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.
#2
06/14/2004 (12:58 am)
Scary music and soundFX just like Resident Evil is the most important part of these games as the huge and awful levels and houses can do. 
#3
And building of suspense, of course. If player is entering new and new rooms, and nothing happens, just some sounds/whatever, he starts to feel edgy, because he AWAITS the surprise and the longer it doesnt come, the scarier the surprise has to be.
Of course, dont overcook it.
06/14/2004 (2:28 am)
Never show the danger right away. Its not that scary when you see it. Its scary when you hear it, when you think it lurks in darkness, but you cant be sure.And building of suspense, of course. If player is entering new and new rooms, and nothing happens, just some sounds/whatever, he starts to feel edgy, because he AWAITS the surprise and the longer it doesnt come, the scarier the surprise has to be.
Of course, dont overcook it.
#4
You need to surround the person with the game. If they keep getting distracted, then they get pulled out of the game, and it becomes a 2d projection again. Ambient sounds are very important, footsteps are important. Sound is very, very important. Music is important. People take more time playing these kind of games over FPS's, you have to pay attention to the details because you will get away with a lot less.
06/14/2004 (5:00 am)
Environment, environment, environment.You need to surround the person with the game. If they keep getting distracted, then they get pulled out of the game, and it becomes a 2d projection again. Ambient sounds are very important, footsteps are important. Sound is very, very important. Music is important. People take more time playing these kind of games over FPS's, you have to pay attention to the details because you will get away with a lot less.
#5
What is good about it ,you dont know when you get attacked
They build up the exicitiment so you can play 2 levels without been attacked,but you always are prepared.
Thats the feeling i like when it comes to horror.
Sounds and enviroment is very important to.
06/14/2004 (7:47 am)
Alien vs predator is a good example if you like games like this.What is good about it ,you dont know when you get attacked
They build up the exicitiment so you can play 2 levels without been attacked,but you always are prepared.
Thats the feeling i like when it comes to horror.
Sounds and enviroment is very important to.
#6
I have yet to play a *GOOD* horror game... though I've played some great games with horror elements. It may be that the interactive environment is not conducive to horror --- part of the horror may be the non-interactive nature of the horror story / movie, where the reader / viewer is strapped into the roller coaster for the ride. I
n a game, you also don't have that investment with the character. In a book or movie, when a character dies, you know it's (usually) the end of that character's story, and you experience an emotional loss. In many of the crappy slasher-horror flicks out there, that's not a big emotional loss. In games, you have perhaps a bigger shock due to your interactive association with the main character, but your emotional response is simply frustration for having to reload and re-play the last few minutes. And frankly, after you've seen the pretty heroine of the story die grisley deaths a few dozen times, it really loses its impact. I don't know how you can get around this from within the conventions of the medium. Sure, you could defy the conventions - but you run a big risk if you do so.
And as Nauris stated - a lot of it is in establishing the mood, building up the suspense and the anticipation of horror to come. Provide little releases and false starts - note the overused tradition of "it's only the cat" jump in most horror movies. There's a noise... the music builds up... you KNOW something's gonna jump out on the character... but it's only the cat. This makes the appearance of the actual horror more of a surprise. This is completely contrary to most games, which typically unveil the nasties right from the get-go, and reduce most of the horror to a small but visceral panic.
06/14/2004 (8:30 am)
Nauris nailed it, I think.I have yet to play a *GOOD* horror game... though I've played some great games with horror elements. It may be that the interactive environment is not conducive to horror --- part of the horror may be the non-interactive nature of the horror story / movie, where the reader / viewer is strapped into the roller coaster for the ride. I
n a game, you also don't have that investment with the character. In a book or movie, when a character dies, you know it's (usually) the end of that character's story, and you experience an emotional loss. In many of the crappy slasher-horror flicks out there, that's not a big emotional loss. In games, you have perhaps a bigger shock due to your interactive association with the main character, but your emotional response is simply frustration for having to reload and re-play the last few minutes. And frankly, after you've seen the pretty heroine of the story die grisley deaths a few dozen times, it really loses its impact. I don't know how you can get around this from within the conventions of the medium. Sure, you could defy the conventions - but you run a big risk if you do so.
And as Nauris stated - a lot of it is in establishing the mood, building up the suspense and the anticipation of horror to come. Provide little releases and false starts - note the overused tradition of "it's only the cat" jump in most horror movies. There's a noise... the music builds up... you KNOW something's gonna jump out on the character... but it's only the cat. This makes the appearance of the actual horror more of a surprise. This is completely contrary to most games, which typically unveil the nasties right from the get-go, and reduce most of the horror to a small but visceral panic.
#7
Personally, I have yet to find a good enough horror game. It's always the little things that ruin it for me. Like when the crazy zombie beast explodes out of the wall and runs at you, but gets stuck on a chair, and you just laugh at it. Sure, there have been some really creepy moments in alot of games, like System Shock 1/2, Aliens vs Predator (as mentioned above), Silent Hill (any of them), etc But I just cant get into the game because of the details that arent right.
Also, and maybe I'm the only person that thinks this, but dying in horror games is very stupid. How scary is it to die? Not at all, you just reload the game, which is boring, and then you have to fight through the same area you just went through, and there is no more surprise. Additionally, annoying gameplay (like jumping puzzles and other tedious tasks) makes a game no fun, which also takes the player out of the experience.
Just my two cents.
06/14/2004 (8:31 am)
My friend said the GameCube game, "Eternal Darkness" was very frightening. He told me of times when it would do things right as you looked away from something, and how it would change the way the whole world was setup, and do other crazy things to screw with your mind. It even pretended to erase your file when you saved sometimes! :)Personally, I have yet to find a good enough horror game. It's always the little things that ruin it for me. Like when the crazy zombie beast explodes out of the wall and runs at you, but gets stuck on a chair, and you just laugh at it. Sure, there have been some really creepy moments in alot of games, like System Shock 1/2, Aliens vs Predator (as mentioned above), Silent Hill (any of them), etc But I just cant get into the game because of the details that arent right.
Also, and maybe I'm the only person that thinks this, but dying in horror games is very stupid. How scary is it to die? Not at all, you just reload the game, which is boring, and then you have to fight through the same area you just went through, and there is no more surprise. Additionally, annoying gameplay (like jumping puzzles and other tedious tasks) makes a game no fun, which also takes the player out of the experience.
Just my two cents.
#8
I have to say that one of the SCARIEST parts of a game I've ever played was the Below the Well section in LOZ: O of Time
The hands made a really scary noise, and they're invisible, so when they jump down and into your lense of sight, they grab you and make a scary sound.
With REDEADS, they scream and paralyse your character. This is SO SCARY.
06/14/2004 (9:21 am)
Thanks for your insights.I have to say that one of the SCARIEST parts of a game I've ever played was the Below the Well section in LOZ: O of Time
The hands made a really scary noise, and they're invisible, so when they jump down and into your lense of sight, they grab you and make a scary sound.
With REDEADS, they scream and paralyse your character. This is SO SCARY.
#9
Man, THAT is horror!
06/14/2004 (12:09 pm)
The most horrifying game I ever played was Jurassic Park: Trespasser. It wasn't the raptors, it was the bugs! Trying to stack boxes that acted like they were greased and in an earthquake! Getting your hand stuck behind a door and walking away, stretching your arm across dozens - or even hundreds - of yards! And two frames per second on a machine that was *relatively* powerful at the time. At least it played Unreal pretty well the next day, when I brought Trespasser back to the store and traded it for Unreal.Man, THAT is horror!
#10
I have you beat with the gameplay of Bikini Karate Babes*, Strip Fighter II, Catfight and the artwork in Square no Tom Sawyer.
* The Bikini Karate Babes game costs as much as the Making Of DVD...
@George
I think that the most successful things I've seen in horror-themed games aren't the jumps of Resident Evil, the creepy character design of Silent Hill, the strange jumping noises in Alone in the Dark, the invasion of the bodysnatchers goggle paranoia of Carrier, or the strange control factor of Deep Fear. It's what you don't see that builds tension and gives a sense of "something bad will happen to me soon".
Look at the original Silent Hill. Seeing things moving around in the mist was much more frightening that seeing lumbering zombies in Resident Evil. The scene where Harry Mason investigates the locker that's rattling and opens it to find...nothing...is one of the best moments in the game. Cutting out the music so that the player is left with only silence so that you can jolt them with a phone ring in the alternate school was genious. Turning off your flashlight so the zombie children couldn't "see" you, but having the radio squelching at full because THEY'RE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU was more effective than fighting some creepy crawly. Also, The Suffering gets major props for scenes where you hear the nasty, but it takes a few seconds for it to come into the light enough to see it.
Which is one of the reasons that I loved Silent Hill, The Suffering, and Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare: the flashlight. While you could catch a glimpse of things moving around, often they were out of reach. And that made you move warily forward. I found myself running around in Resident Evil because it was easier to navigate around zombies and hunters (zombies from the right side and hunters from the left or they'd take your head off). Plus, walking was too slow for an action game like RE. But in Silent Hill and AitD, I moved slowly. I scanned the areas around me in Carrier. I listened to the environment around me in The Suffering. A jump scare is a great way to release tension to allow for another build, but RE only seemed to have jump-scares. Same with Dino Crisis (though DC 2/3 were more hardlined action titles than "survival horror" titles).
Fatal Frame is another example of a game that used subtlty rather than an in-your-face approach for the atmosphere. The newest Echo Night does a pretty good job as well. It's an adventure game from the first-person perspective. The first two were good games, but they weren't well received because people expected a shooter and not an adventure game. Kuon does a great job as well, and it does have several jump-scares. If you've seen the Juon movies/mini-series, then you'll know what to expect. Only in olden Japan.
I could go on all day talking about horror titles because I have a strange fascination with them and will often play any that I can get my hands on (even strange ones like Harvester). For a good little psychological horror/thriller title, you might want to check out Sanitarium on the PC. It's a fun little adventure game.
*edited to add URL's to a couple of horror titles.
*edited to add Kuon, Echo Night, and Fatal Frame information. I can't believe I forgot these.
06/14/2004 (12:55 pm)
@JayI have you beat with the gameplay of Bikini Karate Babes*, Strip Fighter II, Catfight and the artwork in Square no Tom Sawyer.
* The Bikini Karate Babes game costs as much as the Making Of DVD...
@George
I think that the most successful things I've seen in horror-themed games aren't the jumps of Resident Evil, the creepy character design of Silent Hill, the strange jumping noises in Alone in the Dark, the invasion of the bodysnatchers goggle paranoia of Carrier, or the strange control factor of Deep Fear. It's what you don't see that builds tension and gives a sense of "something bad will happen to me soon".
Look at the original Silent Hill. Seeing things moving around in the mist was much more frightening that seeing lumbering zombies in Resident Evil. The scene where Harry Mason investigates the locker that's rattling and opens it to find...nothing...is one of the best moments in the game. Cutting out the music so that the player is left with only silence so that you can jolt them with a phone ring in the alternate school was genious. Turning off your flashlight so the zombie children couldn't "see" you, but having the radio squelching at full because THEY'RE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU was more effective than fighting some creepy crawly. Also, The Suffering gets major props for scenes where you hear the nasty, but it takes a few seconds for it to come into the light enough to see it.
Which is one of the reasons that I loved Silent Hill, The Suffering, and Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare: the flashlight. While you could catch a glimpse of things moving around, often they were out of reach. And that made you move warily forward. I found myself running around in Resident Evil because it was easier to navigate around zombies and hunters (zombies from the right side and hunters from the left or they'd take your head off). Plus, walking was too slow for an action game like RE. But in Silent Hill and AitD, I moved slowly. I scanned the areas around me in Carrier. I listened to the environment around me in The Suffering. A jump scare is a great way to release tension to allow for another build, but RE only seemed to have jump-scares. Same with Dino Crisis (though DC 2/3 were more hardlined action titles than "survival horror" titles).
Fatal Frame is another example of a game that used subtlty rather than an in-your-face approach for the atmosphere. The newest Echo Night does a pretty good job as well. It's an adventure game from the first-person perspective. The first two were good games, but they weren't well received because people expected a shooter and not an adventure game. Kuon does a great job as well, and it does have several jump-scares. If you've seen the Juon movies/mini-series, then you'll know what to expect. Only in olden Japan.
I could go on all day talking about horror titles because I have a strange fascination with them and will often play any that I can get my hands on (even strange ones like Harvester). For a good little psychological horror/thriller title, you might want to check out Sanitarium on the PC. It's a fun little adventure game.
*edited to add URL's to a couple of horror titles.
*edited to add Kuon, Echo Night, and Fatal Frame information. I can't believe I forgot these.
#12
06/16/2004 (9:21 pm)
The scariest game experience for me was in Silent Hill 1 when Harry was in the school at night. It was the moments of silence standing in the dark hallways of the school that I found the scariest. Like David mentioned, it's the "nothing" that scares you.
#13
My friend Toby was the Marine and had somehow managed to hide in an airduct that was fairly hard to get to unless you were the Alien (which was I). I had just facehugged the Predator and grown into a full-size Drone, and suspected my friend was in the duct. I was wall-walking up towards the entrance and just as I entered I saw him there and started clawing his face off! Unfortunately he blammed me, but I could hear the Alien screams coming from his computer and the blast of the pulse rifle, and it made us all wet our pants.
06/17/2004 (1:31 am)
A strange example of real horror tension is in AvP2. Three of us were playing it, each a different class. Most of the action was typical FPS fanfare, until we finally were all different, and silence hit the room as we all tried to hunt each other. You could feel the tension.My friend Toby was the Marine and had somehow managed to hide in an airduct that was fairly hard to get to unless you were the Alien (which was I). I had just facehugged the Predator and grown into a full-size Drone, and suspected my friend was in the duct. I was wall-walking up towards the entrance and just as I entered I saw him there and started clawing his face off! Unfortunately he blammed me, but I could hear the Alien screams coming from his computer and the blast of the pulse rifle, and it made us all wet our pants.
#14
06/17/2004 (1:38 am)
Brrrrrrrrrrr...
#15
Tips
1. Sound is everything
Have you ever watched a horror film with the sound turned down? Use near the bottom of hearing sound effects, really low bass and volume, heartbeat, white or black noise in the backgorund of the mix.
Use 3D sound effectively, skittering footsteps behind you when you've just crossed a platform. Slurping noises as you approach a corner. Only 1 in 5 sound effects should turn into monsters, this keeps the tension hugh, you never know whether the sound means there is something there or not. Silence is also a tool.
Make the sounds relate to the monsters, the sound gets louder as you approach, tension builds.
2. Lighting
We fear the dark so keep lighting low. A good technique is to shift lighting so the shadows are always changing. Torque is not good for this so try the shader engine. Random illumination can freak you out too. Skitter, part of corridor ahead is lit briefly, indicating something has just moved.
3. Space
Oppression is the key word. Make your player feel trapped, long corridor or maze like hallways, give them the impression they can easily get lost or cannot easily run back the way they came. After a long 80' corridor with a dead end, as they turn round, play a monster noise in the distance! Arggh! I'm stuck and there is something down there.
4. Tension
Tension needs to flow in and out, too many changes and players will lose interest. You need to have plateaus, slow buildups, climax, plateau. Allow them to regroup. Surprise them VERY occaisonally. Just wnadering through a well lit area when they hear a loud scream behind them as something attacks straight away.
5. Level design
Use ever trick available, but the key word is subtlety. You MUST be subtle else your player will be laughing after an hour. Corners, vents and holes above you, narrow passageways, subtle changes in textures as things get worse, organic textures. Play to fears, cleverly hide spider shapes and tortured faces in textures, the sub-conscious picks it up, but the mind doesn't if you are SUBTLE!
6. General
You need to evoke emotional responses, not just fear. Make the player feel sorry for something, a poor puppy, a baby. Once you have them in an emotional state they are more prone to all the above techniques.
Fear of the unknown
Fear caused by uncertainty
Fear of death
Phobias
Bloody messes
Violence
Trapped!
Out of control
Dilemmas. Run or save the child?
Use repetition, then twist it for the unexpected.
Kill off vital NPC's when they need them most.
Change the places that seemed safe at the start of the game
Give them no way back
Most horror games fall down for two reasons IMHO.
1. Getting stuck really kills the atmosphere because you stop following the story and get annoyed at looking everywhere, so get your difficulty right
2. Puzzles! All horror game have puzzles in them, these detract from the gameplay for the same reason as getting stuck, you change the way you think and drop out of the atmosphere.
06/17/2004 (4:08 am)
Silent hill 3 on the PS2. If your looking for a good horror resource, play that game. Tips
1. Sound is everything
Have you ever watched a horror film with the sound turned down? Use near the bottom of hearing sound effects, really low bass and volume, heartbeat, white or black noise in the backgorund of the mix.
Use 3D sound effectively, skittering footsteps behind you when you've just crossed a platform. Slurping noises as you approach a corner. Only 1 in 5 sound effects should turn into monsters, this keeps the tension hugh, you never know whether the sound means there is something there or not. Silence is also a tool.
Make the sounds relate to the monsters, the sound gets louder as you approach, tension builds.
2. Lighting
We fear the dark so keep lighting low. A good technique is to shift lighting so the shadows are always changing. Torque is not good for this so try the shader engine. Random illumination can freak you out too. Skitter, part of corridor ahead is lit briefly, indicating something has just moved.
3. Space
Oppression is the key word. Make your player feel trapped, long corridor or maze like hallways, give them the impression they can easily get lost or cannot easily run back the way they came. After a long 80' corridor with a dead end, as they turn round, play a monster noise in the distance! Arggh! I'm stuck and there is something down there.
4. Tension
Tension needs to flow in and out, too many changes and players will lose interest. You need to have plateaus, slow buildups, climax, plateau. Allow them to regroup. Surprise them VERY occaisonally. Just wnadering through a well lit area when they hear a loud scream behind them as something attacks straight away.
5. Level design
Use ever trick available, but the key word is subtlety. You MUST be subtle else your player will be laughing after an hour. Corners, vents and holes above you, narrow passageways, subtle changes in textures as things get worse, organic textures. Play to fears, cleverly hide spider shapes and tortured faces in textures, the sub-conscious picks it up, but the mind doesn't if you are SUBTLE!
6. General
You need to evoke emotional responses, not just fear. Make the player feel sorry for something, a poor puppy, a baby. Once you have them in an emotional state they are more prone to all the above techniques.
Fear of the unknown
Fear caused by uncertainty
Fear of death
Phobias
Bloody messes
Violence
Trapped!
Out of control
Dilemmas. Run or save the child?
Use repetition, then twist it for the unexpected.
Kill off vital NPC's when they need them most.
Change the places that seemed safe at the start of the game
Give them no way back
Most horror games fall down for two reasons IMHO.
1. Getting stuck really kills the atmosphere because you stop following the story and get annoyed at looking everywhere, so get your difficulty right
2. Puzzles! All horror game have puzzles in them, these detract from the gameplay for the same reason as getting stuck, you change the way you think and drop out of the atmosphere.
#16
He also had another philosphy which intrigued me. He said he filmed a love scene like a murder and a murder like a love scene. The care and time given to those scenes freezes some of the simple details in your mind. Remembering his movies is as real as having been there.
06/17/2004 (5:02 am)
I always liked Hitchcock's view of scaring his audience. He felt that showing less gore, but providing plenty of detail about what went on was the best way to create terrifying mental pictures. He believed what a person saw in their own head was worse than anything on a screen.He also had another philosphy which intrigued me. He said he filmed a love scene like a murder and a murder like a love scene. The care and time given to those scenes freezes some of the simple details in your mind. Remembering his movies is as real as having been there.
#17
One of the most interesting uses of cinematic devices in a game I've played recently was in The Suffering. There are a number of horror movie homages in the game. The twin ghosts in the hedge maze (The Shining) was one of the creepiest moments I've had playing a game. Not because of anything in the game itself, but because I have this memory of Kubrick's Shining planted squarely in my brain.
@Josh Albrecht
Eternal Darkness had an interesting sanity effects system (the upcoming Cthulhu games have something similar as well), but after a couple of sanity effects, you were used to seeing them. One of my favorites was when you would run into a room and suddenly you'd get a blue screen of death. Not frightening in the game, but if you hadn't saved for a while, then it was rather frightening to the player. Then it would fade in and you'd be in the room as if nothing had happened. The memory card formatting screen was also fun. But the problem with these effects is that after a couple of them, you expected them. They became annoying. How many times am I going to run into a room and get a BSOD or sink into the floor or get brutally killed by some big beastie only to appear back in a couple of seconds. Let me play the damn game without the interruptions.
Of course, my main problem with ED was that the levels subtly changed throughout the different time periods, but for the most part you were running through the same temple/game areas with only small changes. It was VERY repetative. More so that running through the hallways of the mansion in Resident Evil or the everything-looks-alike rooms in Run Like Hell.
06/17/2004 (6:13 am)
Rebecca has nailed it with Hitchcock. His approaches are still seen in modern thriller cinema, though much less so in the horror genre which has become inundated with 60's and 70's exploitation influences. The original Twilight Zone is another excellent source for providing atmopsheres that can at the same time be placid and yet extremely off-kilter.One of the most interesting uses of cinematic devices in a game I've played recently was in The Suffering. There are a number of horror movie homages in the game. The twin ghosts in the hedge maze (The Shining) was one of the creepiest moments I've had playing a game. Not because of anything in the game itself, but because I have this memory of Kubrick's Shining planted squarely in my brain.
@Josh Albrecht
Eternal Darkness had an interesting sanity effects system (the upcoming Cthulhu games have something similar as well), but after a couple of sanity effects, you were used to seeing them. One of my favorites was when you would run into a room and suddenly you'd get a blue screen of death. Not frightening in the game, but if you hadn't saved for a while, then it was rather frightening to the player. Then it would fade in and you'd be in the room as if nothing had happened. The memory card formatting screen was also fun. But the problem with these effects is that after a couple of them, you expected them. They became annoying. How many times am I going to run into a room and get a BSOD or sink into the floor or get brutally killed by some big beastie only to appear back in a couple of seconds. Let me play the damn game without the interruptions.
Of course, my main problem with ED was that the levels subtly changed throughout the different time periods, but for the most part you were running through the same temple/game areas with only small changes. It was VERY repetative. More so that running through the hallways of the mansion in Resident Evil or the everything-looks-alike rooms in Run Like Hell.
#18
I agree with Rebecca. Hitchcock was a master of the genre. Another example that comes to my mind is the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" done in B/W in the late 50's. It was scary and suspenseful for what you didn't see...
Details. Creating a storyline that the player can "invest" themselvs in makes the twists and turns just that more visceral. Any great game should start with an equally great (read: well developed, thought out and detailed) storyline, IMO.
06/17/2004 (7:13 am)
Suspense, Surprise and the "Unknown". All of the game enviromental effects, art, etc, should lead the player down "the dimly lit, seen-out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye corridor" of suspense. Cutting edge graphics are nice but give me a "hair raising on the nape of my neck" sense of the unknown and it'll hook me everytime. And there's nothing wrong with a a good old-fashioned "boogy man" jumping out at you once in awhile either to keep a player on their toes!I agree with Rebecca. Hitchcock was a master of the genre. Another example that comes to my mind is the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" done in B/W in the late 50's. It was scary and suspenseful for what you didn't see...
Details. Creating a storyline that the player can "invest" themselvs in makes the twists and turns just that more visceral. Any great game should start with an equally great (read: well developed, thought out and detailed) storyline, IMO.
#19
Shock scares are a valid method, but I don't think it is all that effective in the long run. Sure you're scared for a few seconds, but it is really one-dimensional, isn't it?
06/17/2004 (8:41 pm)
I definitely think the "less is more" approach is the way to go. I think when people are left to their own imaginations; they will scare themselves more than anything that is put on the screen. I think it is all about steering their minds in the proper direction. Of course this is all done by using most of the techniques mentioned by everyone. Storyline, as mentioned by Jeff, I think is especially important here. Of course it is easier to write a straight forward horror story than it is an interactive one. The main difference is maintaining a strong and deeply enthralling story while giving the player as much control as possible (or at least as allowed by the story). Shock scares are a valid method, but I don't think it is all that effective in the long run. Sure you're scared for a few seconds, but it is really one-dimensional, isn't it?
#20
"Less is more" is obviously the approach that Silent Hill 2 (maybe the others too) conveys. You can take a 10 min walk down a hillside where you can't see anything and creepy music plays. All the while sound effects of something crawling are playing. This is at the very beginning of the game too, and nothing ends up happening.
06/17/2004 (9:32 pm)
@Richard"Less is more" is obviously the approach that Silent Hill 2 (maybe the others too) conveys. You can take a 10 min walk down a hillside where you can't see anything and creepy music plays. All the while sound effects of something crawling are playing. This is at the very beginning of the game too, and nothing ends up happening.
Torque Owner Banshee
So if anyone wants to make a horror game really scary, they will have to plan it out well to add in that supprise factor, toy with the players emotions.