The Impact of Horror in the Video Game World
When was the last time you were watching a character in a horror movie and thought to yourself some variation of, that was stupid, I would never do that. Probably all the time. Horror has always been a genre that thrives off of the uneasiness and uncertainty that humans naturally get in situations that put them under duress. Because of this, I believe that video games are the perfect medium for horror.
Horror video games go as far back as 1972, when there was a Haunted House overlay for the Magnavox Odyssey. The overlay was inspired by haunted house fiction, where two players would basically play “chase” in a haunted house setting. Ten years later, a game of the same name was released for the Atari 2600, and was more advanced in the sense that it had a goal for players to achieve. The object of the game was to collect three pieces of an urn while avoiding a bat, a ghost, and a tarantula. This has been considered one of the first survival horror games in the genre and it wasn’t until 1992, twenty years after the first haunted house was released, where we got our first 3D survival horror game, Alone in the Dark.
Character Edward Carnby in the game Alone in the Dark.
Alone in the Dark was released for MS-DOS in 1992. As a player you take on the role of Edward Carnby, a private detective, who is sent to investigate a suspicious suicide in a house. Once you enter the house, the doors mysteriously slam shut and you are trapped. As the story unfolds, you find out the house was built by an occultist pirate and beneath the house there are endless caverns where dark rituals were held. This was the first time a game gave you full control over a location and the narrative would unfold as you explore more into the house. It was the first time horror was truly used in an interactive sense and we get the true meaning of “survival horror.”
As the years progress we get staples of the genre like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. These are where story and atmosphere really take the forefront and we get some of the most memorable monsters in horror history like Pyramid Head, Mr. X or Nemesis. One of the scariest aspects of the original Silent Hill came from a mistake. The technical limitations of the original Playstation allowed for a very low draw distance so they had to add fog into the levels to mask the map which gave the game its atmosphere making Silent Hill how we know it today.
Horror games are continually evolving as the years progress. We get games like P.T. (Playable Teaser) for the now canceled Silent Hills. If you want more information on P.T. I highly recommend checking out an article from our own Shelby Fitchett, where does a deep dive on the impact of the game. Some more games that changed the shape of how we view horror are games like Until Dawn, where you are basically playing a slasher movie. This was a choose-your-own-adventure style game where you play a bunch of teenagers in a cabin on the top of a mountain and a killer is on the loose. What made this game interesting was that it had a butterfly effect mechanism, where truly every choice you made throughout the game had a consequence. You could finish the game saving everyone or you could finish the game with no survivors. There are new games that have a similar vibe called The Dark Pictures Anthologies. This is a very interesting take for a horror video game because, like I said, you feel like you are playing a movie.
Horror games are an ever evolving genre, horror is one of the most popular genres in gaming today. It started from very simple beginnings but has become an industry giant, mostly due to the indie community. You can find some form of horror game from indie developers all over the world; some are duds, but some become insanely popular - like SCP Containment Breach. This is a genre that I think will forever grow, and I believe that we are in a whole new renaissance of horror games. The genre is just getting more and more popular, and personally, I look forward to what its future holds. Please feel free to discuss in the comments, because I would love to know what your favorite horror game is, or what game got you into the horror genre. It is spooky season, after all.
