Halloween is almost here, but there is still time to fit a few unsettling games into the week. These compact horror experiences trade long campaigns for focused atmosphere, sharp ideas and endings that arrive before the fear wears thin.
The selection below spans roughly 20-minute scares to three-hour nightmares. It includes experimental adventures, retro survival horror, unsettling computer interfaces and even a seasonal multiplayer activity. For more gaming and industry coverage, explore the RETROCADE Arcade Blog.
The Children of Clay (2025)
Balazs Ronyai’s Children of Clay creates an impressive amount of unease in only a few minutes. In a dim parlour, you examine a strange figurine and consult your notes to work out its secrets. The atmosphere recalls M.R. James’ A Warning to the Curious, while something in the surrounding shadows gradually draws closer.
Paratopic (2018)
Jessica Harvey’s Paratopic plays like a waking nightmare in the spirit of Lost Highway. Three viewpoints place you in the lives of a hired killer, a smuggler and a birdwatcher. Ordinary conversations and drives unfold in real time before giving way to disturbing creatures, cursed videotapes and a conspiracy glimpsed only from its edges. The remix and remake Overdub was released just last month.
Anatomy (2016)
Kitty Horrorshow’s seminal Anatomy finds horror in the relationship between a player and a digital space. You explore an empty, dark house accompanied by white noise and old recordings. As its layout and meaning become clearer, the building begins to shift, challenge your assumptions and invite you towards the basement.
Devotion (2019)
Red Candle Games’ Devotion follows the Du family through an apartment haunted by failed ambition, superstition and religious extremism. After their daughter enters a singing contest, the household struggles with the gap between hoped-for stardom and reality, eventually turning to a cult for answers. The family’s spiritual descent leaves a disturbing imprint on their home.
The critically acclaimed game was removed from Steam after imagery was considered insulting to Xi Jinping. It is now available on the developer’s website.
Stories Untold (2020)
No Code’s anthology builds its scares around screens and interfaces. It begins with “The House Abandon”, a retro text adventure played on a desktop computer, before the fiction starts to intrude on the room around you. That opening story sits within Stories Untold, a collection of unsettling tales presented through different kinds of technology.
Clock Tower (1995)
Human Entertainment’s Super Famicom classic arrived while survival horror was still finding its shape. Inspired by Dario Argento’s giallo films Phenomena and Deep Red, it follows four orphans sent to the Barrows estate in search of a new home. The welcome is a trap, leaving you to investigate the house, rescue your friends and escape the relentless Scissorman.
There are several ways to play the original and a collection of eccentric sequels. Players who prefer modern hardware can choose WayForward’s faithful 2024 remaster.
Darkness Under My Bed (2021)
This adventure game uses photographs of dolls, dioramas and dust-covered spaces to create its unsettling visual style. You control a drone through a maze built by a boy who wants to trap the things beneath his bed. As the passageways expand and the stains become more threatening, it begins to seem that the trap may have caught something real.
Water Womb World (2020)
Yames has made several short, unnerving horror games, and this underwater test of faith is a strong entry point. You play a religious scientist searching the seabed for angels, hoping to reconcile scientific work with belief. In the darkness of the trench, the encounter with the divine becomes a question of how much of it you are prepared to absorb.
Home Safety Hotline (2024)
Home Safety Hotline places you on the safer side of a telephone call, but the cases still carry plenty of residual dread. Working in a call centre, you help people facing unusual problems by searching an index of strange creatures and phenomena. It has the methodical investigation of Papers, Please with the kind of callers that might reach Art Bell during the end of the world.
Ecstatica (1994)
Before Resident Evil became the defining model for survival horror, Ecstatica offered a strange alternative closer to the warped world of the original Alone in the Dark. A medieval village is under attack from werewolves and trolls, while the player character’s enormous ellipsoid body adds to the game’s peculiar charm. Fight, solve puzzles and endure the relentless weirdness. The game and its sequel have modern ports dropping tomorrow.
Horse Master (2013)
Horse Master is a celebrated Twine game that initially appears to be about breeding, raising, riding and mastering horses. Continue through the conversation with the horse seller, however, and the premise turns sharply stranger. Your understanding of the animal, the transaction and who is really in control begins to open into something with a very large, toothy grin.
Inside (2016)
While waiting for Playdead’s next project, Inside remains an essential dark adventure. A young boy crosses a grim world filled with hostile people, pale creatures and disturbing mind-control experiments. Its visual language has been widely imitated, but its carefully constructed mysteries still make the journey worth revisiting.
The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival (2020)
Not every Halloween game needs to keep you awake. Created by A Short Hike developer Adam Robinson-Yu, The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is a multiplayer pumpkin-carving simulator for up to 20 players. You can visit the patch, ride a haunted hay wagon, uncover seasonal secrets and carve a jack-o’-lantern.
There is one important catch: like the festival itself, the game is available only once a year, with its servers leaving when the season ends. For a different kind of interactive display at home, browse RETROCADE’s virtual pinball machines or explore options in our arcade machine buying guide.
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