This is an IGN opinion piece from Ceridwen Millington, who has craved horror of all stripes ever since she stumbled through Silent Hill 3’s wretched amusement park. Or perhaps since she first got blown to bony gibs in Half-Life. You might today find her at home in the esoteric weirdness of MyHouse.WAD.

Survival horror is back at the top. Franchises synonymous with the genre, like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, are releasing some of the modern age's most popular titles. Indie games inspired by the genre's past seem to be getting released in droves, too, with the likes of Crow Country and Signalis echoing the classics of the original PlayStation. It's a triumphant change from yesteryear – horror was smothered by action in the mid '00s (just look at the trajectory of EA’s Dead Space trilogy) and in the '10s a promised Silent Hill reboot never made it to shelves. But the enormous, record-breaking success of recent survival horrors might suggest a couple of things: that there was an appetite for genuine survival horror all along, and that we're in the new glory days.

The upcoming Silent Hill: Townfall might perhaps help affirm the latter. But, at least right now, it's impossible to accept that we’ve made it into a new golden age when the genre’s current state still makes you miss the glory days. For all of survival horror’s recent triumphs, the biggest names in the business seem to have forgotten one of the genre’s vital components: mystery. There’s little more terrifying than the unknown, after all.

Some would argue that the genre necessarily changes shape, given its knotty history. A major and commercially successful change can be seen in the introduction of the first-person perspective. Popularised by Amnesia: The Dark Descent and PT, it represented a move away from the genre's conventions – and one that has become central to its second wind. The third-person perspective was bundled up with a range of staples: collecting items, exploring carefully designed environments, moderately challenging puzzling, and switching between combat and evasion. The first person perspective is very much about vulnerability, of forcing terror into your face and giving you little time to react. By reducing your field of vision, it quite literally introduces mystery to the frame – what horrors lie beyond the edges of the screen? This brought Resident Evil back to the fore with its seventh mainline installment, the game’s opening hours putting relentless stalkers right in your face.

But these shocking, very real scares are being eroded over time as studios move towards safe bets. This year’s Resident Evil Requiem exemplifies a deliberate caution around leaning too hard in any direction. There are plenty of fearsome threats in the sequences in which you play as Grace Ashcroft, including a giant pursuing man-baby, an unstoppable girl descending from the ceiling, and numerous unique denizens in the game's starting location. But all of these were revealed in pre-release marketing, stripping Requiem’s most fearsome chapter of its mystery for those who followed the game’s production. Furthermore, Grace’s horror-forward sequences are paired with the chainsaw-slinging, roundhouse-kicking action that makes up Leon’s section of the game, a homage to the very familiar days of Resident Evil 4 and 5 which ultimately devolves into a motorbike chase that feels lifted straight from anime. The game's story becomes subsumed by this balancing act, atmospheric narrative playing second fiddle to people pleasing. The mystery is lost as Requiem plays beloved hit after hit.

The best Silent Hill games function like artworks, where characters, motivations, and themes are beguiling hooks. “

A similar phenomenon can be seen in last year’s Silent Hill f, the series' first totally original, full-scale title since 2012. The story promises a different approach than others, taking the horror staple of misogyny and considering it through the lens of '60s Japan. Hinako, the game's protagonist, discovers in true franchise style that her town has become fog-laden and populated by horrible creatures. However, it sacrifices any interesting interaction with its deeper themes by presenting them overtly rather than through unease and mystery. Within moments of the game starting there's a grouchy dad whose attitude sledgehammers home what to expect of the narrative. And as you explore the village, you aren't asked to interpret the elegantly designed creatures, with Hinako finding the time to write succinct descriptions in her journal. Imagine the damage Silent Hill 2 would have wrought on its tale if James had spelled out the psychological meanings of the nurses and Pyramid Head as he encountered them. The best Silent Hill games function like artworks, where characters, motivations, and themes are beguiling hooks. Instead, Silent Hill f has the melodrama and obviousness of a teen drama.

Silent Hill never previously leapt wholesale into battle like Resident Evil did, but fighting has been put at the core of Silent Hill f. It was generally more practical to run, to avoid wasting a perfectly good health item so as not to end up in a bad spot later. Fundamentally, the protagonists were everyday people; not superhuman or even capable fighters. Hinako, despite being a seemingly combat-inexperienced schoolgirl, is able to go toe-to-toe with a range of enemies and dodge, counter, special attack, and survive multiple stabbings. It's rare here to feel like a vulnerable person stuck in nightmares, rather than a gamer looking for the next weapon. Breakable pipes and a rare need to run can't mask that fear feels deliberately softened, the vulnerability of survival horror having been undermined in order to drive sales.

Many of the things that new games are doing have been done before, and done with more faith in their audience. One of Silent Hill f's themes is beautiful horrors. As the world changes we begin to see a twisted splendor, the town consumed with blood-red flowers and pulsing pink flesh. But I couldn't help but notice this had already been done in The Song of Saya, a 2003 visual novel that, through static images and sound, presents a similar - but more transgressive - tale of a viscera-filled, upended world and twisted perceptions of beauty. Silent Hill’s approach just feels like bringing a well-worn trope to life. There’s no surprise in this concoction, given the developers were outspoken on trying to craft a beautiful nightmare.

It’s hard to imagine that notorious The Song of Saya didn’t play a part in Silent Hill f’s creation: the latter's writer, Ryukishi07, has created horror visual novels himself. It's unfortunately the case that a visual novel like that isn't backed by a company with colossal revenue, nor will it likely get widespread recognition of its role in horror. Where recent Silent Hill and Resident Evil prepare us for what to expect in their marketing and sanded-off narratives, The Song of Saya leaves us shocked and unsure what to feel. There’s uncertainty from what to take away from the tale, its loved-up protagonists being not just morally compromised but heinous, if pitiable, criminals.

On Rule of Rose's 20th anniversary, it’s never been more clear that the trust it put in its players is exceedingly rare. “

Clock Tower 3 is undoubtedly the most striking example of seemingly contradictory-vibes, thanks to its direction by extreme horror maestro Kinji Fukasaku (best known for the Battle Royale movie). Its heroine, Alyssa, must contend with both the cruelty of serial killers and the threat of a vague “possession” now that she’s turning 15. This doesn’t stop Fukasaki and his then-innovative motion capture turning out camp, eccentric, and unforgettable performances. Meaningful themes aren’t presented sombrely and in a didactic fashion, with messages around misogyny left to the subtext. The experience is all the more worthy of reflection for not being plainly laid out.

Most interesting narratively is Rule of Rose, a deeply obscure title best known for commanding a high price on the second-hand market. This year marks its 20th anniversary, and with those two decades of hindsight it’s never been more clear that the trust it put in its players is exceedingly rare. The story follows a young woman, Jennifer, who finds herself deposited at a creepy orphanage - but little time elapses before it bizarrely becomes an airship. It’s not perfect from a gameplay perspective, with the emphasis on backtracking and item collection occasionally getting excessive. Yet this is a trade-off for a world that you belong in and come to know. Grief and suffering aren’t bludgeoned into you immediately as being the core ideas, but are things which come to suffuse the game through surreal vignettes. And, foundational to the experience, it trusts the players to stick with its ambiguities - Jennifer never scribbling down clear analysis in her journal.

Rule of Rose is particularly beloved by devotees of the era because of how it avoids clear-cut answers. It’s more than a female-led twist on Lord of the Flies with its non-linear, dreamlike tale, with a few scenarios playable in any chosen order. The devious nature of this fairy tale is best represented by one of the most unsettling bosses; seemingly doted upon by the orphanage’s lead staff member, she turns from a bedbound child into a “mermaid princess.” What this means is a clawing, vomiting, half-limbless figure swinging from the ceiling of her mortuary-like room. There’s much speculation online as to what’s actually happening here. Abuse? Suicide? The simple powerlessness of childhood? Players are willing to overlook the questionable gameplay; the extensive Wiki suggests a thirst to dig deeply into ideas instead.

There are recent games that have tried to ape the triumphs of the genre’s earlier entries, but most of them seem to be for a hardcore audience looking for raw challenge over genuine horror. It’s a shame, for instance, to pick up an atmosphere-drenched title that doesn’t over-explain its narrative and systems, only to be hampered by limited saves and hard-to-avoid deaths. Difficulty-focused titles like Remothered: Tormented Fathers should exist, but the experience of playing them is almost like playing a different genre. There’s little today that aims for that still-potent original survival horror mix of innovation, mystery, fear, and meaningful narrative.

Silent Hill: Townfall looks to respect that central tenet that glues the genre’s wider ideas together. It remembers that a compelling mystery guides a player through exploration, combat, and the fear that would otherwise root them to the ground. There is genuine mystery around Townfall’s story and themes, maintained even for journalists who have already played a few hours at trade shows. Assumptions can be made from the fact that protagonist Simon has a cannula in his veins, and that the game’s first monster’s body is bound by belts in a way that mirrors straitjacketing. But it seems that the story is more than just a straightforward look at horrific healthcare: there is clearly a knot of issues mouldering at the core of St. Amelia, with the small Scottish town abandoned and apparently in the grasp of a disdained corporation. Story seems to be at the forefront of the game, but importantly not frontloaded or plainly spelt out in journals, and so it’s pleasantly impossible to know how this will all unfurl.

The problem with survival horror’s wider resurgence is a repeat of what undermined the genre historically: mechanics and structure moving so far away from the core that they can no longer reasonably be called survival horror. People who have held the torch for it across so many years have held that love because it’s not driven by modern trends; that it prioritises atmosphere, themes, and deep cuts for its influences, like ‘70s Italian horror. Silent Hill: Townfall seems to realise that the genre is more than cherry-picking elements; more than taking some horrible creatures or sweat-inducing mechanics. Maybe this can encourage other developers to realise that people don’t fear the conventions of survival horror, and take the admirable, classic-creating risk of bringing true, distinctive, and - above all - ambiguous fear to the fore.

Ceridwen Millington is a journalist, gamer, and reader who is almost always ready to dive into horror.