Halloween is peak co-op gaming mayhem. It's a time to swap the guns of fast-paced shooters for inefficient flashlights and futile attempts to outlast ghastly ghouls, dance with demons, and flee manors littered with intricate locks and crumpled letters.
Sparked by experimental scares that made stars out of players on the internet, we're in a golden era of gore, shivers, and shared shouts. And with many of these cult classics shaped by sole developers and small teams, the indie.io Spooky Games collection is ready to shine a flickering spotlight on the next generation.
Bonefield - Bodycam Horror
Perfectly timed for Halloween, Bonefield - Bodycam Horror brings a different kind of fixed camera angle to the genre that pioneered it, delivering an intense and immersive survival horror experience set in the mountains of Montana.
Thrust into a position no private investigator is truly trained for, it's your mission to seek the truth about the chilling and inhumane events unravelling around Bonefield.
Comb through deserted homes, scan security footage, and take up whatever arms you can to escape the results of a grotesque operation. The shadowy sins of this town are coming back to haunt it.
Can your duty as a staunch defender of the truth ever pay enough to take on this job? Maybe the hidden truths of Bonefield are best buried among its dark alleys and tight spaces. Find your answer when the first chapter of Bonefield - Bodycam Horror sends you to the Big Sky Country on October 27.
The Dead Await: Act II: Origins update
Haven't had a chance to try The Dead Await? With its long-awaited story expansion, Act II: Origins, finally available to all, now's the time to hop aboard. Combining turn-based deck-building mechanics with simple base management, The Dead Await is Darkest Dungeon meets The Walking Dead.
Hordes of hungry monstrosities and opportunistic bandits aren't the only problem. With Act II: Origins, the outbreak continues to break minds, leading to 'the deranged' crawling out of the woodwork of the Westwood Hospital.
Take a small team of survivors on supply runs around a new neck of the woods, take stock and foster a community in your underground haven, and continue to learn what you can about the outbreak without falling foul of these unruly new brutes. The Dead Await: Act II: Origins lands in time for the game's first birthday. Mark the occasion with 30% off.
SCP: Fragmented Minds
Welcome to Mars Site-113. This secure facility on the red planet has begun to crumble, revealing a concrete jungle of horrors.
With the second chapter of this fetid freakfest in production, now's the time to experience the opening section of SCP: Fragmented Minds. It's shaping up to be a challenging survival horror experience with the community at its core.
Chapter 2 is set to see our hero enter the inner sanctum of Site-113. What you'll find there are illuminated labs and wide verdant spaces - the complete opposite of the claustrophobic and dimly lit confines you'll explore in the early outer edges. Make a run through Chapter 1 at a lavish discount and hop into the Steam Community Hub to help shape the direction of the rest of this horrific tale.
Humanitz
Move on from linear horror experiences with Humanitz. Two years after release, this survival simulator has welcomed heaps of new weapons, enemy types, locales filled with shambling horrors and dwindling supplies, and cars that aren't up to the highway code.
When a spike-laden engine powers through one too many rotten husks, traditional horsepower comes in clutch. Ride your steed through a nightmare of shabby towns, derelict outposts, and overrun refuges to find survivors… or just what you need to remain one of them.
Supporting up to four-player co-op, permadeath, and completely optional PvP, Humanitz is the premier zombie survival simulator for those certain they can shepherd what's left of the human race. And with the team's renewed commitment to a full 1.0 release, you're running out of time to enter this doomed, dismal world at a generous 35% discount. Grab some canned beans with what's left, and you're golden.
Bite-Sized Horror Indies
The Bite-Sized Horror Indies bundle is an anthology of horrifying hits you can grab for around $10. At two bucks a pop, each lightly connected experience is cheaper than the tiny bag of Halloween candy you hope will appease the little monsters banging on your door.
Games like The Bunker and Dark Mine offer that classic, confined horror experience, while The Survivor, Night Shift, and Warning add a realistic simulation element to an already potent mix of heart-pumping thrills. The Bite-Sized Horror Indies anthology is a great way to grab a bunch of atmospheric games without spending hours browsing horror tags and genres.
Kriophobia
Miss the tension of fixed camera angles and graphics that leave your mind free to imagine horrors beyond the engine's comprehension? Step back in time and look forward to the future with the Kriophobia demo.
Confined to the concrete tunnels of a frozen Soviet bunker with little more than a flashlight, geophysicist Anna takes on the ghosts of her past in this psychological horror.
Search every corner of a glacial concrete labyrinth to piece together an escape plan. Seek the help of suspicious stragglers, bear witness to ghastly visions of the past, and attempt to wrestle fact from fiction in this frightening return to the 128-bit era of horror hits like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.
Know what makes you quiver? Think you've seen enough earthly horrors to make your own Halloween hit? Strike up a conversation with the indie.io team to learn what it takes to spin up a success story. They help dozens of tiny teams release their passion projects across every genre every year, and yours could be the next new release on the indie.io Steam page.