The Most Influential Mechanics In Horror Game History

Like with any other genre in gaming, horror has a long and twisted history of development. In the earliest days, horror was barely distinguishable from adventure games, but in the modern day, it is one of the most successful and mechanically diverse genres that gaming has to offer.

RELATED

10 Best Horror Remakes, Ranked

It's time to jump back into the horror with these stellar remakes.

Posts 5

By  Chris White

To understand the history of how horror came to be the way we know it today, it's important to look back at those key mechanics that came to irreversibly define the horror genre as it continues to evolve to this day.

5 Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Hiding From Invincible Enemies

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is broadly responsible for popularizing the indie horror scene with a wider audience, and it led to a boom in horror gaming as a mass media attraction on the internet. In terms of horror game mechanics, however, Amnesia: The Dark Descent irrefutably popularized the core mechanic of the player being unable to fight the monsters they encounter. Instead, they can only hide.

This wasn't a new mechanic by any means, but with Amnesia: The Dark Descent's popularity, it became one of the genre's key tactics in making a player feel vulnerable and heightening fear, which was seen in later games like Outlast, Alien: Isolation, and P.T. That makes Amnesia a great introduction to modern horror for beginners to the genre.

4 Dead By Daylight

Asymmetrical Multiplayer Horror

Horror games are mostly known for being single-player experiences, but that has begun to change in recent years. One of the major reasons is Dead by Daylight, a game that takes horror's greatest villains (plus the wild possibilities that are yet to come) and places them in an asymmetric mechanical zone that has entertained gamers for close to ten years.

RELATED

Dead By Daylight: The Best Killer Perks, Ranked

Dead by Daylight is a 4v1 multiplayer horror experience where killers kill and survivors survive. Here are the best killer perks in the game.

Posts

In short, asymmetric multiplayer means that one player plays as a monstrous Killer, while other players control normal human Survivors. Again, Dead by Daylight didn't invent this idea, but it popularized it as a fun way for players to engage with their friends while still maintaining the sense of fear and horror that is essential to the genre. Dead by Daylight showed that this mechanic is a great tool for translating horror to the multiplayer space.

3 Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Psychological Profiling

Psychological horror is one of horror's greatest subgenres because it digs deep into the mind and tries to genuinely unnerve through more subtle means than simple blood and guts. Translated to gaming, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories helped pioneer the concept of psychologically profiling the player's choices and subtly shifting the game depending on their choices.

RELATED

Silent Hill 2 Remake: 7 Characters Who Have Changed The Most

Most characters in the remake have the same personalities, but their designs differ slightly from the original Silent Hill 2.

Posts 1

By  Rohan James Hill

This means that the game feels as if it's responding to the player's actions, which is an extremely eerie feeling, particularly if done in subtle ways. The static interface of the game changes, making the foundational notion of what is true completely unreliable. This works to psychologically unnerve the player just as much as the player character. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories defined the psychological horror genre in gaming, and this mechanic remains a key part of the modern remake that influences the game's many endings.

2 Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Sanity Meter

Though Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem isn't well known outside of horror circles (and it's pretty difficult to actually buy at all), genre fans likely know it well for popularizing the idea of the sanity meter in horror games. Previously, in games such as Silent Hill 2, the protagonist's sanity was an abstract idea, but Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem actually quantified it and turned it into a game mechanic.

That means that players are encouraged to behave and act more in line with their character. They shouldn't be seeking out monsters just to fight them, because that will drive up their sanity meter, making the game more difficult. The player, like their character, is encouraged to run away or avoid sites of insanity, meaning that the actual threat is left up to their imagination, which is always scarier than reality.

1 Resident Evil

Inventory Management

There's a good argument to be made that Resident Evil is the most important game in the horror genre. It pioneered a lot, but no mechanic defines the game — and the genre to come — as much as the player's limited inventory, which became a key mechanic in survival horror as a whole.

In short, players have limited inventory space and can only hold a small number of items at a time. That means that item scarcity is always a concern, and the player needs to make tough choices about what to bring along as they plunge deeper into Spencer Mansion. It's a uniquely stressful mechanic that immediately ups the stakes, and makes the threat of a monster far more terrifying. This mechanic was done so well on the first go-round that the first Resident Evil is still one of the franchise's scariest entries.

More

The Scariest Horror Video Games Of All Time, Ranked

From the torture of Doki Doki Literature Club to the eerieness of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, here are the scariest horror video games of all time.

Posts 1