This spooky chat-led video game will give Twitch streamers nightmares

With Halloween coming up, we've been revisiting on the best indie horror games of 2025. But it's also fun to see what interesting ideas that come out of Halloween game jams with potential for development into something bigger.

One developer has made a proof of concept in which you play as a streamer hunting for ghosts in a forest. The problem is that you can't see the ghouls; only the simulated chat can see them. You have to use their comments to try to find what's lurking in the shadows.

You can't see the ghosts, but chat can. from r/IndieDev

Bits By Brandon's aptly named Live Scream was made using Godot Engine (see our pick of the best game development software). It's a very short game for now and with fairly basic art, but over on Reddit people think the idea has viral potential.

It's not the first horror game with a simulated live chat mechanic. There was Restreamed and FeedVid, but the haunted forest setting seems perfect for this idea, and brings a found-footage Blair Witch vibe to it.

The chat is fully simulated, which the developer says this was done “haphazardly” since it was a game jam game. There's an "excitement" number that increases when the ghost is near, and the number is divided into about four groups. When the chat gets excited, it flips to a new set of chat messages and also increases the speed of the messages.

“There are also alternative sets of messages with their own levels for 'player just looked away from the ghost' or 'player hasn't started the game yet' to add variety and make them feel like they always respond to what you're doing,” the developer says.

But some are saying it would be great to find a way to connect the game to Twitch to make it possible to use an actual live chat, allowing streamers to the play the game with a real audience guiding them. That could make for some entertaining streaming and a lot of chat interaction, and the game could end up being different for every play depending on how chat interacts.

There's room for a lot of variables too, some suggest. There could be devious people in the chat that try to mislead or troll the streamer, requiring the player to decide who to trust, or the streamer could have to use the chat to solve puzzles.

What do you think? Is there potential?

You can play Live Scream on itch.io.