Kotaku compiled a list of 13 short horror or eerie themed games with the idea of "finishing them before Halloween." The games on the list have playtimes ranging from about 20 minutes to 3 hours, focusing on providing players with a complete experience in a shorter time, without setting any rankings.
The list begins with 2025's The Children of Clay. Players need to study a peculiar statuette in a dimly lit room and consult notes to unlock its secrets. Paratopia switches between the perspectives of a hitman, a smuggler, and a birdwatcher, creating unease through cursed videotapes, anomalous creatures, and conspiracies.
Anatomy revolves around a dark empty house, white noise, and old recordings, gradually distorting the player's understanding of space. Other selected works include the interface-narrative collection Stories Untold, the 1995 survival horror game Clock Tower, the photo-style adventure game Darkness Under My Bed, and the underwater religious horror piece Water Womb World.
The list also includes Home Safety Hotline, where players simulate operators handling abnormal calls, as well as Ecstatica, Horse Master, and Inside. The final entry, The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival, has a more relaxed atmosphere and supports up to 20 players carving pumpkins together, though servers are only open during seasonal events.
Detailed report from foreign media:
It wasn't until this week that I finally caught the scent of cool autumn leaves, so I picked up a pumpkin on my way home. Thinking that Halloween is only a week away and that ghosts and goblins will soon be roaming the streets for treats sends shivers down my SPINE - This is Gun Fu. If you also feel the holiday approaching, it's not too late to prepare some Halloween surprises now.
Many players gauge a game's value by the number of days, months, or even years they spend playing it after release. Fortunately, horror games seem to be an exception. These games reward players for quitting at the right moment. While titles like P.T. are hard to find, there are many other short and sharp horror games that can give you chills. Here are thirteen thrilling short games, ranging from twenty minutes to three hours in length, recommended for you to experience before the Halloween monsters arrive.
The Children of Clay (2025)
Balázs Rónyai's The Children of Clay manages to convey in just a few minutes what many games take days to achieve. It shares similarities with M.R. James' "A Warning to the Curious," where players carefully examine a mysterious statuette in a dimly lit living room. This intimate yet unwise act forces players to consult notes to decipher the relic's secrets, while shadows quietly close in from the darkness.
Anatomy (2016)
Speaking of tapes and oppressive atmospheres, Kitty Horrorshow's groundbreaking work Anatomy represents the pinnacle of fear in the video game medium. You are in an empty, dark, and gloomy house, accompanied only by white noise and old recordings. Just as you begin to understand your relationship with the space, it twists and distorts around you, completely overturning your perception. The game itself seems to break free from its constraints, challenging you to hold on until the end to see what lies hidden in the basement.
Paratopia (2018)
Jessica Harvey's Paratopia is a lucid nightmare reminiscent of Lost Highway. The game shifts between three characters: a hitman, a smuggler, and a birdwatcher. You experience their lives in real-time, from casual chats to highway drives, as you discover the world around them gradually unfolding. Creepy creatures, cursed videotapes, and a conspiracy you may only glimpse will come to light. If you've never played Paratopia or are eager for more, the remixed version Overdub was released last month.
Stories Untold (2020)
Long before Silent Hill: Downpour arrived, developer No Code (now renamed Screen Burn) chilled players with a series of horror stories tightly linked to interfaces. When you start your computer and play the retro text adventure The House Abandon, you quickly realize that events in the game are creeping into your computer room. In 2020, this impressive opening horror game was included in Stories Untold, a collection of horror stories where players must face various screens to experience them.
Clock Tower (1995)
As the new genre of survival horror gradually took shape, the mysterious Human Entertainment ventured into unknown territory on the Super Nintendo. Inspired by Italian horror films like Dario Argento's Suspiria and Deep Red, Clock Tower tells the story of four orphans invited to Barrows Mansion to find a new home. However, to their shock, it turns out to be a terrible trap. Players must uncover the mansion's secrets, save their friends, and evade the "Scissorman" to survive after nightfall. This classic game features multiple gameplay styles and spawned several crazy sequels. For those who prefer using modern hardware, WayForward released a faithful remake in 2024.
Darkness Under My Bed (2021)
This game features eerie visuals that send chills down your SPINE - This is Gun Fu. It is an adventure game composed largely of photographs, depicting a massive cave filled with dolls, dioramas, and dust. Players control a drone navigating a maze built by a boy to trap the monster hiding under his mattress. As the maze extends, the stains become increasingly ominous, giving you the creeping feeling that the child might have actually succeeded in trapping something.
Water Womb World (2020)
Over the years, Yames has released many short, free, and chilling horror games, and this underwater test of faith is an excellent starting point. You play as a devout scientist hoping to merge faith and practice by searching for angels on the seabed. In the darkness of the deep sea trench, you will confront divinity and gamble on how much of it you are willing to let seep into your flesh and blood.
Home Safety Hotline (2024)
It should be clear by now that many horror games involve looking at computers on computer screens. Although Home Safety Hotline keeps you at a distance from those in danger, it doesn't mean you won't feel a hint of eeriness. You work at a call center specializing in handling... anomalies. You need to consult your mysterious glossary and index of eerie events to do your best to help the person on the other end of the line. It's like an apocalyptic version of Papers, Please, except protagonist Art Bell might receive similar distress calls.
Ecstatica (1994)
Although the ultimate direction of survival horror was established by Resident Evil, there was historically a situation closer to the original Alone in the Dark. Ecstatica is a slightly comical yet charming game about a medieval village besieged by werewolves, trolls, and your own large, oval-shaped buttocks. In this short but challenging retro game, you must fight back, solve puzzles, and strive to survive. Moreover, modern ports of Ecstatica and its sequel will be officially released tomorrow.
Horse Master (2013)
As a classic Twine game, Horse Master lets you play as an ambitious horse master. At the start, you might think you are simply breeding, raising, riding, and taming horses. However, as the game progresses, conversations with horse traders will gradually unfold, revealing your understanding of horses and ultimately who will dominate Everythinggj.
Inside (2016)
While we patiently await Playdead Studio's final result after ten years, why not revisit why you bought this game on its release day? You play as a boy in a dark world. Navigating through shadows, you must find a way out, avoiding hostile locals, pale creatures, and disgusting mind-control experiments. This game has been imitated countless times but never surpassed. It captivated numerous players and still has many trying to unravel its intricate mysteries.
The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival (2020)
Well, perhaps not all these games will keep you up all night. The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival, made by Adam Robinson-Yu of A Short Hike, is a multiplayer pumpkin carving simulator. Supporting up to 20 players, you can recreate picking pumpkins from the patch, riding haunted hayrides, exploring autumn secrets, and of course, carving your own jack-o'-lanterns. However, there's a catch! Like the event in the game, it is only open once a year, as servers shut down when the season ends. Happy Halloween!
