The age of the superhero is over; the age of the video game has begun. Hollywood studios are snapping up the rights to video game adaptations left and right. However, most upcoming projects like Chad Stahelski’s Ghost of Tsushima movie and Wes Ball’s The Legend of Zelda are not only straightforward – they’re obvious. In 2026 so far, I’ve seen three video game movie adaptations: Illumination’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Markiplier’s Iron Lung, and Toho’s Exit 8. Two of these films really impressed me, and neither of them featured Yoshi.
Iron Lung cost only $3m (and probably 10 years off Markiplier’s life) to make, grossing $64m at the worldwide box office. Meanwhile, the Japanese film Exit 8, based on the viral indie sensation, reportedly cost around $4m to make and has already pulled in $42m around the world. Both of these films were massively successful, reviewed well by fans and critics, and, most importantly, are based on extremely weird indie games. Running with this trend, I believe it is in these low-budget environmental narrative indie games that filmmakers might find something truly inspiring to build from. I’ve assembled a list of ten weird indie games that I think would make great feature film adaptations, including potential creative talent, below.
1. I’m On Observation Duty
The Game: The I’m On Observation Duty series has a very simple premise that is not unlike Exit 8. You are working security at empty houses and buildings of various sizes. Flip between cameras in each room to observe if there are any strange anomalies; these could be anything from a vase moved out of place to a corpse suddenly appearing in the garden. Mark the anomalies as they appear, and an undefined agent removes them. Repeat until dawn to win. If too many anomalies escape your notice, game over.
As A Film: A security guard down on their luck is hired to work security at a huge estate belonging to a billionaire family while they vacation in Europe for the summer. They set up in a control room that can only show a limited number of cameras at once, despite the house having dozens of rooms. They are told to report anything strange in a log on the computer. Things escalate every night from cabinets opening to upside-down rooms. Who is receiving the info they put into the logs? Add in a gardener, housekeeper, chauffeur etc., for more characters.
The Talent: Aneesh Chaganty, writer/director of the hit “screenlife” thriller films Searching and Missing, as well as the psycho-horror film Run, would do very well with this premise. With a lot of focus on in-movie screens as well as the tension and uncertainty that his films deliver, he’s a no-brainer for the job.
2. Harvester
The Game: Harvester is an infamous point-and-click FMV game from 1996 that you probably would only be aware of from YouTubers. Players take control of Steve, an 18-year-old who wakes up in a world that is very much not his own. He is in the town of Harvester, TX, a place that does not exist, and has amnesia. Everyone in this town is either strange, weird, evil, conniving, manipulative, or straight-up threatening – and all of them are in on something you’re not allowed to know about. Steve is tricked into performing a series of increasingly violent quests to gain access to The Lodge, home of the cult that runs the town, in hopes he may find a way out. Harvested gained notoriety because of its extreme violence and gore and meta-commentary about violence in video games, and has a certified cult following.
As A Film: This would be a very weird film, as in the game, it turns out that Steve is in a simulation that a cult in real life uses to turn children into serial killers. The ending needs to be either revised entirely or pushed way farther into absurdist territory to work as a movie. Considering that at one point a woman’s entire spine and skull are pulled out of her body and left on her bed while the sheriff shrugs it off and scarfs down cherry pie, the tone needs to be both repulsive and absurd.
The Talent: I’d give this one to director Robert Eggers, who has proved himself with the absurd bleakness of The Lighthouse as well as the hair-raising tension in The VVitch and Nosferatu. I’d recommend warming up his color correction choices for Harvester, but he would do excellent with the cult material and spooky small town life. And his regular stable of actors includes Willem Dafoe, who is an absolute necessity for this project.
3. Enjoy the Diner
The Game: Moving away from the horror/thriller zone for a second, Enjoy the Diner is a narrative-heavy adventure game that can only be described as dreamlike, ethereal, and very strange. The player wakes up in a 1950s-style diner, floating through the expanse of space, with nowhere to escape. You’ll meet a smattering of characters that come from time periods across thousands of years and from all over the world, who seem to have wandered in and simply have stopped caring about leaving. You’ll need to solve puzzles and navigate dialogue trees to escape before the haziness of the diner takes away your motivation to leave. After all, the moon is as full as it’s ever been, and there’s a soda fountain…
As A Film: The game doesn’t make it very clear exactly what’s happening, although in one ending, your character does wake up in their bed back home. The obvious way to tackle it would be as a purgatory state, but I think it’s more interesting if the protagonist is simply someone who gets stuck in the world between waking and sleep. The other quirky characters in the diner don’t offer much help, and she can feel her resolve to leave slipping. It’d be very interesting to watch a battle between this woman and her own willpower, if done right.
The Talent: My first choice for this film would be legendary Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, who is known for his dreamlike films that feature hazy and saturated worlds. He also commonly deals with fragmented storylines and confusing physical spaces. With films like Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love under his belt, there’s no doubt he’s the right man for the job.
4. Home Safety Hotline
The Game: Another simple premise, Home Safety Hotline puts the player in the seat of a regular Joe in the late 1990s who has been hired to take calls for the titular hotline. Using a very 1990s computer screen, you’ll receive calls, identify the issue, recommend mitigation procedures, and then send a team from the hotline to deal with the problem. At first, everything is normal, and you’re just getting calls about house fires and pipes bursting. As the days progress, your encyclopedia will expand, and you’ll begin getting calls about wheezing cellar doors, giant slug monsters, cheese demons, and things too horrific to define. If you incorrectly identify the issue, the caller ends up dead.
As A Film: The adaptation of Home Safety Hotline has already been announced, still, I couldn’t help but speculate on what it’d look like. It’s never made clear if this is our world or a fantasy one, or how the protagonist is reacting. Setting up the film with an ordinary person taking a job at the hotline, most likely finding the job through a mysterious ad, would be the best way to go. They wouldn’t take the calls about the killer slimes seriously at first, but after finding that real people, perhaps in another world, are actually dying, they’d need to buckle down and correctly identify the issues while unraveling the mystery of the hotline. The game has a very weird live-action ending where you meet your manager, Carol, out in the woods, and she puts a fairy crown on your head, and goblins dance about.
The Talent: This movie needs to be played straight for the first 30 minutes before becoming totally absurd, ending as a sort of dark comedy, but not cheapening whatever personal story the protagonist is experiencing. I believe Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, of The Lobster and Poor Things fame, would be excellent for this role. And hey, Emma Stone would be great as the protagonist! Perhaps if she’s free, we can grab Octavia Spencer to play her boss, Carol.
5. CloverPit
The Game: Another absurd premise with a tinge of horror, Clover Pit became a hit on Twitch as viewers watched their favorite streamers get trapped in an endless loop of gambling at a slot machine in a rusty cell at the behest of a strange voice on a speaker. Each round, it costs a little more money to continue playing – if you can’t afford to keep playing, the floor drops out from under, and your character is disposed of, followed by taking over a new prisoner and beginning a new gambling session. Clover Pit cleverly feeds gambling addictions while commenting on their harmfulness, showing how easy it is for many people to trap themselves in a death loop.
As A Film: Clover Pit doesn’t have a lot going on in terms of story, but arguably that worked well for Iron Lung. I think a film could see a group of prisoners, trapped in a futuristic dystopian debtor’s prison, where they must gamble their way out of the cell or else be exterminated. Each level the elevator goes up could take you to the surface, but perhaps the only way to actually escape is to refuse to gamble in the first place. An ensemble cast in a Squid Game-like circumstance could work well, with high suspense and a death game you have to convince yourself to stop playing.
The Talent: Strangely enough, I think this should actually be Markiplier’s next film project. The crushing weight and claustrophobia of Iron Lung were certainly its strongest features, and the strange circumstances of a world that cannot be understood match well with Clover Pit. He could also easily star in the film. One request, I want Lee Byung-Hun (Frontman from Squid Game and The Demon King in Kpop Demon Hunters) to be the mysterious voice commanding you on what to do. Get to it!
6. Parasocial
The Game: In Parasocial, players take on the role of a young woman who lives alone in an apartment in the city and streams games as a Vtuber for a sizable audience. One day, her equipment messes up, and her face is revealed. From this alone, an avid “fan” in her chat begins to ruthlessly hunt her down with the delusion that she will be his wife, and obviously won’t take no for an answer. The horror comes mostly from the fact that it feels very possible.
As A Movie: If you’re familiar with Chilla’s Art, a Japanese indie studio composed of two brothers that pump out three short but sweet horror games every year, you’re probably wondering the same thing as me – how are all these not already movies? They are! The Convenience Store actually has been turned into a live-action Japanese film, made in collaboration with the game studio, and is currently running in theaters there (no word on international release yet). This story could literally play out the same way it does in the game, of course with the caveat that it’ll have to follow either the good or bad ending.
The Talent: As this would be a Japanese film, I’d put Miwa Nishikawa (director of hit drama/thrillers like Wild Berries and Dear Doctor) in the director’s seat, and bring in Yoshimasa Akamatsu, who wrote The Convenience Store, alongside Chilla’s Art to write. She’s handled some very heavy topics in her films and has a knack for heightening slice-of-life drama into a thriller by the third act, which is exactly what Parasocial needs.
7. Heartworm
The Game: There is certainly no shortage of survival horror games on Steam with retro graphics, but Heartworm stands out among them. The protagonist, Sam, is grieving the death of her grandfather and wishes to see him once more, beyond the grave. She hears about an abandoned house that is rumored to lead to The Other Side, and chances a journey through it to find herself in a dimension of cosmic horror. Sam is taken across dream worlds that don’t spatially make sense, and must use her camera to fight off monsters while finding a way home.
As A Movie: With no NPCs, this movie would rely heavily on the lead actor’s ability to carry scenes without much dialogue. Largely atmospheric, it would need to have a heavy focus on set design and editing, and might benefit from an internal monologue from Sam.
The Talent: An extremely obvious suggestion, but horror master Mike Flanagan would make a really compelling adaptation of Heartworm. Even though he’s best known for his Netflix shows (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass) and his Stephen King adaptations (Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game), I’d point to one of his earlier films, Oculus, as the style with which to approach this adaptation. No matter which way you swing it, he’s the right man for the job. Reunite him with Victoria Pedretti of Hill House and Bly Manor fame, and baby, you’ve got a stew going.
8. Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs
The Game: Carimara is an extremely weird little pseudo-horror game where you play as a mute detective dwarf that must unravel the mystery of a haunted house in the middle of an enchanted forest. It’s almost a deckbuilder, but the cards are clues and can be used on NPCs to ask questions about those clues. Meet all sorts of strange creatures that inhabit the house, interrogate the witch who hired you, who is surely holding back information, and find a way to banish the ghost in the cellar. It’s a fascinating game that only takes about an hour, and could easily be made into a film.
As A Film: Being that the film would be longer than the runtime of the game, there’s plenty of room to expand this small world without blowing up the scope. More backstory on the witch, more woodland creatures to speak to, more mysteries to solve. Carimara doesn’t take itself too seriously, so it would be good to allow the film to breathe with a little surreal comedy while also keeping it unsettling.
The Talent: 20 years ago, I would have said to grab David Lynch for this, but in 2026, I’d tap A24 darling Ari Aster. His first film, Midsommar, is exactly the tone needed to bring the surreal wackiness to life while injecting real unease into every scene. He also made Beau is Afraid and Hereditary, so if you wanted to take this down a much harsher horror path, I’m sure he could accommodate. Also, Will Poulter, with whom he previously worked on Midsommar, would make an excellent protagonist as the Carimara.
9. BABBDI
As A Film: Not much about what BABBDI is or even what escaping it means is explained in the game; that’s great, because it basically leaves the filmmakers to do whatever the game inspires out of them. It may seem like the obvious move, but this is probably some form of purgatory. I like the idea of there being a shared purgatory space for people who have died, and who simply lose the will to move on over time. There’s a creeping dread in that, but it’s not outright horror. Perhaps the protagonist would need to find the will to escape, with the antagonist being their own lethargy. It’s a very conceptual premise.
The Talent: Writer and director of the critically acclaimed A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amirpour could do very well with this wide-open premise. Her debut film was described as a vampire spaghetti western with film noir elements, and also highlighted her own identity as an Iranian migrant to the United States. She later made The Bad Batch and Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, both mind-bending adventures with strong styles and color choices. She’s worked several times with Jason Momoa, who could take advantage of an independent movie like this to flex his dramatic chops that might not be finding use in A Minecraft Movie.
10. No, I’m Not a Human
The Game: It’s the end of the world! As if the sun reaching temperatures of 200 degrees F wasn’t enough, a race of alien shapeshifters called Visitors has appeared on Earth – and yes, they look like humans. In this sci-fi horror re-imagining of Papers, Please, you’ll have to decide who to let into your house each night and who to keep out. Every day, the news will give you one hint on a feature that might help you identify the Visitors, such as pure white teeth. Let in one of the Visitors, and your human friends may get eaten… but if you are caught alone when The Pale Man comes to visit each night, it’s game over.
As A Film: I think this game fits most naturally into a film among all the games on this list. You’ve got your nervous, paranoid protagonist, a host of weirdo human characters hunkering down in their house, and unearthly visitors that aren’t quite right. You’ll need a strong makeup department for this movie, as well as a slow burn of unraveling the secrets of the Visitors and figuring out how to identify them. Based on the game’s true ending, it might be pretty bleak, but it could easily work with a more hopeful ending as well.
The Talent: This will be a crazy take that I doubt any film buffs would back me up on, but this would be a perfect film for Neil Blomkamp to complete his comeback. Blomkamp created the massive independent hit District 9 as his debut film, still revered by many people as one of the greats of 21st-Century sci-fi, after 20th Century Fox canceled his highly anticipated Halo movie mid-production in 2007. He followed this up with Elysium and Chappie, both of which were moderate commercial successes with negative to mixed reviews. Recently, he directed Sony’s successful Grand Turismo movie, so he’s done considerable work with video game adaptations. Give him a shot. As the world’s only fan of Chappie, I think he’s still got the sauce somewhere in him. And for the hell of it, Sharlto Copley is back as the Pale Man!
Did I miss any of your favorites? Any different ideas for writers and directors? Let us know in the comments below!
