10 Surprisingly Good Indie Horror Video Games Of 2016

This year that fades away wasn’t precisely considered the best for horror games, if considered at all. With highly anticipated pieces such as Allison Road or Outlast 2 being cancelled or postponed until 2017, everyone soon was found too busy throwing garbage at Batman v Superman, biting nails for the presidential elections, praising or hating Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan or simply living life, hoping for 2016 to settle down and end up already. Meanwhile, indie game designers, the bohemian people of gaming world, were finishing and polishing their artworks, or preparing their canvases to start delineating what would turn upside down gamer’s rugged minds, fragile hearts and antiquated concepts of a suitable gameplay experience.

When thinking about the craft of approximately 20 to 40-minute installments with simpler stories and dynamics, it’s impossible to avoid the visualization of cheesy, paltry lumps with unvarnished textures and lots of silly jump scares as only incentives. However, sometimes these galleries offer more than just a cheap fun time; they can also offer clever, distinguished, genuinely frightening ordeals whose better component transcends the mere video game realm and reaches unexpected levels of proficiency, artistry, intellect or engagement.

These horror games stood out because they didn’t seem likely to at first glance, because nobody expected them to deliver as much efficiency as they did or simply because they were incredible from the very beginning and kept that incredibleness from end to end. Some of them aren’t even finished, but their demos made their ways into this list, that’s how surprisingly good they are.

Last release date: Sep 4

On the surface, this is just another trite, shopworn sample, but hey!, that’s why it is called Buried Beneath. It supposedly takes place inside an abandoned bunker, where our character gets into for a reason which isn’t explained during gameplay. There are no dialogues; a few instructions pop up on the screen and thereupon a levitating head starts chasing the player.

This little underdeveloped demo looks like the materialized whim of a 13 year old boy, and it is. But it isn’t completely what made it deserving of positive reviews; it was that, despite its precocious origin and rusticity, deploys a very uncommon restraint. One would think his undertaking is full of tawdry gimmicks coarsely trying to obtain shocks; nonetheless, it gains them seamlessly and almost noiseless.

Suffice to say, those narrow corridors are reminiscent of Power Drill Massacre. The overall product has the same effect, minus hearing damage, since the antagonist announces itself with a mild, yet spine-chilling metalline moan. It also moves pretty fast and smoothly, and, of course, scares the hell out of you once it gets you. The quiet ambience and the mission of searching for small things in the mostly impenetrable darkness of bedraggled walls, with a sneaky company… well, this guy definitely did his homework.