50 free Horror Game trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This horror game trivia quiz covers survival horror and its neighbours from the beginning: Capcom's 1989 Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark, the first Resident Evil and Silent Hill, Fatal Frame and Clock Tower, then Dead Space, Amnesia, Outlast, Alan Wake, Until Dawn, Alien: Isolation, P.T., Soma and Bloodborne, and the streaming-era hits Five Nights at Freddy's, Phasmophobia, Dead by Daylight, Lethal Company, Poppy Playtime and Doki Doki Literature Club. It finishes with the recent revivals: Resident Evil 7 and Village, the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill f. Expect questions on mechanics (ink ribbons, sanity meters, strategic dismemberment, tinderboxes, camcorder batteries), settings, creators, the origins of the term 'survival horror', and the films and books the designers were copying. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has played a few of these, a third are medium, and the rest are for people who finished Amnesia without watching a Let's Play. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year was 'survival horror' first used, for the Japanese release of Capcom's mansion game?
1996
The label was later applied retroactively to 1989's Sweet Home and 1992's Alone in the Dark, both of which influenced it.
Q 02Capcom's 1989 Famicom RPG Sweet Home, an ancestor of Resident Evil, was made alongside what?
A film of the same name
Director Tokuro Fujiwara toured the film set for inspiration; the film's director Kiyoshi Kurosawa let him take liberties with the script.
Q 03Alone in the Dark (1992) is set in a haunted mansion in which US state?
Louisiana
Designer Frédérick Raynal drew on Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and the films of Argento and Romero.
Q 04Which two S.T.A.R.S. members can you play as in the original Resident Evil (1996)?
Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine
Chris gets six inventory slots and Jill eight, and you save with ink ribbons at typewriters.
Q 05In the original Resident Evil, what do you need to save your game at a typewriter?
An ink ribbon
The scarcity of ribbons was one of the ways the game made you feel less in control.
Q 06What is Resident Evil called in Japan?
Biohazard
With over 213 million copies sold it is Capcom's best-selling franchise and the best-selling horror series in gaming.
Q 07Who directed the original Resident Evil and later founded Tango Gameworks to make The Evil Within?
Shinji Mikami
Hideki Kamiya's discarded first draft of Resident Evil 4 turned into Devil May Cry instead.
Q 08Resident Evil 4 (2005) sends Leon Kennedy to rescue the president's daughter from a cult where?
Spain
It launched as a GameCube exclusive under the 'Capcom Five' deal and popularised the over-the-shoulder camera.
Q 09Resident Evil 7 (2017) broke with series tradition by using which perspective?
First-person
The team took cues from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Evil Dead and Saw and shrank the game to one Louisiana plantation.
Q 10Silent Hill, the town, is located in which US state?
Maine
The first four games were made by Konami's internal Team Silent between 1999 and 2004.
Q 11In the first Silent Hill (1999), Harry Mason is searching the town for whom?
His missing adopted daughter
The developers used fog and darkness to hide the PlayStation's pop-in, and it became the series' signature look.
Q 12Silent Hill 2's James Sunderland comes to town after receiving a letter from whom?
His dead wife
The story was inspired by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; Bloober Team's remake arrived in October 2024.
Q 13Which seemingly unkillable Silent Hill 2 monster wears a huge helmet and drags a giant knife?
Pyramid Head
Q 21In Amnesia: The Dark Descent, saving manually costs how many tinderboxes?
Four
Tinderboxes and lamp oil are your only defence against sanity loss in the dark of Castle Brennenburg.
Q 22In Outlast (2013), the only way to see in the dark of Mount Massive Asylum is through what?
A camcorder's night vision
Night vision drains batteries, so journalist Miles Upshur has to scavenge them constantly.
Q 23Who created Five Nights at Freddy's, largely single-handedly, in 2014?
Scott Cawthon
He made it after critics said the characters in his family game Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. looked like scary animatronics.
He first appears in the apartment complex and later kills Maria in front of James.
Q 14P.T. (2014) was a free 'playable teaser' for which cancelled game?
Silent Hills
Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro made it under the fake studio name '7780s Studio', with Norman Reedus as the star; Konami then made it impossible to re-download.
Q 15Silent Hill f (2025) is set in the 1960s in a fictional town in which country?
Japan
Its heroine Hinako Shimizu navigates fog-swallowed Ebisugaoka; it sold a million copies in a day, the series' fastest.
Q 16In Fatal Frame, what do the protagonists use to capture and pacify ghosts?
A camera
The Camera Obscura was invented in-universe by Dr. Kunihiko Asou; the series is known as Project Zero in Europe.
Q 17In Clock Tower (1995), Jennifer Simpson is stalked through the Barrows mansion by a killer known as what?
Scissorman
Director Hifumi Kono based the look on Dario Argento's Phenomena, and digitised real people for the character graphics.
Q 18Dead Space (2008) built its combat around what 'founding principle'?
Strategic dismemberment
That's why the Necromorphs have so many limbs; creator Glen Schofield cited Resident Evil 4, Event Horizon and Solaris.
Q 19What is the profession of Dead Space's protagonist Isaac Clarke?
Engineer
He's aboard a mining ship overrun after the discovery of an artifact called the Marker.
Q 20Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) was made by Frictional Games, a studio from which country?
Sweden
It is credited with helping launch the Let's Play boom on YouTube; the same studio later made Soma.
Q 24In the first Five Nights at Freddy's, what does using the cameras and doors consume?
Electricity
Run out of power and both go dead; the night guard, Mike Schmidt, has to last from midnight to 6 a.m.
Q 25Who plays Mike Schmidt in the 2023 Five Nights at Freddy's film?
Josh Hutcherson
Matthew Lillard plays William Afton, and it was released simultaneously on Peacock and in cinemas.
Q 26Alan Wake (2010) is set in which fictional small town in Washington state?
Bright Falls
Remedy structured it like a TV thriller in six episodes, and a live-action web prequel shared the town's name.
Q 27Until Dawn (2015) uses what mechanic to make players' choices reshape the story?
A butterfly effect
Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere and Peter Stormare did the mocap; all eight teens can live or die.
Q 28Alien: Isolation (2014) follows which member of the Ripley family?
Amanda, Ellen's daughter
It's set 15 years after the 1979 film and copies its lo-fi 1970s future rather than the gung-ho Aliens.
Q 29Which studio, best known for the Total War strategy series, made Alien: Isolation?
Creative Assembly
They planned it as third-person before switching to first-person to make the alien scarier.
Q 30Dead by Daylight is an asymmetric multiplayer game with what player split?
One Killer versus four Survivors
Survivors must repair five generators to power the exit gates while the Killer feeds them to the Entity.