Every time I go on Itch.io's games page, the large majority of games are related to horror, with non-horror games being sprinkled in every now and then. Why do there have to be so many of them?
The question is manyfold. Why are there so many. Why are they shown, when you open browse. And are they really popular.
The second one is easy to answer. The initial sorting is by popularity, whatever that exactly means. Horror is popular by the standards of measuring such a thing. If you sort by ratings, it looks less horrifying, but still 9/36 have the horror tag on page 1.
Why there are so many horror games, is probably a combination of many things. Like, the self fulfilling prophecies. New devs see horror games are popular, so they try to make one, adding to the pile. And since they are shown on page one so much, people click them and they stay popular. Also, "horror" is dirt cheap to create. Put in a jump scare, and a creepy image and you can claim it is a horror game.
So, are they really popular. Yes and no. No in general gaming, and among itch users there are many that deem them annoying, precisly because they are in abundance.
But among indie games as a whole, oh yes. They are popular. Big time. Think Slender Man games and of course Five Nights at Freddy or Doki Doki Literature Club. Not to diminish successful games, but I think that of all the genres, it is the easiest to make a good horror game with shoestring budget and limited skills and game mechanics, so it is just a good fit for indie development. It is easier to shock, disturb, creep out people, than to write good comedy, engaging story, eye candy, game play, level design, puzzle desgin, etc. And with the good games there come along all the other ones, that try, but do not quite get as successful as others, but still get enough clicks to be "popular" according to the algorithm.
(Oh, and if you want to filter them out, that is possible. Add
?exclude=tg.horror
I think redonihunter has summed things up pretty well!
One thing I would add as a reason why indie horror games appear to be popular in general is a side effect of the way AAA horror games are released. Those developers seem to have decided people are only interested in playing horror games around Halloween/October/Spooky Season and so they all target that period. If you want to find new horror games the rest of the year you have no choice but to look at indie titles. I can't think of any other genre that has its release dates targeted in a similar way. The same thing also applies to movies.
To tell the truth, Gamejolt has plenty of horror games also so you need extra time to curate the games to find good non-horror games.
But back to topic, I could only guess that most players love horror so some devs create horror games to please them. Not saying I like this though cause I don't like horror games (for multiple reasons).
I do not think that most players love horror games. I think this is one of those situations, where intuitive grasp of statistic fails us humans, yet again.
If you look at Steam, it is just one category among many. And I see no indication that horror is in any way more popular than other categories. To the contrary. You can't market true horror to kids.
They are obviously popular among devs and people clicking games for popular browse sorting on itch. That is what we observe, and wonder about the reasons. Judging from the many threads complaining about horror games, it might be, that horror is more popular among the devs, than it is with the players. If you look for it, just about any thread wanting to filter out games, is asking because they do not want to see so many horror games or visual novels in browse. Wich makes me think, that, no, not most players love horror games. But enough to skew browse results.
Most newbie game developers are horrible at creating art for their game. They can either try to work on their skills until they can draw something that doesn't look horrible, or they can lean into it and create a horror game. The latter requires much less effort, so unsurprisingly that's what a lot of people do.
It is possible to create horror art that actually looks good while still looking scary, but you wouldn't know it from browsing itch.