Critical Reflex’s focus on horror has led to some of the year’s best, weirdest games

While some game genres are swelling to larger and larger sizes, encompassing vast open worlds stuffed full of optional side quests, horror games have remained a smaller subset of games as a whole. The horror genre is naturally resistant to an overly long campaign, as even the most terrifying enemies and bewildering scenarios lose their edge after hours and hours of exposure. Some of my favorite games this year were small, tightly-scoped horror (or horror-adjacent) experiences, including titles published by Critical Reflex. Mouthwashing, Threshold, Arctic Eggs, Buckshot Roulette, and No, I’m not a Human are all fascinating, weird little games that have short run times but big impacts.

Games like Arctic Eggs and Buckshot Roulette are deliberately ugly and unappealing; the games depict grimy environments full of doomed people. While AAA titles strive for greater graphical fidelity and complex interactions, indie games can work with a much smaller and simpler canvas. “I think horror games have a lot of room for experimentation compared to other genres,” said Rita Lebedeva, founder of Critical Reflex, in an interview with Polygon. “When the main goal is to scare the player, the rest of the game can basically be anything. The developers often build the game around one strong concept and tend to stay within an easily digestible scope.”

Lebedeva is a fan of the classic era of survival horror titles on the PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Lebedeva’s inspirations include older classics like Haunting Grounds and newer titles like Lost in Vivo, Buddy Simulator 1984, Darkwood, Inscryption, and Fear & Hunger.

“One way to determine if a title will resonate is to find something that will make you go, ‘Woah holy shit!’ and then try to assess whether this game caters to your very niche tastes or if others will have a similar reaction,” said Lebedeva. “There are obviously some expectations to meet as a publisher, and I’d like to think that so far, we’ve been doing a great job at making sure that we both pick up titles that excite our audience and also make promises to the developers we can truly deliver on.”

As huge titles with long production cycles and massive budgets become more of a risk, smaller labels are focusing on experimental experiences. Blumhouse Games, a spin-off from the movie production studio, showed off six horror games under its label this summer. Critical Reflex has a subsection of its publishing apparatus called the CR Channel, a sub-label for all things horror. Upcoming games on CR Channel include Regular Home Renovation, which is about cleaning and repairing totally normal and safe houses, and Drowned Lake, a fishing game with survival elements.

“Most recently, we’ve had success with titles that most publishers would deem too risky, working with developers whose first games were very experimental and artistic,” said Lebedeva. Investing in small developers can be the start of a collaboration on bigger projects. “So now, if they want to do something a bit more commercial without feeling like they’re ‘selling out,’ we’ll be the perfect partner for them — someone who speaks the same language as they do.”

The indie horror scene has been thriving on marketplaces like itch.io, and publishers like Critical Reflex are helping to elevate promising titles and introduce new games that would otherwise fly under the radar. “When games make their way into the Steam charts because of their weirdness, it makes it less stressful for other developers to make things that aren’t like anything else they have seen before and actually show it to a broader audience,” said Lebedeva. “A lot of the devs I personally reached out to were genuinely surprised to learn that something they considered a tiny project might be of interest to a publisher.

“I really hope to see even more games that make me feel like I’ve just started exploring video games and go, ‘Damn, I can do what?’ or my all time classic, ‘God, wish I published that’ — ’cause it’s so outside the box and me-coded.”