Horror Games

What’s So Scary About a Video Game?

One of the defining characteristics of the survival horror genre, and what sets it apart from other games is that typical video game elements such as gameplay take a backseat to the overall theme of the game. Not to say that the games aren’t interactive. In actuality, this heavy focus on atmosphere and mood make games in the survival horror genre more immersive than most other genres.
Isolation is usually a recurring theme in the survival horror genre. Most involve a character that is trapped inside a empty house or a desolate town with little to no means of defending themselves. The area is usually inhabited with monsters, zombies, or supernatural enemies of some sort. Your ultimate goal is usually to escape from wherever you are. A lot of times you will also find yourself searching for other survivors. Puzzles play a big part in survival horror, as you’ll usually have to solve numerous puzzles to advance and ultimately escape from wherever you are. Puzzles are usually just as abundant, if not more, than actual combat.

Birth of Fear

Although survival horror is typically associated with games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, the genre dates to back to classic beat’em up brawlers like Nightmare Creatures and the old side-scroller Splatterhouse, RPGs like Sweet Home for the Nintendo Famicon, and first person shooters like the two System Shock games for the PC. Games like Doom and Quake contain some horror elements, but those games are more balls-to-the-wall shooters than anything else. Sweet Home, mentioned above, is widely regarded as the first survival horror game. It was produced by Capcom and released in 1989 for the Nintendo Famicon, the Japanese NES. It featured a team of five people who journey to the deserted mansion of the deceased Mamiya Ichirou, a famous painter, to photograph her paintings. They soon discover that the mansion is haunted by Ichirou’s ghost as well as many others, and have to find a way out before it’s too late. Shinji Mikami, the producer and director of many of the Resident Evil titles, said in an interview that Sweet Home was a major inspiration for Resident Evil, citing the mansion setting as well as other things.

Conclusion

While quite different than most genres, survival horror games continue to maintain their popularity. Definitely a different experience, they’re a good testament to what can be accomplished in video games. Often more immersive than movies of the same genre, survival horror video games can give just as good of a scare as any horror blockbuster.