Editorials
6 of the Best Indie Horror Games That You Might Have Missed in 2025
The technology required to make video games is finally widespread and easily accessible enough that game development is no longer monopolized by the same handful of companies, and online distribution has made it easier than ever for anyone to self-publish their virtual passion projects. That’s why I think it’s safe to say that we’re living in a golden age for independent video games.
Of course, this industry boom has its downsides, especially when no gamer can be expected to keep up with the constant deluge of new interactive experiences released every single day. The horror genre is no different in this regard, and quite a few scary titles from 2025 had the rotten luck of being overshadowed by titles that benefited from a bigger marketing budget. With that in mind, this list highlights six of the best indie horror games that you might have missed this year! After all, there are plenty of chilling releases from 2025 that deserve a second chance at finding their audience – and more horror gaming is never a bad thing.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll only be considering fully released independent productions (that means no demos or early access titles!), but don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite horror experiences from 2025 if you think we missed a particularly underrated game.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. BrokenLore: Don’t Watch
Some narratives are uniquely suited for a particular medium, and what better way to tell a story about a struggling hikikomori (a pathological shut-in) than by literally placing you in his shoes as he’s forced to confront the horrors lurking in his own mind while also dealing with the isolation of his claustrophobic apartment?
Taking cues from classics like Silent Hill 4: The Room and even P.T., Don’t Watch is a terrifying J-Horror experience with a meta-twist. You see, our protagonist’s only link to the outside world is his trusty computer, but even this small glimmer of digital hope slowly becomes a source of nightmares once the games and programs inside the device are corrupted by sinister forces.
5. Riddlewood Manor
I grew up playing scary point-and-click adventure games like Exmortis and Crimson Room, so Peanut Button’s promise of a modern-day equivalent to those titles in Riddlewood Manor came as something of an unexpected treat. A spooky puzzle game where you explore a stylish haunted mansion that’s hell-bent on killing the player, this escape room simulator is one of the most charming titles on this list.
That being said, don’t let the Riddlewood’s cutesy cartoon graphics fool you, as there are some legitimately chilling frights to be had here – though these serious moments are usually diffused by over-the-top humor and Looney Tunes-inspired antics.
4. The Séance of Blake Manor
A more serious alternative to Riddlewood Manor, Spooky Doorway’s The Séance of Blake Manor combines the whodunnit thrills of an Agatha Christie novel with classic ghost stories. A narrative-driven puzzler, this game puts you in the shoes of a detective tasked with finding out the truth behind a mysterious disappearance in an Irish hotel rumored to have ties to the occult.
Not only does this incredibly stylish adventure feel like a Mike Mignola comic come to life, but the more free form approach to puzzle-solving and social investigation makes it an incredibly immersive experience. However, the game is also constantly reminding you of an ever-encroaching time limit as the titular séance looms on the horizon, with that added pressure making this one of the most nerve-wracking titles on this list.
3. Look Outside
I’m a huge fan of urban horror, so I obviously had great expectations for Francise Coulombe’s retro survival horror RPG Look Outside. Taking place entirely within a dilapidated apartment building after an apocalyptic event turned everyone who looked out the window into supernatural monstrosities, this ambitious title makes the most of its claustrophobic setting by turning exploration into a nightmarish dungeon crawl.
While the game looks pretty simple at first glance, I’m still blown away by how much quality Coulombe managed to cram into a humble little RPGmaker project. From the eerie visuals to the memorable music and sound effects (not to mention some genuinely creepy writing), there are countless reasons why Look Outside should be on your radar.
2. PAGER
Absurdist corporate satire isn’t a common subject in the world of video games, so Bilge’s minimalist horror comedy came as something of a surprise when it was released back in August. A first-person job simulator where you follow increasingly over-the-top instructions from a pager, this criminally underplayed ’90s period piece will feel even scarier if you have personal experience with the toxic expectations endemic to corporate workspaces.
Of course, it’s the retro aesthetics that make PAGER such an effective title, with the dithered monochromatic graphics enhancing the capitalist despair while further immersing you in the 90s atmosphere.
1. A.I.L.A.
Artificial Intelligence has become something of a contentious topic in recent years, so it’s only natural that developers are now tackling this ongoing issue in increasingly disturbing ways. And among the recent wave of AI-focused genre experiences, the Brazilian-developed A.I.L.A. happens to be one of the most interesting.
A first-person survival horror experience inspired by the likes of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, A.I.L.A. has you play as a videogame tester in a dystopian future that was hired to evaluate an AI tool meant to revolutionize the gaming industry. Naturally, things take a turn for the worse when the AI’s simulations (which are all inspired by classic horror games) begin to erase the boundaries between programming and real life.
A smorgasbord of familiar horror tropes served with a refreshingly meta twist, I’d recommend A.I.L.A. to any fan of classic horror gaming featuring mind-bending storytelling!
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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