The 36 Best Indie Horror Games That Are Genuinely Scary

While the scariest games used to come from AAA studios, the best indie horror games are showcasing the creativity and originality of smaller devs in scaring the absolute crap out of us. These indie games were all curated using review scores from sources like Steam and Metacritic, but the order of these rankings is solely determined from the votes of horror game lovers like you. There are even 2024 releases that made the list, including newer indie horror games like Crow Country and Psychopomp that are good enough to be ranked among more established titles.

While horror can be hard to define, and you'll see that with the variety of genres these horror games fall under, the bottom line is these indie games had to be scary to make the list, in addition to just being super good games. In terms of 2D indie horror games, Inside and Little Nightmares (and it's sequel) are incredible examples of how creepy a game can be even if it's not 3D. Meanwhile, scary indie visual novels like Doki Doki Literature Club! and Missed Messages are cult classics that while nothing like many of the other games being ranked here are surprisingly horrifying games that will stay in your head long after you've finished them. Of course the survival horror genre is represented here as well with the aforementioned Crow Country, as well as Signalis and Darkwood.

While it's tough to make the list, there will be new releases added to these rankings as they come out - as long as they're almost unanimously considered must-play games!