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The Survival Horror Genre
Survival Horror is a video game genre which primarily focuses on the survival of the character's in a setting that attempts to induce fear in the player, often by including horrifying enemies or obstacles, and a frightening atmosphere or setting. Survival Horror games may contain combat elements in the gameplay, however this genre typically tries to maintain the feeling of fear by limiting in-game resources, necessary for survival depending on the game, such as ammunition for weapons or health. Games in this genre make use of horror tropes such as restricted vision or darkness, ambience intended to unnerve the player, and/or jump scares.

The term 'survival horror' was first coined in 1996 with the original Japanese release of Resident Evil. The survival horror genre is considered a subgenre of action-adventure and horror video games. Additionally with the rise of more action-oriented games in the survival horror genre, and the inclusion of elements from first-person shooter games, such as Resident Evil 7 game journalists have begun to wonder whether there should be a distinction between survival horror as a genre and what is referred to as "action horror".

Themes of the genre
Games in the survival horror subgenre typically include elements from horror video games. There is often an emphasis placed on the avoidance of combat rather than direct confrontation, players often having to flee from enemies, hide, or complete environmental puzzles in order to progress to an area away from the threat or to cause the threat to be removed from the area the player is in. That being said many survival horror games do include combat as a core part of the gameplay, however these games limit the emphasis placed on combat through the limitation of ammunition or by giving weapons durability or a set number of uses before it can't be used anymore. The game Deadly Premonition allows the player to use a variety of weapons, however higher damage weapons generally have fewer uses and ammunition is not as readily available.

Design
Survival horror games often use settings and level design intended to cause feelings of unease in players, for example Silent Hill uses the setting of a seemingly abandoned town with fog obscuring the players. Many survival horror games capitalize on environments that are dilapidated or in ruins in order to create feelings of isolation and desertion in the player, such as Dead By Daylight which has several maps of abandoned schools and asylums. Other survival horror games such as The Evil Within 2 feature environments of unusual geometry that seem to ignore the laws of physics in order to provoke feelings of not belonging in the player. Additionally levels and areas in survival horror games are often cramped or tightly packed to make the player feel claustrophobic. Creature design in survival horror games similarly aims to unnerve the player. Many games feature creatures akin to zombies such as the in the Resident Evil series, or even creatures like the xenomorph in Alien: Isolation from the Alien series of movies.

Origins of the genre
Although the term survival horror was coined by Resident Evil in 1996, the genre name was applied retroactively to many other works created before Resident Evil. Resident Evil itself is said to have drawn inspiration from other works such as Sweet Home (1989) and Alone in the Dark (1992). In addition many works in the past bear similar themes to those that founded the survival horror genre and could therefore be considered as being part of the genre retroactively as well. For example the film Alien first made in 1979, in which a the crew of a space ship attempt to avoid the seemingly invincible and titular alien whilst trying to escape.