Horror games, more than almost any other genre, are known for their tense gameplay loop and branching narratives, relying on players to make the right choice in key moments or else face the consequences of their actions or inactions. Sometimes this boils down to pure item management, like Resident Evil‘s ammo conservation and limited inventory, other times it’s the life or death of a friend or party member, and on rarer occasions, it may be something so vital as the death of the universe itself by the hands of a cosmic being.
Whether fighting off undead hordes or a deity, players will always be faced with challenges big and small. Often, even the lightest of these challenges hold consequences that ring through the rest of the game, if not deeper into the player’s psyche. These are some of the more interesting looks into player decisions and the impact they make on the game.
10 Clock Tower
Unlike its contemporaries, Silent Hill and Resident Evil, Clock Tower is a ’90s survival horror classic that went without its fair share of attention from studios and audiences alike. Aside from an attempted reboot a few years ago in the form of NightCry, the franchise mainly lives on in the fond memories of retro fanatics.
The main difference with Clock Tower is its point-and-click gameplay, setting it aside from the 3D games that found an easier ride onto next-gen consoles. The series doesn’t lack tension, however, and has several outcomes based on player reactions in its scenarios, which are split up between two characters a lot like classic Resident Evil games.
9 Dead Rising
Goofy as Dead Rising may be, the first game’s survival horror aspects are fantastic, as the player must make tough decisions regarding not only their resource management but also their fellow survivors.
While balancing various tasks around the Willamette Parkview Mall, the player will often come across survivors trying to secure their positions in various shops and locales. The player is encouraged to rescue these people and bring them back to the safe house where they can await their eventual rescue. However, this can be a hard task to complete when the player is overrun on all sides and lost in the labyrinthian layouts of the mall. More often than not, players will find themselves unable to save everyone, as the zombie hordes overpower NPCs before they can even be met.
8 Telltale’s The Walking Dead
Another classic zombie survive-em-up, Telltale’s The Walking Dead series is a wonderful look at inevitability, as the player will often be given decisions that seem impossible to choose and will likely end up irrelevant in the end due to a slip-up down the line. The difference in TWD’s decisions is that they’re often built-up to devastating ends, with the ever-looming Telltale line “this action will have consequences.”
While Telltale’s development cycle may have been troubled, gamers were at least given resolution on the part of Clementine and Lee. The Walking Dead quickly became a fan-favorite narrative in the gaming world, on-par with the greatest cinematic experiences of the generation.
7 Call Of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu is an interesting look at the world of adaptations. It seems as though, in the many years since his passing, Lovecraft himself has cursed every adaptation of his work to either fail miserably or else go under the radar. Between last-gen’s Call of Cthulhu and The Sinking City, the cycle remains uninterrupted, as most audiences found themselves horribly disappointed in these titles.
While they didn’t get their deserved reviews on release due to a myriad of bugs and jank, Cyanide’s horror adventure became a bit of an overlooked gem. It presents the player with seemingly impossible odds that change and waver with the slightest decisions throughout the campaign.
6 Vampire: Coteries Of New York
Unlike its predecessors, Coteries of New York takes a more traditional narrative approach to the Vampire: The Masquerade universe. It places the player in a vampire’s shoes in the midst of a power struggle between two of the biggest vampiric factions in New York.
The special part of this visual novel is that it’s not only immersive but feels almost like a tabletop narrative unwinding at the player’s fingertips. The decisions are important in their own right, but also change the attitude of the character, making them more likely to react to situations depending on the player’s previous input. It’s a lot more like a DM deciding how situations will play out for players based on their alignments and personalities, and it’s a perfect adaptation for the TTRPG.
5 The Shrouded Isle
The Shrouded Isle is a lot like its sister game, Cultist Simulator, in that it brings players into a morally grey area in which they must manage their respective cultish organizations. In turn, this ends up managing the return of the Great Ones and their subsequent response to the way the cult is being handled.
Every season, players must pick sacrifices for their higher beings, meaning cult resources can be endangered if the wrong choices are made. Stemming from this, there’s also an action/reaction system put into place by the player as their cult leader must punish or reward cultists’ behaviors and make decisions based on their productivity and personalities.
4 Resident Evil
Not only is this classic remake known for its tense resource management, but Resident Evil is also praised for the consequences that come from brash gameplay. Like a grand puzzle, every item and consumable has its place, and the misuse of a single bullet can make a world of difference when staving off the undead monstrosities stalking the Spencer Mansion.
The real treat of the HD remake is that it adds quite a few more twists to the survival horror classic, including Crimson Heads that, if not dispatched properly, can be a real nuisance later in the game. These creatures and more consume precious health and ammo at twice the speed of their counterparts.
3 Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma
Much like its peer, Danganronpa, the Zero Escape series places players in a dangerous game with deadly reactions and devastating twists.
Alongside Phoenix Wright, Zero Escape is considered one of the greatest visual novel narrative games out there. Where this differs from other titles, however, is in its much stronger narrative devices and more abstract storytelling relative to Danganronpa’s limited breadth of narrative impact. The characters all get their moments to shine, and players find themselves invested in their stories equally by the game’s end. While the Zero Escape titles have been overshadowed by the more popular modern visual novels, they’re all worth a look, and fans of the genre won’t be disappointed with what they find here.
2 World Of Horror
World of Horror is an instant classic, regardless of its early-access banner. Taking inspiration from old PC RPGs and combining the low-bit aesthetic with modern addictive roguelike gameplay and convoluted cosmic horror, World of Horror is a gem for fans of the genre.
There are several mysteries in World of Horror that all have different endings based on how the player approaches gameplay decisions throughout the storyline. Every playthrough brings players a fresh delivery regardless of how many times a campaign has been experienced.
1 Pathologic 2
In a lot of ways, Pathologic 2 is a modern Majora’s Mask, where every choice matters in the short span of time before inevitable doom. Returning to their hometown in the midst of a terrible plague, the player must make their own choices as to how they’ll handle the sickness, either saving their friends and family or taking survival into their own hands with organ harvesting and antidotal studies.
Be warned, this game is for a niche audience, and likely won’t be appreciated to its full extent if players go in looking for a big bold triple-A experience. Pathologic 2 is all doom and gloom, and expects, even wants players to quit midway out of frustration. The game takes pleasure in its required calculations, and subsequent hopelessness upon realizing making an impact on the events of the game is unlikely at best.
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