5 Horrifying Historical Stories That Would Make Great Video Games

There are a number of video games being created, especially now that narrative games have hit an all-time high in popularity recently, that have dealt with horrifying stories in history and turned them into interactive adventures in a video game. For example, like the upcoming Kholat which delves into the story about the hikers attacked in the Dyatlov Pass, and The Town Of Light, which explores our world’s dark medical history from the depths of an old asylum. But these five real historical happenings should definitely follow in their footsteps and be made into a video game.

1. The Sinking Of The Titanic

Way back in the 90’s, there was a computer game released that was an interactive experience aboard the R.M.S. Titanic. There was a mystery you had to solve, but I could never get far enough into the game to figure it out. I think this topic could still be a really great game though. Stop the sinking of the Titanic and change history forever. You could be as clever with it as you wanted, tying in a complicated plot line—and it doesn’t have to be romance-based.

2. H.H. Holmes’ Murder Castle

H.H. Holmes was notorious for opening the World's Fair Hotel strictly for the purpose of murder. Most of his victims were female, and he had a menagerie of secret rooms and torture devices and processes within the hotel including things like soundproof bedrooms with gas lines leading into them. I could see a video game taking from this story from the point of one of the victims and your prime objective would be to try to escape or kill H.H. Holmes himself.

3. September 11th

It’s been 15 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and I feel like it’s time that the story was made into a game. You could definitely do this one of two ways. You could format the game so it was a decision-based narrative game with an obviously emotional plotline and various endings. Or you could go about this Watchdog-style and try to stop the terrorists and changing the course of history, but I could definitely see this being a narrative adventure like Life Is Strange or Beyond: Two Souls. There are so many stories tied to the September 11th attacks, that I think the game could tell a compelling story too, but I am the narrative buff.

4. Roswell

Yes, now I’ve gone completely supernatural on you. Many passionate and gung-ho UFO theorists will tell you that Roswell had everything to do with alien beings and the government completely covered it up. There’s a lot you could do with this topic in video game development. You could get the opportunity to explore the crash site as a government official or X-files specialist back when it happened in 1947. Such a secretive and unexplored moment in history would be the perfect subject of a video game, and also I just think there aren’t enough games about aliens.

5. The Angel Of Death In Nazi Germany

Josef Mengele was both a doctor and an SS officer during World War II and stationed at the notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz. He was known as the Angel Of Death because of the horrific experiments he conducted; he had a particular interest in sets of twins. He would do experiments like unnecessary amputations and infect one twin with a deadly disease and leave the other one uninfected. What was creepy about him was his ability to bond with the children one day, so much that they felt completely comfortable with him, and then send them to the gas chambers the next. The stories behind this doctor are absolutely horrifying and to turn this into some sort of video game would be an unforgettable playing experience.

If I were a game developer, I would have jumped on these game ideas ages ago, but I’m going to have to leave it up to the creative minds of the experts—I hope to be seeing some of these ideas transpire in the future.