Sunday, 8 Sep 2024

Developers Share Their Favorite Horror Games Ever

Developer Shares

Are you a horror game enthusiast looking for new recommendations? We’ve got you covered! We reached out to 28 renowned developers from the gaming industry to find out their top picks for the best horror games of all time. In this article, we’ll dive into their choices, compare them to our own list, and explore some interesting insights. Get ready to discover some chilling classics and hidden gems!

Thomas Grip – Frictional Games Creative Director

  1. Silent Hill 2
  2. Resident Evil
  3. System Shock 2
  4. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
  5. Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Chris Ashton – Turtle Rock Studios Design Director and Co-Founder

  1. System Shock 2
  2. Resident Evil
  3. The Walking Dead Season 1
  4. Slender: The Eight Pages
  5. Limbo

Bruce Straley – Naughty Dog Game Director

  1. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
  2. Resident Evil 4
  3. Dead Space 2
  4. Condemned: Criminal Origins
  5. Outlast

Phil Robb – Turtle Rock Studios Creative Director and Co-Founder

  1. State of Decay
  2. Left 4 Dead
  3. The Walking Dead Season 1
  4. Resident Evil
  5. Limbo

Neil Druckmann – Naughty Dog Creative Director

  1. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
  2. Manhunt
  3. Silent Hill 2
  4. Resident Evil
  5. Condemned: Criminal Origins

Steve Papoutsis – Visceral Games General Manager

  1. Resident Evil
  2. Doom
  3. Dead Space
  4. System Shock 2
  5. The Walking Dead Season 1

Ted Price – Insomniac Games President

  1. Resident Evil
  2. Doom
  3. Left 4 Dead
  4. Dead Rising
  5. Parasite Eve

Drew Murray – Insomniac Games Game Director

  1. Resident Evil
  2. Call of Cthulhu (pen-and-paper)
  3. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
  4. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
  5. Alan Wake

Swery65 – Access Games Director

  1. Splatterhouse (1988)
  2. Nanashi no Game
  3. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  4. Alone in the Dark (1992)
  5. Silent Hill

Matt Gilgenbach – Infinitap Games President

  1. Silent Hill 2
  2. Silent Hill 3
  3. Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly
  4. Deadly Premonition
  5. Fatal Frame

Gary Napper – Creative Assembly Lead Game Designer

  1. Dead Space
  2. Siren: Blood Curse
  3. Dead Rising
  4. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
  5. Dead Island

Garth DeAngelis – Firaxis Games Senior Producer

  1. Silent Hill
  2. Resident Evil
  3. The Thing
  4. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  5. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Mike de Plater – Monolith Productions Director of Design

  1. Silent Hill
  2. Dead Space
  3. Resident Evil
  4. Limbo
  5. Manhunt

Steve Gaynor – The Fullbright Company Designer and Co-Founder

  1. Resident Evil
  2. Silent Hill
  3. System Shock 2
  4. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  5. Fatal Frame

Kevin Stephens – Monolith Productions Studio Head

  1. System Shock 2
  2. Left 4 Dead
  3. Limbo
  4. Doom
  5. Dead Space

Matt Allen – Monolith Productions Director of Technical Art

  1. Silent Hill
  2. System Shock 2
  3. Dead Space
  4. Fatal Frame
  5. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

Michiteru Okabe – Capcom Producer

  1. Resident Evil
  2. Siren
  3. Dead Space
  4. Fatal Frame
  5. Silent Hill

Yoshiaki Hirabayashi – Capcom Producer

  1. Resident Evil
  2. The Last of Us
  3. Dead Space
  4. Siren
  5. Enemy Zero

Richard Rouse III – Paranoid Productions Director, Designer, and Writer

  1. Silent Hill 2
  2. State of Decay
  3. The Walking Dead Season 1
  4. The Lurking Horror
  5. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Akira Yamaoka – Composer

  1. Silent Hill
  2. Siren
  3. Dead Space
  4. Manhunt
  5. Prototype

Randy Pitchford – Gearbox Software President and CEO

  1. Doom
  2. BioShock
  3. Resident Evil
  4. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
  5. Splatterhouse (1988)

Mikey Neumann – Gearbox Software Chief Creative Champion

  1. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
  2. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood
  3. Silent Hill 2
  4. Left 4 Dead
  5. Condemned: Criminal Origins

Oskari Häkkinen – Remedy Games Head of Franchise Development

  1. Silent Hill
  2. Resident Evil
  3. Dead Space
  4. The Walking Dead Season 1
  5. Limbo

Suda51 – Grasshopper Manufacture CEO

  1. Shadows of the Damned
  2. Fatal Frame
  3. Siren
  4. Silent Hill 2
  5. The Evil Within

Glen Schofield – Sledgehammer Games Co-Founder and General Manager

  1. Silent Hill
  2. Resident Evil
  3. Condemned: Criminal Origins
  4. System Shock 2
  5. Fatal Frame

Dean Evans – Ubisoft Creative Director

  1. Minecraft
  2. Silent Hill
  3. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  4. Resident Evil
  5. Condemned: Criminal Origins

Dan Pinchbeck – Creative Director The Chinese Room

  1. Silent Hill
  2. Metro 2033
  3. Penumbra: Black Plague
  4. Resident Evil
  5. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Alex Tintor – Founder/Director at Blue Isle Studios

  1. Resident Evil (Gamecube Version)
  2. Silent Hill
  3. F.E.A.R
  4. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
  5. S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl

Breaking Down the Developers’ Top 5 Lists

After analyzing the developers’ choices and tallying up the votes, certain trends and interesting facts emerged:

  • Resident Evil emerged as the most popular game, receiving 12 votes.
  • Silent Hill 2 and Dead Space tied for second place with 9 votes each.
  • The combined top three games chosen by the developers perfectly match our own list of the Top 25 Horror Games of All Time.
  • The developers’ top five games primarily consist of three franchises: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Dead Space.
  • Several games, including Fatal Frame, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Siren: Blood Curse, and Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, received five votes each.
  • Capcom emerged as the most popular publisher, with a total of 24 votes for the Resident Evil and Dead Rising series.
  • Some games that did not receive any votes from developers for our Top 25 list include The Suffering, Sanitarium, DayZ, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and Blood.
  • Certain developer-selected games, such as Limbo, Doom, BioShock, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, were not initially considered by Game Informer for the horror genre.
  • There were a few unexpected choices, including Minecraft, Prototype, and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.
  • While first-person horror games are currently popular, third-person games dominated the developers’ top choices.
  • The most popular indie horror games according to the developers are Limbo and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
  • The most-voted first-person horror games were System Shock 2 and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, narrowly beating out Condemned: Criminal Origins.
  • It’s worth noting that no developer voted for a Resident Evil game released after 2005, highlighting the popularity of the earlier entries in the series.

Visit our hub for a full month of horror-themed coverage on gameinformer.com, complete with video features and more. Get ready to be thrilled!