Browser horror games aren’t that popular. Browser games in general have been quite forgotten lately. But there’s a unique vibe these games give off, it requires no effort to start playing them, and you can play them virtually anywhere. It’s quite relaxing to check out some of these fun and unique indie horror experiences.
10. Hotel 626
Now, unfortunately, you cannot play Hotel 626 anymore. This browser game served as a Doritos promotional site that had a short game. I’m sure Doritos didn’t expect it to blow up as much as it did back in 2010.
Hotel 626 was a game you could access only from 6 pm to 6 am. It basically put you inside a short series of horrific events that required you to think fast in chaotic situations to survive. It had demonic babies, creepy women, and chaotic darkness trying to suck you in and such cliches.
If you provided the game with your phone and access to your camera - your picture would appear midway through the game and you would even receive a phone call that will try to help you escape the creepy hotel.
9. Next Door
Next Door is a short game that serves as an homage to the Japanese manga artist Junji Ito. It takes the story of one of Junji Ito’s famous short stories and turns it into a short pixelated adventure. Although the game is very short, it’s still a nice adaptation of the manga and it’s certainly a nice thing to be able to play through one of Junji Ito’s works.
You start off playing as a girl that’s trying to study in her apartment but can’t because of the noisy upstairs neighbor. After going upstairs to interrogate him, you accidentally start uncovering the mystery of his ominous next-door neighbors.
8. Antumbra
Antumbra is a game that takes pride in its difficulty, going so far as to call itself “The Dark Souls of adventure games”. And yeah, I don’t know if I would go as far as to say that, but it’s certainly not a simple and straightforward game.
The game starts you off in a prison-cell-like room with 3 options: “Wait”, “Run in the other direction” and “Look Around”. You don’t know anything about the story, not even who or where you are. Soon you will realize that a lot of trial and error and patience are required for those who wish to finish Antumbra.
Antumbra takes you on a spiritual adventure. The game is an indie developer’s passion project that came to life. The game plays like a text adventure game, but also has some interactable features on screen. The game can be quite random at times, but it’s mostly an interesting and ominous experience.
7. Coming Back
Coming Back is a short video game with Atari 2600-like graphics. Even though the game doesn’t use many pixels to tell its story, it also doesn’t use many colors! Which oddly enough just makes the atmosphere even better, and helps the narrative.
Coming Back is a short sidescroller game in which you walk around your house. Slowly, you start uncovering the secrets of the house and the ominous actions that took place in it. The game knows how to put you on edge, especially with the glitchy and creepy music that constantly runs in the background.
6. Lomando
Lomando is a cryptic Japanese website with a lot of jumpscares and confusing progression. You can access it by going to lomando.com, and once there, you see a cute cat-girl that explains a bit about what you’re about to get yourself into. Once you start playing the game, however, nothing is self-explanatory.
Every “run” of the game starts with you entering a haunted house. After that, you access random rooms in the house which all have a puzzle for you to solve. Lomando is a point-and-click experience and it has some unique and interesting puzzles to complete.
You can expect a jumpscare in virtually every room you find yourself in. The “game” is very cryptic and will require a whole lot of trial and error, especially since there are quite a bit of rooms that lead to a dead end. All in all, it’s a cryptic and horrific experience filled with Japanese monsters.
5. The Dead In My Living Room
The Dead In My Living Room is a game that’s made in the style of the original Gameboy. The monochromatic color scheme didn’t take away from the creepiness of the game whatsoever. As soon as the game starts, the creepy music and the weird dialogues set the ominous tone that gets carried throughout the game.
One day Jack awoke and found a dead body in his living room. As anybody else would, he gets startled by the mysterious dead body and becomes too scared to check underneath the covers to see who it is. As you keep playing the game, you will slowly uncover the mysteries behind the body and the weird house you’ve been living in.
4. Deep Sleep
Deep Sleep is a point-and-click adventure game done in pixelated art style. It has a lot of unique and hard puzzles and it sets a creepy mood by carefully using the scenery and music.
The game’s plot has you stuck inside your own nightmare. You get the feeling that something is lurking around in the darkness. Even once you start exploring the scenery, you don’t find out much. The only thing that’s apparent until the end is the feeling that something isn’t right.
3. Neighbor
Neighbor’s protagonist is a nameless girl who got a cheap deal for an apartment. Unfortunately for her, the reason why the apartment was so cheap was because there’s a creepy monster hidden in the building, and all of the people who bought the apartment before her, mysteriously disappeared.
Neighbor is a top-down game made in the style of a GameBoy game. The only controls are to walk and interact with objects. Neighbor, however, has an interesting story that slowly builds up and grows. It also masterfully uses the music, and more importantly silence to build tension.
The game is quite fun and has some beautiful high-quality pixel “cutscenes” and a story that will keep you invested with the life of our main character.
2. Exmortis
After mysteriously waking up in the woods with amnesia and seeing a run-down house nearby, you realize that the only course of action you can take is to go into the totally-not-creepy house before you freeze to death in the woods.
This game is another point-and-click adventure. It takes place in an ominous, occult house. One thing to notice is that the art style is consistent and creepy. Everything is devoid of color and grim. The game has a lot of intriguing lore and a LOT of gore scenes.
1. Invitationem
Invitationem is a wonderful short point-and-click adventure game. It’s made by a single french developer, but it doesn’t look like that’s the case at all. The game is carefully thought through, with beautiful visuals and even some high-quality 3D animations, which is not something I would expect of a browser game at all.
The game starts you off stranded in the woods as your car breaks down. Fortunately for you, there’s a house nearby that you decide to venture into to ask the householders to use their telephone. But after you go inside, the door which you came from becomes a cemented wall and you are stuck inside looking for a different way out.
The game is nicely paced, it’s interesting from start to finish, and it generally keeps a creepy and ominous vibe until it decides to jumpscare you - to give you a reality check. The puzzles are intriguing and not too hard, and the monsters lurking around the house are very horrid.
