A darkened room, illuminated only by the soft glow of the television. The soft sounds of rain are followed by a booming crash of thunder. The unnerving chatter bleeds through the speakers as you work on the puzzle on the screen, desperate to open the door and reach the save point on the other side, before the creature chasing you has a chance to catch you.
Oh, horror, my old friend. Where did you go? In the world of today, did we lose you? Are we no longer worthy of solving your dark mysteries? Or are we just to desensitized to your bloodied pages? Or did we just leave you to rot on our shelves, covered in dust as the bullets whizz by and the zombies slowly chew on our skulls?
<Rewind> The year is 1995, and Clocktower opens the doors further than they have been, summoning us into a world that fills us with mysteries. 1999 and Silent Hill just released for PlayStation. One of the first horror games that taught us fear. Real fear. And it opened the door to many possibilities. In 2001 Fatal Frame hit shelves, granting us a look at the darkness of foreign folklore and ghost stories. These are the stories that brought me to love horror. I began playing them as often as I could, staying up long past when the rest of my family fell asleep. To me, these games were everything.
Horror games have been around for a long time, providing scares and mysteries since even before Clocktower, and have made such an impact on the gaming industry that they have become even more brutal, bloody, and mysterious with every game. However, over the years, the amount of horror games has gradually decreased. Sure, you can find amazing titles like Evil Within and Until Dawn, but nowadays, if you want to see "scary", you turn to your FPS where they have evil zombies trying to chew on your brains. There's so much less puzzle solving, haunted folklore, vanishing towns, and jump scares being produced by gaming companies that I have come to wonder: What exactly happened to horror?
Over the years, we have seen a steady decrease of horror games. I'm not talking about your shoot-em-up, zombie survival, moon's haunted by aliens type of games. Yes, there will be a few included in this, because they do lean more towards horror than action... but mainly, I mean the ghost chasing you, demons hunting you, solve the puzzle to unlock the mystery type of horror. The kind that made you sit on the edge of your seat, unable to put the controller down until you were either safe, solved the mystery, or got so frustrated at the boss that you rage quit for months.
Silent Hill
Silent Hill is really what set everything in motion. Not to discredit all the games that came prior to Silent Hill, but this is the game that made you fear the dark, really fear it. Drawing you in with a disappearance, and taking you deeper into the madness within all of us with the blood and mystery soaking the town.
Fatal Frame
This is the game that I truly fell in love with. Bringing Japanese folklore and ghost stories to life in a game surrounded in darkness. Rather than shooting monsters and demons, you're forced to fight these unsettled spirits with an item called the Camera Obscura. Solve puzzles to find the ones you're searching for, and dive into the horror of Japanese ghosts.
American McGee's Alice
While a bit more action based, this dark version of Alice in Wonderland explores more of the darkness of the human mind and emotions when faced with a life altering moment. Focusing on the human psyche and how we deal with grief, guilt, and death, we play as Alice as she must save her beloved Wonderland, as well as saving herself.
Let's take a closer look at the more recent games...
Evil Within
This game dives into the depravity of the human brain and our perceptions on reality. One of the more interesting action horror games I've seen in recent years. Sure, there's more FPS than I had been used to in previous years, but the story behind it all is so interesting, you feel so drawn to trying to figure out what exactly is going on in this world.
Until Dawn
This is the game that really burst the doors wide open. Mixing lore with horror and adding a spice of QTE. And I HATE QTE. What makes this game so special? THe multiple different endings. Each choice you make affects your game play. Each decision leads you down a different path. A butterfly effect. This makes each time you play different. This gave the horror industry a new avenue to explore.
Prey
Not quite your typical horror game, this space horror is definitely unique. What are you? What are those little black things? WHY DO YOU NEED THEIR BODY PARTS TO CRAFT THINGS? Not quite as scary as a lot of other horror games, but the mystery here is enough to draw you in.
Five Nights at Freddy's
Yes, I'm going there. It's a simplistic point and click jump scare based game. Pretty simple play. So what is it that draws you in? The lore behind it all. The simplicity of it. The jump scares. Its classic gameplay is great for the world of today.
PT
Okay, so this one never really was released... but the playable trailer was so popular that when the game was canceled, there was a giant uproar. People still have the PT on their consoles, and still play it for it's creepy loop, perfectly timed jump scares, and amazing (yet brief) ghosts.
SOMA
Another strange horror. Another mind game. But not your usual one. This one makes you think about what we consider human, what we would do to survive. Are we still human in the end? This game makes you question everything you think you know about humans and what we are.
If you were to play these games, old and new, you'd be able to see just how far we've gotten with creepy story telling, gameplay, cues, and clues. Graphics have come a long way, and immersive storytelling has improved.
It's not that horror vanished. It's just.... not as huge on consoles anymore. We've still got great titles, and good horror games, but in today's world, gaming industries have recently taken to pumping out more First Person Shooter and Survivalist games, such as Call of Duty, Destiny, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Overwatch. There's nothing wrong with these games. They are interesting for their targeted audiences, but not everyone wants to just sit there and shoot things. The gameplay for those games is great. They've got interesting story lines. But they are lacking the fear. They are lacking the story that truly draws you in. Truly makes you want to keep playing.
In this style of action gaming, you can pick up the controller and play, set it down, miss a few months, and pick it right back up. Plus, the gaming industry realized they can make more money with in game transactions. Can't really do that in horror stories. Another big contender is PC. With the gaming community really expanding on computers, the gaming community has taken to creating their own horror. There are a lot of smaller games designed by people like you and I, that are available for play on PC. They may not be big game titles, but sometimes that small little game is better than you'd think.
One of the biggest issues is today's fast paced society. With people as busy as they are nowadays, no one wants to take the time to sit down and invest time in the darkness of horror games. We're spending so much of our time busy with work, playing on our mobile phones, Instagramming, Facebooking, and being adults, that no one has time anymore to spend hours in front of a console.
Still, that doesn't fully explain the lack of console based horror gameplay. So, why is it that we don't have any decent horror games coming out?
Some notable exceptions aside, of course.
If you look at the numbers, we've had more horror games released on average in the early 2000's than we do now. We've gone from 11 to about 5. Why is that? Is it the demand for better stories? If you look to the CreepyPasta community, you'd see that we are not short on ideas at all. We've got all kinds of ideas ranging from simple summoned demons and psychopathic killers to the more elaborate mysterious forests and their creepy inhabitants and even some good lore about haunted asylums. Maybe it's a lack of willingness to create an expansive universe like Until Dawn, where every decision you make literally writes a different ending, a game where you could play it over and over again and never feel like you're playing the same game. Or maybe it's just time versus money. The amount of money put into making a good console worthy horror game is insane. Hundreds of thousands of dollars insane. Which means that when it's ready, it's going to be expensive. And in today's society, not everyone can afford to buy a good horror. It's cheaper to read a horror story, watch someone else play it, or even go see a movie (Of which there is no shortage).
Or maybe the gaming big wigs are making a really good horror game and we just have to be patient. I, for one, am looking forward to the next horror release, whenever it is, and am hoping it is worth every minute waited. I hope that they took the opportunity Until Dawn gave them, blended together Silent Hills PT and Fatal Frame's storytelling, and threw in a dash of mental instability from Evil Within. I want a game that leaves me on the edge of my seat, terrified and excited for what is around the corner.
