Horror games sometimes turn to the world of film for inspiration, often with fantastic results. Some games that are based on movies become classics of their own, like Alien: Isolation. Other games, like Dead by Daylight, draw heavily from the film universe of serial killers, masked horrors, and other things that go bump in the night.
Of course, not every horror movie-turned-game is a hit, and some fail to achieve the popularity and creep factor of their source material. Whether these titles are not that well-received or are simply forgotten by horror enthusiasts, they become lost to time, no matter how famous their original movie was.
10 Fright Night Lacked The Movie’s Charm
Based On Fright Night (1985)
Before Scary Movie lampooned horror flicks and played with their tropes for laughs, there was Fright Night. The 1985 movie centered around a teenager convinced that his next-door neighbor is a vampire. After not being taken seriously by friends and relatives, the teen turns to an actor who played a vampire hunter in movies. The movie was a love letter to 80s horror tropes and is still beloved today.
“The graphics are excellent and the SFX are nothing short of brilliant – I love the slurping noise when you bite someone, which restores your health incidentally – but the gameplay is very, very shallow.” Duncan Evans reported for the July 1989 issue of Amiga Computing Magazine.
The same can’t be said for the Amiga arcade game developed by Microdeal three years later, in 1988. Instead of following the movie’s protagonist, it let players control Jerry Dandridge, the movie’s vampire. While some critics praised the arcade game for its visuals and sound effects, the game adaptation of the movie ultimately failed to capture the essence of its inspiration and has since been forgotten by fans.
9 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Was Deemed “Too Violent”
Based On The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
In 1982, Wizard Video created an adventure game for the Atari that was meant to capture the horrors of the classic movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Despite the bright and happy colors, the game was one of the first horror games and was deemed “too violent” for audiences at the time.
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The title let players assume control of the movie’s horrifying villain, Leatherface, and run around killing as many victims as possible, stopping only when the chainsaw ran out of gas. Unfortunately, the game struggled to sell well because many stores refused to stock it.
Another attempt to bring this franchise to video games was made in 2023, with equally lackluster results. This latest attempt was an asynchronous multiplayer game, which relies on a strong player base to survive; unfortunately, the title has had an average of around 300 concurrent players over the last two months, making it another title left behind by fans.
8 Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi Is An Atmospheric Retelling
Based On Nosferatu (1922)
As long as people have been making movies, they’ve been fascinated by creating horrors on screen. Nosferatu is one of (if not the) oldest horror films, and it’s shaped the horror film and game industry since its creation in 1922.
Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi was an attempt by Idol FX to bring the classic black-and-white film to PC. In it, players searched the procedurally generated rooms of the vampire’s castle for people to rescue within a time limit. Although reviews were generally positive, praising the atmosphere and jump scares, the title simply didn’t have the lasting power of the classic movie.
7 The Ring: Terror’s Realm Tried To Emulate Resident Evil
Based On Ring (1998)
This entry might be cheating a little, since The Ring: Terror’s Realm, as well as both the American and Japanese versions of the Ring movie, were actually inspired by the 1991 novel Ringu by Koji Suzuki. In the end, it doesn’t matter anyway because the game was a flop that got buried in the past, perhaps rightfully so.
The 2000 Dreamcast title from Asmik Ace Entertainment added a new cast of characters to the Ring universe. It centers around CDC researcher Meg as she follows the trail of the mysterious RING program that killed four co-workers, including her boyfriend. The game was a clunky clone of Resident Evil with frustrating controls and an unoriginal story.
It was also fully—and perhaps unfortunately—fully voice-acted in English. YouTuber Tangomushi has a fascinating interview with Meg’s voice actress, who shares that she accepted an invitation from “some guy” who “offered me like 300,000 yen to do the voice for the game that I’ve never heard of.“
6 The Thing Was Initially A Commercial Success
Based On The Thing (1982)
Unlike some of the other games in this list, the 2002 title The Thing wasn’t a bad game. In fact, the third person FPS sold over a million copies when it was released for the Xbox, PS2, and PC, marking it as a commercial success.
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Developed by Computer Artworks and published by Black Label Games on PC and Konami on consoles, The Thing took place in the aftermath of the movie by the same name and even features a cameo of John Carpenter. However, in the years since its release, the title has fallen by the wayside and been forgotten. Interest in the title couldn’t even be reignited by a 2024 reboot by Nightdive Studios, which has just over 800 ratings on its Steam page at the time of this writing.
5 The Saw Series Ended After Just Two Games
Based On Saw (2001)
The Saw franchise is incredibly successful, currently working toward a (delayed) release of its 11th movie. The video game series was supposed to follow a similar trajectory, with Konami planning to turn it into the next Silent Hill.
Unfortunately, this didn’t quite pan out for the studio, and the only games in the series released to date were the 2009 Saw and its 2010 sequel, Saw 2: Flesh & Blood, both developed by Zombie Studios. Both titles managed to recreate the feel of the film series in game form, but were blasted for poor controls and combat.
4 Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Was A Quirky Reimagining Of The Classic
Based On Friday The 13th (1980)
Instead of trying to recreate the terror of Friday the 13th, developer Blue Wizard Digital decided to go in the other direction with their 2018 title, Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle. Like the 1982 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game, this colorful “cute” game let you play not as a survivor, but as the killer.
Killer Puzzle placed Jason Voorhees into over 100 levels across multiple iconic locations and plenty of more outlandish options, like outer space. To progress, players helped Jason track down and kill quirky characters by solving puzzles. Although reviews for this off-kilter joke version of Friday the 13th weren’t bad, the game was delisted from storefronts on all platforms in 2023.
3 Blair Witch Was An Ambitious Game From Bloober Team
Based On The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Today, Bloober Team is known for its stellar remaking of Silent Hill 2, which received positive reviews across the board and showed what it was capable of creating. But Silent Hill 2 wasn’t the team’s first game, and it certainly wasn’t their first take on an established IP.
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Bloober Team released Blair Witch in 2019 as an ambitious take on survival horror and stealth. Instead of being a retelling of the movie’s events, Blair Witch took place two years later and focused on the aftermath. Despite an extensive marketing campaign and excellent graphics, the game sold no more than around 260k copies according to Gamalytic, and was mostly forgotten in the years since.
2 Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler’s Green “Made Zombies Seem Even Dumber”
Based On Land Of The Dead (2005)
Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler’s Green was a tie-in game to the post-apocalyptic horror film directed by George A. Romero. The title was released only a few months after the movie arrived in theaters, giving it a chance to ride on the film’s success. However, the Xbox and PC horror FPS, directed by Brainbox Games and published by Groove Games, was too much like the shovelware tie-in media of yore.
“As insane as it sounds to say it, this game manages to make zombies seem even dumber than a zombie ought to be.”
The game received generally negative reviews, earning it a spot on many gaming publications’ worst game of 2005 lists, including GameSpot, which blasted it: “As insane as it sounds to say it, this game manages to make zombies seem even dumber than a zombie ought to be.“
1 A Nightmare on Elm Street TBD
Based On A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
It’s hard to believe that a game based on A Nightmare on Elm Street can be lost to time, but everyone seems to have forgotten about this NES title from 1990. Developed by none other than Rare, the (checks notes) beat ’em up title let characters fight their way through baddies in the form of everything from cats, dogs, and rats, to zombies, skeletons, and minotaurs. Playable characters had a “sleep meter” which, when filled, would transport players to the Dream World, where they would be weaker against attacks from Freddy Krueger (who, of course, is also in the game).
The original idea for the game was, like many of the other horror games in this list, to let players control Freddy and be the one going on a rampage. Sadly, the final version of A Nightmare on Elm Street didn’t become a classic in the same way as the other horror video games based on horror games.
Source: Amiga Computing Magazine, Tangomushi/YouTube, The Thing Remastered/Steam, Gamalytic, GameSpot
