P.T.

What Lurks in the Margins: The Ill-Known Short Horror Video Games

This extended abstract, authored by Bernard Perron and Jean-Charles Ray of the Université de Montréal's LUDOV research group, introduces a research program examining short horror video games produced by indie and homebrew developers at the margins of the mainstream industry.

• The paper is an exploratory extended abstract (DiGRA 2023) from Bernard Perron and Jean-Charles Ray of the Université de Montréal's LUDOV group, framed as a foundation for future study rather than completed findings.
• It argues that the survival horror genre may be renewed most meaningfully on the fringes of the industry, in indie and homebrew short horror games, rather than in Triple-A franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
• Hideo Kojima's P.T. (2014) is credited with launching a trend of shorter, minimalist psychological horror experiences, including Layers of Fear and Evil Inside.