*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
2025 has been a phenomenal year for horror, with the genre putting up a remarkably strong performance on both the big and small screens. In fact, it’s proven itself to be so commercially and critically viable that not one, but three scary movies have managed to emerge as legitimate contenders in the upcoming Oscar race. Meanwhile, demand for the latest volume of Stranger Things ended up crippling Netflix’s servers at launch, such was the intensity of hype surrounding it.
Yet horror’s recent hot streak hasn’t been confined to just our multiplexes and living room TVs. On the contrary, it’s also been dominating our laptops, our computer monitors, our handheld devices and our VR headsets for the past twelve months, courtesy of a frankly extraordinary showing in the gaming space.
We’ve had dark horse indies that felt like they came out of nowhere, mid-budget sleeper hits that punched well above their weight, and tentpole franchises making long-overdue comebacks. With 2026 just around the corner, now is the perfect time to celebrate the ones that really blew us away
As always, it was tough to whittle this list down to a top 10, and some favourites inevitably didn’t make the cut. But that just goes to show how strong the year really was. With that said, here are Bloody Disgusting’s top horror (and horror adjacent) games of 2025.
10) Sharks and Minnows
Solo developers know the value of a good elevator pitch better than most. Without the luxuries of a AAA budget, a AAA headcount, AAA resources or a AAA intellectual property, the main thing that helps these plucky underdogs stand out in the crowd is a strong, attention-grabbing hook. One that can be neatly summarized in a single sentence.
Horror is often fertile ground for these high-concept ideas, as proven by the last half-decade which has delivered at least one indie breakout per year. For example: 2020 brought us the “reverse horror” Carrion (in which you control the tentacled monster wreaking havoc in a science facility for a change); 2021 dealt us a winning hand with Inscryption (an addictive deck-builder crossed with a spooky escape room); 2022 stuck us on the nightshift from hell, courtesy of The Mortuary Assistant (a job simulator wherein you’re tasked with embalming bodies at a haunted morgue); 2023 offered DREDGE up from its abyssal depths (a cosy fishing game by way of H.P. Lovecraft); and 2024 treated us to extended operating hours at Crow Country (a survival-horror throwback set in a corvid-themed fairground). Now, 2025 has us swimming with Sharks and Minnows.
If you haven’t played the latter, it’s self-explanatory title doesn’t beat around the bush. The sublime elevator pitch in this instance is that you’ve been locked in a leisure centre overnight and, in order to earn your freedom, must doggy-paddle back and forth across the building’s shark-infested pool. Each length that you complete is more daunting than the last, and before you know it, you’ll be having to cover Olympian distances, contending with choppier and choppier waters, and avoiding brand new threats like moray eels, stingrays and angler fish.
Other than purchasing a few upgrades between dips and, on occasion, being asked to step onto dry land for a spot of pool maintenance, there’s not much more to it than that. It’s an extremely simple premise: Just. Keep. Swimming!
And yet that’s all developer Collin’s Game Company needs to get your heart racing here. No elaborate mechanics, showy set-pieces or drawn-out puzzles are necessary. Just a couple of maneaters and a tank full of chlorine. I can’t think of another release this year that’s done so much with so little. – Harrison Abbott.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Sharks and Minnows here.
9) The Drifter
Point and click adventure games sometimes feel like a thing of the past, but The Drifter makes a case for the genre by modernizing it with several quality-of-life improvements that make it seem right at home with today’s games. Despite its throwback pixelated art style, there are many modern conveniences that help keep you moving briskly through the eight-hour narrative.
Your inventory is simplified, allowing you to combine the manageable number of items you carry to help solve the more grounded and intuitive puzzles. When playing with a controller, you can use the right stick to highlight interaction points in each scene, which helps alleviate the frustration that comes from hunting for the exact pixel you need to interact with to move forward. I played through the whole thing on my Steam Deck, and it felt right at home, something I never thought possible for a point and click title.
Aside from the mechanical smoothness, the most impressive part of The Drifter is its control of pace in the narrative. It deftly moves from slow investigation to manic action at the exact right time, keeping you fully engaged in the intriguing narrative. There’s a clever time loop element that’s integrated into both the story and the mechanics, providing you with an in-universe reason for you to be able to retry things after your gory death.
As the titular drifter, Mick Carter, you’ll be hunted by mysterious forces as you uncover a wild conspiracy about missing persons, shadowy science organizations, and strange creatures. It’s all wonderfully voice-acted, full of characters that bring a surprising amount of heart as things get more and more outlandish. If you’re looking for a pulpy sci-fi/horror mystery that’s equal parts Stephen King, John Carpenter, and Michael Crichton, The Drifter has you covered. – Aaron Bohem.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of The Drifter here.
8) System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster
System Shock 2 hardly needs anybody to throw it a bone. On the contrary it’s one of the most revered titles of all time. Celebrated for everything from its groundbreaking approach to level design to its legendary villain, its peerless sci-fi horror atmosphere, and the fact that it basically codified what we now understand to be the immersive sim genre, it’s about as far from a hidden gem as you can get.
Still, if you weren’t old enough to appreciate this trailblazer’s significance back in 1999, or have never been much of a PC gamer, then the new 25th Anniversary Remaster is the ideal opportunity to jump in and see what all the fuss is about.
As is their specialty, the crack team of preservationists over at Nightdive Studios did a marvelous job here of delicately touching up the classic without altering its original DNA. Among other things, they upscaled it into 4K resolution, expanded the suite of technical preferences, added support for wide-screen monitors, and introduced crossplay functionality to the existing co-op mod. All of which are small but welcome tweaks.
The thing is, though, you don’t really need to do much beyond small tweaks to translate System Shock 2 into the modern era, because it’s aged like the finest wine. Indeed, even by the standards of 2025, it remains a staggering achievement in game design. What’s particularly impressive is just how much room for experimentation it affords the player, with malleable systems, complex RPG mechanics and responsive environments that allow you to tackle problems in your own way. It’s feasibly possible for one person to go through the whole campaign as a trigger-happy marine, while another never so much as picks up a gun in the first place.
Of course, this level of depth extends to every part System Shock 2 — including its intricate world-building and dense philosophical themes — resulting in a game that is both infinitely replayable and infinitely enjoyable. Whether this is your maiden voyage aboard the Von Braun spaceship or your 100th voyage, it’s an experience that you won’t want to miss out on. The only reason it’s not higher in our list is because, at the end of the day, it is still a remaster. – Harrison Abbott.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster here.
7) Skate Story
When I think of skating games, I think of titles that really focus on skating culture, with little to no narrative content. Skate Story, from developer Sam Eng, decides to turn the genre on its head, using the mechanics of skateboarding to tell a surreal story with psychedelic visuals that look like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s the tale of a demon made of glass who skates his way through the underworld in an attempt to eat the moons that keep the denizen of hell from sleeping.
Throughout the game’s six-hour journey, you’ll meet other strange characters and complete quests for them as you get closer to being free of your contract with the devil himself. It’s a truly memorable story, featuring a great combination of the surreal and the mundane, with a tone that feels incredibly unique and full of life.
What really sells the game is its stellar use of audio-visual effects to drive home every kickflip and grind. The camera zooms into a low angle as you speed up, the screen shakes as you land an ollie, and a powerful hitstop emphasizes the stomping of your board as you end a combo. It makes the relatively grounded actions feel impactful, helping me stay interested in the skating mechanics, even when I wasn’t particularly good at it.
The use of music reminded me of games like Sayonara Wild Hearts, making many of the levels feel like surreal synthwave music videos that you keep playing via your skating. Even if skating games hold no appeal for you, it’s easy to take a quick look at the trailer and see what makes Skate Story one of the most unique and visually striking releases in quite some time. – Aaron Bohem.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Skate Story here.
6) Bye Sweet Carole
If you sit at the intersection of an especially niche Venn diagram — one that lumps together fans of golden age animation, psychological horror, and old-school adventure games — then you’re precisely the kind of special unicorn that Little Sewing Machine hoped to attract with their 2025 debut. After all, Bye Sweet Carole crams all of your (seemingly incompatible) interests into a package that could only ever appeal to the most eclectic of tastes!
A dark mirror universe Disney princess story, the title can best be described as what you get when you cross Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Clock Tower. Its endearing maiden fair protagonist — boasting rosy cheeks, striking doe eyes, a pure heart, colour coordinated animal sidekicks and a sweeping Alan Menken-esque motif— wouldn’t feel out of place in one of the Mouse House’s theme parks. Yet the distressing circumstances in which she finds herself couldn’t be further removed from “The Happiest Place on Earth”.
Indeed, Bye Sweet Carole is not some sanitized fairy tale that indulges in reassuring comforts of chivalry, enchantment and true love’s first kiss. Rather, it’s a sadistic Brothers Grimm affair that confronts its heroine with all kinds of traumatizing shit, including: possessive suitors; unhinged stalkers; terrifying shapeshifting creatures; and more graphic animal fatalities than you’d see during an average workday at the local abattoir. It’s pretty heavy-going stuff.
Not that you’d know any of that from glancing at the Steam screenshots, however, because much like its villains, the game fiendishly conceals its sinister nature beneath a cunning disguise. You see, not only does Bye Sweet Carole have many of the character tropes and narrative beats that you’d expect from a classic Disney cartoon, but it’s also pinched the studio’s art-style to complete the façade. Or more accurately, it’s severed the face off one of your childhood favourites and now parades it around as some kind of mocking skin mask while it tries to scare the ever-loving shit out of you.
That’s right, the USP is that this entire production has been made to resemble a cel-animated feature of yesteryear, with every single asset on screen having been painstakingly drawn by hand. The team really deserve kudos for nailing this aesthetic in everything from the authentic look of the sprites to your avatar’s expressive idle animations, the painterly backdrops and the faux multiplane photography that gives the 2D environments a convincing illusion of depth. The presentation is absolutely spot on and makes it all the creepier when the scenes take a sharp turn from Cinderella to Suspiria.
Honestly, you could forgive the developers for coasting by on the strength of those gorgeous visuals, but the fact that they then go on to also deliver a compelling story, meaty puzzles and a ton of gameplay variety cements Bye Sweet Carole’s status as one of the year’s best. – Harrison Abbott
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Bye Sweet Carole here.
5) Cronos: The New Dawn
Given the strong reception for the Silent Hill 2 Remake last year, there was a lot of hype to live up to here for Bloober Team. Would they be able to create something more mechanically robust than their earlier walking sim titles while also inventing an original setting? Thankfully, the answer is a resounding “Yes.” In Cronos: The New Dawn, you’re dropped into a strange post-apocalyptic setting with little to no information in a desperate fight for survival.
As a Traveler, you explore a burnt out version of 1980s Poland, donning a massive Dead Space-like suit to protect you from the Orphans, horrifying creatures that are the result of an event called “the Change” that caused people to start merging and mutating. It’s a wonderfully mysterious setup that strings you along with intriguing proper nouns and clever twists, easily keeping you engaged for the nearly 20-hour runtime.
While the setting and narrative get its hooks in you, the real appeal to me was the incredible mix of action and survival horror that the combat provides. It’s purposefully plodding, without any sort of quick turn or dodge option, forcing you to take your time as the terrifying monsters writhe their way in your direction. The main hook of the enemies is the merge mechanic, in which monsters can become stronger by consuming corpses of enemies you’ve already killed. This adds so many little micro-decisions to every encounter, prompting you to think tactically while trying to precisely aim your shots. Do you waste one of your precious flame charges to burn the body, or do you let an enemy try to absorb the corpse and hope you can take it down before it transforms into something far more dangerous?
Bloober Team definitely set out to make something that challenges the player, but if you don’t mind the difficulty, it’s hard to think of a more tense action-horror game this year. – Aaron Bohem.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Cronos: The New Dawn here.
4) Silent Hill f
When reviewing Bye Sweet Carole, we admitted that it was at a bit of a disadvantage on account of it launching within a month of Silent Hill f. Good releases getting overshadowed by great ones isn’t a new phenomenon (just ask the perennial bridesmaid that is Sony’s Horizon licence) but we’re not talking about a typical case of upstaging here.
Rather, the problem for Bye Sweet Carole was that it had way too much in common with Konami’s blockbuster for it to ever avoid the comparison. After all, they’re both twisted coming-of-age tales in which objectified young women are forced through painful adolescences and must, in the process, confront their repressed fears of growing up.
Not to mention, they also share similar themes of societal oppression, internalised misogyny, restrictive gender norms, and the inexorable passage of time. Hell, they even do the same thing where they lend physical forms to their protagonists’ inner demons, and make you question if either of them can be trusted as reliable narrators.
To be fair, it’s nothing more than a sheer coincide that these two games came out within weeks of each other. But unfortunately for Bye Sweet Carole, every single thing that it does quite well, Silent Hill f does masterfully.
An overdue return to form for one of the survival horror’s definitive icons, this latest offering from NeoBards Entertainment does for Silent Hill what Resident Evil 7 did for Capcom’s rival IP almost a decade ago. It creatively rejuvenates it, introduces fresh ideas into the mix, and makes it so that we can actually look forward to what the future holds for our beloved series again, instead of just wallowing in its past.
Relocating the action from small-town Maine to rural Japan circa the 1960s, f adds a whole new flavour to the franchise that influences everything from its beautiful art-direction to its ingenious riddles, its ambient soundscape, and its grotesque enemy design. Meanwhile, the traditional gunplay is swapped out for reflex-testing melee (that really comes into its own during some exhilarating boss fights) and there’s a unique twist on that old light-world, dark-world dynamic that takes a few unexpected turns.
Yet, for all the changes it makes to the familiar formula, it’s still 100% authentic to its roots. Anyone who says that this doesn’t feel like Silent Hill (simply because you never set foot in the eponymous town) has a very myopic view of what this property can be. Because, for my money, f understands what made those early SH games so memorable much better than any other installment since the PS2 era. It’s got the same intangible atmosphere, that vivid sense of place, that genuine sense of psychological terror, and the rich storytelling that rewards multiple playthroughs.
Speaking of which, the whole experience gains extra layers on a second go-round, as you come to appreciate more of the character nuances, gain a deeper understanding of the central mystery, discover additional content that wasn’t there before, and submit yourself to tougher challenges in a way that cleverly mirrors the journey of our lead heroine.
Yet regardless of if you only roll credits once — or commit to doing all the hard work necessary for unlocking the canonical “true” ending — Silent Hill f is sure to leave a lasting impression. More than anything, it just feels good to be excited about this franchise once more. – Harrison Abbott
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Silent Hill f here.
3) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
At this point, it’s hard to heap any more praise on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It was nominated for a record 12 nominations at The Game Awards (with a 13th coming from the Player’s Voice category) and managed to win nine accolades. But honestly, the debut game from Sandfall Interactive absolutely deserves it. Accentuating solid turn-based JRPGs battles with a souls-like focus on dodging and parrying, it feels like a breath of fresh air in a genre that has fallen out of favor in the mainstream.
One of my biggest issues with JRPGs is that some of the easier encounters can feel like a waste of time, with you just spamming the attack option until your enemies are dead, but the timing mechanics of Clair Obscur turn every fight into one that you need to pay attention to. It’s satisfying that not only does your extremely customizable build matter in battle, but so too do your dexterity and reaction times. The moment you finally figure out an enemy’s timing and can graduate from dodging to parrying, allowing you to make short work of a creature, is outstandingly rewarding in a way I rarely experience in the genre.
In addition to the finely tuned gameplay, Clair Obscur has a beautiful story hook, telling a tale of how we find hope in the face of grief and loss. After an absolutely heartbreaking opening sequence, you’re thrown into a surreal world full of strange and terrifying creatures as you attempt to stop The Paintress, a being who paints a number on her monolith that causes anyone below that age to instantly perish.
To temper the bleakness, you are given a wonderful crew of characters brought to life by some of the best performances of the year. Each character brings something new to the table, both mechanically and narratively, and their relationships are very well defined throughout the 35-hour main story of the game. Believe the hype on this one. Its combination of unique setting, thrilling combat, and amazing writing make it an RPG for the ages. – Aaron Bohem.
2) Look Outside
A girl impossibly stuck in a small pipe asks you to deliver a message to her crush. An evil car locks you within itself and tries to drive you straight to Hell. Ten monstrous versions of the same man all claim to be the original, and one promises to help you find a cursed painting if you help take care of the others. These are the types of stories you’ll find in Look Outside, a top down, pixel art game that combines turn-based RPG battles with an emphasis on survival horror-style resource management.
For being set entirely in one apartment complex — a place that’s crawling with monsters, following an event that transforms anyone who looks outside into hideous creatures — there’s so much to discover in Look Outside. It’s a rich game that’s full of creepy short stories that offer meaningful choices and unpredictable outcomes. It’s some of the best cosmic horror storytelling I’ve come across in a long time, and it’s delivered with a surprising amount of humor and heart.
The game can be pretty tough, thanks to a well-tuned difficulty that keeps you on the knife’s edge of tension. A very clever save system forces you to explore for a specific amount of time before returning to your apartment to record progress, and it even rewards you with more XP for staying out longer. This gets dangerous quickly, as the turn-based battles can turn lethal in a heartbeat if you aren’t careful with who you’re fighting. As with many classic survival horror games, knowing which enemies to fight and which to evade is crucial to staying alive.
As horrifying as the creatures trying to kill you can be, there’s a surprisingly cozy aspect to Look Outside. While in your apartment, you can focus on the more mundane aspects of life, like cooking meals, showering, and sitting down to play video games. These activities can have mechanical benefits, keeping you healthy, increasing your hygiene, and even making new attacks available to you in battle. Random visitors will also knock on your door, and how you interact with them can yield new items, information, or even party members to join you in battle.
I spent 13 hours completing Look Outside but, despite all the other great games coming out this year, I’m always thinking about dropping everything and starting up a new playthrough of this. There are so many branching paths and random encounters that I feel like I barely scratched the surface, and I can’t wait to see what other wonderful little stories I can run across in subsequent runs. – Aaron Bohem.
1) The Midnight Walk
At a time when the gaming industry is prioritizing engagement statistics at the expense of meaningful experiences, nakedly chasing after trends that are destined to fizzle out within months, courting virality in the most cynical ways and, worst of all, trying to figure out how generative A.I. can make human artists redundant, it’s so refreshing to play something that has a discernible soul.
Developed by MoonHood, The Midnight Walk is one such labour of love. It’s been stuffed to the brim with creativity, rather than with just content, and you can feel every last drop of blood, sweat and tears that has been poured into the final product.
For context, much like how Bye Sweet Carole’s world was rendered in pencil and ink, all that you see in The Midnight Walk was fashioned by hand. Traditional arts & crafts techniques were used to produce everything from the celestial objects in the skybox above your head, right down to the ground beneath your feet and everything occupying the space in between. So, you’ve got buildings constructed out of cardboard, bizarre creatures sculpted from clay, textile surfaces that look as though they’ve been lovingly knitted by your grandma, and various paper mâché items that can be interacted with at your leisure.
Over 700 of these tactical pieces were made for the artisanal production in a real-life workshop, before then being translated into the game’s code via a process of 3D scanning. The end result is a digital world that you genuinely believe you could reach out and touch (an illusion that is even more convincing if you’re playing in the spectacular VR mode).
Granted, it’s not a very long adventure, but you could easily spend hours scrutinizing every inch of the handmade diegesis and the novelty would never wear off. One nice touch is how you can spot microscopic imperfections in the assets, like errant fingerprint smudges or cracks in pottery, that prove no corners were cut in this DIY endeavour.
Of course, it’s all well and good having a distinctive art-style. but there has to be substance backing it up. Luckily, The Midnight Walk’s beauty is more than skin deep, with a moving narrative that feels like it’s been ripped straight from a timeless storybook.
Your titular pilgrimage has you escorting the unreasonably cute Potboy (think a sack-person mascot from Big Little Planet, if they were going through a gothic Tim Burton phase) as he heads to meet an important destiny atop the far-off peak of Moon Mountain. Said road trip is broken up into six self-contained chapters, each of which entails taking a detour into a different part of this weird and wonderful world that requires your intervention.
So one minute you’ll be brokering a truce between the residents of Nobodyville — where the heads and torsos of the populace have had a bitter falling out — while the next you’ll be trying to get to the bottom of a devastating tragedy that befell a local ghost town and then, later still, will find yourself trying to mend the broken heart of a lonely god. Honestly, there’s boundless, Del Toro-esque imagination on display here, and any of the game’s chapters would be an absolute highlight if they were to appear elsewhere. They’re that emotive and powerful.
Yet, while catharsis might be the primary reaction that The Midnight Walk aims to elicit, this Is obviously a list of the year’s best horror games. So, we have to point out that it’s no slouch in the scares department either! On the contrary, danger lurks around every corner, and you’ll need to master first-person stealth mechanics in order to evade the clutches of all manner of harrowing fiends, including the hideous Molgrim and the chattering grinners. One mid-game trip through pitch-black catacombs is genuinely as intense as anything you’d find in Amnesia or Outlast. Even if it is only meant to be gateway horror for kids!
All in all, this is a seriously impressive piece of work that pushes the boundaries of what video games are capable of when taken seriously as a medium. We mean it as the highest praise when we say that, eventually, you’ll forget all about its handmade gimmick and come to regard the denizens of this world as real, living things, instead of just animate pieces of felt and clay. If that’s not the sign of a true work of art, then we don’t know what is. – Harrison Abbott
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