BeholdTheseGames

I continue to be amazed by the horror being made in indie game spaces and hope y'all can experience a fraction of what I've seen these past few years. As usual, these games and many others are featured on my Steam curator account (store.steampowered.com/curator/4247...)! Go out, peep some horrors!

Look Outside (2025)
An RPGmaker game mixing mangled body horror, Lovecraftian cosmic terror, and the frightful world of Montreal. The title itself begs you not to take others at face value, emphasizing players need to show both caution and care in a world that finely balances desolation and hope.

Eclipsium (2025)
One of the most visually striking horrors this year, with its twisting and contorting of the player's perspective to make for wonderfully surreal horror. It feeds just enough pieces of its story of love and heartbreak to prod the imagination as space spirals and unwinds around you.

3. Heartworm (2025)
Many survival horrors lean towards Resident Evil, but this leans into the hazy malaise that made Silent Hill such a seminal work. Its dream-worlds do a good job portraying the utter emotional barrages teenagers suffer during traumatic events, eventually finding solace from it.

2. The Midnight Walk (2025)
I'm always a sucker for 3D-scanned art in games, and this delivers that in spades. There's a child-like wonder to the presentation, proudly showing all the bits of newspaper and twine that stitched together its lush world. If you love Henry Selick's works, check it out.

1. Labyrinth Of The Demon King (2025)
If there is any horror that captures fear frozen in time, it's this dungeon-crawling horror. This is especially true of how it implements Buddhism's purgatorial Naraka's through it's grainy visuals, agonizingly weaving hallways and ever-present rotting enemies.

I actually made it for Halloween this year, if you could fucking believe it. I may have just barely scratched in, but you should dig your claws into these 5 creepy titles.

All of these (as of writing) still have demos available to play on Steam and I would heavily encourage checking them out for yourself! As always, head to my profile description to check out my curator for other indie game recommendations, and I hope y'all find something here that sticks with ya!

Your Holy & Virtuous Heretic.

A SMT-inspired RPG with presentation reminiscent of RPG maker classics like Hylics and Space Funeral. I am always a sucker for a mix of esoterica symbols, wildly exaggerated attack animations and blunt writing in my indie RPGs which this developer has in spades.

Mina The Hollower

A Link's Awakening inspired action platformer with Castlevania-style art and exploration. Yacht Club inspirations are proudly worn and innovated on in an incredibly conducive mix of classic Zelda's top-down perspective and the combat/mechanics of Akamatsu's classic works.

Gecko Gods

A 3D-puzzle platformer where you run along every surface you can. The influx of platformers utilizing different animal movements has been wonderful, and a gecko feels perfect for this kind of game. The way you crawl along walls allows for forgiving but satisfying areas to traverse.

Panthalassa

A cutesy 2000s era-styled point and click deep underwater. The mysterious alien society wrapped up in a cutesy nautical Frutiger Aero aesthetic makes for a memorable world to poke around in. The contrast between the stone-faced biologist and genuinely silly AI is also very well written.

MotionRec

A platformer where you record your movements and replay them to progress. It heavily reminds me of last year's Cato as a platformer with a simple concept that allows its developers to shine their level-design skills. It's a novel idea for a platformer that I'm curious to see develop.

Ambrosia Sky

A sci-fi exploration game where you navigate ships to collect lost resources and memories. Visually, it's gorgeous, mixing cel-shaded 3D similar to Spider-verse with the biological horror of Garland's Annihilation. Mechanically, it's a unique mix of Power-Washing Sim and Metroid.

Consume Me

A WarioWare-style life sim centred around the pressure of weight loss. Hsia and Thomson's coming-of-age story encapsulates a lot of the stresses of body dysmorphia coinciding with coming adulthood through its juggling of mechanics and managing of its thoughtfully named "bites" mechanic.

Eclipsium

A surreal dialogue-less horror that plays a lot with non-Euclidean geometry. Not enough Lovecraft-inspired horror considers his works that focused on physical spaces that induced terror (please read The Festival). Eclipsium is embracing that with its House.Wad-esque spatial aspects.

Easy Delivery Co.

Death Stranding with cats is a relaxing experience with just enough goofy antics and mystery to capture the essence of being in a secluded town. While I am curious to see how it handles its secrets, the simple pickup and delivery gameplay make it a perfect game for a rainy day.

Am I Nima

A claustrophobic psychological horror where navigating the "familiar" feels like walking on eggshells made of glass. The developer does an exceptional job of warping nostalgia, personal loss and memories into weapons against the player in its dark sunbleached scenes.

Another year, another NextFest and a whole pile of demos I got to share. Out of the 20+ I got to check out, here are the ten most notable ones you should keep an eye out for.

No particular order as usual.

This new Mario Kart is looking fire #MarioKart #Nintendo #NintendoSwitch2 #MarioKartWorld

Another year, another fantastic set of games that I managed to ramble about before the year was capped off! As always, these games and many more are featured on my Steam curator account (store.steampowered.com/curator/4247...)! Hope to see you all in the new year! Watch out for the entities!

Mouthwashing (2024)
From fish factories to freight carriers, Wrong Organ is back with one of the best psychological horrors I've played. One playthrough can give you the gist, but looking back at every background item and small character mannerism shows these developers are masterful storytellers.

5. Sorry We're Closed (2024)
On the other side of the survival horror coin, we got gay Silent Hill! A lot of horror often invokes connections to queer heartache but Sorry We're Closed makes it a centrepiece. The writing is super blunt and rings true to many queer relationship experiences I've seen.

4. Crow Country (2024)
An amazing Resident Evil style horror that streamlines much of its gameplay without losing the mechanical charm of its inspirations. I ADORE how the world feels like a carefully put together diorama with hints left by disgruntled employees and its array of theme-park puzzles.

3. Psychopomp (2024)
A lot of good art can emulate how paranoia blends both very real and psychological based fears into an ever-present nightmare. Psychopomp is one of those with a main character that crawls around dungeons with a rusty headset and a mallet. Great storytelling AND it's free!

2. Hauntii (2024)
A ghostly collectathon that's been super slept on this year. The simple mechanics and plot set-up gives way for the game's drop-dead gorgeous and grand visuals reminiscent of certain Henry Selick films. This is further backed by a lovely OST featuring HAUNTING acoustic tracks.

1. Nightmare Kart (2024)
Jokes aside, Nightmare Kart is an INCREDIBLY solid kart racer. The way Lilith integrates [REDACTED]’s mechanics into kart racing feels right at home and it still manages to also spice things up with fun conversions of [REDACTED]’s areas into bombastic racetracks.

It may be the LAST day of the year but you know what? It ain't over till it's over! Here's my INCREDIBLY late spook game list from this year!

Hope any of these piqued your interest as much as they did for me! As of writing the demos for these are still available so feel free to check them out. If you want more game recommendations head over to my Steam curator account in my prof description for a treasure trove of indies and AA games :).

Tactical Breach Wizards

A magically militaristic turn-based strategy game. Tactical Breach Wizards simplifies the genre’s conventions, focusing on the tight mechanical interplay between its characters. This results in satisfying combat encounters complemented by its outright cool character designs.