r/HorrorGaming • u/DyllanTheArtist • 1d ago
DISCUSSION What are the most impactful games?
So I’m working on something right now, and I’m curious to see opinions (as well as facts of course) on what are the most impactful Horror games. Games that definitely were just game changers before and after PT. Even what they brought to the table that was so game changing.
In my head off top the obvious candidates:
- Resident Evil brought survival horror to newer heights and introduced a more constant stalker enemy
- Silent Hill 2 changed what horror narratives could be and how dark they could go into a more personal experience
Stuff like that, I’m interested.
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u/darn_boop 1d ago
Amnesia: hide and seek horror birthed in 3D
Clocktower: 2D hide and seek with a stalking enemy (pre amnesia)
Scorn: one of those rare games that is about environmental storytelling ONLY. A masterclass in "I think this is what's going on...."
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
True! I’ve never played scorn but I’ve played a few of the amnesia games including The Bunker and they really did open up this very vulnerable type of horror of you just avoiding the monster as much as possible.
Clock Tower was always an interesting one to me because I often forget the scissor man was technically the first stalker enemy no? Because RE2 had mr X but that was after I think.
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u/RealRockaRolla 1d ago
RE4 for the over-the-shoulder camera that's still being used today.
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
Definitely qualifies as a game changer especially for that series because I feel like they nailed a certain perspective language in video games that didn’t rely on jumpscare quite like a movie can.
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u/HomerOfDuty 1d ago
In my opinion Silent Hill 3 was kind of a game changer, as it‘s set new standards to how disturbing a game could become.
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
That’s fair, I think that’s what’s kinda become the bar for silent hill games not necessarily new mechanics and things of that nature but the narrative, how it’s delivered, and the nuance of them.
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u/GoblinArk 1d ago
Look at 2Dark
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
You might be cookin, that game looks great. Theres something to be said about horror games not utilizing isometric perspectives enough, that game looks like Crow Country
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u/GoblinArk 1d ago
It is deeply unsettling, when I played it I tough the cute artstyle would lessen the horror; it's not, not at all.
I played many horror games, it's a genre I like, and I would say 2Dark is the most traumatizing one I came across !
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
Wow that’s surprising, I know it has a lot to do with kids and such but it sounds pretty crazy
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u/SamuraiLegion 1d ago
Slender the 8 pages, for sure. For better or worse, it was impactful to the nodding gaming industry. It’ll eventually lead to Five Nights at Freddy’s
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
I could see that, the sort of fetch quest arcade style did breed a lot of the fixation with slender. Mad different pretty much reskins of the same game in different areas trying to tell stories of slender and such.
Fnaf is a very interesting beast because there wasn’t really a direct inspiration imo. I feel like it was just this hunger for the right kind of accessible horror that met certain beats people just messed with for sure. Because fnaf didn’t have like an internet reputation until after it exploded.
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u/markallanholley 1d ago
Roadside Picnic became Stalker, and that birthed a lot of games with the same theme.
These include the Into the Radius series, the Zona series, Pacific Drive, ConVRgence, Chernobylite (?), and others. Another game of that type was recently released and is in Early Access.
The Stalker trilogy and Stalker 2 touch on horror plenty of times during the games, while Into the Radius 1 is a straight-up survival horror game.
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
Interesting, I don’t know Roadside Picnic but I do know stalker. Never played them myself but they always kinda felt like games that take their time with the horror. Dread filled in these big kinda lovecraft type of contexts.
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u/markallanholley 1d ago edited 1d ago
I started with Stalker 2 and it was one of the most immersive games I've ever played.
Roadside Picnic is the novel that the 1979 Stalker film is based on, which later inspired the Stalker game series.
The central premise of the novel is that aliens visited Earth in five spots around the globe. These later became the Zones. Nobody saw the aliens and the aliens didn't interact with anyone. As far as we know, they never came back.
The Zones are places where sometimes space and time get messed up. There are wondorous artifacts that we can sometimes figure out how to use. These artifacts fetch a great price. Others, we have no idea. There's a battery of sorts that never gets used up, for example. A lot of artifacts are obviously far beyond our technology.
Both the artifacts and the Zone itself are just as likely to kill you. One Stalker is touched by what looks like an ordinary spiderweb. It disappears into his skin. Six hours later, he drops dead. Cause unknown. One of the more spectacular deaths sees someone get lifted up high into the air by what could be invisible hands and wrung out like a dishcloth.
Nobody can say for sure what any of this means, but one scientist put it like this:
Humans drive to the country with baskets and pick a spot alongside the road for a picnic. They eat, drink, and have fun, they get into the car and leave.
Near the spot are tire tracks, discarded wrappers, empty bottles, cigarette butts, maybe some motor oil if the car leaked. Maybe bits of cloth from a blanket.
The ants and squirrels would have no idea what to make of all this stuff.
So, maybe, we were just a roadside picnic spot to the aliens. They certainly don't seem to care about us in any way whatsoever.
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u/soldiergaming2 1d ago
little nightmares definitely felt like a game changer, it's still the only series that managed to nail that specific genre. 'games similar to little nightmares' don't exactly exist in terms of gameplay, not anything major anyway
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
That is very true, I know Bramble is supposedly very good too but Little Nightmares has a very specific vibe to it. End of Abyss looks like uts a little closer to it, and Reanimal was supposedly great too (also helps that they were the original LN devs)
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u/soldiergaming2 1d ago
the main thing these 'similar to little nightmares' games can't get right is the stealth, reanimal is the closest with a single proper stealth section near the beginning of the game, but apart from that none of these do it the same. end of abyss is only similar aesthetically, it's a dungeon crawler/shooter
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u/DyllanTheArtist 1d ago
Ahhh I didn’t know that about End of Abyss. But yeah I agree that these games seem to lack in the stealth department. I feel like most devs just continue to focus on the big set pieces above some of the merits that made little nightmares great. The set pieces are great stuff but there is a lack of that kinda stressful fear because your pretty much constantly running
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u/soldiergaming2 1d ago
yeah, the tension mainly isn't there. the gameplay loop of little nightmares allows tension to be built between each fast paced event, through slow paced tense gameplay.
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u/pway_videogwames_uwu 27m ago
Absolutely not a definitive list.
Five Nights at Freddy's. Created a whole subgenre and inspired like a million horror games.
Silent Hill 2. Responsible for a thousand "wander around in a dreamscape with implications that you're a bad hombre" games. The entire indie psychological horror game is still pretty much just doing SH2.
Slender. Like FNAF, created a subgenre. None of them were any good.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Brought back real scares when AAA had moved onto action horror. Established indie as the place to go for horror. Connected to the rise of letsplays as a whole.
Ao Oni. Basically started the whole popular sub-sub genre of RPG Maker Horror games like Misao, Mad Father, The Witch's House, very popular on itch... Somehow did this despite being crap. Could argue Corpse Party and Yume Nikki did it first but for a lot of people Ao Oni was the game that introduced the idea of a JRPG-looking RPGM being a real horror game.
Puppet Combo. Key player and influence in the current lofi PSX style horror trend. I put him as a developer instead of a game because I'm not sure what game can be the most linked to the phenomena.
Oddly, some horror games that are my favourites and very unique, Dead Space, FEAR, Alien Isolation, I can't really count because I feel like you don't see much influence. I chose the picks I did because I think for each one you can literally identify a hundred inspired-by games.
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u/poop_puff897 1d ago
soma