Ahh! 72 indie horror games and a Haunted PS1 demo disc just screeched into 2025 honking the horn and apologising for being late

EEK3 is the alternative showcase of small horror game creators that amalgamates every year like a shell of flies around the corpse of E3. It's a lot of fun for people who enjoy ye olde PS1 aesthetics and foggy throwback horror. The 2024 showcase was supposed to happen in time for Halloween, the night when the spirits of old platformer mascots rise from their graves to gift polygons to small children. But it was postponed due to technical problems. Only now has the 2-hour showcase of game trailers emerged, culminating in a new Haunted PS1 demo disc packed with upcoming games. "The curse," say the organisers, "is lifted."

There are over 70 games shown off. As you can imagine, it's quite a long show. But I heard you have lots of time on your hands. It's a whole new year. And if you need it, here's a full list of all the games on show.

There are more than a few stand-outs among the lo-fi horror. Prison Of Husks is a sword swinger set in a medieval castleland reminiscent of Lordran from the first Dark Souls. Angeline Era is a colourful and bumpy hack 'n' slash from the creators of the Anodyne RPGs. Meanwhile, Of Love And Eternity is an attractively pixelated knightly romance - and by romance I mean your love was killed and so were you and now you are in a hellish skull-filled country where you have to use a lantern full of glowbugs to see the bone-littered path in front of you. We last saw it demoed back in 2021.

There are probably a ton of other promising entries - I haven't got through the whole show yet. But I spy some familiar faces coming down the gore tubes. Trip is the funny, bright timeloop caper I tried in autumn. And the grasping hand of non-euclidean horror game Eclipsium recently got Nic cooing. And, oh look, Sorry We're Closed also gets a shout-out, despite the fact the hot pink horror with horny demons already released in November (Ed reviewed it, in case you're wondering). This is probably just a hangover result of the showcase's long delay.

Still, yes, 70 games. That's a lot of ground to cover. Thankfully, the Haunted PS1 demo disc which accompanies the showcase is not quite so overwhelming. It only has 24 demos to try out. These demo discs have often been the delightfully fetid source of quiet hits. Parkour rock climbing game Lorn's Lure was first featured on the demo disc back in 2021, for example. And one of my favourite games of last year, the Elder Scrolls-inspired Dread Delusion, first appeared on the 2020 disc.

In short, the Haunted PS1 folks have a good track record for curating interesting stuff, and every disc has a fun framing device that makes it a game in itself. This year, a ritual has wrong, say the creators, and it has manifested a two-sided disc, with one side devoted to fearsome freakery and the other devoted to cute nostalgia. You can download the demo disc on Itch.