There are plenty of video game genres that have connected with audiences and produced many mainstream hits, but some of the biggest & most exciting are survival horror titles. There’s nothing quite like a good scare and survival horror games offer up that experience in a unique way.
Many audiences are aware of the biggest franchises in the genre, like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Fatal Frame, but there are also plenty of hits that have fallen through the cracks or are just in major need of a modern update. Accordingly, here are 10 forgotten horror games that deserve a reboot.
10 Illbleed
Illbleed is an extremely creative take on the survival horror genre and it plays into the conventions of horror cinema in a very loving way. The game features a number of friends who enter into a murderous amusement park and try to survive the night.
Clever levels, enemies, and different genres of horror make Illbleed an incredibly full experience. Furthermore, Illbleed only saw release on the Dreamcast, which makes it the perfect title to try to introduce to a new audience who originally missed it.
9 Clock Tower
Clock Tower never gained the same notoriety of other popular survival horror series, but it led to a solid series of games that tried to do some interesting things with the genre. Curiously, the titles mix together the point-and-click adventure genre with survival horror and create a very atmospheric, albeit slow, experience.
Scissorman is a truly intimidating antagonist that was like Resident Evil’s Nemesis, but much earlier. The games feature compelling mysteries and a tense cat and mouse style of horror. The games aren’t perfect and have showed their age, so an updated reboot would be perfect.
8 Echo Night
Echo Night is an ambitious survival horror series that started on the PlayStation and received a few sequels. The titles come from From Software before they were known for punishingly hard action games. Echo Night is a first-person horror experience that tells a layered mystery that sprawls across several time periods. Echo Night makes use of ghosts and was fairly ahead of its time in terms of its style of gameplay and storytelling. The games had a much bigger draw in Japan, so a modern series that improves upon the formula would be great, especially if FromSoftware were still involved.
7 Deep Fear
Deep Fear brings a lot of new ideas to the survival horror genre. For one, Deep Fear is set underwater and takes advantage of that level of claustrophobia while also turning things like oxygen levels into part of the survival aspect of the game. The story also goes to some truly crazy places that are almost Lynchian in nature. Deep Fear was a Sega Saturn exclusive and held back by the clunky tank controls of the time and limitations of the hardware, so a modern remake would be perfect.
6 Dark Seed
Dark Seed and its sequel are pivotal horror games from the ‘90s that were years ahead of the curve. These titles lean into the point-and-click adventure game, but they really explore psychological and body horror in a way that’s rare for games. Additionally, the prolific H.R. Giger did designs on the games, so they are full of disturbing yet incredible monsters. Dark Seed saw a PlayStation release, but only in Japan, so it’d be nice for American audiences to get to play it on consoles and with a revamped system that doesn’t lose the art style and thematic ideas.
5 Hellnight
Hellnight is an unusual horror offering from Konami and Atlus that tries to do something different with the genre. The premise centers around a subway crash and a group of occultists that live underground and form a new society in the wake of these dangerous times. Players try to make their way back to the surface and can recruit partners along the way, all of which are disposable to the threats that litter the environment. Hellnight tells a very dark story, but the game was only released in Japan and Europe, so a remake is especially necessary here.
4 Blue Stinger
Blue Stinger was a launch title for the Dreamcast that made a big splash, but still hasn’t been released on any other consoles, which means that it’s largely a lost survival horror relic. The survival horror game centers around a meteor that crashes into an island and the alien-like entities that arrive as a result. There’s an impressive combat system and wide range of weapons, as well as a campy story that embraces B-movies. Blue Stinger is still a product of its time, so a modern update that irons out the rough spots would be such a satisfying surprise.
3 D2
Kenji Eno's D Trilogy is largely unknown to mainstream audiences, but each game in the series does something radically different and innovative for its time. D2 is the Dreamcast entry in the series and it features a story that's highly reminiscent of The Thing, with a snow-covered environment, shape-shifting monsters, and a focus on isolation and resource management. Eno's D games are full of good ideas that are held back by a muddled overall package. Distilling these titles and concepts into one new game could perhaps be the best way for audiences to experience these games.
2 Kuon
Kuon is a survival horror title from From Software that didn't make a major impact on the PlayStation 2. The game pulls from classical ghost stories & folklore for its inspiration and the end result is less focused on action and more on atmosphere. There's a creative health concept that's incorporated and restored through meditation. There are some really old fashioned ideas here that fans of the genre should love, but it's easy to see how they were too slow for their time. Now over 15 years later, the game's mature story might finally by appreciated.
1 Dino Crisis
It's fair to say that Resident Evil is Capcom's golden goose when it comes to survival horror franchises. However, while many think the Resident Evil series has been done to death at this point, gamers are hungry to see a Dino Crisis remake in the same vein as the Resident Evil remakes. Dinosaurs haven't been overexposed in video games in the same way that zombies have and this series deserves another shot. A successful remake of the first game could remind audiences what made this series so entertaining and terrifying.