Popular gaming history will record 1992’s Alone in the Dark as the first, formalized survival horror. Earlier experiments like Sweet Home, Project Firestart, or even 3D Monster Maze or James Andreasen’s Haunted House established the spiritually assonant union of videogames and fear – when you’re the one in control, and it’s happening to you, it can be scarier than a movie or a book. But it was Frédérick Raynal and Infogrames who pushed the survival horror genre over the edge. Alone in the Dark ratified, or began to ratify, the mechanics. Combat is unintuitive by design and best avoided; progression depends on the discovery and decipherment of esoterica while simultaneously managing your constrictive inventory system.

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