Key Elements for THE Scariest Game Imaginable
- Thread starter SweetLiquidSnake
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Just take into consideration the 3 P's of Horror:
Psychology - Delve deep into the protagonist's psyche. You can't count on a guy in a mask going "Abloogy Woogy Woo." A monster with no depth is just a backdrop.
Pacing - If you're constantly being confronted with monsters, they no longer strike fear, simply startle.
Peripherals - Also known as ParanoiAAAH CHRIST WHAT WAS THAT!? Have monsters. Don't use them. Not very much, anyway. What you need to do here is hint at it. Build up the tension. Make the player's nerve wrack and palms sweat. Try to not let them get a good look at the monster, let them use their own imagination. To quote a certain callipygian superman, "all a good horror game needs to do is hand you a piece of sandpaper and shout encouragement as you vigorously massage your own undercarriage!"
Psychology - Delve deep into the protagonist's psyche. You can't count on a guy in a mask going "Abloogy Woogy Woo." A monster with no depth is just a backdrop.
Pacing - If you're constantly being confronted with monsters, they no longer strike fear, simply startle.
Peripherals - Also known as ParanoiAAAH CHRIST WHAT WAS THAT!? Have monsters. Don't use them. Not very much, anyway. What you need to do here is hint at it. Build up the tension. Make the player's nerve wrack and palms sweat. Try to not let them get a good look at the monster, let them use their own imagination. To quote a certain callipygian superman, "all a good horror game needs to do is hand you a piece of sandpaper and shout encouragement as you vigorously massage your own undercarriage!"
There should be a brightness slide bar option, but when you try to adjust it, a text window pops up calling you a pussy.kebab4you said:
*Places hand on shoulder*ChildofGallifrey said:anthony87 said:Mwahahah.ChildofGallifrey said:
You saw the second part at the bottom too right?
I can't read it, but the last panel seemed to suggest that the girl bludgeoned the ************ to death with something heavy. Right? I have a loft bed by a permanently open closet, so for God's sake, tell me it's dead!!!
We can only hope so....
Not really. The protagonist in Amnesia is called Daniel, so am I. I can tell you that made it a little more scary to me ¬.¬SweetLiquidSnake said:
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! The first time when it turned round didn't bother me that much. When I scrolled down further and it flew towards the screen I fucking shat myself.anthony87 said:
No it's not. Immersion comes from feeling like you are in a game, not when you think your watching something happening to you. The actual model has little to do with the experience. The most successful horror games have deep protagonists who hold a unique psychological makeup that is paralleled in the experience of the game. Having a boring blank slate of a character players can put themselves into will ruin the chance of doing this, unless the protagonist gets amnesia or psychological elements are determine through the actions of the player.
One possible exception to making the character model work is if the player could be transformed in the game, as people do have an innate fear of being turned into something else or having the wrong body. I never seen a fear game pull this off, but it could be more effective if the model was based on yourself. What's happening to my body? Heh, you could make a gender transformation horrifying if you do that right.
The point of a flashlight is to limit the players field of vision, because it is what they cannot see that truly terrifies them. I suppose you could have players be able to hit enemies with a flashlight, or make using the flashlight or any weapon attract more enemies to your location.
Often a field a vision can be limited by other factors, uncontrolled camera or first person views have built in limits. Poor visibility is also a popular notion, darkness, fog, pillars or trees blocking your view of a whole area, objects that look like enemies.
However, you cannot just limit players vision to scare them, you must also limit what they hear. The sound in the game should not make it clear when an enemy is there, but at the same time music and noises may be conditioned in a player to expect to come with an enemy some of the time. The scarcest sound of all of course is total silence, as you'd never expect to bump into an enemy when you don't hear anything.
Nice idea, a lot of horror games do not have a clear life gauge, leaving players wondering how many more hits they can take and often causing them to use too many healing items. Of course, another big part to remember about horror is limited resources.
There should be few enough items and ammo that players feel like they might run out of their supplies. This also has the duel effect of making players want to explore every room for items, even if they really rather not explore in a particular area.
Think we got a good list of horror game tropes that work already, so the question is what phoebes would I like to see in a horror game?
Being followed is an obvious one, just telling the player there's something after him constantly tracking them down like a bloodhound will set this up. The only downfall is this doesn't give players the quite lull they need to get pulled into the atmosphere, rather it tightens tension. Ideally, this is something you want to be able to turn on and off, without making the player feel completely safe. Like making the player thinks they got away, for now.
Another common one is fear of the unknown, now you can make a monster odd and unexplainable, but what about making an enemy invisible. Maybe it can only survive is pitch darkness and you'll never quite get a clear enough glimpse of it. Or perhaps it is actually invisible and only seen through its interactions with other objects ?probably needs a good roar or grunt, to sell whatever it is. Whatever it is, seeing it should lead to death fast enough that you'll never get quite a good enough view of it.
For fear of heights you could teach a player that walking over a particular unsafe looking platform will result in you falling, first in an area where the fall won't kill you. The surprise fall the first time might be something on its own, but then later in the game when you're on a very high place, like say a skyscraper, force the player to walk across that same type of platform. Maybe showing the platform before hand, and then triggering a chase sequence where that platform becomes their only escape route.
Fear of discovery. While a lot of stealth game play isn't that scary, it could be if you're helpless enough if discovered. I even like the idea of "pretending to be the zombie" and having to walk along an area really slow so monster do not detect your not one of them, as your surrounded by them, with no weapons to defend yourself.
This brings me to another important one all my favorite horror games have, fear of being unprepared. At some point in the game, maybe once they player thinks he's strong, force the player to remove all of their equipment. No weapons, no flash light, no first aid, etc. Perhaps, using a built in excuse like not setting off a metal detector or it will exploded.
Make the protagonist have no combat experience, like Dead Space.
Also, make sections where the player is weaponless. I totally want an even more scary Dead Space game, it does give amazing atmosphere and some scares but it isn't as terrifying as I hoped.
It sounds like a bad decision to make Dead Space my primary choice as a Horror game. Too bad, I like its universe and how it flows. I enjoy it as a horror game franchise and expect big stuff from the 3rd one.
Also, make sections where the player is weaponless. I totally want an even more scary Dead Space game, it does give amazing atmosphere and some scares but it isn't as terrifying as I hoped.
It sounds like a bad decision to make Dead Space my primary choice as a Horror game. Too bad, I like its universe and how it flows. I enjoy it as a horror game franchise and expect big stuff from the 3rd one.
Or, better yet, you only fight off non-scary enemies, while you don't even get to see the scary main enemies(except perhaps at the very end), yet are constantly watched and chased by them.
Oh, I know this one. Make it a starter question. *Bing* Zantos, Internet. Alan Wake? I think that's right. That's definitely a game about an author with a flashlight, don't know if it's the one you're after.zehydra said:
OT: Make the scariness linked to something in real life. I'm not as sure about scary games, but as scary TV and films go nothing fucks me up quite like when I'm watching, or even the next day, just seeing something out of the corner of my eye that's exactly what appeared in the scary scary.
You know, what probably made that so scary was the subversion of expectations. The reader is comfortable because they feel in control, I mean you can always stop scrolling, right? Then that control and security is ripped from them suddenly and without warning. It's hard to capture that same feeling in a game, but it could probably be done.anthony87 said:
What I'd like to see in a horror game is something similar to the situation in Deus Ex regarding items under boxes (I know that sounds weird)
Because in Deus Ex, in the first level, there were TONS of items hidden under boxes, and being the person I am I'm completely neurotic about finding them all and had to search under every box after that for the rest of the game.
But for the rest of the game, I only found about half a dozen or less items under boxes.
tl;dr = Have the game start out as a big monster-palooza, but then devolve into just fleeting glances of them or even just hearing them.
Because in Deus Ex, in the first level, there were TONS of items hidden under boxes, and being the person I am I'm completely neurotic about finding them all and had to search under every box after that for the rest of the game.
But for the rest of the game, I only found about half a dozen or less items under boxes.
tl;dr = Have the game start out as a big monster-palooza, but then devolve into just fleeting glances of them or even just hearing them.
Oh shit! I just thought about how it would sound to you.Kungfu_Teddybear said:
Gottom (that's a corruption of God Damned) that would be scarier.
What gets me are unexplained visions and ambient sound. Say you see a lightning flash outside a window, and catch a glimpse of a shadow cast over the floor with nothing to cast it. Next flash a second later, the shadow is gone. Cheesy, I know, but pants-shitting.
I also like when the ambient sound makes you feel like any second something could go spectacularly wrong. You walk down a pitch-dark old hallway with your flashlight. The only sounds you hear are your own footsteps, your breathing, creaking floorboards and falling dust. You walk along, singing the Star Wars theme in your head like you always do when you're bored, when you stop to look at a closed door. Only this time, when you stop, the footsteps don't. You look behind you, not sure where the footsteps are coming from. Nothing down the hall; just dark and dust. You turn back to look at the door, only to find that it is open. Five feet from you.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sit in a corner with a baseball bat.
I also like when the ambient sound makes you feel like any second something could go spectacularly wrong. You walk down a pitch-dark old hallway with your flashlight. The only sounds you hear are your own footsteps, your breathing, creaking floorboards and falling dust. You walk along, singing the Star Wars theme in your head like you always do when you're bored, when you stop to look at a closed door. Only this time, when you stop, the footsteps don't. You look behind you, not sure where the footsteps are coming from. Nothing down the hall; just dark and dust. You turn back to look at the door, only to find that it is open. Five feet from you.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sit in a corner with a baseball bat.
This is what makes a good horror game. Dead Space is terrible when it comes to this and why I don't find it as a great horror game.cyrogeist said:
What I find the most scary in games is something that should be normal and mundane given a slight tweak so that it's not quite right. For example, one of the bonus missions in Splinter Cell: Double Agent has a room that is, for no discernible reason, upside-down. Especially in a game that presents itself as a realistic shooter, this is really disturbing. A similar moment happened in Thief: The Dark Project, where you're sent in to burgle some random guys house, and then you notice there are upside-down rooms, trees growing out of the wall, and other unexplained weirdness. This, to me, is a lot more psychologically scary than jump-scares or anything like that. You go into a situation with the expectation that it's normal, and then skew them to be weird.
Of course, therein lies a problem. Most people go into a horror game expecting monsters, a creepy atmosphere, etc. The key would have to lie in subverting expectations. Make it so that when they think they're safe, they're actually in danger. Maybe have a cutscene where the player thinks they're going to get the standard exposition and mission briefing, but half-way through, the person giving the briefing starts to change appearance slightly, or their mouth stops moving, but the dialogue continues. Just an idea.
Of course, therein lies a problem. Most people go into a horror game expecting monsters, a creepy atmosphere, etc. The key would have to lie in subverting expectations. Make it so that when they think they're safe, they're actually in danger. Maybe have a cutscene where the player thinks they're going to get the standard exposition and mission briefing, but half-way through, the person giving the briefing starts to change appearance slightly, or their mouth stops moving, but the dialogue continues. Just an idea.
This is actually a really good point. I had a moment like that while playing Psychonauts (**SPOILERS** if you haven't played it); you're running through your dance loving psychic teacher's mind, learning the basics of movement abilities and such. Everything is just dandy, what with bright colors and upbeat music and dancing friends. I was under the impression that much of the game was going to have this silly yet fun atmosphere.kane.malakos said:
Then, near the end, you catch a glimpse of a room hidden off to the side. You hop up into it; it's nothing like the rest of the woman's mind. It's a small, dark room like you'd find anywhere. All it has is an empty cradle in the middle of the room surrounded my a few chairs, a chest in the corner, and a memory vault bouncing around. Open the vault and you find that this strong willed, carefree woman used to run an orphanage and she loved the children under her care as if they were children. One day she left to buy groceries, and the orphanage had burned down, killing all of the children. Knowing that, you open the chest and jump in. You're suddenly in a cage that's surrounded by nightmare shades, whispering in children's voices, asking the woman why she let them die.
I would have had to take a break for a little while after that if the woman's mental commentary hadn't dampened the effect.