In The Matrix, the Wachowskis suggested that the late ’90s were the peak of human civilisation and, judging by the games below, a few developers clearly agree. These modern retro horror titles – or retraux – all seem convinced that survival horror achieved perfection sometime around 1999 and has been downhill ever since. They’re grainy, clunky, and unapologetically weird, proudly resurrecting the era of tank controls, fixed cameras, and the long-forgotten dread that comes from a corrupted memory card.
Labyrinth of the Demon King by J. R. Hudepohl (Played on PS5)
Playing Labyrinth of the Demon King feels like stumbling onto a lost FromSoftware prototype, the kind they buried because even King’s Field was too cheerful. You are a lowly foot soldier in Imperial Japan whose lord was betrayed and slaughtered by a cunning demon king. All that’s left is your vow: descend into a labyrinth of horrors, fight the grotesque spawn of myth, solve puzzles, scavenge scraps of gear, and pray your cracked katana lasts long enough to reach the throne room.
This thing leans hard into retro survival horror tropes: claustrophobic corridors, limited resources, oppressive tension, and the kind of slow, deliberate movement that makes you feel every misstep. Its inspirations are right there on the sleeve – King’s Field in the sluggish, doom-laden pacing; Silent Hill in the oppressive ambiance; Resident Evil in how you inch from room to room, a thimble’s worth of blood to your name, praying the next door doesn’t open onto something with better cardio than you.
It’s not without flaws. That same slow, methodical pacing can certainly drag. Combat is draining and in the vein of Condemned‘s weighty “block and wait for an opening then give them hell” bum fights. And some encounters feel unfair in a way that would make the Bed of Chaos say “come on now, lads”. Basically, encountering an enemy that’s dick height or below usually results in a quick trip back to the resurrection shrine. Yes, we’re doing the whole Soulsborne genre routine of repeatedly throwing ourselves into a meat grinder in the guise of making some progress, like we’re taking part in the Battle of the Somme.
That kind of design works in Souls games because those are about triumph through misery – you die, you learn, you eventually feel like a god, only to fumble it at the last moment. In horror, though, it’s a little different. There’s nothing worse for horror than having to replay the same sections over and over again. Still, Labyrinth of the Demon King nails that slow, suffocating dread the best PS1 nightmares thrived on. A bleak, beautiful reminder of when games were slow, mean, and proud to make you hate yourself a little.
Alisa: Director’s Cut by Casper Croes (Played on PS5)
“What if Resident Evil took place in a dollhouse?” feels like the elevator pitch for Alisa, and the game sticks to that mission with creepy devotion. You play as Alisa, a royal guard in a steampunk world (where, tragically, the French still exist), who stumbles into a mansion of traps, doll-monsters, and bizarre locks after a mission goes sideways.
Of all the recently retro-inspired survival horror throwbacks, this one is the most slavishly faithful: pre-rendered backdrops, fixed camera angles, tank controls, and voice acting bad enough to make the PS1 proud. It looks and feels like a lost Capcom title. They even pay tribute to that infamous first zombie in the original Resident Evil, when you encounter the first of the Chappell Roan looking humanoid doll enemies.
The problem? Old survival horror games balanced their clunky protagonists with enemies that were just quick enough to raise tension without tipping into unfairness. Here, nearly every enemy is significantly faster and more agile than you, and combat slides from tense to cheap fast. Yes, you can switch on auto-aim, but doing so costs you in-game currency — making buying that swimsuit outfit (which is somewhat useful in one specific section of the game) that much more egregious. And I’ll be dead and buried before I give up gooning.
Still, flaws aside, Alisa nails the retro aesthetic so hard it’s impossible not to admire. It’s a real fever dream of a game that changes tone constantly, from ominous dungeons to vibrant circuses and everything in between. Whether you’ll stick around depends on how much punishment you’re willing to take before nostalgia curdles into frustration.
Lost In Vivo by Kira (Played on PC)
I judge the effectiveness of horror games by how worried my wife gets about the noises I make while playing. I wear headphones, so I never notice, but apparently my first hour with Lost in Vivo had me wheezing like I was mid-heart attack.
Lost in Vivo is basically first-person Silent Hill — and not the Homecoming, Downpour, or Short Message garbage either, but the actual good stuff. You’re some anonymous poor bastard whose dog slips into a storm drain, so naturally you climb down after it and enter into an ever-deepening nightmare. That’s the kind of loyalty you don’t even get from most marriages.
There’s a story here… probably. Maybe it’s a Dante-style descent into hell, maybe it’s a metaphor for mental illness, maybe it’s just “don’t lose your dog, idiot.” Along the way you also stumble onto a shady lab where scientists have been screwing around with things they don’t understand, because apparently stupid science bitches got to be stupid science bitches. But honestly, the plot is seasoning, not the meal. What Lost in Vivo nails is pure, oppressive atmosphere.
It takes the Silent Hill approach of dropping you in drab, believable places – storm drains, subway tunnels, half-lit corridors -and then slowly melting reality around you until even the air feels hostile. There are no cheap jump scares, just creeping dread built from clanging pipes, distant footsteps, and noises that sound uncomfortably biological – like when you grow up in a house with thin walls and can hear your parents quietly fucking in the next room.
Midnight Cinema Junkyard 
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