Back in 1996, one of the most influential games of all time came out on Playstation: Capcom’s “Resident Evil”. Despite its goofy story, campy cinematics, and almost comic voice acting, “Resident Evil” was one of the first games to successfully create a engaging horror experience. It combined the interactive fun of video games, with the intense thrills of horror movies. “Resident Evil”’s success led to a new wave of iconic horror titles such as, “Silent Hill”, “Fatal Frame”, and “The Suffering”, but as of 2022, it seems like this genre has almost gone extinct.
To clarify, horror games as a genre haven’t completely gone away. Games like, “Five Nights at Freddys”, “Phasmophobia”, and “Dead by Daylight” have all been massive hits in recent years. However, the appeal of these games and the horror hits of the late 1990s and early 2000s are wildly different.
Among almost all the major publishers, Capcom has been the only one to release a big budget horror game in recent years with “Resident Evil: Village”. With the declining support for horror games by large publishers, horror games have largely become a genre that’s popular with indie developers.
In contrast to earlier horror games, recent indie horror games are far more simplistic, shorter, and barely even bother having a story. Although hardly recent at this point, the 2012 indie horror game “Slender: The Eight Pages” is a prime example of the type of indie horror that’s oversaturated the market in recent years. Unlike the varied monster designs and locations of classic horror games, “Slender: The Eight Pages” takes a very minimalist approach to horror with the titular “Slender Man” , serving as the only threat to the player, and the only location that players explore is a dark forest.
Seeing as the game was developed by only one man—Mark J. Hadley, the game’s lack of assets and content made perfect sense. However, “Slender: The Eight Pages” was an enormous hit that jump-started the careers of successful YouTubers like Markiplier and PewDiePie. Like “Resident Evil”, “Slender: The Eight Pages”’s success led to a series of imitators.
Many other indie horror games began to follow the same format of minimal story, simplistic graphics, and almost nonexistent gameplay. “SCP: Containment Breach”, “A Machine for Pigs”, and “Layers of Fear” all seemed to copy this formula. However, the most influential horror game of the 2010s that truly changed the indie horror genre into its own separate genre, was definitely the 2014 hit “Five Nights at Freddy’s”.
While successful in its own right, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” gave us many of the trends that indie horror games are now known for. Such as minimal explicit gore, cryptic story hidden in subtle clues across the game, and—most importantly—a strong presence in viral youtube videos. While “Five Nights at Freddy’s” was a clever game that did many things right, it also effectively ruined the reputation of indie horror games. While indie games like “Outlast” and “Soma” maintained the feel of classic horror games, Steam and other digital marketplaces were flooded with “Five Nights at Freddy’s” clones.
While classic horror games had unique art directions and memorable character designs, such as “Silent Hill”’s Pyramid Head or “Resident Evil”’s Tyrant, new indie horror games tend to have simplistic, childish designs such as the titular Baldi from “Baldi’s Basics” or Bendy from “Bendy and the Ink Machine”. All this seems to be aimed at making these horror games as widely appealing and easily marketable as possible.
Despite the current trends, it seems like classic survival horror games still have a chance at making a comeback. “Tormented Souls”, which came out last year, was a callback to the PS2 era survival horror games with top notch presentation. “Martha is Dead” was immersive and horrific with a strong story. “Omori”, despite being an pixelated RPG Maker game, had fantastic storytelling and presentation.
While both cheap, viral horror games will always be popular, indie developers are getting better and better at replicating the tone and feel of classic horror games. With the amount of great horror games coming out from talented developers, it’s not impossible for passion and product to coexist in the same niche.