Interactive drama survival horror games like Until Dawn, Telltale's The Walking Dead, and the games under The Dark Pictures Anthology are some of the more popular ones in the genre for a good reason: the player's decisions matter for good or ill.

However, these games are not the ones that pioneered this kind of survival horror. Surprisingly, the genre went back to 2001, during the swan song of the Sega Dreamcast console.

During this time, there was a game that ticked all the boxes Until Dawn and TellTale's The Walking Dead did, but in the guise of a B movie video game.

Here is the story of Illbleed.

Illbleed History, Gameplay

IllBleed is an interactive survival horror game developed and published by Climax Graphics (now known as Crazy Games) in Japan for the Sega Dreamcast, per the Survival Horror Wiki and Bloody Disgusting.

The game is critically and financially unsuccessful, with Rely on Horror citing a Mobyscore of 65/100. Despite these facts, though, it eventually gained a cult following for the same reason Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology got theirs.

The game follows the story of one Eriko Christy as she goes through the titular horror-themed amusement park to save her three friends (who are also in the same Horror Movie Research Club) after they disappeared in it a few days ago.

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Apparently, the Illbleed Amusement Park has a contest where the person who survives all the attractions it has to offer gets to win a more than significant amount of prize money.

Despite the survival horror genre, the game is far from horrifying, though it has its moments. The game's presentation is more similar to a B movie that almost takes away its supposedly horrifying atmosphere.

It also doesn't help that the game's dialogue, special effects, and characters look and sound stiff and uninspired.

What Made It The Progenitor Of Interactive Survival Horror?

Much like games like Until Dawn, Illbleed has players control a single character, normally Eriko, and help them navigate through the amusement park's horror-themed attractions that could kill them if their health is low enough.

Tagging and/or disarming them with a "horror monitor" early on helps, but doing so costs "Adrenaline," which is used to operate said monitor.

Losing all adrenaline means the player must go through the game without the monitor and risk being caught unaware by the attractions.

Getting damaged by an untagged attraction can raise the character's pulse, which could kill them with a heart attack if left unmoderated. Similarly, a character with too low a pulse as a result of injuries will die.

In some ways, this more realistic approach to the survival horror genre made the game better than its modern counterparts

The now-popular "butterfly effect" is also present in Illbleed, where if the player took a weapon from a room in one scene, the next scene down the road would not have the already taken weapon.

Additionally, while the game allows you to control one of the four Horror Movie Research Club members, the player's performance while controlling them will determine if they get to live or die at the game's ending.

While the game shares simialrities with more modern games, the best way to see them and their differences is by playing it yourself.

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