It took until this very week for a whiff of cool, autumnal foliage to finally blast by my nose, prompting me to pick up a pumpkin on the walk home. Frightening to think we only have a week until Halloween, when ghouls and ghosts roam cul-de-sacs for candy. If the holidays creeped up on you as well, it’s not too late to cram in some last-minute spooks.
Many players gauge video games on how many days, months, years they’ll be playing after release. Horror games, thankfully, seem to be the exception. A genre that rewards a well-timed exit. And while P.T. is tricky to come by, there are plenty of other short and sweet scares to get your shivers from. Here are thirteen little haunts, ranging from 20 minute screams to three hours nightmares, to cram in before Halloween goblins get ya.
The Children of Clay (2025)
What Balazs Ronyai’s Children of Clay accomplishes in a matter of minutes would humble games that stretch on for days. Akin to M.R. James’ A Warning to the Curious, you are studying a small, uncanny figurine in a dimly lit parlor. Intimate and ill-advised, you’ll refer to your notes to decipher the relic’s secrets, all the while the shadows inch towards you.
Paratopic (2018)
Jessica Harvey’s Paratopic is a Lost Highway-like waking nightmare. You swap between three perspectives, a hired killer, a smuggler and a birdwatcher. Living their moments in real time, from small talk to highway drives, you’ll find your surroundings begin to unfurl. Revealing alarming creatures, cursed video tapes and a conspiracy you may only be nibbling at the periphery of. If you have never encountered Paratopic before, or fiending for more, the remake/remix Overdub was released just last month.
Anatomy (2016)
Speaking of magnetic tape and oppressive vibes, Kitty Horrorshow’s seminal Anatomy is a study in the kind of fears only possible in a video game. You are in an empty, darkened, ominous house, with only white noise and old recordings to keep you company. Just as you begin to clue into your relationship with this space, it’ll twist and subvert around you. The game itself shaking off its rivets. Daring you to last long enough to see what’s in the basement.
Devotion (2019)
Created by Red Candle Games, Devotion is a story about how potential, disappointment and resulting superstitions can make one family’s demons real. You explore the humbling apartment of the Du family, retracing their brushes with stardom when the daughter enters a singing contest. Unable to cope with unrealized stardom, the household turns to a cult for guidance. How much of this newfound spiritualism is snake oil is unclear, but their downward spiral left a psychic stain nasty enough to echo in their abode. Critically acclaimed, the game was pulled from Steam due to imagery believed to slight Xi Jinping. Thankfully, Devotion has been made available on the developer’s website.
Stories Untold (2020)
Years before Silent Hill: Townfall, developers No Code (now Screen Burn) raised goosebumps with this collection of interface-bound creepers. Booting up a desktop to play “The House Abandon,” a retro text-adventure, you soon find the events of the game encroaching towards your computer room. In 2020, this effective kick off creeper was bundled into Stories Untold, a full anthology of other tales about bad things while looking at a variety of screens.
Clock Tower (1995)
As the nascent genre of survival horror itself took shape, the enigmatic Human Entertainment ventured into some unknown territory on the Super Famicom. Inspired by Dario Argento giallo like Phenomena and Deep Red, Clock Tower follows four orphans with an appointment at the Barrows estate, hoping to find a new home. To their unpleasant surprise, the arrangement was a horrible trap, and it’s up to you to uncover the house’s secrets, save your friends and outrun the ‘Scissorman’ to survive the night. There’s numerous ways to play this classic, and a number of unhinged sequels, but for those comfiest on modern hardware WayForward released a faithful remaster in 2024.
Darkness Under My Bed (2021)
This one’s just got a look that’s going to put you on edge. An adventure game rendered through photographs of a cavernous expanse of dolls, dioramas and dust bunnies, you’ll navigate a drone through a maze built by a boy to trap the things lurking under his mattress. As the labyrinth sprawls on, and the grimy smudges become more ominous, you get the sense that this kid may have succeeded in trapping something.
Water Womb World (2020)
Yames has released a number of short, free, unnerving horrors over the years but a good starting point is this underwater test of faith. You play as a devoutly religious scientist, hoping to fuse their faith and their practice by combing the seabed for angels. In the darknesses of the trench, you’ll be confronted with divinity, and wager how much you’re willing to let sink into your flesh.
Home Safety Hotline (2024)
It should be clear by now that there’s a lot of horror games about looking at computers on your computer. While Home Safety Hotline puts some distance between you and those in danger, it doesn’t mean you won’t get some residual spooks. You work at a call center for people dealing with… unusual circumstances on their end. Search through your index of cryptics and creepers and do your best to help the person on the other line. A Papers, Please for the kind of calls Art Bell might get during the end of the world.
Ecstatica (1994)
While survival horror’s path was ultimately defined by Resident Evil, there is a version of history where everything worbled closer to the original Alone in the Dark. Goofy, but charmingly goofy, Ecstatica is about a middle ages village besieged by werewolves, trolls and your humongous ellipsoid ass. Fight back, solve puzzles and survive in this short but unrelenting retro oddity. And as the crow flies, Ecstatica and its sequel will have modern ports dropping tomorrow.
Horse Master (2013)
An all-time Twine game, Horse Master sees you as an aspiring master of horses. Upon its first few pages, you may just think you’ll just be breeding, raising, riding, mastering horses. Any further clicks and your discussion with the horse salesman starts to seem real out of saddle, as your notion of what this horse is, and who will ultimately be the master in this situation, opens its toothy maw wide open.
Inside (2016)
As we very, very patiently await what Playdead’s been cooking for a decade, why not revisit the reason you’re showing up on day one. You play as a young boy in a world gone grim. Navigating through shadows, you’ll have to find passage beyond hostile locals, pale creatures and unbecoming mind control experiments. Frequently imitated. Never rivaled. This classic captivated players then, with many still trying to pry open at its ornate mysteries.
The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival (2020)
Okay maybe not all of these games need you losing sleep. Created by A Short Hike’s Adam Robinson-Yu, The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is a multiplayer pumpkin carving simulator. With up to 20 people, you can recreate a trip to the patch, a haunted hay ride, uncovering autumnal secrets and of course, carving up your own jack-o-lantern. But there’s a catch! Like the activities therein, this game only comes once a year, as the servers leave with the season. Happy Halloween!
