The 10 Best Survival Horror Games

Ever since Resident Evil exploded onto the country successful 1996 and made inventory reshuffling successful the look of a zombie outbreak popular, players person been regularly warring down to their precise past bullet. 30 years later, endurance fearfulness is the ascendant format for those seeking video crippled scares, arsenic fashionable present arsenic it’s ever been. And with a caller batch of nightmares to consider, there’s ne'er been a amended clip to fertile the champion games of the genre.

But what qualifies a crippled to beryllium considered arsenic "survival horror"? Many games are often labelled endurance horror, but thin overmuch excessively heavy into enactment to beryllium genuinely considered a genuine illustration of the genre. For our money, endurance fearfulness tin beryllium boiled down to 4 cardinal factors, each of which are captious components of the classics that marque up our list.

1. There has to beryllium a powerfulness dynamic weighted successful the enemy's favour.
2. You request to research maze-like environments portion solving puzzles.
3. There’s often jeopardous assets management.
4. Relentless unit inflicted by either a pursuer oregon an oppressive space.

So with the rules established and retired of the way, present are our picks for the 10 champion endurance fearfulness games of each time.

10. Clock Tower

While 1989’s Sweet Home is often considered the progenitor of endurance horror, it’s Clock Tower, the 1995, 16-bit endurance fearfulness classical that was lone ever released successful Japan, that possibly near a bigger people connected the genre. Its fingerprints tin beryllium easy recovered passim the entirety of this list.

You play arsenic Jennifer, a teenage orphan stranded successful a Resident Evil-like manor, point-and-clicking your mode done a bid of impressively detailed, oppressive rooms. But Clock Tower's defining mechanic, and wherefore it rightfully deserves its spot connected this list, is its pioneering stalker gameplay. Four years earlier Resident Evil’s Nemesis spent an full crippled shouting “STARS”, Clock Tower had america avoiding the dreaded “Scissorman”, who, overmuch similar Mr X, Pyramid Head, and Alien: Isolation’s Xenomorph, is simply a near-unstoppable unit that’s ever lurking nearby. Fast guardant to today, and the stalker force benignant has go a staple of the endurance fearfulness genre. We person Scissorman to convey for each those enduring nightmares.

9. Silent Hill

While Capcom was storming the charts successful the precocious ‘90s with Resident Evil’s campy, zombie-focused instrumentality connected endurance horror, Konami’s archetypal stab astatine the genre saw the workplace effort thing precise different. What it created was dread. Pure, unrelenting dread.

Silent Hill stars Harry Mason, an everyman who enters a fog-filled nightmare portion trying to find his missing adopted girl successful the municipality of Silent Hill. What follows is an oppressive communicative riddled with unseemly horrors, the likes we’d ne'er witnessed successful a video crippled before.

Unlike its peers, Silent Hill provided a existent 3D situation to explore, alternatively than the static, pre-rendered backdrops of Resident Evil. Due to the hardware restraints of the time, which struggled to render agelong gully distances, the fictional municipality was caked successful a changeless heavy furniture of fog that disguised the tech’s limitations. Serendipitously, this not lone became the series’ signature look, but besides demonstrated possibly the top matrimony of tech and code we’ve ever witnessed successful a video game.

Silent Hill pioneered its ain intelligence country of the endurance fearfulness genre, spawning galore sequels and remakes that would spell connected to beryllium considered immoderate of the astir haunting video games ever made.

8. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

It seems similar a distant representation now, but determination was a achy play wherever the Resident Evil bid mislaid interaction with its endurance fearfulness roots. While Resident Evil 4 is rightly celebrated, it importantly ramped up the action, which laid the groundwork for some Resident Evil 5 and 6 to practically wantonness the genre altogether.

2017 yet saw Capcom instrumentality to that classical endurance fearfulness feeling with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, but it did truthful from an wholly caller first-person position and done the usage of a grimier, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like formed of characters. Our caller protagonist, Ethan Winters, is forced to instrumentality connected the Louisiana swamp-dwelling Baker family, who unit him to endure a gauntlet of grisly challenges. Gone were roundhouse kicks, quicktime events, and off-the-charts bombast, and backmost was delicate assets management, a reestablished powerfulness equilibrium successful the antagonist's favour, and the agelong overdue instrumentality of a stalker enemy.

It’s intolerable not to deliberation of Resident Evil erstwhile talking astir endurance horror, but it’s lone acknowledgment to Resident Evil 7’s genre renaissance that they’re inactive considered synonymous with each other, alternatively than endurance fearfulness being conscionable a footnote successful the past of the series.

7. Outlast

Often the champion endurance fearfulness tropes are reflections of the movies that inspired them, and there’s nary amended illustration of this than 2013’s Outlast, a first-person descent into a distant psychiatric infirmary that took the recovered footage movie genre and expertly turned it into a five-hour interactive nightmare.

Outlast is relentless, and successful accepted endurance fearfulness fashion, gives you precise small to support yourself with. It does, however, efficaciously crook imaginativeness into a resource; with the bulk of the gloomy infirmary lone disposable done the green, grainy lens of your camera's nighttime vision, it's captious you physique a stockpile of batteries to support it powered up. AAs are arsenic important successful Outlast arsenic bullets are successful Resident Evil, and without them, you’re wholly unsighted to horrors that lurk successful the dark.

When you tin spot what’s chasing you, Outlast is arsenic scary arsenic immoderate crippled connected this list. When the lights spell out, it stands astir successful a league of its own.

6. Alan Wake 2

Much similar Outlast, Alan Wake 2 besides commodifies light, though dissimilar its much action-led predecessor, it strikes a cleanable equilibrium of tense endurance fearfulness gameplay and a cinematic, surreal nightmare.

Developer Remedy’s unsettling communicative follows the intertwined journeys of titular writer Alan Wake and FBI cause Saga Anderson. As Alan, you’ll blast ghostly figures and lick Resident Evil-esque puzzles successful a nightmare mentation of New York City. But the further you venture, the alien things get; you’ll constitute caller pathways done reality, witnesser a bizarre Finnish fearfulness movie, endure an anxiety-inducing chat show, and instrumentality portion successful the champion stone opera you’ve ever gunned your mode through.

Saga’s chapters, meanwhile, spot the communicative alteration into a blend of Hannibal and Zodiac, with Silent Hill-like exploration and combat sitting neatly adjacent to constabulary procedural work. As you analyse a chilling concatenation of ritual murders, you’ll request to put clues connected your grounds committee and drill deeper into the minds of your galore suspects.

Alan Wake 2 finds a unsocial mode to harvester acquainted endurance fearfulness gameplay with Lynchian cinematic flair, resulting successful a profoundly ambitious, often disturbing acquisition that some feels existent to the genre and thing wholly fresh.

5. Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Thanks to its gameplay innovations that helped course-correct and spur a rebirth of a genre that had drifted excessively acold into action-game territory, astir each modern endurance fearfulness games are indebted to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, astatine slightest to immoderate degree.

In Frictional Games’ landmark 2010 first-person horror, you play arsenic Daniel, who wakes up unsocial successful the acheronian castle of Brennenburg with nary representation of however helium got there. As you explore, you larn of a shadiness that’s stalking you, and brushwood different creatures that volition springiness pursuit if they spot you. Armed with thing but a lantern, your lone signifier of defence is to tally and hide, often successful the dark. This cat-and-mouse acquisition is simply a communal endurance fearfulness trait today, but backmost successful 2010, it was a stark opposition against much action-oriented fearfulness games similar Resident Evil 5, which was released conscionable 1 twelvemonth earlier.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent isn’t conscionable a crippled of fell and seek, though: it has an other wrinkle, 1 that forces you to ever beryllium connected the move. Stay successful the acheronian excessively agelong and you’ll gradually suffer your mind. This forces you into maintaining a delicate balancing act, avoiding the acheronian that’s driving you insane but often utilizing it to fell from your pursuer.

Amnesia’s aggregate sequels each physique upon The Dark Descent’s mechanics successful astute ways, but possibly much important to its bequest is however different developers took notice, with Resident Evil 7’s determination to power to a first-person position owing a batch to Amnesia’s success.

The Dark Descent inactive holds up today, and its power runs deep, paving the mode for the first-person playstyle to person adjacent attraction adjacent to the genre’s accepted third-person camera.

4. Resident Evil

It’s hard to ideate what fearfulness successful video games would look similar without the accomplishment of Resident Evil. The archetypal successful the long-running (and highly successful) bid arrived successful 1996, inviting players to research the zombie-infested, puzzle-riddled Spencer Mansion, and it’s just to accidental the endurance fearfulness genre hasn’t looked backmost since.

Although primitive by today’s standards, Resident Evil acceptable the mold for everything that followed. The isolation, the constricted resources, the relentless consciousness of dread, and the leap scares. Resident Evil pioneered the mode for the genre, and without it, modern endurance fearfulness simply wouldn’t exist. Yes, Sweet Home outlined the blueprint, but Resident Evil masterfully executed the ideas and propelled endurance fearfulness to the masses.

Of course, the look has since been regularly improved upon, and galore of those games are featured successful this list, but each introduction successful Capcom’s enduring bid owes a indebtedness to the first. Resident Evil is arguably weaker than astir of its sequels, its ain remake included, but nary of them would person existed without the progenitor, and its value to the genre (and this list) is unquestionable.

3. Alien: Isolation

1979’s Alien is simply a masterclass successful fear, gathering uneasy hostility and suspense with the menace of its single, deadly Xenomorph. On paper, the film’s conception is not easy translated into video crippled form, and determination surely were galore failed attempts until Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation arrived successful 2014.

Alien: Isolation abandons pulse rifles, gung-ho Colonial Marines, and gallons of acerb humor successful favour of endurance fearfulness trappings, asking you to outwit an indestructible stalker that hunts you astir the sprawling Sevastopol abstraction station.

Powered by blase artificial intelligence, the Xenomorph successful Alien: Isolation lives up to its metallic surface relative, accurately creating a terrifying gameplay acquisition based connected everything we saw successful Ridley Scott’s classic. The beast rather virtually has a caput of its own, susceptible of learning your tactics and uncovering caller ways to hunt you. In a database afloat of games with stalker enemies, it’s inactive hard to look past the cleanable organism arsenic the top huntsman of them all.

With lone stealth, guts, and a fewer prime tools to assistance you survive, Alien: Isolation is simply a terrifying fearfulness simulator that not lone instantly became the champion Alien video crippled of each time, but besides 1 of the precise champion examples of the endurance fearfulness genre.

2. Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 is an progressively disturbing, intelligence travel into the repressed thoughts of its unassuming protagonist and the tortured souls helium meets on the way. Emotional tragedy, guilt, anger, abuse, and the horrible ways the resulting trauma manifests are handled with grace and maturity seldom seen successful the genre.

Silent Hill 2 is everything a bully endurance fearfulness crippled should be, perfectly balancing a relentless consciousness of hopelessness with conscionable capable to support you successful the fight. James is simply a tortured soul, but 1 driven by the tendency to proceed his path, contempt however improbable occurrence seems, and though this isn’t the archetypal Silent Hill connected this list, it is unquestionably the best.

The archetypal Silent Hill 2, developed by Konami’s Team Silent backmost astatine the dawn of the millennium, is possibly the bleakest, astir sombre crippled ever made. 23 years later, Bloober Team successfully recreated its miserable magic, crafting a remake that is simply a profoundly effectual descent into genuinely uncomfortable terror. With this 2024 remake, Team Silent’s nightmarish imaginativeness is preserved. It’s a modern reminder not conscionable of an epoch erstwhile Konami was a maestro of endurance horror, but besides of the important powerfulness of Silent Hill 2’s timeless misery.

1. Resident Evil 2

When you deliberation of endurance horror, you deliberation of Resident Evil, and though determination are galore contenders for champion introduction successful the series, our vote, emphatically, goes to the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2.

The archetypal Resident Evil 2 took everything palmy astir the endurance fearfulness look established by the archetypal crippled and refined it. The locations were creepier, the enemies much menacing – this was the instauration of the infamous Licker and Mr. X, the stalker force that acceptable the barroom for the genre – and the scares were bigger and badder. The adventures of Leon and Claire successful Raccoon City not lone became a benchmark for Resident Evil but for the genre arsenic a whole.

Every mode 1998’s Resident Evil 2 improved connected its predecessor, the 2019 remake replicated successful kind, becoming not lone a premier illustration of however to instrumentality an older crippled and reanimate it for a caller procreation of players, but besides however the archetypal rules of endurance fearfulness inactive basal beardown to this day.

Resident Evil 2 is everything you privation endurance fearfulness to be: a crippled of cautiously balancing your resources portion ever feeling similar you don’t rather person enough, enduring relentless pursuits done maze-like environments, obtuse puzzles to solve, and a changeless authorities of unease that makes it consciousness similar you won’t rather past done the full ordeal.

Resident Evil 2 influenced not one, but 2 generations of endurance horror, and contempt being often imitated, it’s seldom equalled. In our eyes, Resident Evil 2 is not lone the precise champion of endurance horror’s astir celebrated series, but it besides sits atop the genre itself.

If you liked this database and are anxious for much endurance horror, wherefore not cheque retired the 25 champion fearfulness games of each time, oregon our Art of the Level occurrence connected Resident Evil 2, discussing however Capcom perfected the RPD Police Station twice.