Distressing as it may be for us to acknowledge the exponential march of time, we’re now halfway through 2025. And for whatever else it’s brought, one thing that can’t be denied about the year so far is that it has been absolutely stacked with phenomenal horror (or horror adjacent) releases.
In fact, we’re already struggling to whittle down our top 10 picks, and there’s still a new Silent Hill, a new Bloober Team project, and another installment in The Dark Pictures Anthology lurking on the horizon! Suffice it to say, the competition is going to be fierce when the time comes for us to compile our definitive list in December, and some objectively brilliant titles just won’t be able to make the cut.
Before we have to make any of those tough calls, though, here are our current favourites that have made it through the first round of eliminations. From promising indie debuts to major blockbusters and overhauled classics, we have been spoilt for choice in 2025. Long may that continue!
Editor’s Note: This article was put together and written by Bloody Disgusting’s video game critics Aaron Boehm & Harrison Abbott, who each selected five games to include on the list.
10) Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III
Like many other Strange Scaffold games, the pitch for Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III sounds absolutely wild. It’s a visual novel with light Metroidvania elements that uses match 3 gameplay for its battles, all while using the set dressing of survival horror to tell a fascinating tale about the troubles of game development. I know it sounds like a lot of different flavors to be mixing together, but it comes together into a surprisingly coherent and clever experience.
Fairly close to the beginning of the game, your protagonist finds out that not only is he in the latest video game in a hit franchise, he also finds out it has been cancelled. Thus begins his quest to not only explore the mansion that’s been overrun with dinosaur experiments, but also a journey into the code of the game itself to try and finish it from the inside. It’s so blatantly meta, but it works due to a great sense of humor and a surprising amount of sincerity about the struggles of game development.
In addition to having the successful narrative mashup, the gameplay also combines many elements to great effect. As you explore, you’ll be selecting dialog choices to go down various story branches. Sometimes this leads to you gaining new traits that will open up more dialog choices that can be used by repeating the previous scenes, allowing you to traverse more branches. Whenever you need to do something, like fight a velociraptor or hack a computer, you’ll resolve it with a match 3 versus puzzle, which feel way more engaging than I thought they would. You’ll gain resources as you clear symbols from the board, and these can be used for specific moves that either do damage or progress objectives. It’s a system that forces you to not only find good symbol matches, but to think about resource management at the same time. This is Strange Scaffold firing on all cylinders with their best game since El Paso Elsewhere. – Aaron Boehm
9) The Flayed Man
Clocking in at just under an hour (though mileage will vary, relative to your puzzle solving capabilities) The Flayed Man might not have demanded much of our playtime in the first half of 2025, yet it still left a lasting impression all the same.
Developed by Snoring Dog Games’, this bite-sized freebie casts you in the role of a condemned sinner — awaking with no memory whatsoever of his past transgressions, nor any skin to cover up his exposed flesh — who must escape limbo by convincing a sadistic jailer that he is deserving of absolution. Among other things, said quest for redemption will have you: reclaiming your lost tongue (so that you can reason with this demonic adjudicator); working out the solutions to some elaborate escape-room conundrums; and rendering judgement on the other lost souls caught in purgatory along with you. Suffice it to say, your performance here will ultimately determine how much mercy is afforded to The Flayed Man himself when the bell finally tolls for thee.
For something that can be enjoyed without divesting yourself of a single penny, there’s a surprising amount of depth to the release. And that goes not only for its well-balanced mechanics, but also for its heady philosophical themes. Indeed, Snoring Dog have crammed an entire college semester’s worth of moral quandaries into the lean runtime here, like whether a person’s contrition can ever be genuine enough to redeem their heinous crimes, or if the relative trivialness of a wrongdoing can make up for the fact that it was perpetrated with malicious intent.
With all of that said, if you’ve got an hour to spare and are a fan of ether old-school point-and-click adventures or the works of Clive Barker — particularly his Books of Blood series, to which this owes a clear debt — then you’ve got no excuse to sleep on The Flayed Man. After all, it packs more substance into a mere 60 minutes than most titles manage over the course of 100+ hours. – Harrison Abbott
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of The Flayed Man here.
8) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
On the polar opposite end of the spectrum is Oblivion Remastered, a title that we have sunk frankly way too much time into since it was casually shadow-dropped back in April.
If you take issue with Bethesda’s era-defining RPG being featured in this list (given that it’s neither an outright horror experience, nor a brand-new release for 2025 the strictest sense) just cool your jets for a second and consider this: Oblivion is rife with vampires, zombies, murder cults, ghost ships, grave diggers, and haunted houses. Not to mention, a significant portion of it takes place in a fiery hellscape where using mutilated corpses to decorate your living space appears to be the style de jour.
Should you make liberal use of the fast travel function — skipping over all of those idyllic countryside strolls that provide respite from the more unsettling moments — then the game could feasibly be set in the H.P. Lovecraft universe. Hell, there’s even a quest that serves as an explicit homage to The Shadow over Innsmouth!
So, while it might not conjure the same unrelenting dread as the Amnesia franchise, it’s fair to say that horror is inextricably baked into The Elder Scroll IV’s DNA. Trying to separate it from the rest of the experience would be like trying to filter out all of the science from Star Trek or all of the deeply entrenched awkwardness from The Tonight Show. It’d just be unrecognisable without that key element.
Yet the main reason for including it here is that it’d simply be remiss of us not to acknowledge the title that has consumed our every waking moment these past couple of months. I mean, normally when something is this ruinously addictive it warrants an investigation by the DEA.
Granted, it’s impossible to ignore the various ways that Oblivion is now showing its age. Its combat is so floaty that it might as well be taking place in a zero-gravity chamber, the unwieldy interface reminds you just how user-friendly Skyrim’s is in comparison, certain quest-breaking bugs stubbornly persist to this day, and those procedural NPC interactions remain a constant source of unintentional hilarity.
However, despite all the jank, we simply can’t prise ourselves away. When getting lost in the province of Cyrodiil, it’s easy to dupe yourself into believing that you’re gonna do “just one more arena fight” or “just one more guild job”, until suddenly you check the clock and realise that you’ve got work in 2 hours’ time and haven’t slept a wink. That is how much it has us under its thrall and, for that, it surely deserves some recognition in this list. – Harrison Abbott
7) Sharks and Minnows
I am not especially galeophobic and yet, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had recurring dreams about being trapped in an indoor swimming pool with a great white circling me. I don’t know what that says about my subconscious anxieties, other than that I’m not too fond of creatures that have rows upon rows of serrated 3-inch teeth. Which, on balance, I consider to be a pretty rationale stance.
Anyway, you can see why I’d be drawn towards Sharks and Minnows: the new low-fi indie — from developer Collin’s Game Company — that gave me the opportunity to conquer this nightmare once and for all. The premise here is deceptively simple. You’re locked in an eerily quiet leisure centre pool and must doggy-paddle back and forth, at the behest of some unseen taskmaster, in order to earn your freedom.
As if enforced cardio wasn’t scary enough, there’s a hungry maneater patrolling the water and, with each successive length you complete, your situation only gets worse. At first, that just means that you’ll need to cover increasingly large distances to reach the relative safety of dry land, but it’s not long before moray eels, stingrays and angler fish come to join you for a communal dip.
I’ve been sceptical of so-called “liminal” games in the past, as it seems to me that their conception of psychological horror often boils down to you aimlessly wandering around barren, yellow-hued corridors with little in the way of meaningful incident. Sharks and Minnows has liminal vibes for sure — specifically in the bits where you have to traverse abandoned locker rooms and shower facilities — but it crucially avoids the genre’s pitfalls by giving you something tangible to be afraid of and by escalating over time.
It’s always throwing new discoveries, new mechanics and new threats into the (chum) mix and, by the time you reach its nerve-shredding climax, you’ll be amazed at just how far they’ve taken the idea. That final boss encounter, in particular, is a real doozy. – Harrison Abbott
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Sharks and Minnows here.
6) Labyrinth of the Demon King
In all forms of media, I’m highly susceptible to the vibes of a work, and Labyrinth of the Demon King, the new PSX style dungeon crawler from J. R. Hudepohl, has the most wonderfully rancid vibes I’ve felt in a long time. The low-fi take on feudal Japan just oozes menace, complemented by Silent Hill-esque music that immediately wormed its way under my skin. It’s a truly oppressive atmosphere that you can feel in every single frame.
Instead of looking at FromSoft’s recent output for inspiration like most do, Labyrinth of the Demon King looks back to their earlier King’s Field series as the basis for its first-person dungeon crawling. You play as a warrior on a quest to hunt down the demon who killed his lord, sending you through the twisting corridors of a labyrinth populated with horrific monsters. It’s a classic setup, but the world is filled in with cryptic lore that adds a richness to the game that evokes the best of the genre.
It’s a wonderful combination of survival horror and dungeon crawler that brings out the best in both. The combat can take a bit of getting used to, as it’s clunky, but it makes every encounter feel fraught with danger. The dedication to the retro style comes through in every aspect of the game, feeling like an amazing classic that was somehow lost to time. I’m a sucker for titles about labyrinths, and this is one I’m glad to get lost in. – Aaron Boehm
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Labyrinth of the Demon King here.
5) Skin Deep
As a fan of (the increasingly rare) immersive sims, it feels like every new release in the genre should be a national holiday. And Skin Deep is definitely one worth celebrating. Set in a world of space pirates and feline crime bosses, the game casts you as “insurance commando” Nina Pasadena as you save the talking cat passengers aboard various hijacked spaceships. Each new level offers a perfectly-crafted, densely-packed ship to explore as you find makeshift weapons to take out your enemies while evading them effectively.
There are many beautiful little touches in Skin Deep that both give the game mechanical depth and make its world feel unique. The best example of this is the Skull Saver tech that your enemies have. When they “die,” their heads pop off and float towards a respawn point where their body will be remade. Lore-wise, it adds an interesting wrinkle about how technology has made death a mundane obstacle to be overcome in this world. Mechanically, it gives you one more thing to take into consideration when planning your ambush against foes.
Like all the best immersive sims, the game is just as fun when your plans go right as it is when they go horribly awry. Yes, sometimes I feel like a badass when I sneak around and find all the parts to repair a mech so I can rampage through the remaining pirates. But it’s just as likely that I’ll use one of my precious bullets to shoot at an enemy, but not notice the gas line behind him and blow myself up in the process. Comedy is so hard in video games, and Skin Deep finds ways to be funny both in writing and mechanics. The combination of humor, sci-fi worldbuilding, and deep mechanics makes for a must-play experience for immersive sim fans. – Aaron Boehm
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of Skin Deep here.
4) Look Outside
Feeling like the unholy child of Lone Survivor and Earthbound, Look Outside is a survival RPG that places players in the middle of an incomprehensible disaster. You wake up in your apartment complex to find that anyone who looks outside has started to mutate into some sort of horrible creature, turning your immediate surroundings into a den of danger and mistrust. To survive, you’ll need to scavenge nearby apartments to find supplies that will help you fend off the horrors that lurk around every corner. There’s huge amounts of survival horror baked into the RPG gameplay of Look Outside, focusing heavily on resource management as you use makeshift weapons during the very lethal turn-based battles.
While there’s a lot to explore in the apartment complex, there’s a surprising focus on the mundane elements of life. You can brush your teeth, shower, make meals, or just sit down and play some video games in the “comfort” of your apartment. Each of these gives you some increases to stats like hygiene or morale, all of which have ripple effects on you as you explore. People will knock on your door, leading to random encounters that can result in supplies, battles, or sometimes even new companions. It feels like the systems here are really simple, but there’s so many options for how you can spend your time each day, even outside of facing the horrors.
And face the horrors you will! Monstrous surprises await around every corner as the complex slowly opens up as time passes. What the game really excels at is little short stories that you run into as you venture from apartment to apartment. Every time you enter one, you gradually learn the fate of whoever lived there, and the writing makes these vignettes absolutely chilling. The pixel art style brings Look Outside’s inventive horrors to life beautifully, with some truly upsetting monsters out for your blood. The game can get pretty challenging, especially since the save system forces you to go back to your apartment to record your progress, but there’s an easy mode that changes that up, ensuring that everyone can get a chance to enjoy this extremely special horror RPG. – Aaron Boehm
3) System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster
At a quarter of a century old, you might expect System Shock 2 to be a tad antiquated. The genre-defining trailblazer is obviously more than deserving of its place in the annals of history — having gone on to codify what is now known as the Immersive Sim — but it’s inevitable that cracks would begin showing after its 25th birthday, right? I mean, lord knows that’s the case for most of us!
Operating under this assumption that it indeed would feel creaky from the perspective of a modern audience, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Nightdive Studios’ new remaster of the game would largely just be an exercise in archivism; keeping the classic alive for posterity rather than for the sake of pure enjoyment. Yet, lo and behold, it’s held up remarkably well. Certainly much better than Oblivion (7 years its junior) has at least.
The perilous quest to rid the Von Braun and (later) the Rickenbacker space vessels of their extra-terrestrial scourge remains one of the most enthralling, atmospheric and dynamic that gaming has ever produced. I’d go so far as to argue that you won’t be able to find a better example of sci-fi horror anywhere in the medium, let alone dystopian horror.
The only title that could feasibly serve as a challenger to System Shock 2 here is its own spiritual successor, Bioshock, and even then that game is often accused of dumbing things down from such lofty heights. Which just goes to show how smart it really is, because that undersea offshoot is anything but dumb.
The sheer depth on display across every facet of System Shock 2 — from its mature political themes to its intricate world-building, customisable RPG elements, and malleable mechanics — is dizzying to this very day, never mind when it was released 25 years ago. The Anniversary Remaster might only give it a light-touch up, but that’s all it needed to stand alongside the heaviest hitters of 2025. It’s a landmark for a reason. – Harrison Abbott
Read Bloody Disgusting’s full review of System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster here.
2) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Sitting at the intersection of traditional turn-based JRPG and modern soulslike, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 smartly takes influence from a wide range of classics while still making something that feels wholly its own. The dynamic and in-your-face UI of Persona, the materia-like system of customizing your characters from Final Fantasy VII, and the precise parrying of Sekiro all combine into one of the most exhilarating turn-based combat systems I’ve played in years. It’s a layered system that forces you to pay attention to every single fight to ensure that they don’t become lethal quickly.
The gameplay alone is a strong enough hook to recommend Clair Obscur, but the story and world are what turn it into an instant classic. Beginning with two moments of mass death, one calm and expected, the other shocking and violent, the game explores the concept of finding hope in the face of grief and loss. Set in a surreal world inspired by Belle Epoque France, the titular Expedition 33 goes on a journey to stop The Paintress, a being who is slowly decreasing the maximum age, causing anyone older than the number she paints on her monolith to perish.
It’s a bleak journey that brings you to places that are equally strange and beautiful, populated by some wonderfully creepy creatures. Even with all the darkness, it finds warmth in its characters, who all feel well-rounded and believable, creating one of the best core parties I’ve seen in an RPG in quite some time. There are some big narrative swings that it takes by the end of its 35-hour runtime, and these risks pay off in spades. It’s been a year of great RPGs, and this one stands at the top of the pile. – Aaron Boehm
1) The Midnight Walk
Prerelease, discussion of The Midnight Walk (whether it emerged from the comments section on YouTube, the written flatteries of journalists, or even the title’s own official marketing team) tended to fixate on its distinctive art-style. Which makes perfect sense because, at first glance, that is this project’s most obvious selling point.
You see, every asset featured in The Midnight Walk — from the twinkling stars in the skybox above your head, right down to those more intimate details that you’re able to scrutinise up close and personal — was fashioned by hand. In some instances, these things were lovingly constructed out of paper mâché, while cardboard, clay and textile methods were used to shape the rest. In total, the craftspeople behind this wonderfully artisanal production made over 700 sculptures, each of which were then transported from a real-life workshop into the game’s code via a process of 3D scanning.
This herculean effort resulted in a digital world that both looks and feels extraordinarily tactical. With all of their imperfections left intact (whether that’s an errant fingerprint smudge in some pottery or cracks in a surface that the team consciously decided not to smooth out in post), you truly believe that you could reach out and touch any of your surroundings here. And that goes double if you’re fortunate enough to have a PSVR headset bringing you even closer to the action.
It’s not just the technique that you marvel at when playing The Midnight Walk, however, but also developer MoonHood’s boundless imagination. Indeed, the various characters you meet and sights you see here are among some of the most memorable we’ve encountered in the gaming medium. Across your moonlit pilgrimage you’ll take a detour through the quirky Nobodyville — where the heads and torsos of residents have gone through a bitter separation and entered into a perverse civil war — evade the harrowing grinners — think easter island heads that open up to reveal hideous, chattering abominations — and repair the broken heart of a lonely god — whose backstory is revealed to you in beautiful silent movies that pay homage to the films of German expressionism. Oh, and who could forget the instantly merchandisable mascot, Potboy, who accompanies you throughout the story and for whom you’ll soon find yourself willing to lay down your life?
Taking all of that into account, it’s not surprising that the visuals have taken the lion’s share of praise. Yet there’s way more going on under the hood than just a Burtonesque aesthetic. Because as far as emotionality and rich plotting is concerned, The Midnight Walk has got way more in common with the works of Hayao Miyazaki than it does The Nightmare Before Christmas. And that’s meant as the highest possible compliment!
It really doesn’t take long for to get so wrapped up in the powerful drama and thematically dense storytelling that you eventually forget all about the title’s DIY gimmick, and soon regard its cast as real, breathing people. Not animate pieces of felt and clay. In short, you might come for the attention-grabbing craft, but you’ll end up staying for the nuanced characters and the moving, existential road-trip narrative.
Layer on top of all that a haunting musical score by Joel Bille, some innovative puzzle-solving mechanics, and a few intense stealth sequences (that act as ideal gateway horror for kids), and you’ve got one of the year’s very best releases. Not to mention, a boundary pushing example of what video games are capable of when treated as a legitimate art-form. – Harrison Abbott
Honorable Mentions: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, South of Midnight, The Alters, and KARMA: The Dark World (before it went off the rail’s in its final act).
