Ghostface in the Machine: A Brief History of ‘Scream’ in Video Games

1996 was a pretty important year for horror. Not only did Resident Evil burst onto the scene to thrust horror games into the limelight, but Wes Craven’s meta-slasher Scream exploded onto cinema screens and changed the face of horror. I’m sure that, like me, there were a few horror fans whose real horror awakening came during those last few years of the previous century when both franchises dominated their respective mediums.

Despite these two particular big bangs being in close proximity, there’s been far more crossover for Resident Evil into film than there has been for Scream into video games, but that hasn’t stopped ol’ Ghostface from calling up publishers to appear in a game or two over the past 26 years.

Still to this day, however, there is remarkably no official Scream video game available to legally purchase. In fact, there wasn’t a Scream game or Ghostface appearance at all in any video game until 2011. This, the only official game to be made about the franchise, was a tie-in mobile game for the release of Scream 4, and used the gameplay mechanics of popular phone hit Fruit Ninja. This isometric romp saw you pick up the Ghostface mantle to slay unsuspecting young things against the clock with a swipe of the screen representing a knife slash. 

 

Intentional or not, it looks exactly like the kind of cheesy tie-in you’d expect from the film’s own in-universe Stab franchise. The game, unfortunately, vanished from mobile stores after a while, consigning this particular bit of Scream media to the forgotten files.

Scream resurfaced in the video game world in 2017 when news of a tie-in demo project by HorrorGameDev was revealed to be in the works for the 20th anniversary of Scream 3, leading to a full game release in time for the 25th anniversary of the Scream franchise. It was going to blend the world of the television series with that of the films, and involved a storyline where series heroine Sidney Prescott was killed off. For whatever reason, HorrorGameDev stepped away from the project, and it didn’t end up happening.

Still, it did birth a small game inspired by that premise that was released on itch.io by Stefano Cagnani in 2021, so there was at least some kind of (unofficial) Scream game for the 25th anniversary.

After that, Ghostface did make a couple of significant appearances in other video games. In 2019 the killer joined the ranks of asymmetrical multiplayer horror game Dead By Daylight, which in suitably meta fashion, meant Ghostface could potentially murder Halloween’s Laurie Strode. Weirdly, due to licensing red tape, it’s not canonically the Ghostface of Scream, rather a copycat living in Florida.

Finally, for Halloween of 2021, we did get an official Ghostface appearance in a video game, voiced by Roger Jackson himself. That game? Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (and Warzone). Yes, Ghostface has now modernized its schtick by harassing victims online over Xbox Live. 

A quarter of a century on, and horror is in a healthy place where games can be made of its movie icons with relative freedom. There’s an Evil Dead game on the horizon that includes 30 plus years of characters in its roster. Gun Media has brought Jason Voorhees to life (only to be massacred by the greatest killer of all; legal battles) on PC and consoles, and will soon do the same for Leatherface in the upcoming Texas Chain Saw game, so perhaps we may see the murder-weary residents of Woodsboro represented in digital form yet.

The potential templates for such a game are already there in the likes of Until Dawn, Dead by Daylight and Among Us, so what are we waiting for? A phone call?