You may know them as Puppet Combo or as their publishing label, Torture Star Video. Either way, Puppet Combo has earned itself a crown for being a cult-classic video game developer in the genre of indie B-horror, with an unmistakable influence on the modern indie horror landscape.
With the recent release of Skinfreak, a slasher-horror game about a sexually sadistic serial killer obsessed with harvesting its victims’ skin, including that of protagonist Belle, the studio once again demonstrates why the genre of retro-horror revival is thriving. Made by Jordan King under Black Eyed Priest Games, Skinfreak is everything indie horror fans have come to expect of Puppet Combo: guts and gore through low-poly character models and two-bit pixel minigames; textures that look like they were made in GIMP; characters that look so comical yet hinge on the uncanny valley; grainy VHS filters; and synth-heavy soundtracks that came straight out of the 80s.
Yet, the accompanying voice acting for these games is high quality and even features cameos from renowned YouTubers. This is Puppet Combo’s signature aesthetic: and the reason why their games are so intoxicatingly terrifying. Simply put, Puppet Combo is proof that horror experiences don’t require high-end graphics to be scary. This is seen in Puppet Combo’s other games such as Nun Massacre, Murder House and Bloodwash, all set in what’s presumably the 1980s. They invoke that feeling of nostalgia reminiscent of the era’s ‘video nasties’ and slasher films like Scream and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It further pastiches early PlayStation 1 survival horror games, namely Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Many of these titles take on classic horror tropes like found footage, dodgy petrol stations and the ‘final girl’, reaffirming that manufactured feeling of nostalgia while evoking a sense of uneasiness with atmospheric world-building. They create red herrings with sketchy characters, making you trust no one. The fear of the unknown lets the player’s paranoia fill the gaps and leaves much to their imagination — it’s horror with teeth: raw, grimy, and brutally unfiltered, creating the perfect exaggerated caricature of classic exploitation cinema. And best believe it bites.
What makes Puppet Combo especially important to the resurgence of retro horror is the way they portray vulnerability. The protagonists are often oblivious and unarmed civilians: you play as an office worker. a helpless babysitter, a store clerk working the night shift, or a traveller stranded on a rural highway. Combat is scarce, either you run, hide, or die. And if it is death, it comes quick, cruel, and brutal.
This intentional powerlessness taps into a visceral fear that is often sanitized in mainstream horror games: the fear of being prey to the mundane. Puppet Combo’s design philosophy makes your paranoia into a weapon, and uses it against you. It’s not ghosts or monsters, but other humans at their most depraved. By forcing players into the shoes of ordinary people, the games capture the terror that defined early survival horror, and it invokes the fear that maybe this could all happen to you too.
This has been seen in the broader indie scene with other developers such as Selewi and Chilla’s Art, experimenting with lo-fi quality, analog horror and VHS storytelling. The growing popularity of these games on YouTube and Twitch among creators and fans show that audiences crave these horror experiences; after all, series like The Mandela Catalogue have exploded into the digital stratosphere riding the coattails of this aesthetic. In the same way A24 revitalised arthouse horror cinema, Puppet Combo and its peers are doing the same for lo-fi gaming, prioritizing immersive atmosphere over polish.
In a market saturated with polished but predictable horror titles, Puppet Combo and their work stands out by embracing the imperfect, the ugly, and the meticulously unsettling. Skinfreak is only the latest reminder of how scary low-budget horror can be when guided by a clear vision. As the genre grows in popularity and continues to be embraced by indie developers, one thing can be made clear: the resurgence of lo-fi horror is here to stay, and Puppet Combo might be its zeitgeist.
