The list of things of frightening things is long. Be it spiders, clowns, or thunderstorms, everyone has something they fear, and horror games do their best to wring every drop of terror from players. Jump scares, psychological horror, and that undefinable feeling that something is just oh so very wrong are hallmarks of the genre.RELATED: Games That Defined The Survival Horror Genre & Where You Can Play ThemHorror is a delicate thing, contextual and fragile, and many attempts to evoke it fall flat. Yet free indie games have an advantage other their big-budget horror competitors. They can tell stories just long enough to elicit their desired response, be it a single knowing shiver or a week of sleepless nights, casting one's furtive gaze at the closet door.

10 It's Not Me, It's My Basement

Embry standing in front of door in It's Not Me, It's My Basement

A horror game that would fit comfortably on the Game Boy Advance, It's Not Me, It's My Basement is the story of a non-binary child named Embry who, with their parents away, is tasked with keeping the house clean and feeding the things locked in the basement. It isn't an open-world horror game, but it feels spacious and authentic.

Disconcerting experiences begin early, and the dialog with the shopkeepers (who are clearly worried about Embry but unsure how to intervene in their life) is simple and haunting. Embry is an endearing protagonist, which of course heightens the horror because players fear at every step of the way that something will befall the character. It's Not Me, It's My Basement can be completed in under an hour, but the story it unravels in that time is not to be missed.

9 Haunted Cities V.4

Text overlaid over ruins in Haunted Cities V.4 - Lethargy Hill

Haunted Cities V.4 by Kitty Horrorshow is a collection of four horror games: Exclusion Zone, Grandmother's Garden, Lethargy Hill, and Tenement. Varying from first-person to isometric perspectives, each is a different spin on lo-fi horror. All four games deserve a look, but Lethargy Hill is arguably the stand-out.

It tells the story of a terrible house built by a witch, a story in which text spills unrelentingly out across the screen while the player explores. This is a game with a Lovecraftian side, and its creepy, fairytale-gone-wrong vibe is the perfect complement to its visuals. Its tale is likely to linger in players' minds long after they finish. Tenement, with its creepy urban exploration and occasional jumpscare, is another fine addition, with dialog that may feel uncomfortably relatable to some.

8 You Left Me

Cyclopean cat raising its paw in You Left Me

Made in just 48 hours, Angela He's You Left Me is a horror/romance visual novel. The game's subject matter, including suicide, is not for everyone, but its style should be. If the painterly, anime-influenced aesthetic, perfect animations and soundtrack do not convince players, the cyclopean cat and dad-joke-telling moon should.

The game is at turns funny, sweet, and deeply uncomfortable. Many games collapse under their own weight trying to balance such divergent elements, but in You Left Me it is the very dissonance of the material that makes the work sing in a game where the protagonist is defenseless against the terror.

7 No Players Online

Lo-fi FPS map in No Players Online

A game by papercookies, No Players Online is a trip into 90s nostalgia. The player joins an empty capture-the-flag server in a Quake-like FPS, running around on the map while they wait for other players, until things take a sudden turn for the frightening. No Players Online doesn't need the best jump scares to be horror perfection.

The game can be completed in under half an hour and expertly capitalizes on nostalgia, and if that were the end of it, No Players Online would still warrant mention. Instead, the game was also part of an Alternate Reality Game that had players reading Braille, deciphering Morse Code over a hotline, and venturing into the Belgian woods to retrieve a note. Though players may no longer have access to that second layer of gameplay, No Players Online should still be experienced for what it is and was.

6 One Last Game

The characters play checkers in a crumbling house in One Last Game

In One Last Game, two people with only a loose idea of the rules play checkers in a warzone. This browser game takes only a few minutes and includes no dialog, yet its storytelling and immersion are incredible. With a few choice sound effects and facial expressions, Goose Ladder Games has created a horror game that somehow feels like both a post-apocalyptic dream and a historical reality.

Bombs fall, rattling the characters' tiny house and sliding checkers across the board, but the characters play stolidly on, as if on a death march. The plausibility of One Last Game turns its simplistic visuals and controls into a devastatingly effective story in this single-location horror title.

5 A Man Outside

Text messsage-style dialog in A Man Outside

A brief browser game in the vein of creepypasta, litrouke's A Man Outside demonstrates the flexibility of the Twine software with which it was designed. Billed as a "vocab horror game," A Man Outside is about someone trying to study vocabulary at home but distracted by a shadowy man who keeps staring at them through the window.

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The story unfolds in text messages, glimpses out the window, and a flash card-style, multiple-choice vocabulary test. That the game succeeds in making vocab study terrifying is a testament to the creativity at hand and to its delicate development. Rather than nightmare monsters in an alien world, here one finds a premise altogether too real, and the horror is all the better for it.

4 0_AbyssalSomewhere

Rotten knight character in 0_abyssalSomewhere

0_abyssalSomewhere by nonoise is a PS1-style horror game in which the player controls a rotted knight who awakens in a strange underworld and must explore its depths. The game is highly atmospheric, due in equal parts to its crunchy, lo-fi sound design and PS1-era graphics. The imagination spins the simple forms and textures of 0_abyssalSomewhere into real terrors.

Its enemies are unsettling, and combat (though simplistic) is genuinely distressing, as it should be. The game makes excellent use of flavor text, too, providing just enough to build the game's lore and deepen its atmosphere without drowning players. Because the game takes about a half-hour, it can be devoured in a single, eerie sitting.

3 Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021

The Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021 is not a disc and is not for the PS1, but it was released in 2021, so its title is at least one-third accurate. This downloadable bundle collects 25 horror games modeled after PS1-era horror games.

For those in search of a spooky throwback experience or just a slathering of variety, Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021 is the answer. From platforming and puzzles to survival and atmospheric creepies, if there's a terror itch, this collection probably has a way to scratch it. Considered as a whole, there's a legitimate argument for placing Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021 amongst the most underrated horror games of the last five years.

2 Doki Doki Literature Club

game art that shows all the girls from the game Doki Doki Literature Club

As deceptively sweet as a maggot-filled bonbon, Doki Doki Literature Club is a psychological horror visual novel masquerading as a saccharine dating simulator. Spoiling the plot would do the game a tremendous disservice.

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What matters is this: Doki Doki Literature Club is not what it looks like, is not for children or anyone sensitive to dark emotional subject matter, and is an absolute masterpiece. For players seeking a demonstration of the power of video games as interactive art, the search ends here. For those that just want to peel back the layers of something beautiful and touch the horror beneath, this is one of the best horror visual novels.

1 The Drowning Machine

Black and white building, trees, and courtyard in The Drowning Machine

Finished by Rabbit Run Games after the tragic death of one of its co-creators, The Drowning Machine is an explicit exploration of loss, grief, self-harm, and suicide. Its high-contrast, black-and-white style perfectly suits this stream-of-consciousness exploration of trauma.

The Drowning Machine is not a conventional horror game, but if the genre's purpose is to emotionally unsettle rather than merely jump scare the player with zombies, then this game has more than earned its place. More importantly, the game deserves recognition both as an art piece and a profound gift from one friend to the legacy of another. The Drowning Machine is free, but donations benefit a trans lifeline in the co-creator's honor.

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