Play 69 spooky free games from the Haunted PS1 Wretched Weekend game jam

(Image credit: P.A.R.I.S. La nuit en marche, by Alexandre VS)

Spooky, low-poly 3D games are the new frontier for indie aesthetics, and the latest evidence of that is the Haunted PS1 Wretched Weekend. A 48-hour game jam held over the last weekend, it had just eight rules:

Make a game to fill this cold empty void.
Make it in 48 hours.
It should have minimal gameplay.
You may use a game you've started to make before.
The majority of the game should be made during the jam.
Featuring low poly models, pixel art, and possibly a pixelation filter if it's 3d.
Use whatever you can to make the game.
The game should be spooky.

The completed entrants are now available to play, and there are 69 of them. Included in that number is Rottenwood Lake, which is oddly not the first combination of fishing game and horror I've played. After you catch some ugly fish in the fog you're sent off to track down three skulls in the creepy lake, while being pursued by a beast of the deep. Fortunately the skulls can be tracked because they emit a noise like Tuvan throat singing. It's an unusual one.

I also enjoyed my time exploring A Structure of Unknown Origin at Little Pine State Park, Quiet Manor, and P.A.R.I.S. La nuit en marche, which is where I saw a gigantic projection of Kate Bush around a smaller screen that mashed up footage of student protests with snippets of movies like the Bela Lugosi Dracula. OK, they were all unusual ones.

You can try the Wretched Weekend games at itch.io. And if you'd like more of the same, don't forget the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc.

(Image credit: Quiet Manor by Ivan Zanotti)

(Image credit: A Structure of Unknown Origin at Little Pine State Park by Redact Games)

(Image credit: Rottenwood Lake by selewi, Romain Rope, skcotterell, Tozy, inflatableplatypus)

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.