Halloween may have just passed, but the hearty influx of ominous and spooky content lives on. While low-resolution horror games have seen a resurgence lately, I’ve rounded up a wide variety of work perfect for Halloween and the imminent cozy season. We start with one game from Color Fiction, a developer who showed off a dark stag exploring a mysterious painted world.
We have dark deers and more in Cool WIP, Polygon’s weekly roundup of eye-catching clips, and screenshots of works in progress. Each week, the Polygon staff scours the internet for the most interesting games still under construction, to give you a sampler of the coolest up-and-coming projects.
This week we also have a Lovecraftian game with a comic book art style, a black-and-white shooter, a game inspired by the Cottagecore boom, and one last silly game that turns Katamari-like environments into a 3D platformer with ragdoll physics.
A mysterious stag steps out into a wrangled forest
This is an untitled work from artist and game developer Color Fiction. This game is part of The Haunted PS1’s annual Madvent Calendar, a collaborative anthology of games. In a clip, we see the silhouette of a stag galloping through a sparse and dead forest. If you’re looking for more moody and atmospheric games like it, you can follow Color Fiction’s Twitter account where they curate new and previous work.
Encounter comic book horrors
This game’s visual style is too horrifying to overlook. Forgive Me Father is a recently released first-person shooter — or first-person cross-bearing game, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s novels. The developers at Byte Barrel designed these dark, twisting monsters to look like they’re straight out of a comic book. A clip of the game showed a character fighting off creatures like giant tentacled monsters and glowing, lantern-like eyes. Forgive Me Father is available for Windows PC now.
Cottagecore aesthetics come to life with this adorable mail delivery game
Not everyone is looking for a scare come autumn, and for those people we have this cute game inspired by cottagecore trends. In Mail Time, you play as an adorable delivery person who brings mail to forest animals. The developer, Kela van der Deijl, has a large following on TikTok and posted a video showing the main character running and gliding through the woods. Mail Time doesn’t have a release date yet but you can see frequent updates on the developer’s TikTok account.
A spooky black-and-white shooter
Kingdom of the Dead is another spooky shooter to make this list. Developer Dirigo Games posted a clip showing off its black-and-white art style, as well as a giant, bulbous spider crawling up toward the main character. I’m not a spider person, but it has a striking art style that caught my eye. According to the developer, it will be ready in early 2022 and you can check out more about the game on its Twitter account.
A low-poly playground with deadly fish
This is the odd one out of this batch of cozy and spooky games. This little 3D platformer, Pain Party, combines ragdoll physics with a poisonous swamp. The developer, Icehelm, posted a clip of the character getting absolutely totaled by a giant flying fish. There is no name or release date for the project, but its Steam page says the developer will release it “soon.”
Source: https://www.polygon.com/22757307/low-res-horror-playstation-1-cottagecore-cozy-games
