WHAT TO PLAY
Survival horror
142 games in the catalog
Survival horror is a genre in which the player is too weak to simply shoot the threat away. Ammunition is scarce, healing items scarcer, the inventory is small, and the setting loops back on you as a trap you have to cross again. The fear comes less from what appears on screen than from arithmetic: three bullets left, and something is moving behind the door.
The name stuck around 1996 with the first Resident Evil, but the roots go further back. Capcom's Sweet Home (1989) built a horror game around a party of characters trapped in a haunted mansion, and Alone in the Dark (1992) around polygonal characters moving in front of painted backdrops. Capcom turned these ideas into a formula, and Konami, Tecmo and Silicon Knights each bent it their own way: towards psychology, ghosts, madness.
The genre lasted because it adapts to technology. The camera slid behind the hero's back and later into first person; the dread moved from stately mansions to space stations, subway tunnels and virtual reality. The core stays the same: scarcity and uncertainty.
Today (2015 onwards)
47 games in the catalogAfter 2015 the field split. The big series returned to close-range fear: Resident Evil 7 (2017) shut the player in a single decaying farmstead in first person, and remakes like Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Dead Space (2023) carried the classics onto current hardware. Smaller studios brought subgenres that big publishers rarely risk: asymmetric multiplayer in Dead by Daylight, philosophical horror in SOMA, a card roguelike in Inscryption. Virtual reality and mobile horror games joined in. The genre no longer has one centre: fear is sold as a mansion, a space station or a deck of cards.
PC Little Nightmares III
After two entries by Tarsier Studios, Supermassive Games takes over the series, the atmosphere stays intact.
PS5 Silent Hill f
The first Silent Hill set in 1960s Japan; the script was written by Ryukishi07, creator of Higurashi.
PCVR Metro Awakening
A VR prequel to Metro 2033 from the creators of Arizona Sunshine; a doctor searches for his wife in the tunnels.
PS5 Silent Hill: The Short Message
A short, intimate probe into guilt and mental anguish - an unusually personal psychological horror.
PS5 Slitterhead
Action horror from the creator of Silent Hill: the player jumps from body to body mid-fight.
PS5 The Outlast Trials
A co-op survival horror without weapons — the only way to survive is running and hiding.
PS5 Alan Wake 2
After 13 years, a full-blooded horror about two characters whose stories intertwine.
Alan Wake II
A survival horror sequel thirteen years later; two storylines linked by the Dark Place and Bright Falls.
Series Dredge
A fishing adventure with horror elements; fatigue at night warps both the map and the player's perception.
PSVR2 Resident Evil 4 VR Mode
The famous RE4 remake free in VR; reloading and aiming for weak points is now down to your own hands.
PSVR2 Resident Evil Village VR Mode
The whole Village free in VR; turning your head around corners cranks up the tension a notch.
Switchback VR
A PSVR2 launch on-rails horror game; movement is automated so you can focus purely on shooting.
The HD generation (2005–2014)
41 games in the catalogResident Evil 4 (2005) moved the camera over the hero's shoulder and made aiming a manual job; fixed cameras and tank controls were gone. Dead Space (2008) went further: health and ammo readouts live inside the game world, on the suit and above the weapon, and enemies are stopped by shooting off limbs. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era brought dark shooters such as Metro 2033, where ammunition doubles as currency, while on PC defenceless horror games like Amnesia (2010) appeared. Alien: Isolation (2014) built a whole game around a single creature that keeps hunting you.
X360 Alien: Isolation
Vetřelec na starším Xboxu čekal ve stejné ventilaci, jen s prostším obrazem.
Mobil Five Nights at Freddy's
A horror classic with animatronics and a camera system; it kicked off an entire phenomenon.
PS4 Metro 2033 Redux
A reworked release built on the Last Light engine; same story, smoother shooting and AI.
PS4 Metro: Last Light Redux
The Redux edition merged stealth infiltration and shootouts into one style and added all the DLC.
XONE The Evil Within
A classic survival horror from Shinji Mikami, where reality crumbles into bloody visions.
X360 Metro: Last Light
A post-apocalyptic stealth horror set in the Moscow metro; moral choices change the ending.
PC Outlast
A horror game seen through a journalist's camera in an abandoned asylum; your only gear is the camera and your legs.
PS3 The Last of Us
The post-apocalyptic story of Joel and Ellie, about loss, guilt, and fragile hope.
X360 Resident Evil 6
Four interconnected campaigns, four tones of horror, from classic survival to military action.
3DS Resident Evil: Revelations
A chilling survival horror on an abandoned cruise ship that has nothing to be ashamed of next to its console siblings.
PS3 Silent Hill HD Collection
A remastered collection of Silent Hill 2 and 3 for one console generation.
PS3 Silent Hill: Downpour
A survival horror about an escaped convict; rain signals the shift into a darker world.
The arrival of 3D (1995–2004)
41 games in the catalogWith the PlayStation and Saturn the genre settled. Resident Evil (1996) combined fixed cameras, 'tank' controls, a small inventory and saving tied to scarce ink ribbons. Clock Tower (1995) took weapons away from the player entirely, and Silent Hill (1999) hid its short draw distance in fog while turning attention to the hero's own mind. Code Veronica (2000) on the Dreamcast replaced pre-drawn backdrops with a real 3D scene, Eternal Darkness (2002) added a sanity meter, and Fatal Frame gave the player a camera instead of a gun. Subgenres appeared within a few years.
PC Doom 3
Survival horror reinterpretation of Doom; flashlight or weapon — never both at once.
PS2 Resident Evil Outbreak
A cooperative survival horror game for up to four players in Raccoon City.
PS2 Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2
A sequel to the four-player co-op horror where you play defenseless civilians, not agents.
PS2 Silent Hill 4: The Room
The hero's apartment locks itself from the inside and becomes a gateway to warped versions of Silent Hill.
PS2 Siren
From the creator of Silent Hill; one of the darkest and most demanding horror games of the generation.
PS2 The Suffering
A survival horror about an inmate condemned for a murder he can't remember; a prison full of monsters.
Xbox Dino Crisis 3
The survival horror moves from Earth into space; a crew faces mutated dinosaurs.
PS2 Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Ranks among the best survival horror games of all time; the only weapon against ghosts is a camera.
Xbox Manhunt
One of the most controversial titles of the generation due to its raw violence; from the creators of GTA.
PS2 Resident Evil: Dead Aim
The only Resident Evil built for the GunCon 2 light gun; classic tension in light-gun form.
PS2 Silent Hill 3
A direct sequel to the first game - Heather is the reincarnation of Alessa and the target of the Order cult.
PC The Black Mirror
A horror adventure from Future Games; one of the most successful Czech games ever.
8- and 16-bit (1986–1994)
12 games in the catalogHome 8-bit and 16-bit machines could finally tell stories. Project Firestart (1989) shut the player in a spaceship full of corpses with limited ammunition, and Sweet Home (1989) led a party through a haunted house where a dead member stayed dead. Splatterhouse brought a more action-driven take, Elvira an adventure one. The turning point was Alone in the Dark (1992): polygonal characters in front of pre-drawn backgrounds under a fixed camera. The scenery could be detailed because it was never recalculated, and fear could be directed through the angle of view. Resident Evil later took over exactly that approach.
Jaguar Alien vs Predator
A genuinely horror atmosphere in a 3D shooter; the game can be completed from three different perspectives.
MD Splatterhouse 3
The most ambitious entry in the horror trilogy; defend the house and your son as the path branches by pace.
DOS Alone in the Dark
Usually cited as the first true survival horror with polygonal characters.
SMS Master of Darkness
Sega's answer to Castlevania; a gothic platformer with a horror atmosphere of hunting vampires.
MD Splatterhouse 2
A dark horror beat 'em up from Namco; the hero dons the Terror Mask and fights to save his girlfriend.
Amiga Waxworks
Horror adventure/RPG from Horrorsoft; a cursed museum leads across eras and stories.
ST Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus
The sequel moves the story to a hellish film studio; more action-oriented combat, still with Elvira.
Amiga Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
Horror RPG with Elvira as an ironic narrator; mansion exploration and real-time combat.
7800 Midnight Mutants
A Halloween horror title released in tiny numbers, today a collector's rarity for the 7800.
PCE Splatterhouse
An uncompromisingly brutal horror brawler with a masked hero, a controversial classic of its time.
C64 Project Firestart
Survival horror on an abandoned spaceship, long before the genre had a name.
NES Sweet Home (fan překlad EN)
The predecessor of Resident Evil; a survival horror based on a Japanese film that defined the genre.
The beginnings (until 1985)
1 games in the catalogIn the early eighties nobody spoke of horror as a genre, yet the first attempts at fear existed. 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81 (1981) sent the player through a maze seen in first person while a monster chased them, and running was the only answer. The machine had a few kilobytes of memory and no sound at all, and the perspective was built from chunky blocks of characters. Still, the idea that returned fifteen years later was already there: the player is weaker than the enemy, sees only a short way ahead, and survives by orientation, not by firepower.
