Horizon is a science fiction franchise set in a 31st-century post-apocalyptic version of the United States. It primarily consists of action role-playing games. The franchise consists of two main games, Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) and Horizon Forbidden West (2022). The series also includes two spin-offs; Horizon Call of the Mountain (2023), a virtual reality game, and Lego Horizon Adventures (2024), a family-friendly retelling of Zero Dawn. The franchise also includes adaptations into comic books, Lego sets and tabletop games. Upcoming entries in the series include Horizon Steel Frontiers, an MMORPG, and Horizon Hunters Gathering, a cooperative multiplayer game, alongside a feature film adaptation of Zero Dawn currently in development. The narrative follows Aloy, a young Nora tribe huntress and a clone of 21st-century scientist Elisabet Sobeck. She attempts to uncover the secrets of the ancient past and stop recurring extinction-level threats.
The gameplay revolves around exploring an open world where nature has reclaimed the ruins of human civilisation, which is now overrun by animal-like machines. The player hunts and battles these machines using stealth and tribal weaponry, aided by an augmented reality device called a Focus. They must also navigate conflicts between human tribal societies. The series originated from a concept by art director Jan-Bart van Beek. It is predominately developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Horizon was originally developed as an exclusive for PlayStation consoles, but the franchise has since expanded to include releases on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch, and soon on mobile platforms.
The franchise has received mostly positive critical and commercial reception, and won numerous industry awards, particularly for its tactical combat, worldbuilding, and visual fidelity. Scholars have also analysed the games' environmental ethics and focus on the symbiosis between humanity and nature. As of November 2025, the franchise has sold over 40 million units worldwide, making it one of Sony's best-selling first-party properties.
Media Video games
Main series
Horizon Zero Dawn was first released in North America on 28 February 2017, in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand on 1 March, and Asia on 2 March for PlayStation 4. The game follows Aloy, a young Nora tribe outcast in a post-apocalyptic United States overrun by animalistic machines. She seeks answers about her origins and discovers she is a clone of Elisabet Sobeck, a 21st-century scientist. She learns that the old world was destroyed by a plague of self-replicating military robots created by Faro Automated Solutions, which prompted Sobeck to create "Project Zero Dawn", an artificial intelligence (AI) system led by GAIA designed to restore life to Earth. Aloy is aided by a mysterious ally named Sylens and she must fight a cult called the Eclipse to stop a rogue AI subfunction named HADES from triggering another mass extinction.
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds is an expansion pack for Zero Dawn and was released on 7 November 2017. Aloy travels to a snowy region known as the Cut to investigate a new threat called the Daemon, which is corrupting the local machines. She enlists the help of the local Banuk tribe and their shaman, Ourea, to reach a ruined volcanic facility within Thunder's Drum. Inside, she discovers the Daemon is HEPHAESTUS, another rogue subfunction of GAIA, and must stop it from taking over CYAN, an ancient AI responsible for governing the Yellowstone Caldera.
Horizon Forbidden West was released on 18 February 2022 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. It is set six months after Zero Dawn. Aloy travels to the western coast of the United States to investigate a deadly blight that threatens to destroy the Earth. She clashes with the Far Zeniths, a group of technologically advanced humans who fled Earth a millennium ago and have returned to steal a copy of GAIA. Aloy allies with her friends, local tribes, and her newly discovered cloned sister, Beta, to wipe out the Zeniths. Aloy and her allies learn that the Zeniths were actually fleeing an even greater threat: Nemesis, a vengeful, world-ending AI that destroyed the Zenith colony and is now on its way to Earth.
Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is an expansion pack for Forbidden West. It was released exclusively for PlayStation 5 on 19 April 2023. Aloy travels to the volcanic ruins of Los Angeles to track down Walter Londra, the sole surviving member of Far Zenith. She teams up with a Quen marine named Seyka and discovers that Londra has brainwashed a group of stranded Quen into a cult to help him rebuild a ship to flee Earth at the expense of the local population. Aloy defeats him within a reactivated large Horus machine, and begins preparing for the arrival of Nemesis.
Spin-offs Horizon Call of the Mountain was released on 22 February 2023 as a launch title for PlayStation VR2 headset and was co-developed by Guerrilla Games and Firesprite. The game follows Ryas, a disgraced former Shadow Carja rebel who is offered a pardon in exchange for investigating a surge in machine aggression within the Sundom. Ryas discovers that a rogue Oseram engineer named Asera has constructed lures to lead an army of machines into a direct assault on the Carja capital of Meridian. Ryas eventually finds his missing brother, Urid, and stops Asera's revenge plot, which earns his freedom.
Lego Horizon Adventures was released on 14 November 2024 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Nintendo Switch. It was co-developed by Guerrilla and Studio Gobo in collaboration with The Lego Group. The game is an alternate, family-friendly retelling of the events of Zero Dawn featuring Lego aesthetics and cooperative multiplayer. Aloy is joined by her allies Varl, Teersa, and Erend as they battle sun-worshipping cultists led by Helis and a mysterious red orb entity seeking to corrupt the world's machines. The game downplays Zero Dawn apocalyptic lore. It instead uses slapstick humour.
Horizon Steel Frontiers is an upcoming free-to-play MMORPG developed and published by NC for Windows, Android, and iOS. It was announced in November 2025 and is set in a new southern region called the Deadlands, which is inspired by Arizona and New Mexico. Gameplay centres on machine hunting and faction-based combat, as well as character customisation. It is the first game in the series not to be released on a PlayStation console and is planned to be released in the first half of 2027.
Horizon Hunters Gathering is an upcoming cooperative action game announced on 5 February 2026 and is currently in development by Guerrilla for PlayStation 5 and Windows. The game is set after the events of Forbidden West, and allows up to three players to team up as machine hunters to complete missions. The game features a stylised, cartoonish art direction, a roguelite perk system for character builds, and a narrative campaign designed around team-based tactics.
Complete editions and remaster Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition bundles Zero Dawn with The Frozen Wilds and the "Digital Deluxe Edition" items. It was released for PlayStation 4 on 5 December 2017, and ported to Windows via Steam and Epic Games Store on 7 August 2020 and GOG on 24 November.
Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition bundles Forbidden West with Burning Shores. It was released for PlayStation 5 on 6 October 2023, and ported to Windows on 21 March 2024.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows on 31 October 2024, and co-developed by Guerrilla and Nixxes Software. The remaster includes graphical improvements designed to match Forbidden West, which includes improvements like updated character models and lighting, alongside over ten hours of re-recorded dialogue with new motion capture data. It also includes support for the DualSense controller's haptic feedback and Forbidden West expanded accessibility options, which introduced new haptic and audio cues for interactable elements.
Other appearances The series is also referenced in other video games. Aloy appears as a playable character in the PlayStation 4 version of Monster Hunter: World (2018), and makes a cameo appearance in Astro's Playroom (2020) and in Astro Bot (2024), which has a full level based on Horizon. Aloy was added to Fortnite Battle Royale (2017) on 15 April 2021, for the Chapter 2, Season 6 "Primal" event. That September, Aloy was given out as a free character for PS4 and PS5 players of Genshin Impact (2020), while players on other platforms received her for free in October. In December, Aloy was added to Fall Guys (2020) as an unlockable costume during a limited-time event.
Other media and adaptations The Horizon universe was adapted into a comic book series published by Titan Comics beginning with the release of the four-issue miniseries, Horizon Zero Dawn: The Sunhawk in 2020. The story is set after the events of Zero Dawn and follows the newly appointed Sunhawk, Talanah who is struggling to find her purpose after Aloy vanishes. Talanah leaves Meridian on a contract to hunt a new breed of machine: a black-armoured Clawstrider. She allies with a Carja hunter named Amadis to battle the machines and a mercenary group. The comic bridges the gap to Forbidden West by introducing new machines and characters that appear in the game. A second four-issue miniseries, Horizon Zero Dawn: Liberation, was released between July 2021 and January 2022. It is set during the events of Zero Dawn and the story follows Aloy and Erend as they hunt for Korl, an Oseram assassin responsible for murdering a merchant and is linked to the death of Erend's sister, Ersa. The narrative frames Erend recounting the "Liberation of Meridian" where he details Ersa's escape from Carja captivity and the unification of the Oseram and Carja resistance. The comics were co-created and written by Anne Toole, one of the writers for Zero Dawn.
A licensed cooperative tabletop game, called Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game was announced in August 2018 by Steamforged Games. The game was funded on Kickstarter in less than two hours and released in 2020. The first expansion, called "The Sacred Land", released in September 2021. Steamforged partnered with Sony again for a second game based on Forbidden West called Seeds of Rebellion, which was funded via Kickstarter in November 2023. The game explores never before-seen canon events leading up to the game. In late 2025, Magic: The Gathering released six cards based around Forbidden West as part of their Secret Lair Drops.
Cancelled Netflix series In May 2022, it was announced that a live action Horizon television series was in development at PlayStation Productions and Sony Pictures Television for Netflix, with Steve Blackman writing and producing the series under his Irish Cowboy production banner. Aloy was expected to be the main character. By January 2024, writing was underway. The series was no longer moving forward by that June after a January 2023 human resources complaint was made public, in which twelve former The Umbrella Academy (2019–2024) writers and support staffers accused Blackman of "toxic, bullying, manipulative, and retaliatory behavior".
Feature film In January 2025, Sony announced that a film adaptation of Zero Dawn was in the works at PlayStation Productions and Columbia Pictures. That October, in a statement filed as part of a lawsuit against Tencent, PlayStation Productions president Asad Qizilbash stated that the company had a working script and they were searching for a director. The studio was also planning to start shooting the film in 2026 for a release in 2027.
Lego sets Parts of various games in the series have also been adapted into Lego sets, including one of a 'Tallneck', which is one of the series various robotic antagonists known as machines.
Gameplay