The Oregon Trail Is Basically A Survival Horror Masterpiece

Yes, the Oregon Trail is being turned into a movie. And, as better writers have already pointed out, it’s a slightly weird property to adapt. That said, two of the writers on the film are the Lucas Brothers who are both amazing standup comedians and got nominated for an Oscar for their work on Judas and the Black Messiah. So, I want to say up top, the talent is absolutely there to make something great. And while I’ve got no idea what shape the movie will take, I do have one recommendation: Horror. Because, I’m going to be honest, the Oregon Trail is the creepiest survival horror game of all time. It has scared me since the first time I played it.

To be clear, I am not talking about the very good Oregon Trail horror parody, Organ Trail, which tasks you with driving your car across the country during a zombie apocalypse. It takes all of the elements that made Oregon Trail memorable – including its old Apple II visual style – and turns it into an exciting, engrossing comedy adventure.

The Oregon Trail Is Scarier Than It Looks

The game gets spooky and its sound design is fantastic to that effect, but it plays off all the tropes of the original so it’s more funny than creepy. Still, it’s also a good game and it looks like it’s on sale for $2.50 on Steam, so I’d also say to buy that while I have you on the line.

But, no, Oregon Trail itself is the creepiest survival horror game of all time. It’s not the scariest – it doesn’t have the most jump scares or horrifying enemy design. But god is it creepy. I’m especially talking about the old versions that – even when we were tiny children – looked weird and melancholic. The mismatched tones and abstract shapes and the terse language all speak to something intense and off putting in the world. Loading and playing the game as it stands already feels creepypasta-adjacent.

The choices at the start of the game feel less like a bouncy character creator and more a warning that, if you’re going to die in a bad way, you might as well do it on your own terms. A banker? Well, at least you’ll have money to buy food before your body drains itself out with dysentery.

The Names Make Oregon Trail Scarier

And then there’s the naming your family. Don’t get me wrong: we all named our sons and daughters ‘Fart’ and ‘Fartiffany’ – especially if your older sister was named ‘Tiffany’, as mine was. We all knew that when our children or spouses died, we’d see a gravestone that said, ‘Here Lies Fartifanny’ and we’d laugh and continue on our journey hoping that our oxen wouldn’t drown while trying to cross a river.

And the more ironic gravestones we put up, the more we realized that our family was out there dying, man. It goes from “ha ha funny” to “uh oh funny” when your last funny-name family member succumbs to a fever.

Also, this was thrust upon us as children. Very few people who play Oregon Trail for the first time are adults. We were tiny kids in classrooms being told, “Hey, this game is history! This is a real thing that people went through! All this suffering? All this dying? It happened pretty recently in the grand scheme of things! Anyway, go have fun and be sure to have plenty of wagon wheels!” That weighs on your imagination as a kid.

I didn’t learn that the Oregon Trail was some fun adventure of westward expansion, I learned that it was a death march made by desperate people who were then invading the land of different desperate people. Oh, and if you didn’t want to blow the head off a squirrel, your whole family would starve.

The Oregon Trail Has All The Hallmarks Of Survival Horror

This is all survival horror. It doesn’t have some supernatural, nine-foot-tall hot vampire lady. Nor does it have a hospital that turns into a rusty warehouse when things go bad. It’s a fairly thin reproduction of a famous part of American history. But you are working overtime to survive. You are furious with yourself when you accidentally waste resources. You’re praying that safety can be found around the next corner.

As a kid, you can only have so many sons named ‘MegaDouche’ die of disease and drowning before you realize that maybe, just maybe, the name ‘MegaDouche’ itself is a curse. Go ahead, use a goofy name. Use a serious name. It doesn’t matter, because at the end of the day, the trail will take you.

The fact that this game represents events that more or less happened horrifies me. I do understand that, in the past, things were a bit different. I know that westward expansion was painful and violent and there are many books on the topic. But, even as a child, before learning about historical complexity, there was always a moment playing The Oregon Trail in which some kid or teacher brought up the Donner Party.

You know, the folks that were trying to reach California on the real Oregon Trail but then got stuck – as you can in the game – and had to eat dead members of their group? That doesn’t happen in the game, but finding that out as a little kid while playing an educational game in the classroom is terrifying.

That’s what always scared me about The Oregon Trail as a kid: It happened. Obviously, it was more complicated and morally nuanced and difficult than the game ever presented. But that only means things were worse. There was more death. More disease. More suffering. And, yes, the game papers over a lot of the worst parts. But it doesn’t hide the fact that, in all likelihood, you and most of your family were going to die.

It doesn’t hide that survival was just as much about pure luck as it is about skill. It’s a game for children where you have to bury your children because – like I said – that’s what happened. There’s no haunted robot bear that’s going to jump out of a corner and kill you, just time and cold and hunger and the growing look of gaunt sorrow in your poor doomed family’s eyes.