While video games seem like a media all to themselves, they aren’t an island by any means. Many of the plots, characters, and ideas that you see in games come from other media forms likemovies, shows, and more often, novels.
This is especially true in more focused genres, such as gothic. Modern gothic games, both horror and not, pull heavily from old gothic novels like Frankenstein, The Castle of Otranto, and Wuthering Heights. While it’s one thing to be influenced by classic novels, it’s another to pay homage to them, just like these games do.
Layers of Fear
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A title that reimagines its two predecessors and builds upon them, Layers of Fear is described as a ‘first-person psychedelic horror’ title that puts the player in the middle of a tense, immersive story. It has been built in Unreal Engine 5 for high-definition consoles and PC by Bloober Team.
One of the biggest genre elements in the gothic genre is the sins of the protagonist coming back to haunt them. The manifestations of a character’s own sins is something that comes up quite on the nose in Layers of Fear.
Both the 2023 and the 2016 versions do this well, but the 2016’s standalone story of the painter and his family is the best suited as a love letter to the genre. Wracked by the guilt of his own choices and stuck in a crumbling manor, it lives and breathes the gothic at every turn.
H.P. Lovecraft is a big name in the gothic genre, making his own sub-genre of it in the form of cosmic horror as well. While many games take his ideals, few breathe as much life into it as The Sinking City does.
Set in the northeast U.S., like most of Lovecraft’s works, The Sinking City takes a bit from quite a few of his stories, but most often from The Shadow Over Innsmouth. A mix of ruin and psychological horror mixes to a point where your character can’t really trust anything around them.
Both the original and the remake are fair choices if you’re interested in playing them.
Much like it did with cosmic horror, gothic horror has been around long enough to create multiple offshoot genres. The southern gothic genre is one of the more recent, with novels like The Bluest Eye, To Kill A Mockingbird, and As I Lay Dying, all exploring the trauma and hardships of those living in the southern U.S.
The Colonel’s Bequest is one of the oldest games on this list, but one that pays homage to the biggest names in the southern gothic, and therefore the gothic, genres. Investigating a murder at a dilapidated sugar plantation, your protagonist finds the family that resides there has plenty of dark secrets that go hand-in-hand with any good southern gothic novel.
Most gothic games take the form of horror, as many of the old gothic novels do as well. But, sometimes those games are less about fights, and take more of a casual approach to the genre.
Dredge is part horror game, true. That’s easy to see with the giant fish monsters that inhabit the sea. More often than not, though, it is a look at the everyday life of someone who has to make a living in a dark, seaside gothic world. It’s grim, it’s cold, and quite perilous, but Dredge breathes new life into it through its mundanity.
Sometimes when you start a new game, you can tell the creators had a lot of fun making it. This is an important aspect of any game that is considered a love letter to its genre, and Darkest Dungeon just oozes with its own excitement.
A grueling dungeon crawler, sure. But if you can survive the campaign, you’ll find a unique world rich with crumbling gothic architecture, moody dialogue spoken by impressive voice actors, monsters that look like nightmares, and a story all about fighting in spite of the odds.
Darkest Dungeon 2 continues this tradition, albeit with more of a cosmic horror leaning.
The Dishonored series is one that came seemingly out of nowhere and added another feather in the cap of Bethesda’s already impressive games.
Dishonored seems unique in its art style and direction, but it pulls heavily from the old gothic concepts. After Corvo is removed from his high place in the world, he must skulk around and uncover just how corrupt and broken the people of Dunwall are, all while moving through the world with powers from a pretty obviously Faustian pact.
Sometimes, to write a love letter to a classic gothic novel, you don’t have to create a whole new world from scratch. You just have to do a fine job at porting a classic tale to the newer media form of gaming.
Being so far removed from the digital age, it is quite impressive how well the creators of Dante’s Inferno did at turning the classic tale into a game. The novel itself is amix of dark fantasy, a comedy, and a critique of the world Dante found himself in, as much as it is an early predecessor of the dark and gloomy nature of what the gothic became.
Any of the Amnesia games fit well into the gothic genre, but The Dark Descent is the pinnacle of that notion, with plenty of the standard gothic elements that make it memorable.
A castle haunted by dark creatures, a titular case of amnesia, and a plot unlike any other to drive it home makes Amnesia: The Dark Descent a go-to for gothic horror fans. It is one of the most horrifying games on this list, which makes it both a great tribute to the fear that gothic novels brought forth, and not as suitable for non-horror fans.
While it’s not always the most serious game series, the Resident Evil games are a surprisingly focused love letter to the gothic genre, but none so much as the first game.
The focus might be on the zombie virus that is movingthrough Raccoon City, but the Spencer Mansion takes up most of your time in the game, in actuality. This opulent place takes on the gothic quite well, with a modern-day horror about the dark secrets that fill every room of the mansion.
Resident Evil: Village is another title in the series that has some pretty heavy leanings towards gothic stylings, but not as much as the first game.
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Sometimes the best way to pay homage to novels of a well-established genre is simply to put your own twist on it while still pointing out the classic facets.
Bloodborne does that quite well. Yharnam is full of, quite literally, bloodthirsty monsters that are quite new ideas, but a lot of them feel like they’re based on gothic ideas of creatures (Frankenstein, the black dog, werewolves). In addition, every district of the city breathes life intothe gothic setting, from the tall peaks of buildings to the roving gangs of madmen.
