The best indie horror games are those that take our deepest darkest fears and turn them into something tangible, throwing our neuroses right back at us. Some of the best horror games of all time weren’t created under triple-A conditions, but rather sprang to life as a result of a small indie studio pushing the boundaries.

Many of these titles contain multitudes, some great story games with heartbreaking or disturbing narratives, some mysteries that dig deep into our souls, and some fast-paced thrillers that keep us in a state of perpetual fear. We’ve also indicated whether the game has jumpscares, as this might persuade or dissuade you from any particular title. Start to poke around in any of these great indie horror games, and chances are you’ll find a whole world of theories, lore, and surprises waiting for you. Not to mention genuine, heart-pounding scares.

Signalis

• Developer: Rose-engine games
• Release Date: October 27, 2022
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox Series X
• Jumpscares: None

We could heap accolades onto Signalis as one of the greatest modern horror games, as well as featuring one of the best gay romance storylines, and a twisting dynamic narrative that has spawned thousands of theories and deep-dives: this indie horror game is a certified classic.

Signalis takes place in a dystopian future, but leaves you to piece together the lore as you explore, figuring out the nightmarish locations and technology that surrounds you. Every piece of the story is a mystery that can be solved. You wake up alone in an abandoned facility on a strange planet, knowing only that you’ve made a promise to your partner that can’t be broken. As the game progresses you’ll do anything and endure unimaginable horrors to keep that promise and find her again. If you need help getting started, check out our Signalis guides for solutions to some of the trickier puzzles.

Mundaun

• Developer: Hidden Fields
• Release Date: March 16, 2021
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X
• Jumpscares: Just one

Mundaun is a hand-drawn horror tale, set in a quiet Alpine village where perspective isn’t always something you can predict. Aesthetically charming and effortlessly spooky, Mundaun’s grayscale vision of a secluded town introduces unspeakable horrors and compelling mysteries that drive you forward despite wanting to retreat to safety. In true survival horror fashion, you’ll encounter puzzles, inventory management issues, and plenty of running away.

The game is beautiful and terrifying all at once, veering between myth and reality and twisting the way we view the world and the assumptions we make. Quick thinking and a talent for driving in adverse conditions will keep you alive for the most part, fighting your fear as your character slows down the more scared they become. Although this town has plenty of unusual inhabitants, you’ll not be able to communicate with them through conventional means, and strange creatures will often take you by surprise as you scale the mountain and try to escape the surreal horror of the trail.

Crow Country

• Developer: SFB Games
• Release Date: May 9, 2024
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X
• Jumpscares: Minor, although you can turn off combat which helps a little

Crow Country is both a homage to–and a warning against–nostalgia. Using blocky throwback aesthetics and slightly off-key sounds, the game taps into our most subconscious of childhood fears and takes us deep into an eerie mystery set in an abandoned theme park. Crow Country is a clever mix of combat, atmospheric exploration, and puzzle solving, to the extent that combat can be turned off entirely and the game still offers up an incredibly haunting experience.

Part of what makes Crow Country so terrifying is the callbacks to innocence, putting you in a whimsical theme park where everything just feels slightly… off. Underneath the slightly-uncanny park, you’ll find a series of mines, where something horrifying is happening. The survival elements are reminiscent of games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, stocking up on scarce resources and managing your inventory as you go–sometimes it’s better to dodge than to shoot.

Mouthwashing

• Developer: Wrong Organ
• Release Date: September 26, 2024
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X
• Jumpscares: Minor

Mouthwashing was easily one of the most disturbing games of 2024, and home to several of the most shocking deaths in video games, but it’s not all blood and violence. Some of the darkest themes in Mouthwashing emerge from reading between the lines, as the story’s unreliable narrator tries desperately to make everything okay and avoid responsibility at any cost.

The crew of a shipwrecked space freighter have no way to get home and must either come to terms with their impending death, or keep hoping in vain for a way to escape. Each character carries with them their own demons and complex relationships with the other members of the crew, and there are very few supplies left. No one is calm, no one is safe. Mouthwashing is a surreal, nightmarish end-of-the-world scenario where there doesn’t seem to be any happy ending–what could be more horror-coded than that?

Soma

• Developer: Frictional Games
• Release Date: September 21, 2015
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One
• Jumpscares: Atmospheric only (flashing lights etc)

Soma’s horror seems to come from all angles. It’s slow and creepy and stealthy in parts, then frantic and tense in others. There are moments of visual disgust, and moments where the deepest horror is what you picture in your mind’s eye. The premise and big reveal have often been referred to as one of the biggest twists in indie games, creating a simultaneously heartbreaking and horrifying ending that you’ll never quite be prepared for. Soma is a game that will mess with your head.

In our Soma review we gave it a 9/10 for its thought-provoking story, dead-filled atmosphere, and unbelievably immersive sound design. We won’t give too much away here, as everything that happens is best served up as a surprise, but Soma is certainly one of the best indie horror games to arrive in the 2010s and will keep you guessing until the very end.

The Forest

• Developer: Endnight Games
• Release Date: May 30, 2014
• Platform: PC, PS4
• Jumpscares: None, but enemies can sneak up on you

The Forest is both a truly chilling horror game, and somehow a relaxing survival sim at the same time. It might even fill the need for games like Minecraft, as long as you don’t mind the odd mutant cannibal or the looming threat of harm to your abducted son. Other than that, you can kick back and build the base of your dreams.

After a traumatic plane crash over a densely forested island, your character is on a mission to find his son, who he saw being dragged away just before he lost consciousness. Everyone else is dead, you have only the supplies you can scavenge from suitcases or the forest itself, and you need to survive for as long as you can. There’s plenty of combat, as well as a linear story that brings you to explore a hidden base on the island, but our favourite bit is the extensive building catalogue that allows for survival gear, living quarters, and even cute household decor.

Pathologic 2

• Developer: Ice-Pick Lodge
• Release Date: May 23, 2019
• Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One
• Jumpscares: None

Pathologic 2 isn’t for everyone. Set in a labyrinthine town on the outskirts of the Russian steppe, people worship great bulls, are born from the earth, and find healing in herbs. Great towers loom overhead in impossible shapes, and people speak in cryptic whispers. There are folk demons on the loose–or possibly just innocent women being burned at the stake. The town is alive and you are expected to play by its rules. Supply lines have been cut, and the people trade thimbles for nuts. You mustn’t kill anyone, and if you get into a fight they’ll probably kill you first. Don’t catch the plague. Don’t cut up bodies.

The easiest thing to do in Pathologic 2 is die. This is a hard game. It might be one of the hardest video games we’ve played. The point is not necessarily to succeed, but to feel the full experience of despair and the creeping horror of an incoming plague that indiscriminately wipes out the townsfolk. You play as one of the only doctors in the town, a hereditary surgeon who has to find the balance between honouring the folk traditions of your ancestors and embracing modern medicine. But there’s very little modern medicine can do for a mythical plague brought about by hubris.

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Sorry We’re Closed

• Developer: A La Mode Games
• Release Date: October 19, 2023
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X
• Jumpscares: None

Faux-retro horror has been in fashion for a little while now, and Sorry We’re Closed uses PS1-era survival horror aesthetics to its advantage like nothing else we’ve seen. Everything is gloriously lo-fi yet almost impossibly beautiful–save for the explicitly gruesome scenes. The game oozes style but packs a substantial gameplay punch, using fixed-camera exploration and portraited dialogue sections to lend moments of respite to frenetic arcade-style shooting and tense puzzle solving. This might not only be one of the best indie horror games, but also one of the coolest.

Sorry We’re Closed manages to tick every possible box if classic survival horror is your thing. It’s got puzzles, combat, inventory management, gorgeous visuals, a banging soundtrack, and plenty of blood and guts. There’s no skimping on storytelling either, Sorry We’re Closed has a diverse and genuinely fascinating cast of characters with a brilliant narrative leading to multiple endings depending on your choices.

Who’s Lila?

• Developer: Garage Heathen
• Release Date: February 23, 2022
• Platform: PC
• Jumpscares: Depending on your choices, two or three

I can guarantee with almost complete certainly that you’ve never played something like Who’s Lila. It’s an indie horror point-and-click mystery where instead of choosing dialogue options, you manually control facial expressions and see how those around you respond. You have to manipulate each part of the face to see a full expression–eyes, eyebrows, lips, teeth–but you’re sometimes actively working against the clock and your own facial muscles to keep things steady.

You play as William, the last person to see Tanya Kennedy before she went missing. The police and your friends all want to know what you know about her disappearance, and it’s very much up to you how much you show, and how much you hide. Different expressions–and even accidentally fumbling the one you meant to make–result in different reactions from the other characters, meaning you’re fully in the driving seat as to how you want this chilling, otherworldly plot to play out.

Detention

• Developer: Red Candle Games
• Release Date: January 12, 2017
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, mobile
• Jumpscares: A few

Red Candle Games’ Detention somehow makes high school an even more terrifying experience than it was in real life. From its inky 2D atmosphere, where shadows seem to twitch and shift, to its crushingly tragic story, if you like a slow-burn horror that creeps up on you and taps you right on the shoulder, Detention is a great indie horror game to add to your library.

Set in 1960s Taiwan under martial law, the game is packed with religious symbolism, otherworldly terrors, and a heaping dose of deep-rooted cultural trauma. Detention keeps you guessing as each door opens, drawing you in through claustrophobic survival gameplay and a desire to try and save just one person.

Strangeland

• Developer: Wormwood Studios
• Release Date: May 25, 2021
• Platform: PC
• Jumpscares: None

Strangeland is a point-and-click adventure game published by Wadjet Eye Games (always a sign of quality) and developed by the small team behind Primordia. This creepy, compact, carnival-themed indie horror pits you alone against a nightmarish world where your only option seems to be despair.

Another game that dumps you in a strange place without explanation, Strangeland’s story begins with a woman jumping down a well in the centre of a crumbling, floating carnival, and it’s all your fault. You set out to try and save her–and yourself–, encountering surreal characters and solving complex riddles, as the entire place seems to laugh at your fruitless efforts. The game’s design has been likened to the art of H.R. Giger, and the writing to David Lynch, so Strangeland is a cult classic must-play for fans of either artist.

Yume Nikki

• Developer: Kikiyama
• Release Date: June 26, 2004
• Platform: PC, mobile
• Jumpscares: Minor, if any

Yume Nikki is one of the older games on this list, but its influence on the world of indie horror RPGs cannot be overstated. It’s also completely free to play. Inspiring games as diverse as Undertale and Doki Doki Literature Club, Yume Nikki was made on RPG Maker back in 2003 and has very little in the way of linear plot or direction. You simply fall into a selection of dreamworlds and try to piece together the story in your head.

Decades of dedicated fans have come up with endless theories about the game, so playing it fresh all these years later means there’s a wealth of resources to dig into and groups to join. If going it alone is more your style, the game has barely aged at all. Depending on your choices and which door you enter, you could experience jarring and violent visual storytelling… or have a pretty chill time.

Immortality

• Developer: Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid
• Release Date: August 30, 2022
• Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, mobile
• Jumpscares: None

Part interactive-film, part detective game, Immortality is a proper work of art and a joy to play, despite being absolutely terrifying in parts. From the creators of Her Story, it’s a similar vibe where found footage is used to tell interlinking tales underlying one central mystery: what happened to up-and-coming movie starlet Marissa Marcel?

Marissa made three movies, none of which were ever released, but footage of each has been found. Your job is to match cut your way through her story all the way to the harrowing truth. The experience is similar to that of falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2am, convinced you might find the answer to something that no one else has managed to spot. Before you know if you’ll be compulsively flicking back and forth between scenes and pieces of footage, hungry for clues and cooking up your own theories. Check out our Immortality review to see why we’re still fixated on this immersive mystery.

The Tartarus Key

• Developer: Vertical Reach
• Release Date: May 31, 2023
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox Series X
• Jumpscares: None

The Tartarus Key is an atmospheric faux-retro puzzle game that drops the player right into a mansion filled with deadly traps. During development, the team actively looked at ways to spook the player without resorting to jumpscares, combat, or chase sequences, resulting in a game that feels thoughtful and unsettling, while managing to keep the tension high.

If you enjoy escape rooms and mystery games, you’ll get a lot out of The Tartarus Key, even if you don’t usually consider yourself a horror fan. The mansion is full of unexpected traps and an unnerving amount of cameras, watching you and the other abductees. None of you know why you’re there or how to get out alive. With The Tartarus Key’s blocky PS1 aesthetic giving way to a unique approach to puzzle design, there’s plenty of headscratching between the scares.

No, I’m Not A Human

• Developer: Trioskaz
• Release Date: September 15, 2025
• Platform: PC
• Jumpscares: A few, but not a central theme

If you’ve been anywhere near Twitch in the last short while, you’ll have seen countless channels playing indie horror hit No, I’m Not A Human. It’s a classic body horror in the long tradition of folk tales about skinwalkers, asking if you can really trust these people who say they’re human but still trigger your uncanny valley reflex.

Set in a post-apocalyptic near future, where the sun is poisonous to human beings, Visitors have started to appear. These almost-human creatures lurk during the nighttime, when people are able to leave their houses, snatching them out of thin air and preying on an already terrified population. The game takes place inside a house where it’s your job to work out who to help, and who to cast out. Visitors will try to trick you, appearing so visually similar to humans that it’s down to you to spot the tiny tells that distinguish them from us before disaster strikes.

Garage: Bad Dream Adventure

• Developer: Kinotrope
• Release Date: (Remaster) July 7, 2022
• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC, mobile
• Jumpscares: None

Garage: Bad Dream Adventure was first released in 1999 as an obscure PC adventure game. It has since been the subject of laborious fan translations and niche YouTube lets-plays, but fortunately for fans (and newcomers), an officially upscaled and accessible version was re-released in 2022. The game is hard to categorise–though predominantly featuring a deeply sad atmosphere with a through-current of anxiety, there’s also something beautiful and whimsical about the world of Garage.

A surrealist point-and-click adventure with a haunting soundtrack and a frog-collecting minigame, Garage: Bad Dream Adventure is set in the mind of Yang, a man who is strapped into an experimental therapy machine in the outside world. His internal world is full of disturbing ideas and biomechanical body horror, but also a nameless longing and a deep well of hurt, which his subconscious communicates through a cramped, decaying city full of apathetic and terrified fish-like residents. You can leave Garage, though, all you have to do is find your shadow.