Record-breaking horror games guaranteed to give you a scare this Halloween
It’s time to hang garlic around your windows and keep the night light on, because spooky season is upon us once again. Whether you’re preparing for Dia De Los Muertos, All Hallows Eve, or Samhain, the end of October is a time when spirits are abroad. And you can celebrate with videogames, too, because there’s a rich history of horror running through gaming culture.
Some suggest that the first horror game is 1972’s Haunted House on the Magnavox Odyssey, the first ever videogame console. The Odyssey wasn’t very powerful, and could only really render dots on the screen, so the games required art on plastic sheets, which stuck to the screen with static, to create the game worlds. And one of these was a spooky mansion. It counts!
Other influential horror games followed in the 80s, several of which were text adventure games that told their story with descriptions in prose, rather than using any imagery. There was also another game called Haunted House (Atari, 1982), not to be confused with the Magnavox title of the same name, of course.
Another classic game that was directly influenced by October tradition in form, if not function, is Grim Fandango (LucasArts, 1998), the first LucasArts adventure game to use 3D graphics. It’s set in the Land of the Dead, and the characters all resemble calacas – skeletal figures used as decoration during Day of the Dead festivals.
Today, horror games are firm favourites, with some of the biggest franchises being pillars of the genre – think Silent Hill (Team Silent, 1999) or Resident Evil (Capcom, 1996), both series still going strong after decades. Even more family-friendly franchises dip their toes into terror every now and then; Luigi’s Mansion 3 (Nintendo, 2019), which sees the taller Mario brother rescue his friends from a very haunted building, is the best-selling Luigi videogame.
Games from smaller developers often find success through word of mouth. The Five Nights At Freddy’s series of jumpscare horror games, which began with the first Five Nights At Freddy’s (Scott Cawthon) in 2014, has the record for the most videogame sequels released in a year. Five Night’s At Freddy’s 2, 3 and 4 all came out with 12 months of the original, due to the series’ surprising and continuing success from its popularity with streamers, and the fact that they were relatively easy to make. Since then the series expanded to many more games, tie-in books, and a series of films!
So whether you’re a fanged fan of all things creepy, or you find yourself hiding from monsters under the bed, the world of gaming has plenty to offer you at this spooky time of year.