The 10 Best Survival Horror Games

Ever since Resident Evil exploded onto the scene in 1996 and made stock reshuffling within the face of a zombie outbreak well-liked, gamers have been often combating all the way down to their final bullet. 30 years later, survival horror is the dominant format for these looking for online game scares, as well-liked now because it’s ever been. And with a recent batch of nightmares to contemplate, there’s by no means been a greater time to rank one of the best video games of the style.

But what qualifies a recreation to be thought-about as “survival horror”? Many video games are sometimes labelled survival horror, however lean a lot too closely into motion to be actually thought-about a real instance of the style. For our cash, survival horror will be boiled all the way down to 4 key elements, all of that are important elements of the classics that make up our record.

1. There needs to be an influence dynamic weighted within the enemy’s favour.
2. You have to discover maze-like environments whereas fixing puzzles.
3. There’s usually jeopardous useful resource administration.
4. Relentless stress inflicted by both a pursuer or an oppressive house.

So with the foundations established and out of the way in which, listed below are our picks for the ten greatest survival horror video games of all time.

10. Clock Tower

While 1989’s Sweet Home is usually thought-about the progenitor of survival horror, it’s Clock Tower, the 1995, 16-bit survival horror traditional that was solely ever launched in Japan, that maybe left an even bigger mark on the style. Its fingerprints will be simply discovered all through the whole thing of this record.

You play as Jennifer, a teenage orphan stranded in a Resident Evil-like manor, point-and-clicking your manner by a collection of impressively detailed, oppressive rooms. But Clock Tower’s defining mechanic, and why it rightfully deserves its place on this record, is its pioneering stalker gameplay. Four years earlier than Resident Evil’s Nemesis spent a complete recreation shouting “STARS”, Clock Tower had us avoiding the dreaded “Scissorman”, who, very similar to Mr X, Pyramid Head, and Alien: Isolation’s Xenomorph, is a near-unstoppable power that’s at all times lurking close by. Fast ahead to at this time, and the stalker enemy kind has develop into a staple of the survival horror style. We have Scissorman to thank for all these enduring nightmares.

9. Silent Hill

While Capcom was storming the charts within the late ‘90s with Resident Evil’s campy, zombie-focused tackle survival horror, Konami’s first stab on the style noticed the studio attempt one thing very totally different. What it created was dread. Pure, unrelenting dread.

Silent Hill stars Harry Mason, an everyman who enters a fog-filled nightmare whereas looking for his lacking adopted daughter within the city of Silent Hill. What follows is an oppressive story riddled with unseemly horrors, the likes we’d by no means witnessed in a online game earlier than.

Unlike its friends, Silent Hill supplied a real 3D surroundings to discover, somewhat than the static, pre-rendered backdrops of Resident Evil. Due to the {hardware} restraints of the time, which struggled to render lengthy draw distances, the fictional city was caked in a relentless thick layer of fog that disguised the tech’s limitations. Serendipitously, this not solely grew to become the collection’ signature look, but in addition demonstrated maybe the best marriage of tech and tone we’ve ever witnessed in a online game.

Silent Hill pioneered its personal psychological nook of the survival horror style, spawning many sequels and remakes that will go on to be thought-about a number of the most haunting video video games ever made.

8. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

It looks as if a distant reminiscence now, however there was a painful interval the place the Resident Evil collection misplaced contact with its survival horror roots. While Resident Evil 4 is rightly celebrated, it considerably ramped up the motion, which laid the groundwork for each Resident Evil 5 and 6 to virtually abandon the style altogether.

2017 lastly noticed Capcom return to that traditional survival horror feeling with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, but it surely did so from a completely new first-person perspective and thru the usage of a grimier, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like forged of characters. Our new protagonist, Ethan Winters, is compelled to tackle the Louisiana swamp-dwelling Baker household, who power him to endure a gauntlet of grisly challenges. Gone have been roundhouse kicks, quicktime occasions, and off-the-charts bombast, and again was delicate useful resource administration, a reestablished energy steadiness within the antagonist’s favour, and the lengthy overdue return of a stalker enemy.

It’s not possible not to think about Resident Evil when speaking about survival horror, but it surely’s solely due to Resident Evil 7’s style renaissance that they’re nonetheless thought-about synonymous with one another, somewhat than survival horror being only a footnote within the historical past of the collection.

7. Outlast

Often one of the best survival horror tropes are reflections of the flicks that impressed them, and there’s no higher illustration of this than 2013’s Outlast, a first-person descent right into a distant psychiatric hospital that took the discovered footage film style and expertly turned it right into a five-hour interactive nightmare.

Outlast is relentless, and in conventional survival horror trend, offers you little or no to defend your self with. It does, nevertheless, successfully flip imaginative and prescient right into a useful resource; with nearly all of the gloomy hospital solely seen by the inexperienced, grainy lens of your digicam’s night time imaginative and prescient, it is important you construct a stockpile of batteries to maintain it powered up. AAs are as necessary in Outlast as bullets are in Resident Evil, and with out them, you’re utterly blind to horrors that lurk at midnight.

When you possibly can see what’s chasing you, Outlast is as scary as any recreation on this record. When the lights exit, it stands practically in a league of its personal.

6. Alan Wake 2

Much like Outlast, Alan Wake 2 additionally commodifies gentle, though not like its extra action-led predecessor, it strikes an ideal steadiness of tense survival horror gameplay and a cinematic, surreal nightmare.

Developer Remedy’s unsettling story follows the intertwined journeys of titular author Alan Wake and FBI agent Saga Anderson. As Alan, you’ll blast ghostly figures and resolve Resident Evil-esque puzzles in a nightmare model of New York City. But the additional you enterprise, the stranger issues get; you’ll write new pathways by actuality, witness a weird Finnish horror film, endure an anxiety-inducing chat present, and participate in one of the best rock opera you’ve ever gunned your manner by.

Saga’s chapters, in the meantime, see the story remodel into a mix of Hannibal and Zodiac, with Silent Hill-like exploration and fight sitting neatly subsequent to police procedural work. As you examine a chilling chain of formality murders, you’ll want to rearrange clues in your proof board and drill deeper into the minds of your many suspects.

Alan Wake 2 finds a singular method to mix acquainted survival horror gameplay with Lynchian cinematic aptitude, leading to a deeply formidable, steadily disturbing expertise that each feels true to the style and one thing utterly recent.

5. Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Thanks to its gameplay improvements that helped course-correct and spur a rebirth of a style that had drifted too far into action-game territory, virtually all trendy survival horror video games are indebted to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, at the least to a point.

In Frictional Games’ landmark 2010 first-person horror, you play as Daniel, who wakes up alone at midnight fortress of Brennenburg with no reminiscence of how he acquired there. As you discover, you study of a shadow that’s stalking you, and encounter different creatures that can give chase in the event that they spot you. Armed with nothing however a lantern, your solely type of defence is to run and conceal, usually at midnight. This cat-and-mouse expertise is a standard survival horror trait at this time, however again in 2010, it was a stark distinction towards extra action-oriented horror video games like Resident Evil 5, which was launched only one yr earlier.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent isn’t only a recreation of conceal and search, although: it has an additional wrinkle, one which forces you to at all times be on the transfer. Stay at midnight too lengthy and also you’ll regularly lose your thoughts. This forces you into sustaining a fragile balancing act, avoiding the darkness that’s driving you insane however steadily utilizing it to cover out of your pursuer.

Amnesia’s a number of sequels all construct upon The Dark Descent’s mechanics in good methods, however maybe extra necessary to its legacy is how different builders took discover, with Resident Evil 7’s determination to modify to a first-person perspective owing quite a bit to Amnesia’s success.

The Dark Descent nonetheless holds up at this time, and its affect runs deep, paving the way in which for the first-person playstyle to obtain equal consideration subsequent to the style’s conventional third-person digicam.

4. Resident Evil

It’s exhausting to think about what horror in video video games would appear like with out the arrival of Resident Evil. The first within the long-running (and intensely profitable) collection arrived in 1996, inviting gamers to discover the zombie-infested, puzzle-riddled Spencer Mansion, and it’s honest to say the survival horror style hasn’t seemed again since.

Although primitive by at this time’s requirements, Resident Evil set the mildew for all the pieces that adopted. The isolation, the restricted assets, the relentless sense of dread, and the soar scares. Resident Evil pioneered the way in which for the style, and with out it, trendy survival horror merely wouldn’t exist. Yes, Sweet Home outlined the blueprint, however Resident Evil masterfully executed the concepts and propelled survival horror to the plenty.

Of course, the formulation has since been often improved upon, and plenty of of these video games are featured on this record, however each entry in Capcom’s enduring collection owes a debt to the primary. Resident Evil is arguably weaker than most of its sequels, its personal remake included, however none of them would have existed with out the progenitor, and its significance to the style (and this record) is unquestionable.

3. Alien: Isolation

1979’s Alien is a masterclass in worry, constructing uneasy rigidity and suspense with the specter of its single, lethal Xenomorph. On paper, the movie’s idea shouldn’t be simply translated into online game type, and there actually have been many failed makes an attempt till Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation arrived in 2014.

Alien: Isolation abandons pulse rifles, gung-ho Colonial Marines, and gallons of acid blood in favour of survival horror trappings, asking you to outwit an indestructible stalker that hunts you across the sprawling Sevastopol house station.

Powered by subtle synthetic intelligence, the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation lives as much as its silver display relative, precisely making a terrifying gameplay expertise based mostly on all the pieces we noticed in Ridley Scott’s traditional. The beast fairly actually has a thoughts of its personal, able to studying your ways and discovering new methods to hunt you. In an inventory stuffed with video games with stalker enemies, it’s nonetheless exhausting to look previous the proper organism as the best hunter of all of them.

With solely stealth, guts, and some choose instruments that can assist you survive, Alien: Isolation is a terrifying horror simulator that not solely immediately grew to become one of the best Alien online game of all time, but in addition one of many perfect examples of the survival horror style.

2. Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 is an more and more disturbing, psychological journey into the repressed ideas of its unassuming protagonist and the tortured souls he meets alongside the way in which. Emotional tragedy, guilt, anger, abuse, and the horrible methods the ensuing trauma manifests are dealt with with grace and maturity hardly ever seen within the style.

Silent Hill 2 is all the pieces survival horror recreation needs to be, completely balancing a relentless sense of hopelessness with simply sufficient to maintain you within the battle. James is a tortured soul, however one pushed by the need to proceed his path, regardless of how unlikely success appears, and though this isn’t the primary Silent Hill on this record, it’s unquestionably one of the best.

The unique Silent Hill 2, developed by Konami’s Team Silent again on the daybreak of the millennium, is maybe the bleakest, most sombre recreation ever made. 23 years later, Bloober Team efficiently recreated its depressing magic, crafting a remake that could be a deeply efficient descent into genuinely uncomfortable terror. With this 2024 remake, Team Silent’s nightmarish imaginative and prescient is preserved. It’s a contemporary reminder not simply of an period when Konami was a grasp of survival horror, but in addition of the numerous energy of Silent Hill 2’s timeless distress.

1. Resident Evil 2

When you consider survival horror, you consider Resident Evil, and though there are various contenders for greatest entry within the collection, our vote, emphatically, goes to the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2.

The unique Resident Evil 2 took all the pieces profitable in regards to the survival horror formulation established by the primary recreation and refined it. The places have been creepier, the enemies extra menacing – this was the introduction of the notorious Licker and Mr. X, the stalker enemy that set the bar for the style – and the scares have been greater and badder. The adventures of Leon and Claire in Raccoon City not solely grew to become a benchmark for Resident Evil however for the style as an entire.

Every manner 1998’s Resident Evil 2 improved on its predecessor, the 2019 remake replicated in type, changing into not solely a first-rate instance of the way to take an older recreation and reanimate it for a brand new technology of gamers, but in addition how the unique guidelines of survival horror nonetheless stand sturdy to this present day.

Resident Evil 2 is all the pieces you need survival horror to be: a recreation of fastidiously balancing your assets whereas at all times feeling such as you don’t fairly have sufficient, enduring relentless pursuits by maze-like environments, obtuse puzzles to resolve, and a relentless state of unease that makes it really feel such as you received’t fairly survive by the entire ordeal.

Resident Evil 2 influenced not one, however two generations of survival horror, and regardless of being usually imitated, it’s hardly ever equalled. In our eyes, Resident Evil 2 shouldn’t be solely the easiest of survival horror’s most well-known collection, but it surely additionally sits atop the style itself.

If you favored this record and are longing for extra survival horror, why not try the 25 greatest horror video games of all time, or our Art of the Level episode on Resident Evil 2, discussing how Capcom perfected the RPD Police Station twice.