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Which part of Halloween do you love the most? Do you like to spook kids with your creepy animatronic decorations? Dress up as resident vampire couple Nadja and Lazlo? Or can you not wait to curl up and watch Nightmare Before Christmas or Friday the 13th under your heated blanket?
Here at Zatu, we love playing creepy-themed video and board games. Don’t knock it until you’ve played The Thing: Infection At Outpost 31 with your closest friends, balancing avoiding infection with holding off ravenous trick-or-treaters.
With Halloween just around the corner, we are looking at the weird and obscure video games that help us usher in Spooky Season. This blog is all about little-known games that are weird, creepy and scary, or otherwise strangely off-putting—the perfect concoction for a spine-tingling Halloween,.
Get into the spooky spirit with these weird and wonderful video games and scare yourself senseless.
Pathologic 2 – Lauren Skinner
A town on the brink of collapse. Surviving against all odds. Curing the incurable. Despair, death, and morality.
Pathologic 2 is one of gaming’s most unsettling experiences. You are Artemy Burakh, a surgeon returning to your hometown on the ancient Russian Steppe after receiving a cryptic letter from your father. Shortly after arriving, you learn your father has been murdered, and the town is gripped by a deadly plague known as the “Sand Pest”. Your father had managed to curb the plague five years previously, at the cost of wiping out half the town, trapped in a deadly, ruthless quarantine.
How can we stop the plague this time? Who would have murdered the one man who could save the town?
It’s not all about unravelling a mystery. It’s also about survival in a world that actively and brutally works against you. Food, medicine, and other resources are scarce, and the player must manage hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and immunity levels at all times. The intended difficulty is an exercise in torture, dropping your levels without mercy. Often, you are caught in a hunger or exhaust spiral, forcing you to ignore the people of the town with the hopes that you’ll find a shrivelled, lone lemon slice in the bin—despite knowing you only have 12 days to curb the plague.
Because death is punishing. If you die, you get a penalty, be that less health, a faster decaying hunger bar, or even the inability to hug those you love. And you cannot reload a save to reverse this. If you do, you may be taken back to the point you wished, but your penalties remain. It’s not an arbitrary decision, but services to immerse players deeper into the despair of the town and the harrowing, irreversible choices faced by its inhabitants.
The whole experience is suffocating, tense, and gives immense pressure to every decision, as you’ll constantly feel like there’s never enough time to do everything you need to. Time marches on no matter what you do, and each day and night are shorter than the ones before. It creates a genuine sense of urgency that amplifies the horror of the situation. Death is inevitable, but how you manage the downfall is what counts.
And that’s the message of Pathologic 2: you can’t save everyone. Sacrifices must be made for the good of all.
The horror of this game is its bleakness; its pressure; its atmosphere—wailing women in houses, crying babies, the eerie pang of the Steppe, the crackling voice of the plague, the chilling music. Not to mention the characters that stare at you, their faces far too close for comfort, desperate and distrusting. The plague itself is a character, racing at you like a vengeful ghost and threatening your immunity in dense black clouds.
It’s an experience like no other. Pathologic 2 wants to scare you and wants to make you think. About the harsh realities of human nature, of broader societal decay, and of polluting the Earth. If you want a chilling time this Halloween, and don’t mind a brutal challenge, look no further than this.
Dredge – Sophie Jones
I never thought I’d enjoy a game that combines fishing with Lovecraftian horror, but Dredge is something special. I’m currently on my second playthrough and about to dive into the game’s DLC, Iron Rig, which adds even more mysteries and deep-sea disturbances.
In Dredge, you step into the shoes of a fisherman with no memory of how his boat crashed in the town of Greater Marrow. After the Mayor helps fix your boat, you start fishing to pay off your debt. Along the way, you meet locals, hear strange stories, and quickly realise that sailing at night is a dangerous idea. As darkness falls, the game transforms, eerie sounds, ghostly apparitions, and lurking monsters turn the ocean into something truly unsettling. It’s unnerving, a bit frightening, and totally addictive.
The fishing mechanics are easy to pick up, with each fish offering a unique mini-game to keep things interesting. Your inventory adds a puzzle element, as you carefully fit your catch alongside boat upgrades, almost like a game of Tetris. Beyond fishing, you can dredge the ocean floor to find upgrades that improve your boat’s speed, cargo capacity, and ability to catch different fish. This constant hunt for new resources added depth to the gameplay and kept me hooked throughout.
While Dredge may seem like a simple fishing game at first glance, it’s so much more. The haunting art style, atmospheric soundtrack, and intriguing story pull you in, while each new area introduces fresh fish, monsters, and quests. Every corner of the map offers a distinct, eerie flavour of Lovecraftian horror. If you’re looking for a game that blends the weird and wonderful, Dredge delivers. Available on all platforms, there are plenty of reasons to set sail into its dark, mysterious waters.
HOUSE – Paul Blyth
Horror is always at its best when you don’t know what’s going on and, typically, before you see the monster/killer/thing. HOUSE, an indie pixel horror adventure game by Bark Bark Games, makes the most of the ‘unknown’ from the off.
You play as Tabby, a young girl, who must explore the family home, which is doing its best to kill her and her family. Where HOUSE differs from other games in the genre is it doesn’t give you any help at all. No tutorial, no hand holding, nothing. You, as Tabby, wake up, get out of bed and have to figure out what’s happening, why and how to stop it. All the while listening to a basic, yet rather unsettling soundtrack.
Your family will go about their day and, one by one, die a grisly death unless Tabby intervenes. But as you figure out how to stop one event, it’ll trigger another. To make matter worse, Tabby is only ever one step away from a gruesome end herself. So far I’ve witnessed Tabby’s demise in 18 different and unique (read ‘bloody’) ways.
To say anymore would begin to spoil the mystery and enjoyment of HOUSE. But with multiple endings (to the game as well as the family), an unrelenting evil, and several puzzles without clues, HOUSE is a game worth checking out that will stay with you for a good long while.
Until Dawn – Jay Davies
Although it is far, FAR from being obscure, Until Dawn is definitely on the weird side, and with both Halloween and a remaster of the game fast approaching, it seemed like a good choice. Despite having a genuine hatred for Quick Time Events, I’d rate it as one of my favourite modern games.
Not only is the story of Until Dawn strange (I won’t go into it as even the smallest detail could well be a spoiler for those who haven’t played it), but the game itself is a bit of an oddity, with very few games coming close to doing what it does.
The game starts with the player being psychoanalysed by ‘Dr Hill’, played by Peter Stormare of Prison Break and Fargo fame. This isn’t just some window dressing though, as the responses given actually influence the game in small ways to make it that little bit creepier for the player.
Then there’s the gameplay itself. At points Until Dawn is little more than a walking simulator, as the player investigates areas of the map and talks to the other characters in order to get to know them more and progress the story. But then something will happen, and things go from 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye, with the player expected to hit several QTE prompts as they appear on the screen.
Get them wrong, or press the wrong input, and the consequences can be dire.
Likewise, at many points in the game, the player will be asked to make a decision. It could be something simple like who to throw a snowball at, or whether to walk left or right at a junction, but equally it could be whether to save someone’s life or save your own skin.
All these decisions have consequences, and even the most innocuous choice could send the player down a completely different path with far-reaching implications for everyone staying up on the mountain with them.
On paper it might not sound like the best game, but the story is so engaging and the atmosphere so tense, it is impossible not to get drawn into the creepy goings on. When you add in the massive levels of replayability, Until Dawn is an absolute must play for me.
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye – Adam Sharman
Imagine a game that you could finish in 20 minutes, yet will still take you 20 hours. In a twist to conventional gaming norms, there are no upgrades, no gear to find, not even any levels. The only thing stopping you from finishing this game quickly is your knowledge of how the world around you works. I suggest you hop in your spaceship and get exploring!
Outer Wilds isn’t a particularly obscure game: the space archaeologist simulator has slowly been gaining a cult following and even won the Game of the Year award at the 2019 BAFTAs. For all the original’s success, many people didn’t come back to play the horror-esque expansion, Echoes of the Eye, so here is my recommendation for you this spooky season.
As with all Outer Wilds discussion, the less you know about it going in the better. Just know that where the original was an immaculate escape room on a solar scale, Echoes is a more condensed package. This makes me all the more impressed with how the developers were able to cram such clever reveals in a comparatively small area. The whole experience slots neatly into the base game, tying up one minor loose thread while also giving you a whole new mystery to unravel. While the original induced a sense of cosmic horror in some from the scale of everything around you. Echoes takes a more direct approach and leans into more stealth based elements that will have you constantly on edge, perfect for a dark autumn evening.
I describe Outer Wilds as the best designed game I have ever played. Echoes of the Eye continues that trend by being the best designed DLC I have ever played. The only thing that can compare to the joy of having the whole mystery unravel in front of you and understanding all its parts is vicariously reliving that experience by dragging your loved ones into the rabbit hole as well. Give it a try.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox – Tim Evans
Metroidvania was a buzz word genre in the 2020s, but few reach into the occult world of Lovecraftian beings. The Last Case of Benedict Fox brings such a tale. You star as the namesake detective, aided by a demonic being, stepping into a mysterious house to solve a murder, but soon becoming lost in a creepy world within.
With Houdini (yes, that Houdini!) acting as the Q to your Bond, and an occult being providing you with some supernatural powers to aid you in your plight, you must uncover the secrets of the house and solve the case or be trapped in its beautifully twisted passages.
You will quickly descend into the depths and find that your limited tools will at least initially prevent progression, but each return progressing the story and unlocking more of the house to explore with puzzles in the form of coded doors, riddles and keys. The game won’t hold your hand with the solutions to these either, meaning you can feel like a true detective solving them.
Combat is initially simple but broadens as more tools and powers are added to your arsenal, and branching paths make backtracking once new tools are unlocked a must in order to see everything this beautifully imagined world has to offer.
The music adds a thematic mix to haunt your adventures, and the art style feels almost hand drawn in its beauty. The small voice cast adds just enough to lure you into this world of occult noir which has been crafted by the team at Point Blank.
The world and story have always been worth the price of admission for this title, but controls were an issue in the base day 1 release. Patches and a new definitive edition release have sharpened this up to make the game itself a joy to play through.
Phasmophobia – Lauren Skinner
It’s not the most obscure game—Covid alone meant Phasmophobia captured the attention of both horror enthusiasts and casual gamers alike—but it’s certainly weird. And a perfect game to dive into for Halloween.
Phasmophobia is a master class in atmosphere. You are a ghost hunter, tasked with investigating murderous ghosts in various locations in the dead of night. Each investigation begins in dimly lit, abandoned environments, ranging from suburban homes to decrepit schools and asylums. The eerie silence is punctuated by creaking floors, distant whispers, and flickering lights.
This immersive setting taps into a primal fear of the unknown, where every sound and shadow could indicate a lurking threat. The game relies heavily on darkness and the use of flashlights to disorientate players and increase tension, and the eerily quiet homes suddenly become houses of horror when you suddenly hear a door slamming shut or a shuddering gasp of the unknown.
The game is multiplayer, adding a unique twist to its terror. You think you have strength in numbers? Think again—even with three friends ready to banish the Banshee or get the jump on a Jinn, fear becomes a shared experience rather than a diminished one. This false sense of security, only heightened by players becoming isolated in the dark as they work together to find the ghost’s location as quickly as possible, is horribly terrifying. The game capitalises on this by triggering events when you’re most vulnerable, heightening the tension when you're physically alone but aware of your friends' distant screams through in-game voice chat.
Not to mention the ghosts themselves. None of them act the same, so every investigation is different. Some hunt quickly and without mercy. Some prefer to taunt you with noises and appearances that make your heart jump into your throat. And some use the voice recognition system to respond to you, making you hyper-aware that you’re not just an observer in this game—you are actively influencing the entity’s behaviour. The fact that saying the wrong thing could lead to your doom? That’s another level of disturbing.
The horrifying mix of tension, psychological torment, and fear of the unknown makes Phasmophobia truly a weird and unsettling experience.
Gregory Horror Show – Jay Davies
When it comes to obscure and weird, no game quite lives up to the moniker quite like Gregory Horror Show.
Releasing in December of 2003, you’d be forgiven for just walking straight past it as you perused the PS2 shelves of your local Gamestation, as the anime series (if you can call it that) on which it is based is not available in the UK.
But a couple of things immediately jumped out to me when I first saw it; the quirky, surreal artwork, and the word ‘Capcom’.
Yes, this game is made by the same people who gave us Street Fighter, Megaman and Resident Evil. The latter is immediately noticeable when you start up the game. The location bears a striking resemblance to a mansion you might find on the outskirts of Raccoon City, and the transitional door opening videos are a near carbon copy, albeit slightly more cartoony.
The game places you in the shoes of a male or female protagonist (quite a rarity at the time) who has gotten lost in the woods. They soon stumble across a creepy old hotel fronted by an equally creepy anthropomorphic rat named Gregory.
Once you have checked in for the night, you realise there are some real Hotel California vibes going on. You quickly find out the only way you are going to get out is by collecting the souls of the other damned residents by spying on them and figuring out their weaknesses.
Each guest has their own quirky personality, backstory, daily schedule and way in which their soul can be harvested. Although some might seem friendly, the majority of them will subject you to their own unique private ‘Horror Show’ if they think you’re going to cross them.
Horror shows include having your blood drained by the psychotic lizard nurse Catherine, being sent hurtling through time by Clock Master and his son, and getting jumpscared by the Lost Doll way before Five Nights at Freddy’s was even a concept. Although it’s a good idea to avoid them, they are so quirky you’ll find yourself wanting to get caught just to see what happens.
For me, Gregory Horror Show is massively underappreciated. The writing is just the right level of creepy and endearing, the gameplay is fun, frantic and often just a little bit terrifying, and the pacing and replay value are on point too.
It’s quite difficult to get hold of a copy these days, but if you ever have chance to step inside Gregory’s Hotel of Horrors… go for it!
Wrap up
And there you have it! Which creepy, weird, or wacky game will you try this Halloween? Just make sure you close your curtains, or you might see the object of your nightmares watching you play…
Whatever your preference, we Zatu video gamers wish you all an exciting spooky season!