10 Years Later, A Legendary Horror Franchise Could Help Save Survival Games

"All of those modern games have something in common: they're asymmetric multiplayer titles riffing on a playstyle popularized by 2016's Dead by Daylight, which features a four-player team of survivors trying to escape from a supernatural murderer controlled by a fifth player. DbD and many of the games that use this format are popular, but it's become a predictable template for licensed horror games over the last decade, giving a mechanical uniformity to a group of titles that could've each offered a loving, hyper-specific experience."

"The first of two anticipated licensed games coming from the developers (the other being the recently announced John Wick game), Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival is being presented as a tried-and-true first-person survival horror game, evoking the frantic combat, resource management, and puzzle-solving of classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill with the immersive aesthetic of Alien: Isolation."

Horror movie adaptations in video games began in the 1980s with titles like Halloween on Atari 2600 and A Nightmare on Elm Street on NES. Recent high-profile adaptations of franchises like Friday the 13th, The Evil Dead, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre predominantly follow the asymmetric multiplayer format popularized by Dead by Daylight, where survivors escape from a player-controlled killer. This template has created mechanical uniformity across licensed horror games. Saber Interactive's Hellraiser: Revival offers a departure by adopting a first-person survival horror approach reminiscent of Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Alien: Isolation, featuring protagonist Aidan Lynch attempting to rescue his girlfriend from the Cenobites in Hell.

Read at Inverse