Halloween is creeping closer, so naturally we’ve decided the appropriate thing to do is give somebody enough indie horror games to seriously damage their sleep schedule.
Thanks to our friends at Cuibulcujocuri, one lucky winner is getting a massive bundle of 9 PC games covering psychological horror, Romanian folklore, abandoned villages, dark-web nightmares, and supernatural hauntings.
Several of these games will already be familiar to regular Indie-cent Exposure readers. We highlighted some of them when we went digging through Romania’s indie scene earlier this year, and we’ve been keen to keep shining a light on the developers creating horror with a distinctly local flavour.
Now somebody gets to take a sizeable chunk of it home.
What can you win?
The winner will receive all 9 games below.
Cartier 06
An ordinary evening in a quiet Romanian neighbourhood rapidly stops being ordinary.
You play as Stefan, an engineer returning home after another shift, only for strange dreams, unexplained knocks and something lurking outside to turn the familiar streets around him into something considerably less welcoming.
Cowardly Knight’s Cartier 06 combines first-person exploration, mystery and survival horror in a mid-2000s Romanian setting.
Geamana Village
Not every horror game needs something chasing you.
Geamana Village, developed by Chainwold Studio, takes a slower, more unsettling approach, sending you into a drowned Romanian village armed with a camera and notebook.
You’ll photograph the devastation, speak with the remaining locals and search abandoned homes for clues about what happened there, with the game drawing inspiration from real-world events surrounding the village of Geamăna.
It’s the sort of horror where the setting itself does most of the work.
Gospodar’s Tales
Rural Romania gets considerably darker in Gospodar’s Tales, developed by Gospodar Games.
Set in 2009, this first-person psychological horror follows Ion as memories of greed, guilt and betrayal begin dragging him back through a past that refuses to stay buried.
Romanian traditions and folklore sit alongside environmental puzzles, exploration, dark humour and some deeply unpleasant things happening in otherwise familiar surroundings.
Left By Angels
Your wife disappeared.
Then her face appeared in footage captured at an abandoned mansion.
Obviously, going inside is an excellent idea.
Street Art Studios’ Left By Angels is a story-driven psychological horror game built around grief, guilt and a reality that starts looping and reshaping itself around you. Your flashlight is essential, batteries are limited, and the mansion seems increasingly determined to make sure you don’t leave with your sanity intact.
Măgurele Mystery 2
Sometimes coming back from holiday is worse than others.
In another of Street Art Studios’ other games, Măgurele Mystery 2, you return to the Institute of Atomic Physics to discover that experiments have gone catastrophically wrong, a virus has escaped, and the surrounding area is now filled with zombie-like people and mutated creatures.
Probably slightly worse than finding 400 unread emails waiting for you.
The game mixes first-person horror, exploration, puzzles and an apocalyptic Romanian setting.
NETBREAK
Tarba Paul Cornel’s NETBREAK might make you reconsider plugging mysterious USB sticks into your computer.
A strange drive leads you into a dark-web investigation centred around a horrifying underground operation. Players must search for hidden information, decrypt clues and survive increasingly dangerous attempts to stop them from uncovering the truth.
It’s deliberately difficult too, demanding attention across several threats while you try to piece everything together.
Perfect relaxing Halloween entertainment, then.
Psychopathy Assessment
Are you a psychopath?
Actually, maybe don’t answer that.
Psychopathy Assessment, another indie title from Tarba Paul Cornel, presents itself as a disturbing retro psychological test wrapped in VHS distortion and PS1-style horror.
Questions gradually become more unsettling, reality begins to blur, and eventually the test gives way to something considerably more involved than ticking boxes on a questionnaire.
It’s also designed as a relatively short experience, making it an ideal candidate for a dark October evening with the lights conveniently switched off.
Stay Still and Stay Still 2
Another double whammy from Tarba Paul Cornel. Stay Still is a first-person psychological horror game influenced by Vietnamese culture, placing the emphasis on exploration, puzzles and surviving supernatural threats.
You’re hunted by spirits while attempting to understand what is happening around you, meaning the title is perhaps not especially useful advice.
Standing still is generally a terrible idea.
And once you’ve survived that, naturally we’re giving you the sequel as well.
Stay Still 2 expands on the Vietnamese-inspired supernatural horror of the original with another first-person survival experience centred around puzzles, exploration and avoiding things you absolutely do not want finding you.
Because one haunted night clearly wasn’t enough.
That’s 9 indie horror games for one winner
So, to recap, one winner gets:
- Cartier 06
- Geamana Village
- Gospodar’s Tales
- Left By Angels
- Măgurele Mystery 2
- NETBREAK
- Psychopathy Assessment
- Stay Still
- Stay Still 2
From slow-burn psychological horror to dark-web nightmares, Romanian folklore, supernatural scares and more, there should be enough here to keep somebody busy well beyond Halloween.
Or until they decide sleeping was actually quite nice.
How to enter
Use the giveaway widget below to get your entries in.
A massive thank you goes to Tudor of https://cuibulcujocuri.ro/, and the developers who have helped us put this bundle together and, more importantly, trusted us to inflict their creations on one unsuspecting winner.
Good luck.
And maybe leave a light on.
Find more giveaways over on our Staff Blog.
