Key Elements for THE Scariest Game Imaginable

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I would disagree with a detailed protagonist. Ideally the protagonist needs to be a blank slate so the player can project on to them. It also has to be vulnerable. A defenseless child is probably the most vulnerable character you can put in a horror environment in the mind of the player.

Games could do with taking some queues from internet creepypasta

That creature you have seen outside and appears to be getting closer to the glass? It's actually behind you.

Your friend finds a picture of a little girl making a peace sign with her hand. You find him dead later and the little girl is holding up three fingers.

Things like that creep humans out much more than jump scares or hidious beasts. Our own imagination can do a lot worse.

Slowpool and kane.malakos also make great points.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

It'll have to include something like this:

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=20&weekday=tue

Have that in some sort of gameplay form and bricks shall be shat.

Well, I guess I wasn't really planning on sleeping tonight anyways.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Not even scary at all.
Amnesia is true scary kids.

Not really, scary is different for everyone.

Honestly, I hardly found Amnesia scary. It got pacing right, but it wasn't that bad for me.

 

[Stuberfinn88]

Suspension of disbelief. We are scared of the unknown reality. If we can believe it could exist but don't know what it is, then it just makes it all the more scary, but the moment you give it form, and if it looks waaaaay to funky and over-the-top then its scare factor is null. Since you know a 200 ft speedo monster with a dolls face isn't going to happen, ever.....

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Not even scary at all.
Amnesia is true scary kids.

Not really, scary is different for everyone.

Honestly, I hardly found Amnesia scary. It got pacing right, but it wasn't that bad for me.

Although I hate to say it becuase I always feel like a massive spoil sport I didn't get scared either, the protagonist ruined it for me. His going insane and shivering and stuff was just totally distracting and broke the immersion for me.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Not even scary at all.
Amnesia is true scary kids.

Not really, scary is different for everyone.

Honestly, I hardly found Amnesia scary. It got pacing right, but it wasn't that bad for me.

If you say its not scary then u have never played it kid.

I have, and I didn't.

The teeth grinding was one of the most annoying sounds I've ever heard and I was very intoxicated through a majority of it, but I still didn't find it that scary.

The scariest thing I've half way played was Nightmare House 2. But I stopped after the room encloses around you.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I find that most great horror games I have played involve some element of mystery. You need to give a reason to make the protagonist and therefore the player keep moving through the nightmarish scenario. Curiosity killed the cat indeed.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Not even scary at all.
Amnesia is true scary kids.

Not really, scary is different for everyone.

Honestly, I hardly found Amnesia scary. It got pacing right, but it wasn't that bad for me.

If you say its not scary then u have never played it kid.

I have, and I didn't.

The teeth grinding was one of the most annoying sounds I've ever heard and I was very intoxicated through a majority of it, but I still didn't find it that scary.

The scariest thing I've half way played was Nightmare House 2. But I stopped after the room encloses around you.

That game isn't even scary.

Like I said bud, scary is different for all of us.

 

[PAGEToap44]

If you combine Amnesia and Condemned, I will never go to sleep ever again for the rest of my life. Just sayin'.

Also, I don't think that there should be any weapons, really, or melee weapons that you can pick up that break after a few hits. Being helpless is a lot scarier than being able to defend yourself.

What he said.

It would have to be first person, for immersion and so you can't see what's coming up behind you. And maybe add lots of mist in places, like the Silent Hill games. This way you can have daylight levels, but they're still bloody scary. And then have enemies hardly ever attack, just make lots of scary noises. So on and so forth.

One cool feature would be to have the game ask the player what they are like at the start of the game. For example if there are guns, the game would ask, "do you own and gun ,and if so, choose the type from this list." So if you want to believably put yourself in the game and you own a shotgun for hunting then your on screen character will be more adept at firing, reloading and taking care of one than other guns found. Still limit the ammo found though. And every so often take the gun away from the player. For shits and giggles.
It could also say pick a martial art you know from this list, pick a profession, pick your gender, build, age. etc.

EDIT: And if you're a physically fit 20 year old in the military you win at the game.

 

[StorytellingIsAMust]

Lots of good points made here, but I have one that really needs to be emphasized.

BE MINIMALISTIC WITH GRAPHICS! DO NOT EVER SUCCUMB TO THE TEMPTATION TO FULLY RENDER AND LIGHTEN EVERY PIXEL JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN AND EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT!!

When modern horror games make their graphics as HD-like as possible, it removes the suspense. With early Silent Hill games, they put a layer of mist on the screen in order to hide the fact that they couldn't render the graphics well. And this added a layer of confusion and terror to the franchise. If the monsters' features are difficult to make out, then our imagination will make them that much more terrifying.

 

[SweetLiquidSnake]

Well lots of good input here so far, I guess to add in some of the best I see people like:

-Sound. I'd like to see tense build ups everytime you open a door or something, because you never know what's on the other side.

-Varying Scares. I like the idea of having randomly generated scare moments, almost L4D director-style. Like if you're going down a long windowed corridor, make it so one window will randomly smash open, but you'll never know which one.

-Scarce resources. Have ammo and health pick ups few and far between, makes you play smarter.

-Few varied enemies. If you walk in a room with 5 enemies you'll feel like some Arkham Asylum gang fight is about to erupt, but if you're being followed by one strange guy in a house and finally confront him it's much more tense (Fighting SKX).

-Being followed. Having a constant presence watching and following makes things worse, even having it so you can be attacked from behind, it's extremely unnerving since you never know when they get you.
- Oh, and having it so when you walk by a bed or a sewer drain and having a hand come up and grab your leg would always cause some pant-soiling. Even walking by a mirror and seeing a different or no reflection works too.

-Unexplained events. Having random screams, random dog barking followed by an abrupt whimper, having empty buildings with only one window lit, having you walk down a street and suddenly all the lampposts turn off, garbage cans tipping over, chairs rocking on their own, people huddled in the corner, muttering in fetal position, etc.

-Inspiration from other media. xXxJessicaxXx made a great point about taking ideas from CreepyPasta because I know after reading on there around 2am I'll never do that again. Lots of good scenarios and stories there.

Keep it going guys!!

 

[Exfil 22]

I personnally like the idea of subverting expecations, and stealing control from the player. Like in this:

It'll have to include something like this:

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=20&weekday=tue

Have that in some sort of gameplay form and bricks shall be shat.

Where the watcher assumes control through scrolling which is then stolen thru the animation. My personal reaction was to slam my laptop ad flinch away like IT would come out and get me. Something like allowing detailed character creation, then having the character mutate psychically, or cutting off a cutscene suddenly, or having the objective indicator lead you wrong. Fear is the unexpected

 

[individual11]

Single Player. Isolation is the scariest thing a non-sociopath human will experience. Leaving a lot to the imagination works wonders too. Multiplayer survival horror doesn't work, it just becomes a slow action game. Horror is psychological, jump scares are cheap, actual dread and foreboding is the goal.

System Shock or Silent Hill, not Doom or Dead Space.

 

[Voulan]

The idea of being chased or hunted/searched for is also a very good way to entice some fear. It would be wrong to constantly have those, however.

Some sort of impairment, such as never being able to fully see clearly (due to darkness, invisible enemies, fog, etc) or perhaps being unable to hear your enemies (could cause some heart attacks, though).

Frighteningly disturbing backstories may help here also. Anything particularly off-setting of your location (be it from an unexpected twist from normality or a sympathy-inducing story of a character being there before you) gives the player an unsettled feeling. This ties into the idea of highly emotional reactions, which are offsetting for the sake of making you react so much.

Turning what was once safe and reassuring into the exact opposite. Silent Hill 4 played on this a little, when your room goes from safe-haven to demon-filled leaving you nowhere safe, but I don't think it played on this enough. The idea of being tricked into reassurance will be completely upsetting and alarming to the player.

Playing on human irrational fears - giant faces, wide open spaces, unbeatable enemies, inability to defend yourself, inability to hide, dream-like moments of running slowly when chased, etc.

But as many people have already pointed out, imagination is key.

 

[marurder]

Randomness, you KNOW there is a (or several) nasties in the for-coming area, a big issue is that you know WHERE and WHEN they will pop out. Make it so there are a possible 10 spots A creature could pop out. But each has a 50% chance of doing so. So it's possible nothing happens OR that several come out quickly.

If nothing happens - a player is shitting them-self because they don't know what is out there or when, 2 - if all 10 pop out then a player has a massive fight on their hands which will keep the blood pumping.

It also adds replay value. I should also mention that this chance changes if you reload.

 

[johnstamos]

atmosphere and pacing, say a game starts you off in say a completely empty town covered in fog and occasionally you see a shadow or hear a spooky noise that makes you piss yourself a bit, great scary game. on the far other end you have a game that starts your off with loud noisy things with with noodles coming out of there backs yelling at you as the game also tells you to RUN STUPID and gives you a flamethrower an hour in, thats not really horror, if you play any horror games you can probably tell what I'm talking about here.

 

[Chaza]

It'll have to include something like this:

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=20&weekday=tue

Have that in some sort of gameplay form and bricks shall be shat.

That was horrible. I totaly agree just this in a game would make it bloody scary. Only if done right, the only thing that made it scary was I wasn't expecting it as I thought it was a web comic so you'd have to find a way to portray that in a game.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

It'll have to include something like this:

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=20&weekday=tue

Have that in some sort of gameplay form and bricks shall be shat.

Jesus-Mother-Loving-Christ! I'm so fucking glad it's daylight outside right now otherwise I'd have screamed. Did NOT see that coming.

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.

Yes and this is the very thing that developers of so-called "scary" games (FEAR, I'm looking at you) miss. Most games would just stick that same scene in the game and fully animate the whole thing and then say it was terrifying. But they miss the point.

This is what made Silent Hill so scary for me. You never knew what was going to happen. Areas where enemies could jump out simply never had any enemies, only that tense music. The possibility of enemies was there all the time so you could never be sure, even though you KNEW SH disn't use jump scares. Condemned did this well too, the AI was quite impressive in that it stalked you from the shadows instead of making a direct bee-line for you.

As I always do in these situations, I direct people to this SH3 moment:


This is probably the reason why I find it hard to look into mirrors...

 

[somonels]

Make sure there is cereal all around the floors, so every step sounds like a thousand little crunches and is heard from afar.

 

[IrisEver]

I'll make my own list.

-Unexplainable. There needs to be something that, for the whole game, is unexplainable. The story progresses and you start finding out why what's happening is happening. Something quite complex and disturbing.

-Unable to defend yourself against some monsters in the traditional sense (pew pew). Amnesia did this really well, but I would limit it to just being defenseless against certain enemies rather than 'all'. Perhaps you could confuse them, hide from them of course. Perhaps the noise from your attacks on other enemies would lure the invulnerable ones, so you had to be careful what you attacked and when. Being able to rush into a game all guns blazing doesnt make for much of a scary game.

-Atmosphere. Eerie. No 'funky music'. Subtlety in this sense is key.

-Innocence. There must be some sort of innocence at stake. Even those of us not too concerned with the concept of 'innocence' still tend to get a rise from the corruption of, on a very primal level. Ghost children would be fine.

-Enemies that look gnarly.

-Corruption of familiarity. Setting a game in a dark and gloomy castle is great, but I would imagine something that looks more like your neighbour hood getting more and more messed up as things progess. At least, it starts off quite familiar and by the end of the first chapter in the game, it's not anymore.

-A good number of health packs, but healing is 'hit and miss' (you find a health restoration item, and there are many of them, but it works sporadically). Worrying so much about your health in a game takes your mind off the fear. Everyone is so used to dying in a game, now, that death isn't really whats going to scare us. The respawn point doesnt bother us, its being attacked that does. When we have low health in a quite moment though, we will keep a huge eye on it, being distracted in the process.