Analog Gaming: Arkham Horror and Survival Horror Games

Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark.  These names are instantly recognizable to gamers.  If you haven’t played the games or are not of fan of survival horror games you’re still aware of them and their meteoric rise to the top of the gaming charts (since to be replaced by the FPS).  But where did the idea of a survival horror come from and does it have parallels in the pen and paper, analog world of gaming?  The answer is of course that it does!

The survival horror genre of games takes a number of disparate elements and combines them to create a unique experience for the player.  The recipe looks something like this:  1 part horror movie, 3 parts adventure game, 2 part action game, 1 part RPG, and 4 parts paranoia and tension, mix, bake at 450 degrees. Viola!  Survival horror.  Resident Evil is usually pointed at as the first survival horror game, and the game created the label.  There were a numbers of video games released before Resident Evil that contained some, if not all, of the elements of the Survival Horror genre, the oldest being Infocom’s The Lurking Horror (1987). It was a text adventure game inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s writings and known for putting the player on the edge of their seat.

Capcom’s Sweet Home (1989) was a horror RPG while not the first graphical horror game (the Atari 2600 had a few but thy’re universally bad and fail to create the fear/tension that is the hallmark for the genre) is an early attempt at creating a game that recreates the fear and tension that horror movies aim at.  Sweet Home has been acknowledge as one of the prime influences on Resident Evil.

The other big influence was Infogrames’ Alone in the Dark (1992) series.  Alone in the Dark was a third person 3-d adventure game that put the player in the role of a man (or woman) trapped in a house consumed by evil, and while combat played a role in the game it was secondary to exploration and puzzle solving.

With Resident Evil, the genre was labeled and came into its own.   The franchise was wildly successful, despite its flaws (and there were many:  clunky slow controls, mixed visuals often too dark, inflated difficulty through item scarcity, restricted saves (damn those ink cartridges), an incoherent story line, etc.)  No, the reason Resident Evil worked was that it gave the same chills and bumps that shock horror films do.  It kept you on the edge of your seat, it created tension and paranoia, and people loved it.  They still do in a way, though the franchise has moved closer and closer to becoming a FPS.

Survival horror didn’t start on consoles though.  The horror genre is old, remarkably old, and just a little younger than story telling itself.  Our oldest written sources are full of ghosts and nightmarish creatures.  Modern horror’s roots can be found in the 18th century.  Gothic horror rose in the mid 18th century and was focused on “an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere.”   It was this genre that Lovecraft made his own in the early twentieth century, coupling extreme emotion with alienation and existential horror. It is in the world of table-top RPGs that we find the earliest instance of a game attempting to evoke horror, tension, and paranoia in the player.

The Call of Cthulhu RPG was first released in 1981 and was set in the 1920-30’s that Lovecraft set his own stories the plots that players play start out innocent enough but usually end with the player’s character going insane, if not being horribly maimed or killed by some monstrosity.  Some of the game’s more prominent themes were awe and terror of the unknown and the price such knowledge had on the human psyche

In 1987 Call of Cthuhu was adapted for a board game:  The Call of Cthulhu: the Board Game. The board game attempted to distill Lovecraft’s mythos and the themes of the RPG into a board game that could be played in an hour or so opposed to days.   Unlike acting (on the screen or role-playing) that can create an atmosphere of paranoia and tension through editing and surprise, the board game does so by slowly escalating the difficulty of the game and putting a random time limit on the players before some terror is unleashed upon the earth, an encounter the players rarely survive .  These two things created the tension, paranoia, and at times the fear that are so essential to the horror genre.

I really enjoy Arkham Horror but it certainly isn’t for everyone:

There are hundreds of cards and tokens and the rules aren’t intuitive.  Despite this I love the game and it is possible to pick up the game on your own with a couple of understanding friends around to help you figure it out.  I’m always trying to rope 3 or 4 friends together to play the game, those who aren’t intimidated by the board inevitably find they’re having a good time.  If you’re not into competitive games Arkham Horror is perfect as everyone has to cooperate in order to beat the game.   If you’re looking for a less complicated co-op horror game A Touch of Evil is good as well.  So next time your power goes out whilst playing Resident Evil 5, light some candles, and pull out Arkham Horror and play to keep the terrors coming!

Resources:  Fantasy Flight Games – the publishers of Arkham Horror and its expansions, Flying Frog Productions – the publishers of A Touch of Evil, Chaosium – The publishers of Call of Cthulhu, Let’s Play Already: Arkham Horror – An in-depth play through of the game with commentary, pictures, and rule explanation, I used this to help me play my first game

Author: Jonathon

Would rather be out swimming, running, or camping. Works in state government. Spent a youth reading genre-fiction; today, he is making up for it by reading large quantities of non-fiction literature. The fact that truth, in every way, is more fascinating than fiction still tickles him. View all posts by Jonathon