We're all broke, and horror games are digging into that dysfunction

It’s not particularly controversial to say that horror, as a genre, is a mirror to our culture’s difficulties and fears. Vampires, zombies, masked slashers, quarantine zones, beaches that make you old … these weren’t invented from wholecloth so much as taken from our subconsciouses and presented back to us. So it’s not a surprise that at the tail end of 2025, after a year of tariffs, war, and the second global recession of my lifetime, I’m seeing tons of horror games based on economic precarity.

This can be a really easy fix to one of horror’s biggest problems: watching characters make choices that just don’t make sense. No, we yell at our screens at the hapless babysitter left home alone, “don’t go down the stairs!” “Don’t skinny dip, there’s a murderer in the woods!” But an eviction notice on the front door or a sudden medical bill is urgent, relatable, and immediately sets the stakes for the player.

This combines nicely with the recent surge in simulator-style games, which puts the player in the role of everything from long haul trucker to humble supermarket attendant. With a little imagination, that concept can be pushed: What if your job was working as a hitman, like Pigface? What if you were running a diner in the apocalypse, or clicking a counter in a seedy hotel room, or feeding your arms to an endlessly hungry machine? Fuck, it’s a living, I guess. Mondays, am I right?