Scare Tactics: Video Games and the Real-Life Horror Stories That Influenced Them

For fans of the horror video game genre, certain names are as hallowed as holy scripture. Castlevania, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, these and other properties both big and small have been giving gamers goosebumps for decades. Bringing any successful horror game property to life requires no small amount of originality and creativity, but in a surprising number of cases it also requires a liberal application of cold hard truth.

In Scare Tactics, author Nathaniel Hohl takes readers on a journey through the annals of horror game history, focusing on eleven specific horror game properties. In every case, the game or series being discussed has some connection to a real-life element or event. Whether it's the perpetually burning Pennsylvania town that helped shape the Silent Hill movie adaptation, the scrappy indie title that harkens back to the Salem Witch Trials, or the doomed video game project that would have cast Jack the Ripper as an unsung hero, real-life history has seeped into the horror game genre's bones like a specter of icy death.

Through a combination of historical research and narrative recounting, Scare Tactics paints a vivid picture of how these horror properties came to be, and the role real-life history took in bringing them to life. Horror fans, historians, and video game enthusiasts alike will enjoy reading about the subtle yet tangible connections that make these iconic horror works unique and allow them to be equal parts fascinating and terrifying.