PlayStation's 9 Indie Horror Picks for Halloween Include 2 Not Out Yet

PlayStation staff have picked nine indie horror games for Halloween, from the four-player ghost hunt Phasmophobia to the clay-sculpted The Midnight Walk. Two of the picks, Fangtopia and Hunter's Moon, aren't out yet: both launch October 26, five days before Halloween.

"There is joy in being a little scared," Senior Brand Manager Mattia Maccario wrote in the PlayStation Blog roundup, which gathers recommendations from staff across PlayStation's global teams. Not everyone took that literally. The Fangtopia pick is there specifically for having no scares at all.

The list sticks to indies and runs from co-op ghost hunting to cozy kingdom building. Hunter's Moon comes from Twin Swans, a studio made up of developers of The Stanley Parable, according to Gematsu. It also lands the same week Nintendo opened its Halloween-themed Screaming Deals eShop sale.

The details

• The picks: CloverPit, Escape the Backrooms, Fangtopia, Graveyard Keeper 2, Hunter's Moon, Phasmophobia, Reanimal, Silver Pines, The Midnight Walk
• Not out yet: Fangtopia (PS5, Switch 2, PC) and Hunter's Moon (PS5), both October 26
• Up to four players: Phasmophobia and Escape the Backrooms
• The no-scare option: Fangtopia
• Prices: none listed in the roundup

What are the nine picks?

The two biggest group games turn your own voice against you. In Phasmophobia, picked by Game Content Analyst Mikel Reparaz, teams of up to four investigate hauntings with UV lights, cameras and thermometers while the ghost listens and hunts. Escape the Backrooms, picked by Global Account Manager Jonty Binns, spreads puzzles and entities across more than 30 levels, and since the entities can hear proximity chat, the move is to whisper.

Reanimal, chosen by Independent Partners Team Lead Becky Sayers, follows an orphaned brother and sister rescuing missing friends on a nightmarish island through co-op stealth and puzzle-platforming. The Midnight Walk, from John Vega, head of independent partner relations, is a first-person adventure with clay-sculpted, 3D-scanned characters and a lantern companion called Potboy.

Reparaz also picked Silver Pines, a side-scrolling survival horror game where detective Red Walker searches a mountain town for missing musician Eddie Velvet, and CloverPit, a slot-machine roguelite about winning enough coins to cover a rising debt. Producer Dominic Kendrick picked Hunter's Moon, a folk-horror stealth game built on British folklore that gets its tension from people and beliefs rather than jump scares, with mummers along for the ride.

The cozy end of the list is Graveyard Keeper 2, where Go-To-Market Strategist Juliette Common points to questing, crafting and a zombie workforce restoring a medieval town, and Binns' Fangtopia, a timer-free hex-tile puzzler about building a monster kingdom of forests, towns, mountains and railways.

Reparaz picked three of the nine on his own, including the one where the monster is debt.