Toxic Town Cast: Meet the Netflix True Story Drama’s Characters

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As art forms, literature and video games couldn’t be more unalike…at least on the surface. Video games are hypersensory, stimulating with sight, sound, and touch while giving the player agency to play their way. Novels on the other hand are hyperlinear and unfold in the theater of the mind. One would think it would be difficult–if not near-impossible–to tell the same story across both mediums.

Indeed, video games directly adapted from novels are a rare breed. So rare that there are only a handful of them. However, there are some terrific games inspired by novels, and we’ve compiled a list of some of the best ones here. What’s fascinating about the titles listed below is that, while in most cases their stories vary wildly from the original author’s vision, in almost every case the essence of the source material remains intact.

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With that being said, here are Den of Geek’s 15 Best Games Inspired by Novels.

**Parasite Eve – (Parasite Eve, Hideaki Sena)**

In 1995, Hideaki Sena’s novel Parasite Eve helped spark a surge in popularity for J-Horror fiction like Ringu, Audition, the works of Junji Ito, and the novel’s sequel, a PS1 survival horror RPG by the same name. Developed by Square using the Final Fantasy VII engine, Parasite Eve continued the novel’s sci-fi body horror tale, moving the story from Japan to New York City, following NYPD officer Aya Brea’s quest to stop Eve, an evolutionarily corrupted being, from causing the entirety of the human race to spontaneously combust.

Like Sena’s novel, the game was one-of-a-kind in its space. It was a shorter campaign at about ten hours, but the storytelling was focused, the visuals were evocative and spectacular-looking for the time, and most notably, the material didn’t shy away from the scientifically dense exposition of the book, which helped set it apart from the series it was most commonly compared to, Resident Evil. And on that note, with remakes of ‘90s classics making all kinds of noise in recent years, a fully realized version of Parasite Eve is long overdue.

**The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – (The Witcher, Andrzej Sapkowski)**

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold over 50 million copies worldwide and earned top spots on “best” and “greatest” lists ever since it set the gold standard for modern action RPGs when it released ten years ago. In fact, as the years go by, it becomes clearer and clearer just how monumental CD Projekt Red’s magnum opus is–even in 2025, it can stand up to every other game in its weight class.

One of biggest indicators of The Witcher 3’s staggering success other than the fact that it’s sold over 50 million units to date and counting is that it’s helped raise awareness of its source material, Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher novels and short stories, which Netflix’s series is adapted from. The game’s story takes place after the events of the books and show and takes a few liberties with the original lore, but it maintains the spirit of the franchise. Together, the game, books, and show have cemented The Witcher as one of the defining fantasy stories of the past 50 years.

**BioShock – (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand)**

There are a lot of things that make BioShock such an intoxicating and timeless experience, from its evocative art style to its unforgettable scripted moments, to the haunting atmosphere of Rapture, the leaky underwater city that serves as the game’s setting. But it’s the ideological potency of the game’s writing that makes it so rich. While the game’s story is wholly original, it’s a less-than-subtle critique of Objectivism, the philosophical backbone of much of Ayn Rand’s work.

Andrew Ryan, Rapture’s creator and the story’s unveiled antagonist, is the most obvious embodiment of Rand’s Objectivist worldview, fashioning an ultimately doomed vision of a society where self-centeredness and productivity are paramount. There are numerous references to Rand’s work littered throughout the game, like “Andrew Ryan” being a loose anagram of Ayn Rand, and the “Who is Atlas?” posters hung around Rapture being a flip on the line “Who is John Galt?” from Atlas Shrugged.

**Spec Ops: The Line (Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad)**

Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness most notably inspired Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, with both pieces examining the psychological and ethical horrors that war conjures in its ground combatants. While also a riff on Conrad’s classic, Spec Ops: The Line leverages the experiential nature of video games to take the themes of Heart of Darkness to a new level, putting the moral paradoxes and impossibilities of its characters in the player’s hands. When the game was released in 2012, the age of the bro shooter was in full swing, and it was a sobering subversion of all of the ultraviolent indulgences players had become so numb to.

As protagonist Captain Martin Walker leads his three-soldier Delta Force into a decimated Dubai and his sanity begins to deteriorate, nightmarish visions meeting him at every turn, the story takes on a form and tone unseen in any video game before. The game still stands as one of the most unique mainstream releases ever, and remains a must-play for those who have yet to experience it.

**Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (Journey to the West, Wu Cheng’en)**

Alex Garland made a name for himself as one of the most inventive storytellers in film, with his penned screenplays (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later, Civil War) providing unnerving examinations of human nature that, to our horror, ring utterly true. What Garland is less known for is Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, a 2010 game whose story is a loose retelling of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.

Garland’s fingerprints are all over the Enslaved’s campaign, but it’s the knockout of an ending that makes the game a true masterpiece. When protagonists Monkey (Andy Serkis) and Trip (Lindsay Shaw) finally reach their destination, they’re faced with a mind-blowing revelation when they confront Pyramid (also Serkis), a man who has transplanted the pre-war memories of a single person into the minds of thousands of wastelanders in an act of mass hypnosis to, in his view, gift them salvation. What happens next is one of the most astounding, thought-provoking final moments of any game, ever.

**Dune II (Dune, Frank Herbert)**

There are a lot of underappreciated titles on this list, but Dune II is the granddaddy of them all. Westwood Studios’ 1992 RTS is also the granddaddy of an entire genre, with its gameplay mechanics and presentation influencing some of the most popular RTS franchises in history (Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, Warcraft).

While the game ran on relatively primitive hardware, with a version even released on the SEGA Genesis, it was incredibly engaging and had all of the addictive qualities of the aforementioned RTS greats, albeit in a less evolved form. The ties to Herbert’s novel are thin, as the game’s narrative is anything but elaborate, particularly in comparison to the density of the books. But from a gameplay perspective, Dune II is well deserving of a spot on the list.

**I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison)**

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a rare case in which both the video game and the book it’s based on were written by the same person. For the 1995 point-and-click adventure game, writer Harlan Ellison worked with studios Cyberdream and The Dreamers guild to adapt his 1967 short story, which revolves around sentient supercomputer AM, who destroys all of humanity save for five survivors who he spends the next 109 years torturing in the center of the Earth.

Both versions of the story are twisted as hell, but what was so riveting about the game was its unique, language-based control scheme (players put together words to control the characters’ actions), which added a literary element to the surrealistic, gnarled visuals, which were quite handsome (in their own, sinister way) for the time.

Goldeneye (James Bond series, Ian Fleming)

Saying Goldeneye is inspired by Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels is a bit of a reach. It’s based squarely on the Pierce Brosnan film, which is based on the character from the books. Despite the degrees of separation, Rare’s iconic N64 first-person shooter needs to be on this list because it holds such a special place in the hearts of gamers of a certain age.

Goldeneye is nearly 30 years old now, and because of that, it’s easy to lose sight of just how groundbreaking it was for the time. When it was released in 1997, the N64 had been released just one year earlier, and its library was largely comprised of traditional kids’ games. Goldeneye’s mature presentation and depictions of violence were novel for Nintendo’s machine, but the kicker was how amazing the first-person shooter gameplay felt in split-screen multiplayer. The N64 split-screen deathmatches are almost unplayable now (that framerate is brutal), but the game was a beacon of joy that countless ‘90s kids will never forget.

**LEGO Harry Potter (Harry Potter Series, JK Rowling)**

While Hogwarts Legacy certainly made a splash when it dropped in 2023, it’s the LEGO Harry Potter games that resonated with a broader audience on top of being more directly adapted from the books/movies. Traveller’s Tales did a fantastic job capturing the feel of the books and films while imbuing the campaign’s storytelling with the charm and wholesome humor of LEGO.

LEGO adaptation games are, pound-for-pound, some of the most undervalued games on the market. They do big business of course, but they’re often dismissed as cash-grabby, shallow, bargain-bin titles. This couldn’t be further from the truth–these games are genuinely well-made and insanely fun, and the LEGO Harry Potter games were some of the first truly great entries in a long line of LEGO games that don’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.

**Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Shadows of the Empire, Steve Perry)**

Before Disney expanded the Star Wars universe to dizzying proportions, there was a little thing called Shadows of the Empire, a multi-media project launched by Lucasfilm in 1996 to drum up hype for the upcoming prequels. The story was set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and introduced a new character, Dash Rendar, who acted as the player character for the N64 game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.

The game wasn’t quite a launch title for the N64 (it came out three months after the console’s release), but it went on to be regarded as a defining first-wave N64 game. The graphics were mind-blowing in a transitional period when polygons were hype as hell, and the licensed music and familiar locales (Hoth was a killer opener) brought the nostalgia hard. Gameplay-wise, the game was a little janky, particularly in the platforming sections. But as a package, Shadows of the Empire was a solid example of a licensed game done right.

**Metro 2033 (Metro 2033, Dmitri Glukhovsky)**

What’s extraordinary about Metro 2033 is the specificity of its cultural identity. The game is based on a novel of the same name by Dmitri Glukhovsky, a Russian author and critic of the Russian government who hand-picked Ukrainian studio 4A Games to develop the game adaptation of his novel because he aligned with them spiritually, culturally, and politically.

This can all be felt in the game, which like the novel is set in a post-apocalyptic Russia’s Metro system, which has been infested with irradiated creatures and human combatants from warring factions. The game plays like a straightforward first-person shooter and isn’t extraordinary in this respect–but its dingy atmosphere and sociopolitically charged story help it transcend the FPS genre.

**Lies of P (The Adventures of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi)**

It’s one thing to stay faithful to a classic story. It’s another to distort a classic story so far beyond recognition that it becomes something completely new. The latter approach is a riskier endeavor, but Lies of P proves it can be done as long as the concept is inspired and well thought-out.

As wild as it sounds, turns out taking Caro Collodi’s Pinocchio and using it as a foundation to tell an eerie Baroque tale bolstered by Souls-like gameplay was a wonderful idea by Neowiz and Round8 Studio. Everything in this game clicks; the visuals, gameplay, and narrative all come together in a satisfying, harmonious way. The fictional European city of Krat is one of the more unique game settings in recent memory, and strangely, the game’s oddness somehow aligns it nicely with the spirit of the original novel.

**S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (Roadside Picnic, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky)**

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl’s roots lie in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, a Russian sci-fi novel that went on to inspire several other projects, including filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Developed by Ukrainian studio GSC Game World, the game combines first-person-shooter gameplay with RPG mechanics and a non-linear narrative with multiple endings, which helped distinguish it from the FPS pack when it was released in 2007.

Above all else, what made the game special was its dark, nebulous atmosphere, which it inherited from the novel. The setting of The Zone and Chernobyl is ominous, bleak, and terrifying, with anomalies and abominations abound. The open-endedness of the story lends to the game’s overall mystique, and it earned cult-classic status that led to an unlikely, long-overdue 2024 sequel that was released in the midst of the Russa-Ukraine conflict.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien)

The truth is, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor would probably be a great game even if it didn’t have The Lord of the Rings license attached to it. In other words, the Tolkien of it all doesn’t add a whole lot to the experience in this instance. The game made the list not because of its interpretation of the LotR lore or aesthetic, but because its simply a badass third-person action game that is incredibly fun to play.

The game’s Arkham-inspired combat system is its greatest strength, hands down. The Nemesis system is a cool way for players to navigate the game and apply creative decision-making, but at the end of the day, it’s all a means to an end, an excuse to head somewhere new to find some more asses to kick. Like Rocksteady’s Batman games, the combat makes the player feel insanely empowered, which is a hell of a drug.

**Dante’s Inferno (Inferno, Dante Alighieri)**

This one’s a big-time sleeper: Dante’s Inferno, developed by Visceral Games (best known for the Dead Space series), ostensibly looks like a God of War clone. And you know what? It kind of is a God of War clone. But this isn’t a bad thing! It’s a killer action-adventure game with sinister visuals and a mythical setting based on Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.
The game follows Dante as he battles through the Nine Circles of Hell to save his wife’s soul from Lucifer. While the comparisons to God of War hurt the game’s perception a bit, the third-person, ultraviolent action was wholly appropriate considering the tone of the story. The combat is fast, frenetic, and razor-sharp, the score is spectacular, and the story is simplistic in a good way. There are a lot of people who haven’t played this game but absolutely should.

The post The 15 Best Video Games Inspired by Books appeared first on Den of Geek.