What's considered 'scary' differs from person to person, so the horror genre has a lot of aspects that it can play with. In horror games, you have to brave 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:all kinds of different scares to get to the end. Many things widely considered scary only exist🍸 in fiction as far as we know, like monsters and ghouls.
But there ar🥀e countless incidents that have happened and locations that exist in real life that strike fear in people. Plenty of horror games might seem totally fictitious, but actually take inওspiration from real events and places. However, you might have no idea until after the fact.
Updated on September 3, 2023 by Jouanna Bondakji: They say no idea is truly original, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Countless games have come about from real events or concepts that inspired them. Real life can be stranger than fiction, so there are absolutely cases where strange or tragic events have directly inspired horror games. We've added more games inspired by true events, and they probably won't be the last!
10 Cursed ♎Mountain - Mountainee♑r Tragedy
Sadly, it's not uncommon for people to go missing or perish while going mountain-climbing, especially if the mountain is particularly treacherous, like Everest. A man named Reinhold Messner managed to not only climb Mount Everest solo, but do it without any extra oxygen, which is an incredible feat.
Messner both inspired and is directly referenced in the game Cursed Mountain. He's one of the mountaineers the game's main antagonist has climbed with, alongside Barry Bishop and Edmund Hillary. Also, in the game, a man named Eric must stop his brother who has unleashed evil spirits and creatures onto the world. This plot point was inspired by Messner tragically losing his mountaineer brother, Gunther, while they were descending a mountain together.
9 🔴 The Dark Pictures: Little Hope -ꦇ Witch Trials
As strange and foolish as they might seem to you in the present day, witch trials were a real thing back in the day. The 17th century Salem witch trials are the most popular, but there were others that occurred, including the ones in Andover. Though 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Little Hope takes place in a fictional town, it's still in the state of Massachusetts, where the Salem and Andover witch trials happened.
The game also moves between various time periods, a prominent one being the 1690s, when the Salem witch trials transpired. Little Hope's cast has doppelgangers from the past who experience the witch trials for themselves.
8 Resident Evil Village - Elizabeth Bathory ꧅
You probably know Lady Dimitrescu, even if you've never played 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil Village. This iconic evil mistress had many fans falling in love with her. But it's not as easy to accept a person's wicked acts when that person is real. Elizabeth Bathory was a noblewoman who allegedly engaged in many acts of torture on young women before killing them.
She's said to have bathed in her victims' blood, as well as performing other vampiric acts like biting their flesh off. Her husband is also said to have gifted her clawed gloves to help punish servants. Lady Dimitrescu is a noblewoman who has similar gloves for a similar torturous purpose, on top of a vampiric nature. Her three daughters are also based on the servants who supposedly helped Bathory with her acts, three of whom were executed as a result.
7 Chernobylite - The 🎃Chernobyl Disaster 🍬
The Chernobyl disaster is an infamous incident that happened in the 1980s, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Chernobylite heavily plays on its aftermath. In fact, the main area you play in is a 3D-scanned environment of the real Chernobyl disaster's exclusion zone. You play as a physicist who was working in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant before the disaster.
Chernobylite is a survival horror RPG where you have to gather resources and construct bases as you fight off enemies, both supernatural and human, as well as the environment itself. This game is probably the closest you can get to exploring the disaster's aftermath without actually setting foot there yourself.
6 The Town Of Light - Volter💙ra Psꦜychiatric Hospital
Volterra Psychiatric Hospital, also known as Volterra Asylum, is a real place in Italy. It was notorious for the staff's horrendous mistreatment of patients and was shut down 90 years after its opening. The Town of Light is a psychological horror game that uses Volterra Psychiatric Hospital as its setting.
In the game, you follow a teenage girl's point of view as you explore the hospital and witness events unfold through her eyes. The story can change depending on the choices you make. Though the Volterra Psychiatric Hospital in this game is a fictional version, the scenes in the game could be close to what real patients experienced and endured until the place shut down.
5 Silent Hill - Centra🔥li🎀a, Pennsylvania
The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Silent Hill games are known for their excellently ominous atmosphere, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:making you feel tense despite the town's desolation. If you've ever wondered how the developers came up with the setting of Silent Hill, the answer is that they were inspired by a real place. Centralia, Pennsylvania, used to be a regular mining town, but it was soon abandoned after a coal mine fire broke out.
Now, it's pretty much a ghost town. If you went there, you might be able to feel how empty and foreboding Silent Hill felt to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the game's protagonists. Supposedly, the fire in Centralia c🙈ontinues to burn even today.
4 𝕴Kholat - The Dyatlov Pass Incident
If you're knowledgeable in true crime, you've probably heard of the Dyatlov Pass incident, where nine students hiked to the Ural Mountains in Russia. They had seemingly vanished, until they were discovered deceased months later under strange circumstances. Kholat is a survival horror game that has you retracing the hikers' steps as famous actor Sean Bean narrates your investigation.
In Kholat, shadow monsters appear as you gather clues. They won't leave you to explore the mountains freely, chasing you as you look into the truth of the incident. The game puts an interesting spin on the events of Dyatlov Pass.
3 💝 Ou🌱tlast - Project MKUltra
Project MKUltra was a project conducted by the CIA in which they tested drugs and procedures meant to brainwash and mind-control humans. The fact that this was a real event in history is disturbing enough, but Outlastꦆ tak♔es inspiration from these events and amplifies them even further.
You play as a journalist investigating an asylum filled with patients who were subjected to experiments similar to MKUltra. Needless to say, they're not in their right minds anymore and attempt to kill you at every turn. There are dead patients and staff alike within the asylum, and you have to come to the bottom of the investigation while dodging all the murderous inmates.
2 Five Nights At Freddy's - Murder In Chuck E. Cheese
The setting of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Five Nights at Freddy's is clearly reminiscent of Chuck E. Cheese in many ways, and it's definitely not a coincidence. The inspiration behind the bloodthirsty animatronics is a real murder case that happened in 1993 in Aurora, Colorado. After closing for the night, four Chuck E. Cheese employees were tragically killed and one seriously injured while cleaning up when a former employee shot them.
In the game, you play as a security guard in charge of making sure everything goes smoothly every night. But when the place's iconic 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:animatronics come to life, what you should really be worried about is yourself. Of course, the game wasn't inspired by real animatronics gaining sentience and killing people, but it just goes to show that dark events grounded in reality can inspire horror that could only happen in fiction.
1 Neverending Nightmares - A Developer's Inner Struggles
Sometimes, it's not external factors that inspire your stories. This is the case with Neverending Nightmares, a psychological horror game inspired by the lead designer's struggles with his mental illness, as stated on . Matt Gilgenbach is fully transparent about how his battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression are the inspiration behind the game.
In Neverending Nightmares, the protagonist wakes up from a nightmare. Except he's not actually awake yet. You have to navigate the nightmarish world and dodge the symbolic creatures coming at you as you try to figure out what's real and what's just a projection of the protagonist's inner battles.