2025 was another great year for fans of things that go bump in the night, and so it’s fitting that we visit these nightmarish visions of gaming just before Christmas.
Whilst much of the attention was focused on titles from some of the industry’s biggest names, it was another year with almost countless indie games that deserve more eyes and attention – although given that so many were released over the Halloween period I’m still working my way through them now. Our top three offers a glimpse of the range of experiences that are grouped together under the term of ‘horror’, starting with our thoroughly deserving winner.
After years of disappointment and unremarkable spinoffs Silent Hill came back with a bang with Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2 last year. The increased focus on the series meant that Silent Hill f had far more attention and anticipation than would have been the case only a short while ago. Fortunately the game is fantastic and offers a whole new spin on the horrors of gaming’s foggiest of locations. While there was some controversy over the switch to Japan rather than the iconic town of Silent Hill itself, the narrative and complex puzzles quickly won players over.
Set in 1960s Japan, in the fiction town of Ebisugaoka, you play as Hinako Shimizu, a high school student who finds herself trapped within a sinister fog (of course) and who must fight off terrifying monsters in order to find her missing friends. Alongside the shift in period and setting, Silent Hill f offers a far more involved combat system that owes a debt to Soulslikes. This debt is also shared with the drip-drop of lore, encouraging you to investigate every corner to find more information. Some puzzles absolutely require you to have found the right clues, so searching is essential.
The horrific beauty of the design, the complex unfolding of the story over multiple playthroughs, and the terrifying atmosphere make this a worthy winner of this year’s award.
Cronos: The New Dawn – Runner Up
After the aforementioned Silent Hill 2 Remake, many previous critics of Bloober Team found themselves changing their views, and so Cronos: The New Dawn had a larger and more attentive audience than it might have had otherwise. Luckily the game was a fantastic fusion of Silent Hill and Dead Space that had enough ideas of its own to become a survival horror standout. The Silent Hill influences come from the dual environments – switching in time between a Polish town prior to and immediately following a mysterious event that saw the populace transformed into monsters. As for the Dead Space inspirations, the impactful combat here felt highly reminiscent of Isaac Clarke at his most brutal.
The familiarity of the mechanics were combined with a fascinating science fiction survival horror narrative that saw you play as The Traveller, a helmeted stranger sent through time to retrieve the memories of key figures who could explain what had happened in the past. This time travelling mechanic led to complex narrative transitions and also gave everything an uncanny veneer of past, present, and future. While puzzles were mostly more simple than classic Silent Hill brainteasers, the excellent presentation and voice acting pushed players through to a satisfying (albeit ambiguous) conclusion. And I haven’t even mentioned that you get to rescue cats as you go!
Navicula Meatus – Runner Up
While both the previous games share a familiar DNA from classic survival horror (although both bring interesting new perspectives) Navicula Meatus is an indie game in the truest sense. The horror of this world is the horror of feeling completely out of place in a strange land. There is no interpretable language in Navicula Meatus – everything instead being portrayed through an impenetrable typescript and pictograms. Even working out how to get started is deliberately obscure as the main menu similarly has no words to guide you.
Once you do get into the game you are confronted by a lo-fi aesthetic that looks like a mixture of classic Doom and dungeon crawler titles like Eye of the Beholder, and plays like it too, thanks to the minimalist keyboard-based controls for movement. This simplistic set of mechanics feels familiar and yet nothing else about Navicula Meatus is. You are a meaty bipedal crab of some description and must trade mysterious items with a host of similarly surreal and monstrous characters. Once this opening section is completed then things (somehow) get even more strange.
While a very different style and vibe to this year’s other top horror games, Navicula Meatus is a truly unique experience that deserves a far wider audience. It is one of those games that you will either bounce off or become obsessed with, but give it a try and you might just find your new favourite indie horror.
Horrible Mentions (in alphabetical order)
- Echoes of the Living
- Flesh Made Fear
- Tormented Souls 2
After that thoroughly spookifying entry in our GOTY awards, we’ll take a little breather for Christmas and then return for the final sprint through to the top award at the end of the year!
