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Definition
Survival Horror is a category underneath action-adventure video games genre, in which a protagonist try to survive and escape a frightening, gruesome and violent environment that is out to get them. The protagonists are frail and weak, and solving puzzles and evading enemies take priority over violence. Typically, games would limit player resources and test their management skill as well as rationing rare resources. Survival Horror games aim to disempower players and making them feel uncomfortable through the use of sound, atmosphere, anticipation, ambiguity, limited movement control and weird camera angles.

According to Shinji Mikami, “It’s a close genre but the difference between pure horror and survival horror is that in the latter you can defeat the monsters and feel good about it. You have to have that sense of being able to defeat a monster, even if it’s tough."

A quote from IGN, "Survival horror is one of the only genres defined not by gameplay mechanics, but by theme, atmosphere, subject matter, and design philosophy."

Player Experience
The Survival Horror genre is typically a single player experience inspired by horror-fiction. Players would encounter a frustrating, horrifying and stressful experience due to inventory management, puzzle solving and being in a mysterious environment that is fraught with danger to the player. Player tries to survive this deadly world with their limited resources as they navigate with limited movement control and will experience a sense of helplessness and fragility due to the limitation on the player character.

Theme and Design
The main theme of a survival horror is to create a horrifying and immersive world. The setting of a survival horror game can vary from outer space to a haunted house. The main idea is that the environment makes the player have a feeling of uneasiness and full of ambiguity. The design of the game all contribute into creating a world that is fatal to the player character and endanger them at any point in time which would continuously stress the player as well as scaring them.

Sound Design
The sound is a crucial factor in creating an immersive world and can help trigger fear and tension in the player. Sound can also be used as a mechanic and a strategy for survival. In Alien Isolation, the sound is used to allow the player to know the location of the Alien who can appear at any time and thus creating continuous tension to the player as the game progress. Sound can be split into diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Diegetic sound refers to a sound that is created by a source visible on the screen while non-diegetic sound refers to the sound made from sources that aren't visible on the screen or haven't been implied to be present. Diegetic sounds are used to make the world more realistic and allow the player to immerse themselves in while non-diegetic sounds can contrast the diegetic sound for a shocking and suspenseful for the player.

The Uncanny
The uncanny is finding the strangeness in the ordinary, a psychological experience of finding something strangely familiar. The uncanny refer to a mental state that is unable to differentiate between the living and the dead or between what apparently is seen as animated or inanimate. This effect makes the player feel unsettling and paranoia as anything that may appear to be inanimate or dead could actually be alive, examples being self-opening doors and self-playing piano.

Monstrous Feminine
Monstrous Feminine refer to when the feminine is viewed as monstrous, it is commonly done through the conjunction of the female reproductive body and their sexuality. A variety of monster reflects this idea, Marguerite Baker's design from Resident Evil 7 can represent the idea of Monstrous Feminine as the design include an insect nest in place of her crotch area which actually represents the idea of a monstrous womb.

Origins (1980s - 2004)
The root of the survival horror genre dates back in 1980 with Roberta William's first game, Mystery House for the Apple II. Mystery House was a murder-mystery inspired graphical adventure game and was the very first game that attempted to scare the player. Another early example that helped shape the genre were Haunted House for the Atari 2600 and 3D Monster Maze for the Sinclair ZX81. Haunted House had a weak player avatar that had zero combat capability and could only collect items and find passageway in order to escape the monster that was chasing them. 3D Monster Maze had a player character escape from a Tyrannosaurus through escaping a randomly generated maze.

AX-2: Uchuu Yusousen Nostromo was the very first survival horror game. Nostromo was first developed by Akira Takiguchi and Masakuni Mitsuhashi, and was published by ASCII in 1981 for both PET 2001 and PC-6001. Nostromo 's gameplay was inspired by a combination of the sci-fi horror Alien in 1979 and the 1980 stealth game Manibiki Shoujo, the player had to evade the pursuit of an invisible alien while managing resources, collecting items and seeking a way to escape the spaceship. Nostromo had only one release in Japan and it never entered the western or global market.

The 1980s saw other early horror-themed game releases such as Konami's Castlevania, Sega's Kenseiden and Namco's Splatterhouse. These games were more horror-theme paired with the classic gameplay rather than an actual horror genre game. Sega's Ghost House, released in 1986, had gameplay that was designed around the theme of horror with strong and intimidating enemies and stages that were filled with traps.

The very first game to coined the term survival horror was Capcom's Resident Evil in 1996 which had mechanics such as multiple endings, puzzles, limited item management, death animations and horrifying imagery. The game was a huge commercial success that sold over 2.7 million copies which then created a wave of survival horror games that tried to replicate the success and the formula of Resident Evil. Clock Tower 2 and Silent Hill being two games that managed to capitalise on the heightened interest in the survival horror genre.