There are now 10 video games based on the Evil Dead series, not counting games Ash has cameos in like Dead By Daylight and Poker Night 2. That’s a decent number, although the Alien series has beaten it, especially counting the various Alien vs. predator. There have been four Blair Witch games, each developed by a different studio, and even Texas Chainsaw Massacre was made into an Atari 2600 game in 1983. Meanwhile, several attempts to make Hellraiser games were canceled before release, including one in the game. Duke Nukem. Build Engine and one in the same engine as Wolfenstein-3D. It hardly seems fair.
Which horror movie would make a great video game?
Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.
Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: It follows. Imagine a type of life simulation game like Bully. You are a teenager, you go to school, you choose whether your character studies at night or goes on dates in the retro town square. But at any moment, an NPC can actually be a horrifying, indestructible force of nature to rip your head off. You can avoid death by dating and sleeping with other people around town, but when you hear about their gruesome murders on the news, you’ll know your number is coming.
This game would probably be terrible. Great movie though.
Chris Livingston, Feature Producer: March of the Penguins. Let me finish. Yes, it’s a beautiful film about the triumph of life in extremely harsh conditions, ending with the heartwarming sight of all those adorable baby penguins whose parents fought like hell to protect and support. But then you think… wait, these baby penguins are going to grow up and have to put up with everything we’ve seen their parents endure: months of starvation, near freezing to death, whale attacks, losing a bunch of kids, and the sheer agony and unrelenting misery of trying to survive in the coldest place on earth. This is not uplifting. This is a goddamn horror story! The life of these penguins is a nightmare.
But there should be a game about penguins, because they are cute.
Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Host. A pandemic horror movie where scary things happen on a video call was guaranteed, but it wasn’t guaranteed to be good or even watchable, so I think we got along pretty well with Host. It’s an energetic 57 minutes and does all the things you’d expect a Zoom horror story to do. (There’s good use of automatic face detection, as seen in the trailer.)
A game would work, I think. The simulated computer interfaces are modern (Her Story, Emily is Away, Duskers, Pony Island, etc), and Five Nights at Freddy’s proved that a game primarily about watching scary things on monitors is viable. You want great spatial sound so the video call feels like a video call, but footsteps sound like they’re behind you.
Morgan Park, staff writer: Is A Quiet Place a horror movie? I’m never sure about these things, but let’s just say it is. I think you could make a really good third-person survival game out of the first movie if it really leaned into the whole “don’t make a sound” thing. I’m imagining tense moments of looting a grocery store while trying not to step on broken glass or drop a can. It would probably have to be a travel story so you don’t spend 10 hours cooped up on the same farm as Jim Halpert’s family. Ideally, it would be more stealthy than action, more or less like the original Splinter Cell series.
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I mentioned the various Hellraiser games that were started but never released in the intro because that’s what I’d like to see finally realized. Solve puzzle boxes, get chased by extradimensional BDSM demons, take a trip to the labyrinthine hell they call home. What’s not to like?
DXCHASE: The human centipede. You have to lure people into your lab and then sew them up and send them out to fight for you.
Sarafan: The Underworld series deserves a solid game adaptation. Maybe it’s not pure horror, but it definitely has a lot of elements of it. The first movie got a PS2 adaptation, but you don’t want to play it… The series has huge potential in many different genres, be it RPG, FPS and even strategy. It’s strange that no one has decided to deliver a good game set in this universe. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines would finally have a solid competitor.
Brian Boru: I’m not a horror guy, but has anyone ever made a Frankenstein game for PC? I only know one console fighter from ~30 years ago. You can build your monster using a finite number of pieces, say 20 – with a few needed, like a head and 2 legs. Rest is up to you – want 8 arms, go for it!
Once you have your plan, you have to chase down and kill people in the locality, bring them back to the dungeon you won in a PC Gamer competition, and pull your trusty, rusty saw to acquire their contribution to the game. le big project.
The various quests you send your monster on will need very different layouts – cutouts? – so there will be a lot of reconfiguration and tuning needed.
flashn00b: Does The Purge count as a horror movie? I think if you don’t count second and fourth movies then maybe?
I feel that for a game based on The Purge to work, it would need to be a life simulator, a base builder, an open world survival ship, and a third-person shooter all in one. Life simulation because the key to a successful purge is earning the trust of the right people, base builder because you will have a house and a neighborhood to defend, open world survival ship because you will need to leave the safety of your home to scour a city-turned-warzone and a third-person shooter because ALL CRIMES WILL BE LEGAL IN THE NEXT 12 HOURS.
I think if risk/reward needs to be a thing for the life sim part of a Purge game, they might also offer the option of committing crimes outside of Purge, although America’s New Founding Fathers take it very seriously even petty offenses.