Halloween is a great time to check out interactive horror media, and there are plenty of great titles that cost less than a Baconator. Here are our horror video game budget picks.
Exit 8/Platform 8
Japanese indie developer Kotake Create redefined the hidden picture game genre with this pair of spiraling anomaly spotters. You must navigate through a repeating train station (or car in the sequel), spotting disturbing anomalies to progress. Fail to catch the differences and you either restart or are killed by strange beings. Both take maybe an hour each to beat, though wandering through the haunted liminal spaces can be oddly relaxing on a replay. These games have birthed numerous imitators, including Cabin Factory, which is also a great cheap game.
Anatomy
Ten years later, Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy is probably still the best reason to start checking out experimental games on Itch.io. Players navigate through an abandoned house looking for audio logs that explain how the buildings we create can start to actively hate us. The game deftly uses system crashes and reboots to simulate the deterioration of the house and the introduction of corrupting elements. It’s also one of the games that helped launch video essayist Jacob Geller’s career, so check that out if you haven’t already.
Voices of the Void
Speaking of Itch.io and viral YouTube videos, Voices of the Void is a pay-what-you-want masterpiece of ambient horror. You play as the only worker in a Swiss astronomical monitoring station, analyzing signals from space then selling the information. It’s probably not a good sign of the economy that so many job sims double as horror games these days, but it does at least make for satisfying play loops.
Voices of the Void takes a while to get going. There are 45 days in the game and you won’t really start seeing weirdness until the second week. If you can take the slow burn, it’s a very rewarding play.
Hidden Memories
If I may get on a soapbox for a second, we don’t talk enough about how the entire adventure game genre renaissance we’ve been enjoying since Dear Esther was made possible by Her Interactive’s Nancy Drew series remaining popular throughout the 2000s. Long before Exit 8 changed hidden picture forever, point-and-click puzzle mysteries were paving the way for spooky narrative experiences.
No one produces better throwbacks to those golden days at an affordable price than Peru-based developer Darkdome. Their entire catalogue is cheap and excellent, but check out this year’s Hidden Memories as an entry point. It’s got a haunted mansion, vampires, and oodles of puzzles all presented in an adorable art style vaguely reminiscent of Edward Gorey.
That’s Not My Neighbor
If you’d like all the paranoia and uncanny valley weirdness of No, I’m Not Human at a third of the price, That’s Not My Neighbor is for you. Set in McCarthy-era America, you are tasked with identifying doppelgangers before they can get inside and kill the real people. You have to pay close attention to who says what lest you eliminate an innocent person or subject your group of residents to a killer.
Note: play this on Steam. The mobile versions have had issues with ads and technical glitches.
Ravenous Devils
Developer Bad Vice basically made a Sweeney Todd job simulator with less singing. Ravenous Devils is a super gory ant farm-style game where a couple murder people to resell their clothes and meat. It’s oddly cozy despite all their killing and offers a lot of gameplay for just $4.99. The playloop can get a bit unrewarding later on as atrocity becomes a simple work routine to buy better stuff. There’s probably a moral in that somewhere.
Loan Shark
Indie games are always about four things: grief, being LGBTQIA+, capitalism, and jump scares. Loan Shark is the last two. Like a discount Dredge, you’re an angler paying off a debt. However, in this game you come across a magic and manipulative fish who offers you help at increasingly drastic prices. Escaping the jaws of debt is possible, but you have to sail through a sea of horrors to get there. The update in August added a bunch of extra endings and content for the dedicated explorer, but the core hour-long experience is perfectly gruesome, too.
Buckshot Roulette
Short and very intense, Buckshot Roulette is exactly what it says on the tin. You are playing a game of Russian roulette with a loaded shotgun against a devious dealer. Each turn you bet on whether or not a live shell will kill you. Yes, the game is 90 percent luck, thought there are various tokens and artifacts that will increase the odds in your favor. The game’s atmosphere is brilliantly rendered in low-fi polygons that add to the sinister setting.
Dollmare
Dollmare exists almost perfectly at the intersection between bargain price and quality horror experience. You work in the Sweet Cheeks doll factory inspecting dolls for defects. The dolls, of course, are haunted, and so haunted doll antics ensue. The factory is a well realized space, inspection tools increase in complexity throughout play, and there’s just enough lore to make the whole thing memorable.
Oh, and if you prefer your scary doll game experience with a bit more walking simulation and focus on grief, try Until They Burn, also for $4.99
The Creepy Syndrome
The Creepy Syndrome is actually four games in one. A mysterious psychiatrist walks the player through four retro-style games done in a variety of styles dealing with everything from nuclear apocalypse to a mass cult suicide. The mini-games are all lovingly crafted and terrifying despite the low-res pixel art. There are also twelve different endings, so it has a bit more replay value than your typical budget game. Happy Halloween!
