What makes a compelling horror game stick with a community? Well, two of the best horror series of the 90s were Resident Evil and Silent Hill, so that’s a good place to start looking. Resident Evil is still going strong whereas Silent Hill took a nose dive with a recent promise from Konami to revitalize things in a big way.
The future looks great then with some truly scary horror games on the horizon, but what about these one-off examples from the past? Will they ever receive sequels? Do they deserve sequels? Let’s take a look at a wide variety of franchise spinoffs to completely standalone games.
8 Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Inferno was loosely based on the book from hundreds of years ago. It was like EA’s excuse to make a God of War clone complete with the same tone, QTE button prompts, action combat, and the list goes on.
That doesn’t mean it was a bad game as it was more uninspired. It was an interesting spin on the lore that created some truly horrific moments even if it wasn’t billed as a straight horror game. It was released in 2010 and never received a big port or remaster after that.
7 Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was a 2002 GameCube exclusive that was ahead of its time and is still trapped on there. It was a classic survival horror game from this era except that it threw players into a confusing state as the game constantly messed with their heads.
For example, the volume could be turned down on the TV, creating some meta-horror moments. It never made it off the GameCube but a sequel almost happened. Shadow of the Eternals was a spiritual successor kickstarted by Denis Dyack, Eternal Darkness' director, in 2013. Plans for that fell through after several crowdfunding attempts failed.
6 The Order: 1886
The Order: 1886 did not receive good reviews when it launched in 2015. It was a good twist on the concept of the Knights of the Round which was an organization that was created to stop evil monsters like werewolves in this game’s universe.
The organization persisted through the ages up to when the game takes place in London. The game leaves on a massive cliffhanger, seemingly setting up a sequel that could have cleverly been called The Order: 1887. Sadly, Sony never greenlit a sequel, but things may change.
5 Prey
While they share a name, the 2006 version of Prey does not relate to the 2017 game, making it a true Sci-fi one-off. It was like BioShock except it took place on a moon base and players faced creatures called, Mimics, that could turn into objects like coffee mugs. They weren’t any wild humans running around unlike in Rapture.
Arkane Studios was hard at work with Deathloop following this game’s release. Now they are working on Redfall, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come back to Prey. There is hope, however small, that players can one day face Mimics again.
4 Resident Evil Gaiden
Resident Evil Gaiden could be the most forgotten game in this series. It was released on the Game Boy Color in Europe first in 2001 which was a rare occurrence. It then launched the following year in Japan and North America. It saw Leon and Barry working together on a boat that was infested with zombies.
It was almost like a first-person RPG as battle windows appeared whenever players ran into an enemy. Capcom was seemingly fascinated with boats in this series at the time as another one-off entry, Dead Aim, was released in 2003.
3 The Thing
The Thing is one of John Carpenter’s best horror movies which was released in 1982. It had a Mimic-like alien similar to Prey except that this alien could assimilate into organic material such as dogs or humans. The horror came from figuring out who was friendly and who was an alien as there was no easy way to tell. That concept was ripe for the picking and twenty years later a video game was made with the same name.
However, it is a sequel to the movie and not a remake wherein different endings could occur depending on random events. Despite some setbacks today on the old versions, like PS2, it is one of the better movie tie-in games.
2 Yakuza Dead Souls
Yakuza Dead Souls is a spinoff from the mainline Yakuza games which were all brawlers up until Yakuza: Like a Dragon which turned the action combat into turn-based gameplay. Yakuza Dead Souls was the first change to the formula though, adding zombies to the mix.
Players could still bash zombies with fists, but guns were a bigger part of the combat. It was released in 2012 in North America and never got an updated remaster let alone a sequel. Even the samurai spinoffs to this series got sequels, but not this one-off zombie adventure.
1 ZombiU
ZombiU was a launch game for the Wii U if the name wasn’t a dead giveaway. It was an open-world action game set in London during a zombie outbreak. Players could die and awaken as a new survivor in the city although they could retrieve lost items if they found the previous character.
It had the brutal difficulty and randomness found in the Dark Souls games, making it one of the more unique launch titles for Wii U. This was in 2012 and it did get a remaster for consoles such as the PS4 in 2015 when it was renamed Zombi. This was all Ubisoft did with the property since then which is better than nothing.