If not, you've probably seen one of the many, many, games made by community members played by your favorite horror creator; there's 10 Dead Doves, The Heilwald Loophole, and Mummy Sandbox, to name a few. As the community expanded, they began taking on increasingly complex projects, including the parodical EEK3. Geoff Keighley is replaced by Skully the Skeleton, a perpetually dapper purple skellybones with heterochromia and a campy, charismatic attitude. Likewise, the samey fare of AAA sci-fi first-person shooters and cinematically epic open-world fantasy action RPGs with crafting elements are supplanted by a deluge of creative indie titles, often by single-digit teams, all falling into a broadly horrific theme. I’ve carefully plucked my top 20 most anticipated games out of the two-plus hour, 80-plus game showcase.
At the time of writing, many of these trailers are exclusive to EEK3; so, in lieu of my normal YouTube playlist, I’ve provided clickable links below. As may already be clear to you, the show covers a wide range of horror, so trailers may include such disturbing content as blood, gore, frightening sounds, body horror, bugs, and more. To the best of my knowledge, there are no references to abuse or sexual assault in any of the trailers linked below. Please proceed with your health in mind.
Originally developed for mobile, the aptly named 1-Bit Survivor has just made its way to PC. This dungeon crawling, turn-based roguelike motivates the player to struggle against the hell of an undead apocalypse with a cute tuxedo cat named Leo. After all, there’s no greater motivation to stave off The Horrors than a furry friend. And those superimposed battle animations are nothing to sneeze at, either.
With the visuals of a Windows XP theme and the boundless enthusiasm of a 2000s Naruto AMV, 500 Caliber Contractz, in its own words, dares to ask the question: what if Super Mario 64, but with a gun?
Surreal, absurd, and interactive. Those are the only three words that can consistently describe BÅÅBÖSÅÅNGJÅÅR (Korean for “idiot box”). Originally from the Haunted PS1 Madvent Calendar 2021, it boasts a collage-like mix of visuals. There’s highly-detailed and expressive pixel art, low-poly 3D environments with heavy filters, and flat, simple, geometric characters, sometimes all in the same scene. It’s a self-described “love letter to théâtre de l'absurde,” so I suppose I should expect to not know what to expect.
The latest in a line of magic users find that neither themselves nor their living family members have much talent for magic anymore, with only three spells left to cast: Become Mechanical, Become Fear, and Become Dirt, the most useless spell of all (or so I’m told). After her younger brother disappears, seemingly after arriving home from school, our protagonist must navigate her house and her family to bring him to safety.
Cooking, killing, and necromancy? Bone’s Cafe is that special hybrid of hectic, arcade-style gameplay and automation. You’ll be designing your own restaurant, its menu, training your undead staff, and sourcing some… ingredients… There’s a lot to do, so it may behoove you to invite some local friends to help manage it all.
The Death in Abyss trailer is straight to the point: pilot a multi-winged fighter ship through a pitch black sea. Slay leviathans. Repeat. Tension is king here as the massive sea creature twists and coils out of sight around the ship, which swims with an abnormal level of character for a machine, flapping its “fins” as it frantically jets away from gnashing teeth and readies volley after volley of missiles.
Bloom-heavy, dreamlike, and with a digital veneer, [ECHOSTASIS] presents itself like nothing else. In a world where our realities are each individually controlled by an algorithm (but like, for real), a glitch in the system means the death of the self.
Ah, aliens. The oft-forgotten “cryptid” that haunted me for years living in the exurbs, among miles and miles of corn and cotton fields. I was positively scarred by the infamous party scene in Signs after watching it at a friend's house, I used to worry about the Fresno Nightcrawlers hanging out in my backyard, and I love to indulge in a little bit of conspiracy, as a treat. Thanks, Greyhill Incident.
Hamelin’s Journey takes the creature collector genre in a new direction by going back to its roots in the 90s, citing Monster Rancher (among the obvious) as inspiration. Dark, open areas are chock full of strange beings ripe for the capturing on your quest to take a chunk off of an ancient beast that resides deep underground.
You can tell from the quickest of glances that HEAVENSCAPE is set in the early 2000s; the fonts, the flip phone, the computers, and its vibes overall are assembled perfectly. While many elements are clear right away, I wouldn’t have guessed this is a roguelike. Take control of an angel on their way home after a party; experience the nightlife, meet some friends, try not to die?
What’s a fly to eat in a world where nothing dies? Zip around as the titular hungry fly through a grotesque swamp, meeting all manner of surreal, icky friends in your struggle against starvation. Although the strangeness of the story may initially lead you to believe otherwise, The Hungry Fly may reflect you, too.
If you let me in (Trailer)
While information on it is hard to come by at the moment, If you let me in arrests with its (first-ever?) trailer. Aggy is trapped in a horrific and unreal world, stalked by bizarre creatures and living furniture as she struggles against the being in her head, begging for permission. The off-color, cartoonish art style really serves the atmosphere, bringing the more mundane elements of the world in line with the horrific, while still maintaining their normalcy.
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is one of the most enduring of the Greek myths; the tale of a man descending into the Underworld to retrieve his lost wife and sedating all manner of danger — including Hades himself — with his bardic skill. Hades allows him to take Eurydice back to the surface, back to life, on the condition that he not look back at her following him for the entire journey. Things… don’t work out. The Last Orpheus imagines a bard who can try again, and again, and again, instead of one cursed to live with his failure, barred from reentering the Underworld until his death. It’s different from the many retellings of the tale that exist, but Hades is Hades all the same.
Introducing the woman who takes the “if” out of “if looks could kill,” our (presumably self-made) widow stalks dark gothic environments as she considers her next move. Owing to its bite-sized nature, more information on Lorraine is kept carefully out of reach to preserve the experience for those yet to play.
“Why did you wake it up? Why did you wake it up? Why did you wake it up?” repeats all throughout the trailer for One-Eyed Likho, an upcoming first-person folk horror, rendered in grimy, dark monochrome. The game is apparently inspired by “The One-eyed Likho,” a Slavic fairytale depicting this embodiment of evil. Fire seems to serve as a central element of gameplay, be it giving light, destroying obstacles, or hopefully providing a cleansing flame.
There’s a monster in the basement. Instead of putting as much distance between it and him as possible, R00000’s protagonist opts to film a horror flick. His mental state increasingly deteriorates as his obsession deepens; he reshoots scenes over and over again as his intrusive thoughts introduce flaws with his work, ever chasing perfection.
Set in the arctic, Sender sees you operating a big, trundling tundra cruiser through the frozen wastes to find your missing predecessor. On the way, among powerlines and waymarkers, are strange, misshapen figures in the snow. Don't stray from the path.
Billing itself as earthquake readiness training software, sin(e)s is a mix of machine interaction and archival footage. The trailer repeatedly refers to a “they,” perhaps something other than human, that looks and smells and acts human, though the human element — the horror of having a human body in a disaster event — is not forgotten.
If you haven’t been following The Tower of Tears, you’re missing out. I initially thought it was a fake game; a pretty popular method for artists to market their style and skills, especially as a portfolio for game art direction. Delightfully, The Tower of Tears is a real, upcoming survival horror game that explores the creepy-cute aesthetic we’ve come to know and love from every angle.
Aliens and lechuzas, they go together like wine and cheese. Across the globe, and across time, humans have looked at barn owls and thought they know more than they’re letting on. This stunningly shaded black-and-white psychological horror game puts you in the shoes of one being watched — and maybe more — by “something extraterrestrial.” Some phenomena shown off in the short trailer could be recognized by any alien abduction aficionado, but it’s the “Based on personal experience” in the description that piques my interest the most.
