“For a period, it really seemed like survival horror had died. But like the zombies that plague its hallways, it always gets back up. You cannot kill survival horror.”
So posits Doctoral Researcher, Kaytlin Blackmore, in TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming’s debut episode. It’s a rhapsodic reflection on how the genre in question has managed to endure across the generations, in the face of ever-shifting consumer tastes, adversarial cultural forces, and unfavourable regime changes on the publishing front. More importantly, though, it’s just a fundamentally warm and fuzzy sentiment that resonates throughout the entirety of this community-backed docuseries.
Constructed in a way that recalls the reverent originals that you often find while browsing Shudder (i.e. Horror’s Greatest or The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time), TerrorBytes is first & foremost an admiring look at survival horror over the ages. So rather than scrutinising the genre with any kind of critical distance or academic neutrality, its contributors are far more inclined to wax lyrical and talk about how much canonical texts like, say, Eternal Darkness mean to them.
Akira Yamaoka
Their giddy enthusiasm for Resident Evil 4’s opening village salvo or the cat-and-mouse dynamic that characterises Alien: Isolation is infectious, and before long you’ll find yourself wrapped up in a similar state of euphoria. Itching to replay an old favourite or maybe even try out something new for the very first time.
In that sense, the doc can be best described as a love-letter to survival horror, made by the genre’s biggest fans for its biggest fans. Of course, this emphasis on cheerleading over analysis does mean that TerrorBytes is unlikely to win over anybody not invested in the subject matter to begin with. But if you just want to hear passionate people gush about their earliest visit to the Spencer Mansion (or whatever other formative experience popped their horror cherry so to speak) then this will deliver that in spades.
None of which is to say that TerrorBytes is completely devoid of substance, however. On the contrary, there’s sharp discussion of hidden gems, as well as some fresh behind-the-scenes tidbits that might deepen your appreciation of those familiar classics we’ve all played a thousand times before.
John Carpenter
The latter insights come courtesy of an impressive lineup of scholars, developers and industry bigwigs that director Richard Moss and Producer Daniel Richardson have roped in as interviewees. For example, Jeremy Blaustein — resident translator and localizer for Konami during the studio’s heyday — is able to articulately unpack the emotional depths of Silent Hill 2 with his unique perspective on the material.
Elsewhere, Sam Barlow humorously relates how he was able to get publishers to buy into his combat-free vision for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories by appealing to their ingrained understanding of Pac-Man, while Alex Aniel — author of the terrific, unofficial Resident Evil history, “Itchy, Tasty” — is able to shed light on Capcom’s rival IP. We even get some good technical insights from people like foley artist, Dawn Lunsford, who breaks down her sound design for the notorious “Rat King” encounter from The Last of Us Part II. In short, these are authorities who really know their stuff and are keen to celebrate it.
And yet the juiciest morsels actually come from those who have worked on less-than-stellar titles and who are more than happy to get real candid about the compromises they had to make along the way. Case in point, there’s a fascinating section wherein veterans from the Silent Hill: Homecoming team describe how they were pressured to make that game more closely align with the 2006 Christophe Gans movie (as well as to shoehorn Pyramid Head into the plot for no adequate reason). Likewise, Brian Gomez, writer of the Clive Barker-branded FPS Jericho, explains how one higher-up on that project insisted on completely redesigning a female character in order to cater to his own fetishistic whims.
It’s when it dips into these unvarnished anecdotes that TerrorBytes gets super intriguing but, even when it’s not being gossipy, it’s still just a pleasure to hear from all of the passionate voices that have been assembled. Speaking of which, it’s difficult to list all of the accomplished talking heads here because there are just so many incredible gets.
David Szymanski
Among others, you’ll hear from: Alone in the Dark scribe Hubert Chardot; legendary composer Akira Yamaoka; DUSK creator Dave Szymanski; The Angry Video Game Nerd himself, James Rolfe; the one and only John Romero, and some bloke called John Carpenter. They even found room for Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor at one point. In fact, there are so many interesting people on display that they sometimes pass you by in a blur, with you barely having a moment to scan the lower third overlays telling you who is who!
Fortunately, editor Connor O’Keane is able to piece the tremendous amount of footage he’s been lumped with together in a way that always feels flowing and coherent. In fact, the craft is impeccable across the entire board here. Apparently, the two episodes we watched for reviewing purposes weren’t quite 100% finished, but you couldn’t tell. As it stands, the opening animation is brilliantly realised, the transitions are slick, and your attention is held throughout by some well-chosen archival cutaways. If it’s going to look even more polished after a final editing pass, then there can be no complaints whatsoever about TerrorBytes’ technical execution.
The first episode, affectionately titled “Enter the Survival Horror,” is especially well packaged considering how much history it tries to compress into just 60 minutes. Taking us on a whistle-stop tour of the genre that starts off with the arcade coin guzzler Sinistar, and goes right up to last year’s indie darling Crow Country — stopping along the way to pay respects to Sweet Home, Clock Tower, and Dead Space — it certainly manages to cram a lot in.
One thing that helps make it digestible is that Moss and co. have shrewdly elected to break up the chronological structure with some thematic mini-chapters (looking at the evolution of the final girl trope, for instance, as well as the emergence of stalker enemies and the often turbulent journey that Japanese franchises have to endure when Western studios are given custody over them). One particular highlight is a section looking at how necessity really was the mother of invention back in the PSOne era, as the confines of that older hardware demanded some really ingenious workarounds from developers.
The second episode that we saw, “Lethal Licenses,” was admittedly more loosey-goosey. It’s meant to be an overview of horror titles that have been adapted from pre-existing sources — which sounds like an awesome premise — but it goes off topic a few too many times and its focus seems to have primarily been dictated by who they could get to appear on camera. As such, we end up with a disproportionate amount of coverage being devoted to the final season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead (presumably because its writer was available to chat about it), while there’s also a lengthy puff piece about Dead by Daylight near the end that feels dangerously close to turning into a corporate livestream. Yet it’s crucially never dull, and there are still some cool segments scattered throughout, including one about the delayed production of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game.
All in all, if you have even the vaguest of interest in survival horror, then you owe it to yourself to watch TerrorBytes. You might occasionally find yourself craving a little more depth, but it’s a fun, well-made series that has clearly been crafted with care, amplifies a lot of smart voices, and one that will remind you of why you fell in love with the genre in the first place.
TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming will be released as a 5-part docuseries in April 2025. You can pre-order the series now. Previews for the first two episodes were provided by CreatorVC.
