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Crushingly, AMY is one of the few Survival Horror games beside Amnesia that actually is Survival Horror, and not just a Shooter that ate some marinara sauce too quickly.
Somehow, the world, or at least the city you are in, has had its inhabitants slaughtered and resurrected with a hunger for brains, or their murderers have minions trying to find you and any accomplices. Your goal: Don't die before help arrives or before you reach an exit. You will have close escapes from horrible creatures. Things will jump through windows at you. Sometimes, you will be forced to fight the horrible creatures or flee for your life.
Not unlike Post Modernism, modern Survival Horror isn't really a genre in itself; it exists more as a blurred subset of Horror and First-Person Shooter or Third Person Shooter. Older games or installments of long running series are closer to adventure games in gameplay, with much less focus on combat and more on puzzles. It requires you to figure out how to survive the onslaught and the related puzzles, and escape usually comes after you stop the source of the problem or secure an escape route. It should be noted that, unlike shooter games, there is no penalty for not killing non-boss enemies — indeed, in some games ammo is in such short supply that evasion, not confrontation, is the best tactic, similar to Stealth Based Games. This is usually compounded by having the protagonist be an Action Survivor or Non-Action Guy who is poor at combat, rather than a Badass.
Note that simply featuring large amounts of monsters, zombies and/or demons does not make it survival horror; even if the game has supernatural elements, or scares you in some way, it may not be a survival horror game. No matter how scary GLaDOS may have appeared to you, the game she was featured in is most definitely not a survival horror title.
There's some debate as to what truly makes a game survival horror. Some claim that any sufficiently scary counts, while purists often believe that it must have a heavy focus on resource management to qualify, believing that providing too many resources, no resources, or otherwise sidelining it disqualifies a game. As a rule of thumb, a game typically labeleled Action Horror is not Survival Horror. This includes games such as Resident Evil 4, which, despite keeping the tense atmosphere of the previous games, has the player sitting on a pile of ammo and supplies by comparison, making it a different genre to its Ur Example predecessors. In order to minimize confusion, try looking at the protagonist's despair; if the protagonist is oppressed and their major issues seem too petty for action games (extreme scarcity of ammunition & supplies, very tough enemies regardless of difficulty, enormous objectives, etc.), then you may be looking at survival horror.
Examples of Survival Horror games: Metro 2033, Manhunt, Silent Hill, ZombiU; overwhelmed protagonist(s), oppressive atmosphere and a need for careful management of resources (ammo, health, etc.). Examples of non Survival Horror games: Halo, Doom, Half-Life 2, Resident Evil 4, Left 4 Dead and so on; despite grim prospects and scary content, just about any fight can be won at a gain and there is always enough ammo and supplies on hand to win most scenarios. We also have advice if you want to Write A Survival Horror Game. Survival Horror Games:
Action Horror games with Survival Horror elements:
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