I’m a big fan of everything related to Horror: books, movies, TV shows, art, even games. If it’s Horror, I’m interested. Lately I’ve been paying special attention to Horror games.
Horror games have been successful since the time when Atari, now obsolete, was the best gaming platform. But no matter where you play, PlayStation, Xbox, PC, or mobiles, more and more gamers are passionate about these games.
It is interesting to look at the list of gamers’ favorite Horror games. I’m going to break it down into ‘categories’ to get to the main point of my article.
Dead by Daylight, Phasmophobia, The Mortuary Assistant, and Outlast, to name just a few, are games where the plots were entirely created by the developers. During the course of the game, they cause us “an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust”, which is the definition of Horror in any dictionary.
Some games on this list have clear influences from famous characters and/or bizarre art. This is the case with Dredge, which must have been inspired by Lovecraft’s Cthulhu-type sea creatures; and Scorn, where skeletal structures, blood-veined flooring, and mechanisms made of appendages are akin to the works of H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński.
The vast majority of the games on this list are based on Horror movies, including Chucky, Predator, Fright Night, Alien, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th, etc. It is undeniable that the greater the success of the movie/character, the more Horror games appear. The fixation on them is so great that in the game Dead By Daylight, several killers are part of some movie franchise and/or TV series.
But when it comes to games based on Horror books, the number drops significantly. The most interesting thing is that among the gamers’ favorites are, among others, Dracula and World War Z, which were adapted for the cinema and only later became a game.
An interesting exception is the game Resident Evil, which became a movie after the game’s success, and not the other way around as usually happens. There are rumors that The Mortuary Assistant will become a movie; let’s see.
So why aren’t more Horror books the main source of inspiration for Horror games? If they serve to inspire movies and TV series, why aren’t they the predominant choice when developing a game? Is it because people are getting used to the ‘uncomplicated’? It’s much easier to binge-watch hours of movies and TV episodes than to use those same hours to read a book.
As an author of Horror books, this conclusion saddens me. The stories created in the books should serve as a fundamental element of inspiration, or even the theme, of Horror games.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Horror games. I even play Dead By Daylight. I’m pretty bad, but I play, lol. And when we are playing, or watching the videos of matches on YouTube channels, we can feel all the adrenaline and intense terror that these games provide. So I always ask myself, didn’t the inspiration of the creators, even those that are the result of a movie, come from a passion for Horror books first? I like to think so.
Threads that Bind 
6 responses to “Horror Games: Why Aren’t Books the Biggest Source of Inspiration for Them?”
What an interesting post. Let me first offer a disclaimer: I am not a fan of horror games which all seem to center around hiding, sneaking, and running for your life. I prefer to go through a game with a weapon in my hand and a fighting chance. But addressing the concern you raise late in your post, allow me to allay some of your sadness.
The latest ranking information a Google search showed me was for 2021 at which time The Guardian listed horror books as the #5-selling genre. Since then (source, Nielson BookScan) horror book sales were up 54% in 2023, and up 34% in the first three months of 2024 over the same period of 2023, so being a horror writer is definitely not a dying art.
As to why books don’t inspire more games, that’s harder to say. Perhaps game designers with their focus on the digital would rather kick back with a movie than spend that two hours reading a fraction of a book they may never come back to. Perhaps it’s because books only “show” what the author chooses to describe, as opposed to a movie in which you can see everything going on in the background. Or maybe, to return to my cynical roots for a moment, it’s that most books (unless you’re Stephen King) don’t track in the millions-of-dollar sales, but when a movie makes $100M plus, the development team says, “That’s what we’re going after right there!”
Whatever the reason, horror fans seem to have no shortage of titles to choose from; GoG, the online game seller, lists 360+ horror titles in their catalogue, so there is no dearth of creepy settings to journey through. There’s plenty of enjoyment to had out there for any horror fan, and I wish you the best of it. And best of luck solving the mystery you raise here as well; I hardly think I’ve answered it, but it’s a question worth exploring.
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I don’t know if it’s because I am a horror author and love to play horror games that it’s hard for me to understand why creators don’t use books more often as inspiration. But you listed a few good points here.
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You ask why don’t horror books serve as inspiration for horror games; well, maybe it’s because basing a game on a book is too time-consuming and resource-intensive. And ditto for movies being based on books. In both cases, preparing a script (for a game) or a screenplay (for a movie) before pitching the book would probably help. I know some authors have done this, or hired someone to do it for them; but that’s a lot of work in the former case, and a lot of money in the latter. Speaking for myself, I have no experience writing scripts or screenplays, so I’d have to either take the time to learn how to do it, or pay someone else to do it – and I find both paths daunting.
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I see your point, but it shouldn’t be us authors pitching the game developers but them reading our books and immediately being inspired by them. I know, it’s too much to ask, more like a wish, but a girl can dream, right? lol
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Great post and, like you, I’m a little surprised there aren’t more games inspired by horror novels and stories. There are certainly plenty of rich worlds out there that would be fun to explore on a gaming platform.
That said, Dredge is an interesting example (and one of the few games on the list I’ve actually played) since it very much does feel like it was written by someone who had read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, possibly along with stories by other authors who’ve written in the Cthulhu Mythos. Then again, Lovecraft is one of those authors who achieved something truly magical in that his characters are arguably better known than the stories where they first appeared.
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I totally agree with you.
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