PAX West 2025: A Place for Horror

One of the best things about PAX West is its position in early September, that beautiful period of transition from summer into the fall season. For many people, fall means pumpkin spice everything, apple cider, cozy fireplaces, flannel sweatshirts, and – most importantly – scaring the hell out of ourselves for fun. As such, the horror titles on offer at PAX never fail to elicit a feeling of sincere joy and fundamental transition into the spooky season, and PAX West 2025 delivered that in spades. Between the ever-present quality of the DreadXP booth and the smattering of indie darlings waiting to be unleashed on the public, I am in that wonderful mood to scare myself senseless in the dark with a controller in hand.

The DreadXP Booth

Pigface

Developer: titolovesyou

There is something so undeniably special about the horror games released during the PS2 era. Something about how the polygonal characters move and interact, the way the baked-in lighting forces shadows to look when you walk past them, and the creativity necessary to scare someone with the modesty of the retro graphics makes these games seem so much scarier than they actually are. One of the most prolific and controversial titles of that time is Rockstar's Manhunt – a grindhouse gore-fest that gives the player more points for being more brutal and patient with their kills.

As I sat down to play Pigface at the DreadXP booth, visions of Manhunt were all I could conjure in my head. Pigface is a first-person shooter designed with that same grindhouse retro aesthetic, and it executes it flawlessly. Booting up the game, a gruff voice on the other side of a flip phone told my protagonist that she had to carve her way through a slew of enemies to prove her worth and gain employment. Analogue scan-lines crackled as I picked up my first weapon (a baseball bat conveniently left for me) and I set about my business, brutally executing all of the hapless polygonal goons in the tutorial area in a variety of ways. After my murder spree, I got the job and was sent out on my first mission: find drug dealers in the sticks, kill them all, and find evidence about their operation. I set upon my gruesome task with the same level of direct efficiency as the tutorial. This is where I learned my first lesson in Pigface: this game will kill you, with no mercy.

It took me three different tries to clear out the drug dealers and complete my mission, running out of ammo with the cheap submachine gun provided for me and improvising with hammers and handguns. As I stalked around the outside of the barn, picking off unsuspecting drug dealers from afar and closing in for the kill, it was amazing how much I actually felt like a predator. I was slimming down the herd one by one until there was no opposition left, all set to that grindhouse aesthetic that Manhunt established years ago. The grit and grime of the drug dealers' barn, mixed with the undeniably charming PS2 visuals, coagulated into a masterclass of shock gameplay.

Just like with Manhunt, Pigface possesses some baked-in humor as well. Bodies careen across the screen and contort in ridiculous and hilarious ways as the ragdoll physics take over, and the entire thing has an air of dark humor to it that I really appreciated. It sounds sadistic to say that I enjoyed Pigface, but I found the mix of atmosphere and challenging gameplay to be exactly what I look for in a brutal game like this. The most interesting thing was that, in talking to the developer, I learned that they had not played a single Manhunt game. Instead, they loved the atmosphere and wanted to see what they could do by trying to capture that essence without knowing the subject matter. Homage without being derivative is how it was explained to me, and they absolutely nailed it.

Pigface has a demo available on Steam and will hopefully enter Early Access by the end of the year.

The Lacerator

Developer: Games From The Abyss

I didn't really know what to expect when going into The Lacterator. I was familiar with the game's tagline: "Lose a limb, learn to adapt in The Lacterator!" but that isn't exactly descriptive. So, I sat down with an open mind, and was immediately floored by what I saw.

A low-poly, retro aesthetic muscle man with a ridiculous mustache and tight purple shirt strides towards the screen, opening a monologue with, and I quote, "This is Max, the man who loves sex." From that point forward, I was hooked and extremely excited for whatever schlocky nonsense was coming my way. I was not disappointed.

The Lacerator is a third-person horror game derived from old 80s slasher films. You play as Max, a porn star who wakes up in a dilapidated cell, unable to remember how he got there. After escaping, he finds his co-stars in various other cells, stuck in the grime and dirt. As you make your way through the labyrinth, saw-like traps await around every corner. You must solve puzzles and traverse the filthy maze you find yourself in to escape from the main antagonist: an axe-wielding maniac known as the Lacerator.

I found The Lacerator to be incredibly endearing. As far as modern-retro indie horror games are concerned, The Lacerator does a lot to stand out above the rest. The tongue-in-cheek writing and acting, along with the ridiculous premise and the brutality of the gameplay, make for some really funny and jarring moments. If it sounds like I'm being really vague with The Lacerator, it's because I am. I don't want to ruin any of this experience for someone whose ears may have perked up at The Lacerator's description. I'll only spoil it this far – I finished the game with a statistic that said: "Lacerations: Arm, Dick." If that doesn't make you laugh, then The Lacerator probably won't be for you, but if you're into dark humor, gritty set pieces, and unique gameplay, give it a look.

You can wishlist The Lacerator on Steam now.

White Knuckle

Developer: Dark Machine Games

White Knuckle is a game that's kind of hard to pin down. The best way I can describe it is a first-person horror urban bouldering simulator. Not unlike the other games I've played at DreadXP thus far, White Knuckle has a gritty, modern-retro aesthetic, with ominous pixelated 3D environments that are just dripping with atmosphere. From the demo I played, there wasn't a lot of context given to the story, but I was immediately hooked by the strange and stressful gameplay on offer.

Like other games in the climbing genre, you use your right mouse button to grab onto a ledge or an item with your right hand, and the left mouse button to do the same with your left hand. Where other climbing games, like Don't Nod's seaside epic Jusant, give you a full stamina bar that steadily depletes as you climb, White Knuckle has two separate stamina bars, one for each hand. As you hold onto a ledge, whatever hand you're using to hang on for dear life will slowly start to turn red, representing how much grip strength you have left in that hand. Switching from one hand to another will temporarily relieve the free hand, but also cause the singular grip to diminish faster. While this is all happening, you may be required to hammer in pitons to give yourself a handle to reach higher areas or jump further distances.

This singular mechanic is what turned White Knuckle from a fun idea into a stressful test of endurance. To hammer in a piton, you have to hold on with one hand, pull the piton from your inventory (either by opening up the inventory or assigning it to a hot key), place it in the wall, pull your hammer out of your inventory, hit the piton multiple times to get a solid foundation, and then you can grab onto it and use it to aid in your traversal. The number of times I scrambled to switch hands, grab pitons, bring out my hammer, switch hands again, grab onto the ledge, all the while being abhorrently aware of the loss of stamina in my hands as they got redder and redder, is staggering. Every death results in a restart, so falling without catching yourself can have dire consequences.

At first, I was a little bit confused by what White Knuckle was doing at the DreadXP booth. The publisher is known for their indie horror titles, and the other games I had played there had thus far followed that route as expected. The atmosphere of White Knuckle is impeccable - you're climbing up through a dirty, rusty, massive industrial silo. Darkness obfuscates what's above and what's below, creating a foreboding sense of scale, never quite knowing how far you've climbed or how far you have to go. Still, I wouldn't classify it as horror, at least, not until I started my third climb. Suddenly, grotesque growths reminiscent of Half-Life's barnacle growths sprouted all over the place, with wet tendrils smacking the walls all around me as I climbed. These fleshy columns extended all around me, creating a significantly more treacherous environment to scurry up.

During my climb, a distorted voice echoed from the loudspeaker, warning me of a power failure, followed by the screen shaking. Suddenly, a furtive glance down revealed a miasma of fluid of questionable origin, rising quickly up the silo like bile rising through a throat. I desperately sought to get away from it, but in my haste, I fell directly into the liquid to my death. My reservations about it appearing at the DreadXP booth were dashed as quickly as my character was drowned in the brackish fluid.

I'll be honest, White Knuckle kicked my ass. I don't think it's the game's fault – I just struggle with this type of coordination when it comes to gaming. I had to split my brain into so many different quadrants just to move up a few meters that I was practically doomed from the start. Still, White Knuckle is a really cool and original take on the horror formula, and if you like climbing games, I would definitely check it out.

White Knuckle is available on Steam now.

The Secret of Weepstone

Developer: Talesworth Game Studio

Right from the get-go, I knew I was going to enjoy The Secret of Weepstone. As a huge TTRPG fan, when the intro opened with a table-top module, surrounded by dice and pencils, opening to reveal a beautifully stylized black-and-white game world, covered with a ridiculously gripping narration explaining what Weepstone is and why its secrets must be uncovered, had me giddy. I couldn't wait to dig into whatever adventures this TTRPG video game had in store for me, and I wasn't disappointed.

The game's art style is absolutely fantastic, a beautiful homage to the Dungeons & Dragons booklets of the 70s and 80s, complete with exaggerated black-and-white characters and environments. Take any still image from any part of the game, and you'd have a hard time discerning it from the Dungeons and Dragons books of yore. From the story (the ruler of a keep has passed, and now the townsfolk must explore and uncover its secrets) to the dialogue and voice-over, The Secret of Weepstone oozes the same fun, cheesy charisma that the old Dungeons and Dragons books do.

It plays as close to a TTRPG as a video game realistically can, a feat that is not easy to achieve. Whereas a game like Baldur's Gate 3 replicated the adventure of a tabletop game, The Secret of Weepstone is trying to capture the feeling of actually sitting down at a table and playing. You pick your character, they have a backstory (with some characters being packaged together,) their backstory influences their playstyle, they have pros and cons, and those pros and cons can be leveraged for your benefit or mistaken to your detriment.

Each time you get into an enemy encounter, you physically see the appropriate dice roll onto the screen to show you how you did, and just like in a real game, a critical roll (the highest a die can give, like a 20 on a d20) causes immediate dopamine-based celebration, where a critical fail (the lowest roll a die can give, like a 1 on a d20) causes that same anger-induced deflation you'd experience sitting at a table.

The Secret of Weepstone isn't afraid to embrace the humor of a D&D campaign, either. During my playthrough, I found the latrines. One was closed, the other was filled to the brim, and the third was empty. I threw a rock down into it and waited a very long time before I heard it splash into the water below. The narrator commented on how falling would mean certain death. Still, an option for "climb inside" tantalized me from the menu selection, so I hesitantly clicked it. The other five party members heard a scream as the character I was playing fell seven stories to her death. The character who fell just so happened to be a character who claimed their death was prophesied by oracles, and a blurb came up saying that she was happy, as it was all laid out before her already.

Accidentally causing a character's canon to be that their death, written in the cosmos for all to see, was to climb into a toilet and fall the equivalent of 70 feet for no reason, is hilarious to me, and very indicative of the D&D experiment. A good Dungeon Master is an improv specialist, always landing on "yes and." That sort of freedom is partially what made Baldur's Gate 3 the legend it is, and The Secret of Weepstone seems to be keeping that idea alive and well.

If you like TTRPGs, but can't always find a group to play with, The Secret of Weepstone will absolutely scratch that itch. You can wishlist it on Steam now, with a planned release date sometime in 2026.

Entropy

Developer: Lovely Hellplace

Now, this one had me excited. DreadXP hadn't announced Entropy when I got to PAX, but as soon as I saw the logo for Lovely Hellplace, I was ecstatic. The developer's previous release, Dread Delusion, was one of my games of the year in 2024, due to its unique take on an open-world RPG, along with the surprisingly in-depth lore and gorgeously macabre visuals. Needless to say, when the logo appeared, I was psyched.

I'm not saying I was disappointed with Entropy; rather, I wasn't entirely sure what it was trying to do. It shares the same recognizable art style as Dread Delusion, with disturbing retro-modern models and environments, and an emphasis on the strange. The main difference is that Entropy is a third-person turn-based RPG, rather than a first-person action RPG. I like the setup well enough: you are an actor performing in a play when demons attack the town where you're performing. The monsters tear the city apart, killing nearly everyone. You miraculously survive, armed with the prop weapons given to you for the play, and you must escape the gutted town. You team up with a few survivors and fight your way out of town, seeking shelter further down the road.

The combat system is simple to grasp but difficult to master. Your team is set up in two rows; the front row will sustain most of the damage and benefits from using more melee-centered attacks, whereas the back row is for support and ranged attacks. Your foes will stack themselves up similarly, with different enemies having different strengths, weaknesses, statuses, and attacks. There are tons of buffs, status screens, and percentages you can tweak and keep track of to create the party you specifically want, and it all works well.

I suppose the issue I kept running into was this - Dread Delusion focused more on the world building than the mechanics. Mechanically, it was very simple – more akin to something like Morrowind than anything else. They were just deep enough to keep you invested without overwhelming you, making it easier to really absorb the world and all the weird characters. In Entropy, the opposite seems to be true. Lovely Hellplace seems to have leaned much more heavily into the mechanics themselves, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely makes me redefine my expectations for the full game. That being said, everything works exactly as intended, and it still has plenty of Lovely Hellplace weirdness to supplement the gameplay.

Entropy has just been listed on Steam, with a generic 2026 release date. You can bet I will be giving it an honest try whenever it comes out.

And thus, my five-game foray into the ever-excellent DreadXP booth came to a close. As always, I was blown away by the creativity and dark humor found in these titles, and I'm happy to add another successful year of wonderful DreadXP titles to my belt notch.

There was one more horror experience I had at PAX West, though, and it's worthy of inclusion with these other great horror titles.

Terrible Lizards

Developer: WDR Studios LLC

I have a question for the game industry: why aren't dinosaurs utilized more often in horror games? We have Dino Crisis, a cult classic in its own right, but aside from that, where are all the dinos? It seems foolproof on paper – massive bird lizards with no drive other than to kill and eat - catalysts of some of the most dangerous and horrifying times in the world's history. Literal monsters that did not come out of a story book, but rather roamed the planet we call home millions of years ago. WDR Studios seemed to agree, and thus began development on their first-ever game, Terrible Lizards.

If you've ever been on a road trip in the middle of the United States, the setting for Terrible Lizards will be immediately recognizable. The game takes place inside a roadside attraction museum in the middle of the desert, adjacent to a gas station with seemingly no other civilization in a 50-mile radius. Your car breaks down, and the only option for a tow isn't coming for a good long while. This is the 90s after all, so just doom-scrolling your phone as you wait isn't an option. As such, you decide to explore the inside of this strange museum to kill some time and potentially get some help from the employees. Things inside are not as they seem, however, as your protagonist quickly finds out.

Terrible Lizards fulfills a lifelong fantasy of so many children who walk the dusty, hallowed halls of natural history museums. You see the giant dinosaur skeletons and huge displays and think, "What would happen if I climbed on that?"

That's the crux of Terrible Lizards - parkour. One of the developers called it "Mirror's Edge meets Five Nights at Freddy's," and that hits the nail on the head. Despite this being the studio's first game, the controls are already super-tight. You will be zipping around the museum in no time, climbing over displays and swinging on pipes, traversing the maze-like museum, and uncovering the mysteries that transpired there.

Like with The Lacerator, I'm going to stay intentionally vague to minimize spoilers. Suffice it to say, even the demo displayed on the show floor did an awesome job subverting my expectations and keeping that creep factor at an all-time high. There's an undeniable charm to Terrible Lizards, with FMV and funny dialogue scattered throughout, not to mention an extremely original premise that's executed flawlessly. It's a really cool idea from an extremely nice team, and it deserves to be played.

So, what are you waiting for? Go add it to your Steam wishlist now!

This is just the beginning of our PAX West 2025, so keep checking back this week for more of SUPERJUMP's first-hand impressions of what we saw at the annual indie gaming festival!