I’m not going to hold your hand when I say this: a first-person indie horror means willingly stepping into the dark and owning whatever comes next. You chose this.
There will be bodies that are human or vehemently dehumanized. Bodies that appear from nowhere and are sent to nowhere after you’re done with them. Sometimes they even scurry off if you hide long enough. You’re meant to rely on your own wits, even as paranoia creeps in. Moral ascendency? Optional.
Many of these games carry content warnings for distressing themes, gore, or repeated depictions of laying waste to, again, bodies. Bodies reduced to chunky salsa. You didn’t even have to do anything; they appeared that way the moment you saw them. If memory serves you right.
A lethal combination of an unreliable narrator and an unsettling chain of betrayals, where nothing is ever as it seems.
The Pony Factory
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck)
We open with a Pony reference, and end with another.
In this factory, the innocence of ponies is ground into industrial glue and set aside where the sun doesn’t shine.
A minimalist shooter where color is drained, mechanics are bare-bones, and the oppressive atmosphere wastes no time. Even visibility is scarce; with your muzzle flash, the only source of light aside from a flashlight. But never together, so it’s a tense choice between seeing and shooting.
This is the work of David Szymanski, best known for DUSK. Expect self-references and horror tropes taken to absurd extremes like the rest of his catalog.
A compact case study in dread, short enough to conquer on a lunch break if you’ve got the stomach for evil, skeletal ponies hell-bent to bid you a forever good night.
The Outlast Trials
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
“Erase your past and remake yourself,” a screen affirms. Truly copium, considering how this is your life now, post-brainwash, all because a piece of paper in a dark alley asked if you’re lonely.
Courtesy of the Murkoff Corporation, you’re now stripped of human traits that make you move and think for yourself. Talking mannequins guide you through this new life, pre-programmed to screech mechanically like everything else that you encounter.
You’re running laps on the hamster wheel for Murkoff, in an era of distrust, fear, and violence. Like a good pet, progress is made through trials that have you tearing down propaganda posters and playing executioner. They pull the strings, but you pull the trigger and somehow escape intact until the next objective.
There’s a co-op option, so you can drag a friend along. Or better yet, an enemy, because why would you traumatize someone you actually like?
Reveil
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck, PS5, Xbox Series X/S)
There’s a failing mind within the confines of a supposedly safe, happy space, and then there’s the Silent Hills Playable Teaser, so far-reaching that it’s referred to by two letters. PT was a first-person horror characterized by the bending of space and sanity. A demo released in 2014 that never went beyond its looping hallways.
On a similar track is Reveil, where the show begins with what seems like the massive interior of a circus tent. It doesn’t seem like you’re walking, but rather gliding like in all dreamscapes.
Between these transitory states of illusion and lucidity, between your home and a circus, tension builds through puzzles upon puzzles, not like a rollercoaster but a spinning, creaking Ferris wheel.
Its environment is a marvel to look at, even though sight may not be the best sense to rely on. Trusting even yourself would be a bold move.
Sker Ritual
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
Touted as the spiritual successor to Maid of Sker, this offshoot takes the original’s folklore-flavored horror and runs it through the grinder of co-op wave survival. It’s a round-based zombie rampage where you’re a poor shmuck stuck in Sker’s cursed landscape. Say that three times. (The title is pronounced “scare”, apparently.)
Enemies arrive in droves, often as grotesque riffs on the antagonists from the first game. No need to hold your breath in this one, as what this needs is for you to hold your ground through every horde.
Stockpile weapons, tighten your circle, and pray you make it through the ritual without becoming part of the beautifully rendered, yet Skery scenery.
Still Wakes the Deep
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck, PS5, Xbox Series X/S)
Something’s in the water, and it’s not the infamous garbage patch of microplastics and earth’s excrement twice the size of Texas. Speaking of exploited regions, this game puts you in an offshore oil rig.
The massive structure is in the North Sea, long gone from the safety of solid ground. There is only yourself and a handful of others in this dire elevation where you’ve swapped safety for servitude. This isn’t the hook of the horror yet. For here, you are merely human against the relentless battery of a deep-sea mystery.
There are no powers or weapons as you scale the monstrosity that is the rig, fix what needs fixing, and escape from an infiltrating presence.
A place of atmospheric horror where your smallness against the unknown is doubled by a lingering question from your wife at the very beginning: “What were you thinking, going to that place?”
Platform 8
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck, Switch 1/2, PS4/PS5; Mobile (Android)
All aboard the hallucination express, where anomalies disrupt regular train service. Some aberrations are blink-and-you-miss-it, while others rear their head in, too glaring to go unnoticed.
Undoubtedly connected to Exit 8, which was released first and has its own film adaptation, this puts you once again stuck in a liminal space of transition with a man carrying a briefcase. Is it really the same person, or merely a strange likeness? Why do you keep getting yourself into these situations?
This time, move forward through every break in reality, keeping your observational skills keen, though you may have little to go on.
Surreal and terrifying, with the constant sound of a never-ending train nagging at you in the rare moments of calm.
除邪(CHUXIE)
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck)
While FPS horror often throws tropes your way, this game instead bombards you with… a pickle. In between the parade of borderline brainrot creatures are the usual Weeping Angels-style stalkers and long-haired banshees waiting in the corner.
Set in a hospital that can turn any shooter mental is a messy Unreal Engine experiment that gives anyone creeping through the darkened halls a cortisol spike, due to fear or laughter. Either way, it’s a stress response. By the end of your run, you’ll be debating whether to end the guy doing capoeira in the dark or just join it.
Chuxie is an unpredictable, surreal first-person horror shooter with a playful edge that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Fears to Fathom – Woodbury Getaway
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck)
Closing the Fears to Fathom series is its fifth entry, one that delves into a familiar but potent nightmare of mundane realism, this time unfolding after you book a rental through a dodgy dot com. All told through nostalgic fuzz and a muted palette that strangely feels like remembering a long-buried memory.
Like Still Wakes the Deep, you are utterly human. Not just any human: a young woman, which means the odds of people acting completely unhinged around you are never zero. And since it’s the 90s, calling for help isn’t easy, especially in this era crawling with serial killers for some reason.
What was thought to be a relaxing escape from your stressful office job turns into a threat to your very life. Naturally, you and a friend stop for pizza on the way there.
It’s this kind of resonance to a real-life random Tuesday that makes it all the more unnerving.
Baby Blues Nightmares – Toddler Horror Game
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck)
In psychology, the first seven years of life are considered a formative, sensitive period. Bad news for this kid, whose name is Aiden, as things aren’t looking great from the start. Playing through this will make you want to root for the little guy and give it a juice box after a nap.
In this survival horror, playgrounds and playthings become death traps for any developing mind and body.
Forget about crying, which is the only survival tool toddlers have. Here, silence is golden, allowing little Aiden to track down five toys that offer safety in the surrounding gloom. With names like Mr. Bunny Teeth and Ms. Hunny Claws, their equally creepy exteriors are seen as refuge, which says a lot about the horrors Aiden’s already witnessed.
Thank heavens he can customize his tricycle as a momentary respite. An idea: press pause, and you actually cry in a corner by proxy.
Mouthwashing
Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck, Switch 1/2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S)
Five crew members find themselves in deep-space trouble, on what was supposed to be another routine long-haul trip managed by the dubious freighter company Pony Express.
The ship falls into mayhem after colliding with debris that compromises the already rickety vehicle. The story is told in a non-linear way, as you play between Captain Curly, who has become limbless after the crash, and co-pilot Jimmy, who is newly assigned to the ship’s helm.
While trying to stay sane, flashes of text fill your vision, serving as a breadcrumb trail of memories and glimpses into a doom you’re desperate to avoid. As supplies dwindle, measures become drastic.
Within the ship are constant reminders that you work for Pony Express through the ominous presence of its mascot, Polle, watching your best and worst decisions. God isn’t here, but Polle can be a stand-in.
As sanity becomes a fragile resource, will home hear the screams of desperation from far, far away?
As hopelessness settles, reality tends to fray at the edges. Your rationality might quit before you do. At times, there’s no one to trust, not even yourself. No, you don’t even have yourself. Do you? Huh. Who said that?
Now, make a choice. Any choice. But tread carefully, as you might not leave unchanged. At the very least, you’ll find yourself, if only for a moment, doubting your own internal voices.
This list is the first part of a two-part series on first-person horror games. Check Part 2 here.
