History of the Horror genre

Greetings everyone!
Recently, so many horror games have appeared, but not everyone knows how and when this wonderful genre was born. Therefore, I want to tell you how it all began and continues to this day. I will touch on the period from the 80s to 2010. Well, let’s start.

In the 80s there was insufficient development of gaming systems. At that time, pixel graphics and melodies of a couple of notes dominated, and it was difficult to scare any player with this, but still there were attempts to scare players. And the first game is Alien. released in 1982 on the Atari 2600, it was something like Pac-Man but starring Lieutenant Ripley. A year before Aliens, a game was released in 1981 called Haunted House, on the same Atari. In the game we control eyes glowing in the dark, players darted through the maze, dodging monsters. The roles of enemies were played by bats and spiders with frightened darting eyes. It was more of a maze simulator, and in 1983 it was released The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For the first time, the player was given the opportunity to feel like a villain. The task was simple: kill as many people as possible. He could even cut off the main character’s head. Consisting of a pair of pixels. All this pixel miracle could not scare the player, so to speak, the first damn thing was lumpy.

The date of birth of the genre is considered to be 1989. At this time, the developers from Dynamix, together with the publisher Electronic Arts, released a game on the Commodore 64 Project Firestart, and Capcom and the film studio Toho decided to make a pair project “film-game”. The studio was filming a film, Capcom was simultaneously working on a game – both projects were released simultaneously and were called Sweet Home.. Project Firestart told the story of the Prometheus ship, where scientists raised mutants, and the appearance of mutants was accompanied by loud, frightening music, and the most striking moments showed detailed art, special chords.
Sweet Home, both in the film and in the game, was the story of five people who came to the old mansion of a deceased artist to photograph the frescoes. Quite quickly they realized that the house was a trap set by the dead. In addition to the terrifying music, the game also had scripted scenes, for example, our heroes enter a mansion, discussing what they will do, and suddenly there is an earthquake and the mistress of the house comes to us and says that you will not get out of here. And yes, the plot in both games was explained using notes. Another game of those years isFriday the 13th (Friday the 13th). She talks about the destruction of teenagers by a man in a hockey mask Friday the 13th for the NES it turned out to be one of the pioneers, which was really capable of scaring (despite the archaic graphics and other technical limitations). Periodically, Jason would appear out of nowhere and attack the unwary player. Surprise is another striking feature of the upcoming genre.

The genre became an example Alone in the Dark, which appeared in 1992, Everything about it was cool at that time: the atmosphere, the plot and the monsters. The developer studio said that it was inspired by the works of Howard Lovecraft. The plot is simple. Edward Kernby, a red-haired private detective, unexpectedly receives an interesting task: to go to an abandoned mansion and find out the circumstances of the suicide of its owner, Jeremy Hartwood. But suddenly the doors of the gloomy building slam shut, and Edward finds himself alone. One of the most interesting features of Alone in the Dark is that you could play not only as Cairnby, but also as another character – Emily Hartwood (niece of that same late homeowner). Four years after “Alone in the Dark,” the Japanese joined the celebration of horror with their Resident Evil’om and they did it. Where did the ascent to heaven begin?? Capcom invited designer Shinzdi Mikami to create a scary quest. As Mikami himself later recalled: “Another Sweet Home,” but as it was created it turned into the first Resident Evil. It was she who appeared the legendary Resident evil. A few years after RE comes out Silent Hilll, it was intended as a counterweight to RE. SH, compared to the resident, was in full 3D and could produce camera angles that the resident, with his rendered backdrops, had never dreamed of. Silent Hill characters were much more like real people. And Silent Hill wasn’t scary because of giant spiders and walking corpses, although there were plenty of monsters there too. This game was captivating primarily because of the atmosphere of the foggy city.

Let’s take a break from Japanese horror for a minute and talk about System Shock 2, it came out at the same time as SH. It was made by Western studios: Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. It was the story of a soldier who woke up with amnesia after suspended animation and found himself on a spaceship captured by intelligent alien biomass. In this game there was almost always a feeling when someone was following you, watching you, but you couldn’t figure out who it was.This game still has fans who release patches with improved graphics and much more. It was a small digression.

Let’s return to Japanese horror. In 2001 Tecmo made Fatal Frame. The game follows a girl, Miku Hinasaki, who goes to the supposedly haunted Himuro Mansion to find her brother Mafuyu. Mafuyu has been missing for a week after visiting the mansion, where he was looking for his teacher Junsei Takamine. The game has a rather interesting feature: in order to kill ghosts you need to photograph them and the whole game is involved in this.

And in 2003 it came casino-spingenie.co.uk out Forbidden Siren, it was made by one of the authors of the first Silent Hill. developed by SCE Japan Studio and published by Sony. The plot of the game develops in the Japanese village of Hanuda, which is located on the banks of the river. But one day something strange happens in the village that the player has to find out. Each of the characters that the player will control suffers from memory loss, headaches and hallucinations. In addition, they do not know the places in which they appear. There was even a movie based on this game.

Somewhere in the early 2000s, developers showed a large number of wonderful projects. Okay, let’s start. And yes, I will not talk about the continuation of any franchise games. Neither the landmark SH 2 nor the iconic RE 4.
Released in 2001 Clive Barker’s Undying. The action takes place in the fall of 1923. The main character, Irishman Patrick Galloway, was expelled from his native country many years ago for a crime he did not actually commit. Over the past years, he has become famous as an expert in occult sciences and a successful fighter against otherworldly phenomena.One day, returning home after a long absence, he finds a letter waiting for him there for six months already. A former commander from the First World War and an old friend, Jeremiah Covenant, the owner of a large estate in Ireland, writes to him. Jeremiah asks Patrick to come and help him as soon as possible, without going into details. Stephen King once called Clive Barker "the future of horror". Unfortunately, Stephen King was wrong. Barker, even after becoming famous, did not become the new leader of the genre. A similar fate awaited Clive Barker’s Undying. The game was praised by critics, but players did not buy it.

The next game, one of the scariest games made based on the film, is The Thing, released in 2002 and is a sequel to the film. We are ruled by Captain John Blake. Unlike most games of this genre, the character’s abilities in this game are limited: Blake cannot jump or climb on any objects. There are two modes for combat in the game: Normal third-person mode and first-person aiming mode. Since the game takes place in Antarctica, low temperatures also affect the character. Staying in an open space for a long time can cause Blake to freeze. This game has everything that can scare you: the cool atmosphere of Antarctica, cold, ice, I wouldn’t want to go there.

In 2004 the famous The Suffering. It is a third-person shooter with an interesting plot that tells the story of the main character named Tork, who was accused of the brutal murder of his family – his wife Carmen and two children. At the same time, he does not remember at all how he committed the murder and whether he committed it at all. Despite the fact that he completely stopped speaking from the shock he experienced, the court finds him sane and sends him to Abbott Prison. The action begins on the first evening after Torque arrives in Abbott. As soon as Tork is in his cell, Abbott begins to be shaken by tremors. Following this, the evil that has accumulated there begins to crawl out of all the dark nooks and crannies. Having escaped from the cell, Tork is faced with hordes of various monsters, which, as he later learns, are the embodiment of prisoners who were once here… and not only them. A distinctive feature of the game is the transformation of Torque into a monster. In monster mode, our hero becomes very strong and destroys everything.

Although this is part 3, I still couldn’t help but write it, because.To. it’s really scary and is considered the standard of the genre – it’s Doom 3.The game is a first-person shooter survival horror game developed by id Software and published by Activision in 2004. Like the plot of the first Doom, the game focuses on a soldier who arrives on Mars and is assigned to the position of security. But this time, id Software hired professional science fiction writer Matthew Costello to write the script and help create the storyboard for the entire game. id focused on retelling the story and creating an intense sense of horror. The events and atmosphere of the game are imbued with the spirit of James Cameron’s films "Aliens" and George Romero’s "The Living Dead". What else can I say about it? Good atmosphere, good shooter, pretty good graphics and a lot of other things, and thanks for the hours of play in this game.

The next game is based on the works of Lovecraft. You probably already guessed what this game is. Of course it is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. The game was released in 2005. Fear is intensified by the local atmosphere: sounds, texture of rooms, people and their conversations. The feeling of participating in events and the effect of presence are performed “excellently” due to the complete absence of any interface on the game screen: no life bar, no number of cartridges or weapons, no sight. About the plot I can say this: we play as detective Jack Walters. He is tasked with investigating a shop robbery in the old port town of Innsmouth. And then it started..

OOO… The next representative is F.E.A.R, which came out in 2005. The game is designed as a shooter with horror elements. F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) is a secret unit introduced into the US Armed Forces in 2002 to combat paranormal threats. The main character is a new employee of this unit, Point Man, called to carry out his first combat mission. The plot of the game is confusing until the very end. The main antagonists of the game are Paxton Fettel and Alma. This is a wonderful game that has become one of the best in its genre.

The next game I’m really scared of is Penumbra: Overture. Horror action that grew from a wonderful techno demo. The set includes a great atmosphere, nice graphics and, in fact, exciting gameplay. The plot begins when a certain friend of thirty-year-old physicist Philippe Lafresque receives an email in which Philippe explains to him what happened to him and begs him to finish what he started. All subsequent events of the game are a flashback, which Philip tells his friend by e-mail. After the death of his mother, Philip receives a mysterious letter from his father, who had long left the family and by that time was considered already dead. The letter leads Philip to distant Greenland. Despite the severe cold, the hero finds the entrance to the abandoned mine, which was mentioned in his father’s letter. And that’s where the fun begins.The game has a cool feature with controls: the movement of objects in the game is not done by simply clicking the mouse, which would be typical for most games, but also by moving the pointer in a certain direction

The next game developed by Monolith Productions and released in 2005 is Condemned: Criminal Origins. In Condemned: Criminal Origins, there is a heavy emphasis on hand-to-hand combat using improvised means, from a gas wrench and a dummy’s hand to axes and sledgehammers. Most of the battles involve dodging and blocking opponents’ attacks and striking with your weapons. And FBI Serial Murder Agent Ethan Thomas will be armed with a weapon when he arrives at the scene of the murder. He examines the corpse and realizes that the killer is nearby, and we begin to look for him. This is probably one of the games for which I respect the developers of Monolith.

This game is the scariest in several years, of course it is Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The atmosphere, the plot, the music are all great. The plot of "Amnesia: Ghost of the Past" tells about the misadventures of the main character named Daniel. He doesn’t know what happened and how he got into the walls of a dark and gloomy castle, his memories were erased by someone’s terrible hand. He knows only one thing: having explored all the corners of the medieval citadel, his memory will return to him and a way out will be found. But is this destined to happen?? After all, corridors filled with darkness hide not only an unsightly environment, but also something more dangerous and terrible that moves along them, that looks for a victim, that lives by our fears. Controls are the same as in Penumbra.

The last game is Dead Space is an action game driven into the framework of a sci-fi story, flavored with elements of classic “horror” films. We play as engineer Isaac Clarke (sent to the ship Ishimura, with which communication was suddenly lost. Upon arrival, Isaac discovers that most of the crew are dead, and the survivors have been infected with a mysterious alien virus that has turned them into monsters. Isaac will have to go through fire, water and copper pipes in order to survive in all this hell. Overall there is nothing more to say about this game.

P.S. Thank you for your attention!
Help in writing an article:
Wikipedia and LKI magazine