*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
This year seemed to be one that was packed to the gills with horror games of all shapes and sizes. With so many games demanding your attention, it’s easy for a real gem to sneak past you. To make sure you don’t miss something that could end up being your next favorite game, here are some of the best underappreciated horror games of the year.
Advertising itself as a “soulslike deckbuilder,” Death Howl is a moody tale of grief that feels like a story straight out of classic folklore. You play as Ro, a hunter who travels to the spirit realm in search of her recently deceased son. The game is presented from an isometric perspective with a moody pixel-art style that brings to life the strange spirits that stand in your way. You’ll explore the lands, following the traces of your son, as you aid other spirits adrift in the grim lands.
Like other souls-likes, there will be bonfire-like checkpoints that you respawn at, and using one of those will bring back all the enemies that you’ve previously killed. Unlike souls-likes, instead of doing real-time, reflex-based combat, battles take the form of a grid-based tactics game that’s driven by deckbuilding. You have five action points to spend each turn, which can either be spent on moving or playing the various cards you have in your hand. As you gather more resources from your fights, you can craft more powerful cards to add to your deck.
If you’re a fan of deckbuilders and would like a break from the roguelike format that they usually follow, Death Howl is a beautifully haunting tale of grief with compelling combat.
After years and years of soulslikes, we’re used to throwing ourselves against a boss, dying over and over again until that final moment of triumph. But what does this story look like from the boss’s point of view? This is the perspective explored by The Dark Queen of Mortholme, a 20-minute 2D pixel art game from developer Mosu.
What sounds like a one note joke actually ends up being an interesting exploration of life, death, purpose, and inevitability. All taking place in one gorgeously rendered room, you’ll fight the same hero over and over again, as he grows in strength, having quick conversations with him before battles. The gameplay is fairly limited, but evolves a little as the hero becomes able to hurt you enough to get you to your second phase, though mechanical depth isn’t the point. As the game progresses, it’s able to simulate that feeling of the hero getting better, as he is able to hurt you more and more each time.
It’s the video game equivalent of a short film, able to pack an emotional and philosophical punch into a very brief runtime.
Playing like an interesting cross between Balatro and Inscryption, CloverPit burst onto the scene this year and ended up breaking a million copies sold. The low-poly game locks you in a room with a slot machine and a debt to be paid. Each round you need to earn enough money to proceed, and you’re given a series of charms that allow you to manipulate your odds and payouts.
It’s the standard roguelike formula, applying the principals of the genre to the mechanics of a slot machine, but the presentation makes it feel so much more engaging. The rusty deathtrap room is a gorgeously grimy nightmare, with bottles and cigarette butts scattered next to a broken toilet. Slot machines are already designed to be addicting in real life, and there’s even more little audio/visual flourishes that make the simple act of pulling the lever and watching the symbols go around even more stimulating. The items you can purchase offer both interesting mechanical choices and flavorful visuals, crafting a strange world full of mystery.
While I don’t think it has the staying power of something like Balatro, CloverPit definitely has the right tone to sink its teeth into you.
Imagine a typical sci-fi setup of dealing with the aftermath of a weird crisis in space. Usually you’re playing as a trapped scientist or badass space marine, blasting your way through some sort of alien monstrosities. In Ambrosia Sky, you go in and clean up weird alien fungus using mechanics similar to Powerwash Simulator. It’s a novel concept that puts a fresh spin on weird sci-fi, using more calm and meditative mechanics to tell a story that ruminates on the concept of death itself.
You play as Dahlia, a scientist who works for a group trying to unlock the secrets of immortality, as she returns to her birthplace in the wake of a fungal outbreak that has devastated an asteroid colony. As you explore various locations, clearing the way with your cleaner and zipping around with your grappling hook, you’ll learn about the people who died in the outbreak, while reflecting on what they meant to you in the past. There are some clever twists to the very simple gameplay, forcing you to figure out how to reroute power to a door or remove danger from an area. It’s the perfect combination of eerie and relaxing that really lets you reflect on the sombre tone.
Act One of Ambrosia Sky is out now, with the next two acts coming out sometime next year, and I can’t wait to see what strange and sad worlds I’m taken to next.
CREEPY REDNECK DINOSAUR MANSION III
What happens when you combine the genres of visual novel, survival horror, RPG, metroidvania, and match-3. You get Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III, a hilarious game that sets you loose in the titular mansion to explore a narrative about the nature of video game development itself. If that sounds like a lot, it is, but the team over at Strange Scaffold makes it all work.
Most of the game is played through a visual novel format, which allows you to work your way through the many strange locations in the mansion. When you need to do something, from unlocking a door to fighting a raptor, you go into match-3 mode. To make progress on your objective, you’ll need to match specific symbols, while trying not to allow your opponents to match others. You’ll also be able to collect certain symbols that let you do specific moves to affect the match in other ways. It’s a surprisingly compelling system that made me think about every move. There are several narrative branches you can explore, backing up the solid gameplay with tons of charm and humor.
If you end up liking it, you can check out Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion I: Re-Raptored, the sequel that presents itself as a remaster of an “earlier title in the series.”
Every once in a while I like a good shoot ‘em up, but it feels like they rarely have a horror theme. Enter Death in Abyss, a terrifying descent into an alien ocean that feels like a mix between Star Fox 64 and Devil Daggers. As you explore the dark depths of each level, you’re swarmed by wave after wave of strange creatures that overwhelm and unnerve.
It’s a challenging game that keeps you constantly moving in all directions as enemies attack you from all sides, punishing you for stopping for even a moment. There’s a unique system that allows you to heal a bit every time you kill an enemy, forcing you to scramble as you get closer and closer to death. This tense shooter gameplay is all brought to life by a wonderfully crunchy PS1-style aesthetic, accompanied by old-school sound effects, coming together for a complete retro-inspired package.
The level of challenge presented may not be for everyone, but if this type of shoot ‘em up is your speed, Death in Abyss will keep you coming back for more.
Like many indie games this fall, Demonschool shifted its schedule when Hollow Knight: Silksong disrupted everyone’s plans by announcing its release date. While it was a tough wait for the game, it was definitely worth it. Demonschool is a neat twist on the Persona formula, casting you as a group of students fighting demons at a university on a mysterious island. Faye and her misfit friends try to balance their studies, social life, and monster fighting over a 30-ish hour campaign.
It’s all brought to life from an isometric perspective with a vibrant pixel art style that takes inspiration from anime and Italian horror cinema. There’s also a bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the mix, with witty dialog that moves the story along. Instead of using Persona’s traditional JRPG combat, battles take place on a grid with a tower defense-like twist. Enemies will be moving across the battlefield trying to get to your side, while you’re trying to kill a certain amount of monsters to allow you to perform a ritual that will end that fight.
It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it manages to inject in enough of its own personality into the elements it’s remixing to make it a charming twist on the strategy RPG genre.
There’s something inherently compelling about the loop of a typical RPG, getting loot and improving your hero to take on bigger and bigger monsters. He Is Coming boils that all down to its most basic components, condensing that idea into a roguelike autobattler with a dark fantasy coat of paint. You’re dropped in the woods, surrounded by monsters, with a warning that a boss monster will be arriving in three days. It’s your job to spend those days fighting creatures to improve your build so that you’re ready to take on the challenge that’s coming when time runs out.
Each move you make on the map moves time forward, and when you clash with a monster you do so in a very simple autobattling format, taking turns doing damage to each other based on stats. There are plenty of modifiers you can add, changing up the battle in important ways, even though you’re not in direct control. It’s the kind of game that makes you feel clever when you find a synergy that makes you tear through enemies, but also challenging enough that it can still push back on you even when you think you’ve discovered an overpowered build.
A run in the game can be about 10-15 minutes, giving you a satisfying sample of the gameplay loop in short order, making it the perfect lunch break game.
HUNDRED LINE: LAST DEFENSE ACADEMY
I’ll admit, I’m nowhere near the end of Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, which reportedly takes over 150 hours to get through all the endings, but the game is so unique that I couldn’t leave it off the list. The minds behind the Danganronpa series and Nonary Games trilogy have teamed up for what seems to be the final word on the type of games they’ve been doing for years. It’s a complex visual novel/adventure game full of wild characters, branching paths, and wild twists and turns that keep you coming back for more.
You play as a group of strange students stuck in an academy and forced to defend it from monsters for 100 days. The stakes and circumstances of what you’re going through don’t really make sense, but that’s all part of the ongoing mystery that unfolds. You’ll walk around the academy and explore to improve your characters and talk to others, while fighting off enemies in an interesting twist on turn-based tactics. It reminded me of a much wilder version of Vanillaware’s 13 Sentinels, but somehow even more ambitious.
It seems like the culmination of both of their careers, though it won’t win you over if you’re not already a fan of visual novel-esque games with a very anime-like tone.
It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that when Routine was first announced, Alien: Isolation hadn’t even been released, since that’s the game it reminds me most of. A space station in crisis, killer robots, and clunky retrofuturistic technology–it has all the hallmarks of the classic franchise, but still manages to feel like its own thing.
The lunar base you find yourself on is so detailed and well-rendered, and you’ll get to know it intimately as you play a lethal game of hide and seek with your mechanical tormenters. The real highlight of the game is a C.A.T. (cosmonaut assistance tool), a gun-like tool that has multiple functions that can be accessed by interacting with all its clicky buttons. One of my favorite little aesthetic touches is using the C.A.T. to sync up with the save points, which come in the form of screens that are projected on the wall. There are no quest markers or interactive maps in the game, so it demands that you become familiar with your settings to solve the puzzles that the game throws in our path.
It can get frustrating having to backtrack to areas without a map, but if you’ve got a tolerance (or appetite) for games that demand a little more attention from you, Routine is worth it.
What are your most under-the-radar suggestions from 2025? Sound off in the comments below!
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