Which horror movie would make a great video game?
There are now 10 video games based on the Evil Dead series, excluding games in which Ash has guest appearances, such as Dead By Daylight and Poker Night 2. That’s a decent number, although the Alien series beat it, especially counting the various Alien vs. Predator games. There are four Blair Witch games, each developed by a different studio, even Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in 1983 It was made into an Atari 2600 game. Meanwhile, multiple attempts to make a Hellraiser game were canceled before release, including a build engine in Duke Nukem and an engine identical to Wolfenstein-3D. This doesn’t seem fair.
Which horror movie would make a great video game?
Here are our answers, and some of our answers forum.
Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: It follows. Imagine a life simulation game like Bully. You’re a teenager, you go to school, and you can choose whether your character is studying at night or dating in a retro town square. But at any time, an NPC could actually be a terrifying unkillable force of nature to rip out your fucking head. You can avoid death by romanticizing and sleeping with other people in town, but when you hear about their gruesome murders on the news, you know your number is coming.
This game could be bad. Great movie, though.
Chris Livingston, Featured Producer: Penguin March. let me finish. Yes, it’s a beautiful film about the triumph of life in extreme adverse conditions, ending with a heartwarming spectacle of all those adorable baby penguins, their parents fighting desperately for protection and nurturing. But you’d think… wait, those baby penguins are going to grow up and have to endure everything we’ve just seen their parents endure: months of starvation, nearly freezing to death, whale attacks, losing a bunch of kids, and trying to get on Earth The sheer and unrelenting pain of surviving in the coldest places. It’s not exciting. That’s a damn horror story! The lives of those penguins are nightmarish.
But there should be a game about penguins because they are so cute.
Taylor Wilde, Executive Editor: host. A pandemic horror movie with horrible things happening on a video call is sure to happen, but there’s no guarantee it’ll be good or even watchable, so I think we’re getting along pretty well with Host. It’s an energetic 57 minutes that does everything you’d expect a Zoom horror story to do. (As seen in the trailer, automatic face detection works well.)
I think, a game will work. Analog computer interfaces are trendy (Her Story, Emily is Away, Duskers, Pony Island, etc.), and Freddy’s Five Nights proves that a game that’s mostly about watching horror on a monitor can work. You need great spatial sound so that a video call sounds like a video call, but footsteps sound like they’re behind you.
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Is A Quiet Place a Horror Movie? I’ve never been sure about these things, but arguably it is. I think you could make a pretty decent third-person survival game out of the first movie if it really incorporated the whole “don’t make a sound” thing. I’m imagining the tense moments of robbing the grocery store while trying not to step on broken glass or knock over tin cans. This probably has to be a road trip story so you don’t spend 10 hours on the same farm as Jim Harpert’s family. Ideally, it would be more insidious than the action, kind of like the original Splinter Cell series.
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/Australia editor: I mentioned a number of Hellraiser games in the intro that had started but never came out, because that’s what I’d like to see finalized. Solve puzzle boxes and be chased by extra-dimensional BDSM demons on a journey through the labyrinthine hell they call home. What’s not to like?
DXCHASE: Human centipede. You have to lure people into your lab, sew them together, and send them out to fight for you.
Salavan: The Underworld series deserves a solid game adaptation. Maybe it’s not pure horror, but it certainly has a lot of elements. The first movie was adapted on PS2, but you don’t want to play it… The series has huge potential in many different genres, be it RPG, FPS or even strategy. It’s strange that no one has decided to offer a good gameplay in this universe. Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines will finally have a solid competitor.
Brian Bolu: I’m not a terrorist, but has anyone made a Frankenstein game for PC? I only know a few console fighters from about 30 years ago. You can build your monster with a limited number of parts (eg 20), some of which are required, such as the head and 2 legs. The rest is up to you – want 8 arms, go for it!
Once you have your blueprint, you’ll have to stalk and murder people locally, bring them back to the dungeon you won in PC Gamer matches, and pull out your trusty rusty hacksaw to get their contributions Great Movement project.
The various missions you send monsters to require very different layouts – decoupage? – so a lot of reconfiguration and tweaking is required.
flashn00b: Is “Purge” a horror movie? I guess if you don’t count the second and fourth movies, then maybe?
I feel like for a game based on The Purge to work, it needs to be a mix of life sim, base builder, open world survival ship and third person shooter. Life simulation because the key to successful clearing is earning the trust of the right people, base builders because you’ll have a home and neighbors to defend, open world survival spaceships because you need to leave your safe to clear the city into a war zone and third person Home of the shooter, because for the next 12 hours, all crimes will be legal.
I imagine if the risk/reward needed to be something that would be the life sim part of a Purge game, they could also offer the option of committing a Purge crime, although America’s New Founding Fathers would take even the tiniest of crimes very seriously.