What makes a good Horror Game?
by nibbuls · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 06/13/2004 (10:23 pm) · 31 replies
Here is what you can say what you think is most responsible for a horrorfying experience.
Lighting, Sound FX, Music, Animations, Character design, ETC.
I'd say lighting and animations with music provide the scariest horror games. The thing about the new gen games is that shadows are NO LONGER ON THE ANIMATIONS, but rather done with computer algorithims. The music can be creepy and if you've ever played Silent Hill 3, then you'd know about the creep women when they are "dead". They constantly twich, which is the creepiest thing I've ever seen.
Lighting, Sound FX, Music, Animations, Character design, ETC.
I'd say lighting and animations with music provide the scariest horror games. The thing about the new gen games is that shadows are NO LONGER ON THE ANIMATIONS, but rather done with computer algorithims. The music can be creepy and if you've ever played Silent Hill 3, then you'd know about the creep women when they are "dead". They constantly twich, which is the creepiest thing I've ever seen.
#22
A good horror game, as has been mentioned, needs a good environment and a good atmosphere. The environment (the physical setting and the "laws of physics/nature/science" that are supposedly inviolable) can be as mundane as a middle-class apartment ("The Sixth Sense") or as grandiose as an Irish manor (Clive Barker's "Undying"). The atmosphere, however, is the overarching nature of the place, the feeling of secrets being kept, the air of desolation on an empty street, or the sense of unrest and disturbance. Sounds help immensely, the proper use of subtle images and shocking scenes will keep the players off balance, and if we had a means to generate the smell of brimstone and unidentified slime, we'd be horror game heaven.
As far as puzzles in games, I think they can be useful, to an extent. If the puzzle is there simply for the sake of the puzzle, then it is an obvious detriment. But having a puzzle that is part of the environment and fits with the atmosphere of the game, then it's a good thing. It can be part of or lead into a useful plot device.
Horror games, I think, are a bit like horror movies. They're best experienced with the lights off. Otherwise, we're too apt to laugh.
06/18/2004 (8:08 am)
"Hitch" definitely earned the title of "Master of Suspense," even today. It wasn't just the whole "less is more" process relating to gore and violence, though. I think a big part of Hitchcock's success was that he played with uncertainty. Nowadays, "Psycho" has entered into cliche, but for the time, the uncertainty of Norman's mental state and the uncertainty of who else was in the big house on the hill along with Norman lent to the creepy atmosphere. Perhaps a better example of the uncertainty factor would be "Vertigo" or "Spellbound," since both of those dealt not only with the uncertainty of the protagonist's grip on reality but with the sanity and honesty of the people around him.A good horror game, as has been mentioned, needs a good environment and a good atmosphere. The environment (the physical setting and the "laws of physics/nature/science" that are supposedly inviolable) can be as mundane as a middle-class apartment ("The Sixth Sense") or as grandiose as an Irish manor (Clive Barker's "Undying"). The atmosphere, however, is the overarching nature of the place, the feeling of secrets being kept, the air of desolation on an empty street, or the sense of unrest and disturbance. Sounds help immensely, the proper use of subtle images and shocking scenes will keep the players off balance, and if we had a means to generate the smell of brimstone and unidentified slime, we'd be horror game heaven.
As far as puzzles in games, I think they can be useful, to an extent. If the puzzle is there simply for the sake of the puzzle, then it is an obvious detriment. But having a puzzle that is part of the environment and fits with the atmosphere of the game, then it's a good thing. It can be part of or lead into a useful plot device.
Horror games, I think, are a bit like horror movies. They're best experienced with the lights off. Otherwise, we're too apt to laugh.
#23
For instance, the thing with the Cthulu mythos was teh fact that you couldn't simply win! The enemy was too powerful... the best you could wish for was for the character to delay it...
In The Suffering, the best part for me was the beginning, when you don't have a single weapon, and still you knew there was an enemy outside your cell... When you already had lots of weapons, your fear would plainly abate...
In Silent Hill, the radio did most of the scaring really... very nice game-gimmick... Why? Because the player would feel helpless... he didn't know where the enemy was, he just knew he was there!
In Eternal Darkness (can't believe nobody spoke about the blowing head-thing!), it was the knowledge your character would die... That would trigger the surprise-factor when the character didn't die... The player was helpless most of the time, thinking: "When am I going to die?!"
In Clocktower 3, the enemies wouldn't die... you would just delay them... that would scare the player... again, the helplessness of knowing you couldn't win...
So, for me the key is to keep the player helpless... That, coupled with surprise does an horror game...
06/23/2004 (4:27 am)
I think all horror can be summed up in one thing: helplessness... The more the character is helpless, the more this works, I think...For instance, the thing with the Cthulu mythos was teh fact that you couldn't simply win! The enemy was too powerful... the best you could wish for was for the character to delay it...
In The Suffering, the best part for me was the beginning, when you don't have a single weapon, and still you knew there was an enemy outside your cell... When you already had lots of weapons, your fear would plainly abate...
In Silent Hill, the radio did most of the scaring really... very nice game-gimmick... Why? Because the player would feel helpless... he didn't know where the enemy was, he just knew he was there!
In Eternal Darkness (can't believe nobody spoke about the blowing head-thing!), it was the knowledge your character would die... That would trigger the surprise-factor when the character didn't die... The player was helpless most of the time, thinking: "When am I going to die?!"
In Clocktower 3, the enemies wouldn't die... you would just delay them... that would scare the player... again, the helplessness of knowing you couldn't win...
So, for me the key is to keep the player helpless... That, coupled with surprise does an horror game...
#24
06/23/2004 (4:32 am)
Horror is also triggered by disgust alot of the time. So if you have something completely disgusting or something that no-one thought anyone would ever think up (you kind of have to be sick and twisted to make horror games) 
#25
However, just acknowledging that "stuff happens" doesn't make for a good story, and having a completely helpless player doesn't make for a fun game. The best stories (and games) give the main characters SOMETHING that they can accomplish, something they can struggle for. Many times - it's simply escape or survival (Jurassic Park). Maybe it's facing and defeating the bad guy who has seemed impossible to defeat for so long (Nightmare on Elm Street, It). Maybe it's simply forstalling the inevitable. But yeah - convincing the audience that the main character can't possibly succeed (YET) against an overpowering and only dimly understood power is part of it.
And maybe the characters just eventually fail(Blair Witch Project, Trilogy of Terror, and dozens more... though this is too often done poorly & cheaply)
One of my favorite "non-horror" movies that did this was Aliens. It was kind of a horror / action / science-fiction flick. The marines go in cocky, sure of themselves - and seem in every way possible to be fully prepared to do battle against this menace. Even if the audience isn't convinced. Then suddenly they get the chair kicked out from under them - not only do they discover that they were overpowered when fully prepared, but they also end up in a much weaker position than they were before.
06/23/2004 (7:38 am)
Quote:I think all horror can be summed up in one thing: helplessness... The more the character is helpless, the more this works, I think...The greatest horror is having no control over your destiny. What makes it worse is realizing that it is because of a decision you made earlier, and now you are powerless to avoid the consequences.
However, just acknowledging that "stuff happens" doesn't make for a good story, and having a completely helpless player doesn't make for a fun game. The best stories (and games) give the main characters SOMETHING that they can accomplish, something they can struggle for. Many times - it's simply escape or survival (Jurassic Park). Maybe it's facing and defeating the bad guy who has seemed impossible to defeat for so long (Nightmare on Elm Street, It). Maybe it's simply forstalling the inevitable. But yeah - convincing the audience that the main character can't possibly succeed (YET) against an overpowering and only dimly understood power is part of it.
And maybe the characters just eventually fail(Blair Witch Project, Trilogy of Terror, and dozens more... though this is too often done poorly & cheaply)
One of my favorite "non-horror" movies that did this was Aliens. It was kind of a horror / action / science-fiction flick. The marines go in cocky, sure of themselves - and seem in every way possible to be fully prepared to do battle against this menace. Even if the audience isn't convinced. Then suddenly they get the chair kicked out from under them - not only do they discover that they were overpowered when fully prepared, but they also end up in a much weaker position than they were before.
Quote:Horror is also triggered by disgust alot of the time.I think disgust is something totally different from horror. I love a good horror movie - one that creeps me out and gives me a fright. But I won't bother watching one that turns my stomach. That's not horror to me.
#26
Now, are you talking horror, or FEAR? I'll assume you're capable of writing a game that will startle/scare a player.. just have lots of things jumping out at them.. That's what Doom3 does. Horror, however, is slightly different. Horror is deeper.
For me, what general horror is stress and worry. Feelings of failure, and uncertainty can be much deeper and more terrifying than just a quick startle, particularly for more adult gamers. The things that scare us as children are ugly monsters, but when we grow up the uncertainty of everyday life, finances and so on are very real fears that never go away, and if you can tap into those, you will generate a lot of worry and horror.
The elements of horror include: isolation, being trapped, pain, decay, and gore.
Isolation is easy enough to do in a game if you cut off party members from each other as in Resident Evil:Zero. Most games feature the chr by himself, so I doubt that has any effect.
Traps are nice, also. Suddenly cut the player off from their goals, or make them tread backwards is frustrating and frightening, particularly if the player can be made to feel it is their own fault.
Pain: Is it next to impossible to make a player feel pain, unless you turn up the rumble to the point where it hits them in the head, but feel free to include imagery of people in pain in the game. This is most distressing. Mutilation, if you want to go that far, that is: people in pain, damaged and NOT dying, is intensely distressing. I would argue TOO distressing, but I am forced to mention it anyway. The idea of being in pain for a long time and unable to escape it is a very basic primal fear.
Decay: a very common theme, and you can use it many ways. Most horror games feature scenery, monsters, and images that show much decay. This gives one a very sick feeling in one's stomach. Also, most survival-horror games capitalize on this by making ammo VERY scarce. This makes the player feel like all the things they need are trickling away little by little and will they have enough? It's very worrying.
Gore: Well, gore. I personally think so much gore has been sprayed we're all inured to it. I don't think anybody is scared by mere blood anymore, but you'd be remiss if you didn't have blood in the horror game. I personally adore when you see dried blood, blood smears, or blood trails in a very quiet scene. It gives one a feeling of something horrible, all in one's imagination, and that we are too late.
Sorry that was probably more than you needed. Darn, now I wanna go run I2D real bad :)
If I'm way off and what you want to generate is FEAR not horror, then just do this: Sit down, make a list of all the things you are afraid of.. and no I don't mean silly childish things like: the dark, monsters, guns.. no, I mean the things that YOU are afraid of. The things that keep you awake at night. Tap into the things that really scare people, then find ways to suggest those fears are happening to the players. Horror is more disgust, than just pure fear.
When I did the designs for Furst Force and the superhero board games, each supervillain embodied basically one basic fear of people. This came from the fact that all old monster myths are basically the embodiments of fears.. but that's another mongloid post so I'll stop there :)
08/17/2004 (2:13 pm)
Horror is a fascinating topic. My own game is horror-themed but won't have anything like a horror feel. I've only been scared by a game once, and that was Tomb Raider when the bloody T Rex comes out of nowhere and the controller is SHAKING LIKE MAD and you go 'bang..? bang..?' I've also only ever been scared by a book once and that was Sphere when it described the size of the spaceship fin. I got startled a lot of times by Wolfenstein 3D when monsters come outta nowhere, but..Now, are you talking horror, or FEAR? I'll assume you're capable of writing a game that will startle/scare a player.. just have lots of things jumping out at them.. That's what Doom3 does. Horror, however, is slightly different. Horror is deeper.
For me, what general horror is stress and worry. Feelings of failure, and uncertainty can be much deeper and more terrifying than just a quick startle, particularly for more adult gamers. The things that scare us as children are ugly monsters, but when we grow up the uncertainty of everyday life, finances and so on are very real fears that never go away, and if you can tap into those, you will generate a lot of worry and horror.
The elements of horror include: isolation, being trapped, pain, decay, and gore.
Isolation is easy enough to do in a game if you cut off party members from each other as in Resident Evil:Zero. Most games feature the chr by himself, so I doubt that has any effect.
Traps are nice, also. Suddenly cut the player off from their goals, or make them tread backwards is frustrating and frightening, particularly if the player can be made to feel it is their own fault.
Pain: Is it next to impossible to make a player feel pain, unless you turn up the rumble to the point where it hits them in the head, but feel free to include imagery of people in pain in the game. This is most distressing. Mutilation, if you want to go that far, that is: people in pain, damaged and NOT dying, is intensely distressing. I would argue TOO distressing, but I am forced to mention it anyway. The idea of being in pain for a long time and unable to escape it is a very basic primal fear.
Decay: a very common theme, and you can use it many ways. Most horror games feature scenery, monsters, and images that show much decay. This gives one a very sick feeling in one's stomach. Also, most survival-horror games capitalize on this by making ammo VERY scarce. This makes the player feel like all the things they need are trickling away little by little and will they have enough? It's very worrying.
Gore: Well, gore. I personally think so much gore has been sprayed we're all inured to it. I don't think anybody is scared by mere blood anymore, but you'd be remiss if you didn't have blood in the horror game. I personally adore when you see dried blood, blood smears, or blood trails in a very quiet scene. It gives one a feeling of something horrible, all in one's imagination, and that we are too late.
Sorry that was probably more than you needed. Darn, now I wanna go run I2D real bad :)
If I'm way off and what you want to generate is FEAR not horror, then just do this: Sit down, make a list of all the things you are afraid of.. and no I don't mean silly childish things like: the dark, monsters, guns.. no, I mean the things that YOU are afraid of. The things that keep you awake at night. Tap into the things that really scare people, then find ways to suggest those fears are happening to the players. Horror is more disgust, than just pure fear.
When I did the designs for Furst Force and the superhero board games, each supervillain embodied basically one basic fear of people. This came from the fact that all old monster myths are basically the embodiments of fears.. but that's another mongloid post so I'll stop there :)
#27
RELIEF
If a game has a constant stream of tension with absolutely no "safe place" to regroup or catch my breath, I have to find my safe place outside the game and stop playing for a little while. And who knows when I'll feel like coming back.
Running through Thief 3 recently where there is a haunted house and there came a point where I thought to myself, "this isn't fun anymore". The house sort of had three or four different stages and some good atmosphere (eerie music, good lighting, distant banging sound in the attic, growing louder as you climb up the stairs...). They just had one too many missions in the house, and kept me there a little too long for my taste.
Without some relief, you'll be forced to make things more and more tense and scary to keep things from getting monotonous. So relief also lowers the bar on what you have to do to keep your players interested.
-Michael
08/18/2004 (9:36 am)
I would just add this factor to the mix:RELIEF
If a game has a constant stream of tension with absolutely no "safe place" to regroup or catch my breath, I have to find my safe place outside the game and stop playing for a little while. And who knows when I'll feel like coming back.
Running through Thief 3 recently where there is a haunted house and there came a point where I thought to myself, "this isn't fun anymore". The house sort of had three or four different stages and some good atmosphere (eerie music, good lighting, distant banging sound in the attic, growing louder as you climb up the stairs...). They just had one too many missions in the house, and kept me there a little too long for my taste.
Without some relief, you'll be forced to make things more and more tense and scary to keep things from getting monotonous. So relief also lowers the bar on what you have to do to keep your players interested.
-Michael
#28
1. Don't rely on dark areas and things jumping out all the time. Ultimately this gets frustrating to the player and isn't much fun. Don't get me wrong this will scare for a few minutes to an hour, after that it just gets stale and annoying.
2. The more normal something seems at the beginning the more fear you generate when things suddenly get abnormal. Silent Hill 3 did this transition very well.
3. Frequent bouts of normalness and calm make the scary moments more intense i.e. the player is finally safe in a well lit room with some friendly and seemingly well armed npcs when one opens a door and WHAM is jumped on by a creature and torn limb from limb in full view of the gathered npcs and player. Everyone tries to kill the creature, some innocents get blasted in the crossfire. Panick and fear ensue as no-one was expecting to get attacked in a well lit seemingly safe place. Learn from history "Nothing is more suprising than an attack without mercy!"
4. Being chased by the unseen is an inherited species fear i.e. we all have it from the moment we are born! This is what kept our ancestors alert and ultimately alive. Prey on this fear by having something one step behind the player. Use sounds to illustrate this. The louder the sound acompanying the creature (be it music of a screeching scratching sound) the more fear you will generate. Having an NPC scream and having the player go see why only to find a mutilated corpse or worse still a live mutilated person whose last words are "Run you fool run!" before a sound getting louder down a dark corridor and a timer clicks onto the screen. Trust me this will scare the s**t out of even a hardened gamer simply because the timer says you're dead in 15 seconds and they don't know what the heck is going to kill them!
I will not give away any more good tips as I am currently making a RE4 style horror and am using some of these suggestions already.
hope this helped though
08/18/2004 (11:22 am)
Horror is all about the anticipation that something will happen. As such tips would be:-1. Don't rely on dark areas and things jumping out all the time. Ultimately this gets frustrating to the player and isn't much fun. Don't get me wrong this will scare for a few minutes to an hour, after that it just gets stale and annoying.
2. The more normal something seems at the beginning the more fear you generate when things suddenly get abnormal. Silent Hill 3 did this transition very well.
3. Frequent bouts of normalness and calm make the scary moments more intense i.e. the player is finally safe in a well lit room with some friendly and seemingly well armed npcs when one opens a door and WHAM is jumped on by a creature and torn limb from limb in full view of the gathered npcs and player. Everyone tries to kill the creature, some innocents get blasted in the crossfire. Panick and fear ensue as no-one was expecting to get attacked in a well lit seemingly safe place. Learn from history "Nothing is more suprising than an attack without mercy!"
4. Being chased by the unseen is an inherited species fear i.e. we all have it from the moment we are born! This is what kept our ancestors alert and ultimately alive. Prey on this fear by having something one step behind the player. Use sounds to illustrate this. The louder the sound acompanying the creature (be it music of a screeching scratching sound) the more fear you will generate. Having an NPC scream and having the player go see why only to find a mutilated corpse or worse still a live mutilated person whose last words are "Run you fool run!" before a sound getting louder down a dark corridor and a timer clicks onto the screen. Trust me this will scare the s**t out of even a hardened gamer simply because the timer says you're dead in 15 seconds and they don't know what the heck is going to kill them!
I will not give away any more good tips as I am currently making a RE4 style horror and am using some of these suggestions already.
hope this helped though
#29
08/18/2004 (4:49 pm)
Just a warning: "Silent Hill" - The Room is awful. Try before you buy.
#30
I'll have to check out the reviews.
08/19/2004 (8:23 pm)
Hmmm.... By awful, do you mean a bad game, or just scary?I'll have to check out the reviews.
#31
Anyone played System Shock 2? There is a system similar to the Doom III PDA elements, but instead of being played for laughs or passwords, they were, for the most part, just blogs - the every day ramblings of the crew of the ship. As the game progressed you'd learn about the crew, what they did, what they liked to eat - they became your friends in a lonely world. It's quite disturbing when you find them dead - or worse.
Doubleplusgood for mentioning Hitchcock - he is indeed the master of suspense.
08/20/2004 (3:43 am)
I'm in with the suspense crowd. You can make things jump out at you all you want, but it just makes you jump (and maybe a bit jumpy). It doesn't make you want to switch off and hide in a box, only to find that you can't because you're too enthralled in the game. Those birds in Resident Evil were memorable though, weren't they?Anyone played System Shock 2? There is a system similar to the Doom III PDA elements, but instead of being played for laughs or passwords, they were, for the most part, just blogs - the every day ramblings of the crew of the ship. As the game progressed you'd learn about the crew, what they did, what they liked to eat - they became your friends in a lonely world. It's quite disturbing when you find them dead - or worse.
Doubleplusgood for mentioning Hitchcock - he is indeed the master of suspense.
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