From Ants to Zombies: Six Decades of Video Game Horror January 30, 2024

Since last year, we’ve been obsessed with the incredible volume of releases coming out of Bitmap Books. Their independently published titles focused on the art and history of video games are an incredible mix of coffee table artbook and reference quality encyclopedia that perfectly matches this website’s tastes and aesthetics. Recently, the publisher has released a new book focused on the history of video game horror, From Ants to Zombies: Six Decades of Video Game Horror, and we were able secure a copy of the book for review.

This site has a long history of covering horror games of multiple platforms and eras, and we’ve been proud to talk about games like Silent Hill, Dead Space, and Until Dawn throughout our existence. Horror is a major genre of the current video game industry, and with platforms like Virtual Reality (VR) getting a wider adoption, the genre is poised to expand to an even stronger audience. However, before we speculate on the future, it’s important to know about the past. That’s where our interest began in From Ants to Zombies, and why we were so excited to check it out.

Before we get into the review, let’s take a look at what someone who purchases the game from the publisher can expect to arrive on the day of delivery!

Nothing beats the smell or feeling of opening up a brand new physical book, and proudly keeping it on your bookshelf or coffee table for future rereading. However, a physical book is just ONE component of your purchase. As always with purchases made off of Bitmap Books, you will get access to a high-resolution PDF file of the book you purchased, which can be downloaded and viewed on the device of your choice. That is typically our preferred method of reading the books (we did our reading of the book’s contents using the official PDF on iPad Pro).

The book begins with an author’s preface where writer Alexander Chatziioannou described their early childhood upbringing watching the same kinds of horror films my wife grew up with. It’s an introduction that likely will resonate with most of the book’s readers. The foreword, which attempts to define “what is horror?” is well-researched and cited in such a way to please my tastes as well as the English professors I had growing up. With the exception of Alien and Halloween, I am not much of a fan of horror films, but I absolutely love the author would draw connections between the games discussed in the book and the great films that clearly inspired them. The preface also includes a detailed description of the book’s layout to better help you navigate the tome in the event you want to skip directly to your favorite game.

Each section of the book essentially themes itself to the games it’s covering. The complementary colors on each page really puts you in the mood to read each section. The typical high resolution in-game screenshots that you would expect from a collector’s guidebook are included with each entry, but unlike a standard collector’s book or encyclopedia, the book will actually alter its page color to better match the aestetic of the game. Information about each game is detailed, with a fair mixture behind the scenes information about the making of the game sprinkled on top of the description of the game’s plot and description of its gameplay.

In some sections, the game’s actual developers have provided their own insight into a featured game’s development. I was absolutely blown away to read the legendary Ken Levine look back on System Shock 2 or Graeme Devine talk about The 7th Guest all these years after the games’ release. I have to say I was literally hooked on every word I read, and there was plenty of information about games I was familiar with included in the book that I didn’t even know about, and no we are not going to be spoiling any of that here.

If the last few paragraphs haven’t already made it clear, Bitmap Books has done it again! They have delivered another reference-quality coffee table encyclopedia on a major portion of gaming history. I’m sure it will be cited and referenced by many publications moving forward, as it really is that well researched. If you do order a copy, make sure to read it under a blanket with a flashlight. Oh and did I mention in the unboxing that the accompanying sticker glows in the dark?

Editor’s Note: Review copy provided by Bitmap Books. A PDF version is provided to all customers who purchase the book through the publisher’s website.