Ideas for a really scary game?

[Sean Hollyman]

So what would you put in a game to make it truly scary?

I'd put something in there that follows you wherever you go. You can't attack it, but it can attack you, and it walks really slowly, but doesn't stop. But it's there. It's always there. Wherever you go.

 

[Rumpsteak]

Off the top of my head an enemy that could sneakily take control of any squad members you have. Not to kill you of course, they'd wait until some plot point and take the story down a route you didn't intend.

That or weeping angel type enemies, used sparingly those are terrifying. Modding them into minecraft is one way to cure an "addiction".

 

[poisonedcon]

Scarcity of ammo. Left 4 Dead could've been so much more appealing had ammo not been as plentiful.

Sure, we've got guns. Ammo? Just a couple.

EDIT: Didn't finish my thought.

Ammo scarcity in a scenario such as being overrun or overpowered. Zombie horde or pack of wolves chasing you down in the dead of winter, with hunger/sleep dep/thirst/hypothermia meters. Also the fact that you HAVE to leave safety to get food or water. The requirement of risk.

 

[shootthebandit]

bird flu has developed into a new resilient strain and it has turned all the bird into zombie like creatures. you are a bird hunter and its down to you to protect society from alfred hitchcocks avian baddies

 

[DigitalAtlas]

So what would you put in a game to make it truly scary?

I'd put something in there that follows you wherever you go. You can't attack it, but it can attack you, and it walks really slowly, but doesn't stop. But it's there. It's always there. Wherever you go.

A game where you're abducted by aliens and need to get off the ship. They have lasers and already tore one of your arms off. There. Done.

 

[Generalissimo]

i've an idea: you're in hospital for treatment, but some guy drugs you into a horrible nightmare world in which the hospital is filled with zombies, mad doctors and such. a very silent hill 2 type of scenario ensues, with mr trigonometry for a face is replaced by the insane director.

the final boss is when you wake up, and have to fight the guy who put you there in the first place.

perfect tagline: "fever kills, doesn't it?"
the cover art can be of a surgeon holding a bloody knife, grinning eerily at you.

 

[Singapore Sling]

On the psychological side of fear, I think anything that allude to a twisted, dark aspect sexuality can be pretty powerful, since we usually feel the need to draw a pretty clear line between WANT and DO NOT WANT. Plus, it involves the idea of power (or lack of it), pain, danger... You get the idea.

 

[endtherapture]

A Zelda game where Link is fully voiced.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

A first person shooter set in modern or near future times. Except unlike the COD or Battlefield model, make it more akin to STALKER or Metro 2033. Actually make combat feel threatening. Homefront hoped to make you "feel" each kill, and failed miserably. But if someone could actually perfect that, make you actually feel how terrifying combat is, that would be an intensely frightening game.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

A Zelda game where Link is fully voiced.

And then it pulls a Jak 2: Renegade, and the first thing that comes out of Link's mouth is "I'M GONNA KILL GANON!"

 

[Quaidis]

I want to play a scary, mind-blowing game where you start off normally... Normal home, normal neighborhood. And you have to avoid a killer that's out there, stalking you. It would be psychological at first. You'd know he was there, and you know he is going to hurt you, but you don't know when. You'll have friends who talk about it (or die off), you'll see posters up about it, you'll see news programs.

After a point you come into contact with him and he does something unexpected. Like bites you. Or slashes you with a knife laced in some type of unknown liquid. Or stabs you with a needle.

You fight, he gets the worst off and is defeated (or shot by cops) and/or flees.

Then through the rest of the game your body changes. You grow cancerous growths all over, lesions open up, wounds don't heal. Throughout the rest of the game your character's mind deteriorates. Things level backwards. You can't carry as many items. Your aim with a gun gets progressively harder. People's features are harder to make out. And during this, more people are out to get you. You hit a moment where you can't tell who is who anymore and if they're your friend or one of the people who wants to kill you (or even the original killer guy).

That would be the premise of the game. There would be two objectives. One is to kill everyone who's a threat and stay alive. The other is to find out what's happening with you and cure it before you lose it and go crazy.

The real mind-fuckery is that the scenery and visuals of the game get creepier and more messed up the longer your character goes mad.

There would be little to no music. Only during exciting parts, or from a boombox far off.

I could edit more and ramble about this idea, however I doubt anyone gives a damn.

A Zelda game where Link is fully voiced.

Well Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, princess.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

No health regeneration. Make health a resource which can be depleted, and there are no health packs, or anything of the like within the game. The player will start with a high amount of health which while gradually dwindle as the player encounters more and more enemies. It'll make it basically impossible to die at the beginning of the game while the player is still learning the mechanics, but as the game gets closer and closer to the end it forces the player to play more carefully, never quite knowing if they have enough health to complete the game, and constantly damning themselves for making unnecessary mistakes in the beginning of the game which cost them precious health.

Players would start with more or less health depending on difficulty modes. There would be no guns in the game, forcing players to confront enemies head on with a high probability of getting hurt, or forcing players to run away. This would make the combat a lot more strategic because it would make players want to lead enemies into areas where they have the advantage.

The combat would be something smooth and simple, on the level of about Assassin's Creed, and the player character would be a proficient fighter, meaning whether players got injured during combat would be completely down to player skill, not clunky controls messing them up or anything to that effect (completely shunning the staple tank controls that seem to crop up in the survival horror genre). There would also be a system for players to build traps out of objects they find in their environment, which would lead players to want to explore levels more thoroughly, and would also aid in the strategic combat of the game.

With this system, the game would get progressively more and more intense as the story progressed and pretty much any enemy could be made fearsome and foreboding by the end of the game.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I've got an idea. How about we play a game where we go out and buy Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or wait and buy Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. The gameplay consists of you playing those games. Sorry, I just had to fanwank over Amnesia for a second, since well it's the scariest game ever to me.

OT: Basically, it's some sort of Grand Theft Auto style open world game where at random points something akin to Slenderman starts to stalk you. You start to see him more and more as you go through your missions (just some generic mobster/revenge missions would do). Then about halfway through the game you are tasked with going into an abandoned house to collect something. You go in and instead you find the monster who has been stalking you, he knocks you unconcious and you wake up to find the whole open world has turned into a monster filled hellhole. You are still always being stalked by the monster, he serves as sort of a downer as you try to fight off the various creatures that lurk the new world and find out what's happened to you.

 

[Mr Companion]

Making a horror game is so easy I cannot comprehend why companies cant do it.

-Stealth based, if you mess up you have to run to the next safe zone but the monsters are faster than you.
-No cut scenes, ever.
-The environment/sound messes with you, somebody is running at you from behind! Oh wait no....
-No music change when enemies see you, no indication
-Pictures that devour you
-A monster that steals voices, talks to you in many voices and wants yours
-Lots of silence, only dietetic sound often indicating where hostiles are
-This is all your fault somehow
-Groups of randomly walking blind monsters you have to sneak past

Edit: Oh also the building/world you are in gets smaller as time goes on. You revisit places and the rooms get gradually smaller giving a sense of claustrophobia and insects start crawling everywhere. Places that were once niece are now horrifyingly bleak and small.

 

[Mr Companion]

I've got an idea. How about we play a game where we go out and buy Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or wait and buy Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. The gameplay consists of you playing those games. Sorry, I just had to fanwank over Amnesia for a second, since well it's the scariest game ever to me.

I think Amnesia was a massive step in the right direction but in a genuine terror sense I feel the potential was not fully realized. The main problem I personally had with it was that once you notice that crouching in a dark corner for 30 seconds whenever you hear scary music makes all the monsters go away (I happened to notice this very fast unfortunately) the game becomes a long walk through a castle full of puzzles. If only the monsters didn't disappear after a while forcing the player to tensely sneak past or the music didn't outright alert you to danger I feel the game could have genuinely made me scared rather than simply annoyed at increasingly fetchquesty puzzles.

Edit: Just so you know im not trying to ruin your experience or say you were wrong im just saying that Amnesia was not the end all of horror and if only I had been on the design team to give them the benefit of my immeasurable wisdom it may well have been the greatest horror game of all time but alas it twas not to be.

 

[accipitre]

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~snip~

DayZ mod for ARMA. Permadeath, persistent multiplayer, ridiculous realism, and terrifying zombies. Running out of ammo is one of the more common causes of death. Did I mention that most guns, including the starting gun, are generally a 1-hit-kill? Combat is terrifying, and PvP is intense, especially when you have a lot to lose.

~snip~

~snip~

SCP: Containment Breach, namely SCP 173. I refuse to play it... it's a ridiculously primitive alpha, yet I saw gameplay footage, said NOPE, and went outside.

OT: A game where you're not sure if you're going mad, or your companions are. Bonus points for forcing the player to become attached to said companions. More bonus points if the insanity is inspired by subtle, Lovecraft-like eldritch influences.

 

[Zhukov]

Still waiting for that underwater horror game.

Drifting through the water, hearing the sound of you own breath in the scuba mask, catching glimpses of huge somethings sliding through the murky depths.

 

[Joshua Hochstetler]

I think Amnesia was a massive step in the right direction but in a genuine terror sense I feel the potential was not fully realized.

I agree with you completely. I loved the fact that Amnesia was a game that took the horror into a more Lovecraftian direction (even to the point of not being able to look at the monsters for long), but there were few times that I felt legitimately scared because it became a stealth and waiting game. I'm really looking forward to Machine for Pigs though to see how they improve on the model.

 

[Animyr]

Open world, domestic environment like a vacant suburb at night (where you can go int all the houses), killer/killers/monsters stalking the area at random. Clunky combat, limited ammo, limited health recovery if any, up to you to figure out where to go.

I'm really looking forward to Machine for Pigs though to see how they improve on the model.

Agreed. The scariest part was in that cellar where the enemies don't go away and you have to work your way past them. In all the other areas they disappear after about a minute.

I squealed in glee when I heard that the Dear Esther people were working on MfP.

 

[ManInRed]

The idea of being stalked by some bloodhound whose can always track you down, even if you think you lost it is a scary idea. Of course, the stalker is always scariest if you don't get to see them. Maybe they just make noise every now and then, or a shadow, or leave a trail when you turn around to look sometimes. Even the notion of the invisible Hell Hound from Supernatural could work with this idea. No target to counter attack.

Of course, the stalker doesn't need to be bad to get under someone's skin. Like a real stalker, they could be an admirer, who leaves you 'love' notes. Of course, when one of these notes suggest they were in the same room as you, perhaps a room you heard a noise in and saw nothing, you'll suddenly get that creeping coldness up your neck as you wonder: are they here now?

The nice thing about being watched is, people try to push this thought out of their head instinctive, thinking that'll take away their fear. But in a game, you need periods where player lulled into a sense of false security, in order to have anything to take away and surprise them. With a stalker, the player is all too willing to put themselves in this feeling safe state, even if you try to convince them the threat is constantly there. Any excuse they have for feeling safe, they'll take. So you only need to be inconsistent with when you choose to remove this feeling of safety.

Just remember, eventually the player will prepare themselves to expect finding something stalking them. And this is when you can give them the scariest thing of all for them to find, something they're not prepared for: nothing at all. Let them examine an area in such a way that it must convince them, that they have to be alone -that the room is empty, they've had time to examine it fully, and there is only one path in, and they can see the path leading up to them for a long way, and know nothing has passed through or is coming towards them. Then, as they turn back or take the only advancing route left -bang, they get hit from behind as it was there all along.