The State of Horror Games in 2021: Not Too Horrifying

In the last several years, I’ve used the annual “The State of Horror” posts analyzing the horror game landscape to highlight how dire the situation is for the genre during the last console generation. A number of genres have been sacrificed at the altar of high-definition fidelity over the last decade, and this genre was one of them. It’s become tiring to point this out in so many words year over year.

It’s a good thing that won’t be necessary this time, because the offerings haven’t been that bad this year. High-budget examples remain gone, but that doesn’t mean importance shouldn’t be directed at still-impressive games with smaller budgets. They don’t present the level of photorealism some genre fans want, and they’re hardly as plentiful as they used to be (which applies to plenty of genres), but several options exist.

Some are lookers despite their lower budgets compared to AAA games, like The Medium, a psychological horror game that takes place between two realities. It first released on Xbox platforms and PC at the beginning of the year, while the PlayStation 5 version arrived in time for this month of horror in September.

The Dark Pictures Anthology from Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco has also continued since the first title released in 2019, with House of Ashes, the third installment (pictured above), releasing last Friday. Note the “anthology” in the name, which means the series will wrap up with The Devil in Me in 2022. The games reportedly don’t reach the heights of Until Dawn, the developer’s horror work prior to this series, but they’re good horror adventure games. There’s nothing suggesting that horror fans are only saying this because they’re the only games of their kind. Supermassive could continue to make games in this style, even if they have to partner with a different publisher, unless they have other plans and want to take a break from them.

Smaller and stylized experiences have also been worth paying attention to. Little Nightmares II follows in the footsteps of the first one, involving a boy who has to survive through a miniature-though-harsh world while seeking help from survivors he meets along the way. It’s as solid as the first game, though there are questions as to whether it will receive another follow-up with developer Tarsier Studios being purchased by Embracer Group, while the Little Nightmares games were published and remain owned by Bandai Namco. But nothing’s stopping them from working on a spiritual successor. There was also Mundaun, a first-person game that garnered a number of solid reviews but flew under the radar after it released earlier this year.

It’s also been a good time for remasters of titles that might have been overlooked when they first released, worthwhile reissues in a time when developers are still reeling from their pipelines being interrupted by a pandemic. Alan Wake Remastered released for all non-Switch current-generation platforms (though it could maybe release for the platform eventually) many years after being an Xbox console exclusive, and follow-up American Nightmare should come soon behind it.

Koei Tecmo also released Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water for all current platforms after it originally released for Wii U between 2014 and 2015 in Japan and western territories, respectively. Even though it’s a port, it’s the first newer Fatal Frame to release on non-Nintendo platforms since the third game on PlayStation 2, and could be a sign of things to come for the franchise if this performs well enough. For another port of an older Japanese game: Corpse Party, originally localized for PSP, was rereleased for current systems last week.

The only horror game released within the last year that counts as high budget is Capcom’s Resident Evil Village, which was received about as well as predecessor Resident Evil 7: biohazard critically. It’s since become the fastest-selling game in the Resident Evil franchise by reaching five million copies sold. Story-related downloadable content is planned for the game, but precisely when that will come is anyone’s guess. It’s a shame Capcom isn’t facing any competition for the big-budget horror throne, but it’s clear most publishers don’t think the horror genre is big enough for them to pump millions upon millions into the budget of a single game. RE remains because it’s an older franchise, they feel, and they might be right.

The 2022 lineup is also encouraging, and it’s hardly complete yet. In addition to the RE Village DLC that I assume will come eventually and The Dark Pictures Anthology’s fourth and final installment, titles like Ghostwire: Tokyo, Scorn, and The Outlast Trials are due for release during the year. There’s also Dying Light 2, though how far the game will lean into horror themes remains to be seen. The same will apply to Evil Dead: The Game given the tone of every Evil Dead work outside the first film. A video game adaptation of A Quiet Place is also on the way, though there’s no current way to determine how big an effort this will be. That this much is already known about next year’s software is a good sign for the genre, even if, again, there are unlikely to be many high-budget examples. Even if, say, a Silent Hill game is in development from a Konami partner, it would take a while to surface.

In the meantime, this entire month has marked a good opportunity to play a bunch of horror games, which should explain why three of the aforementioned remasters released in the last few weeks. They make for fitting distractions from the horrors of the outside world.