The Best Indie Horror Games at PAX East 2023

Sometimes, we just want to be scared, and (though you might not’ve guessed it), our time at PAX East 2023 gave us plenty of opportunities. With more developers than ever coming up with new, terrifying ways to frighten us, many of the games we had a chance to see left us quaking with fear (or backed far away from the screen, glad to be in a well-lit and crowded conventional hall). Of those, though, some stood out for being so unique, so terrifying, or so captivating that they’ve stuck with us since we played them. Without further ado, here are some of the best and scariest horror (or horror-adjacent) games we played at PAX East 2023.

Edge of Sanity

• Developer – Vixa Games
• Publisher – Daedalic Entertainment
• Release Date – “Coming Soon”

This is one we really wish we’d had more time with — there’s a lot to Edge of Sanity, and it felt like we barely scratched the surface of it during our time with the demo. This survival horror adventure might be 2D, but it’s got some serious depth in its mechanics. To survive, you’ll have to carefully manage your resources and make good decisions about which of your fellow survivors you send out on expeditions. The monsters are deadly, and demand that you approach them cleverly — just walking up to one of the game’s tentacled monstrosities and hacking away with your axe is a surefire path to a swift death.

The brief glimpse of the game’s sanity mechanic was tantalizing, as Edge of Sanity feels like it truly grasps the fundamentals of Lovecraftian horror. Rather than non-stop action, the preview segment we played was mostly a quiet adventure, punctuated by brief moments of terror — just how we like our scary games. We’re very glad Daedalic has stepped in to publish this title, as the devs definitely deserve a chance to make it the best game they possibly can.

Fort Solis

• Developer – Fallen Leaf, Black Drakkar Games
• Publisher – Dear Villagers
• Release Date – Q3 2023

It’s hard to believe Fort Solis is an indie game, but Fallen Leaf and Black Drakkar Games are both newly formed studios, and Fort Solis is (at least as far as we can tell) their debut title. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was a big budget, AAA title from looking at the previews, however. This narrative driven, third person thriller is set on a Mars inspired by the 2009 film Moon, and features an all-star cast that includes Roger Clark (Red Dead 2), Troy Baker (TLOU), and Julia Brown (M.I High). While perhaps more of a thriller than a true horror game, we’re pretty sure Fort Solis is going to make players uncomfortable and scared, so it ended up on this list.

The developers crafted a demo for PAX that carefully avoided any spoilers, which means that we couldn’t really get a sense of the game’s story beyond what’s already been revealed in trailers and press releases. All we know is that player character Jack shows up at a Mars base that needs some help, but with a storm moving in, figuring out what happened to the former crew becomes complicated and dangerous. Despite not getting into the meat of the game, the overall feel of moving through the base is top-notch, and Fort Solis is shaping up to be a standout title of 2023.

[I] Doesn’t Exist

• Developer – LUAL Games
• Publisher – DreadXP
• Release Date – August 2023

[I] Doesn’t Exist was one of the biggest horror-adjacent standouts at PAX, because it might be one of the most unique games we saw there. It is a difficult game to describe; the best way to put it might be to say that it is doing for text-adventure games what Inscryption did for deck-builders, but even that paints an incomplete picture. The game seeks to understand its genre, and to meta-textually look at gaming as a whole, but it has a certain emotional or philosophical heart that makes describing what it is actually “about” difficult. It is about isolation, mental health, control, and a million other things — and that’s just in the first section of the game we had a chance to play.

Suffice to say, this unique, surprisingly tight experiment from a tiny two-woman team from Switzerland won us over, and left us curious to know more about where it would go and what it would have to say. It promises to be as smart a game as it is unsettling, with something to say about its dark subject matter. And, honestly, we can’t wait to see what its conclusions will be.

My Friendly Neighborhood

• Developer – John and Evan Szymanski
• Publisher – DreadXP
• Release Date – 2023

A welcome fresh take on the “Mascot Horror” genre, My Friendly Neighborhood is a terrifying first-person-shooter that pits you against the puppet cast of a fictional Saturday morning kid’s show of the same name. From that premise, you might be expecting something akin to Five Night’s at Freddy’s or Bendy and the Ink Machine, but what My Friendly Neighborhood instead delivers is a cogent, truly terrifying experience that stands on its own. What’s more, it is willing to lean into the joke just enough to be just a comedic, perfect for lowering your guard just before the terror returns.

The thing that really makes My Friendly Neighborhood work where so much Mascot Horror fails is the… well, the horror. The puzzles you are forced to solve are never difficult, but force you into genuinely uncomfortable scenarios that often make you bask in the tension they create. The dialog and writing is unsettling and odd, while still being clear enough to give your character a much more apparent personality than most horror characters. The animatronics and puppet monsters which attack you are much less “broken” than in other mascot horror titles, helping subvert your familiarity with similar objects much more effectively than, say, if all their felt was torn and metal was rusted.

Put briefly, My Friendly Neighborhood looks to be what the subgenre of mascot horror has been aiming for: A tight, terrifying experience that evokes the same kind of fear that Amnesia: The Dark Descent once did, but for… well, kid’s show puppets.

You best watch out for these terrifying titles, since these were the scariest games we played at PAX East 2023. If you’re dying to know more about any of the games, let us know in the comments, and we’ll come for you as soon as we can.