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Making a Horror Game Scary
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Mar 01, 2009 03:45 AM
from the zombies-and-darkness dept.
from the zombies-and-darkness dept.
GameSetWatch has put up an article about the characteristics that give games in the survival-horror genre the ability to unnerve, startle, and scare players in ways that most games don't. The genre has seen a resurgence lately, with titles like Dead Space, F.E.A.R. 2, and Left 4 Dead posting strong sales numbers. What triggers your fight-or-flight impulses in games like these? From the article:
"Being visual creatures, humans are most comforted by sight because of our ability to discern objects, action and consequences based on a picture. As a result, cutting visual stimuli and sticking purely to audio or speech is one of the best ways to keep a player on their toes. Even with weapons, it's very hard to find what you cannot see, and what you do not know. Even if visual stimuli is used, limiting or obfuscating the player's view can enhance the horror in a game, especially if the player sees it for an incredible short time. This can hint both at the difficulty of an upcoming encounter, or even allude to matters earlier in the narrative that the player will soon have to face."
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Gameplay mechanics (Score:5, Interesting)
Low tolerance for failure (taking a lot of damage or even dying when messing up), uncertainity where enemies are (whether a facehugger jumping out of a corner or a ghost that can teleport around you) and generally a feeling of "ohshitohshitohshit" when an enemy engages you. FEAR wasn't scary, you've got a gun and you shoot people with it, neither was Doom 3 (though FEAR was more of a tactical shooter while Doom 3 was just "eat lead, motherfucker!"). The situation must be life or death, not life or slightly less life. You simply can't have a horror game when your main character is a supersoldier with bullettime, massive firepower and lots of health who murders an entire platoon before breakfast.
Re:Gameplay mechanics (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh and something I forgot to mention: That must apply to ACTUAL enemies, not scripted events or something. Only an actual enemy with dynamic behaviour is scary, a prescripted attack is pretty much an exercise in memorization and "foreboding" sounds in the distance aren't scary because you know they aren't associated with enemies, just part of the level script. Hearing something scream means the level designer told the level to scream, not that there's an enemy hiding nearby that just randomly decided to scream. The dead world is not scary (mostly because it doesn't behave erratrically and often doesn't even attack you), the living part is.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You obviously have not played Thief 3. There you learn that the scariest enemy is the one you make up in your mind. And you don't even expect some surprising attack out of a closet that instantly kills you. When you enter THAT level you just fear what kind of enemy the game designers could possibly have made up for THIS, given the enemies they already introduced to you in much more peaceful levels.
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So here I am, in a secret unused basement corridor underneath an old church, at night, a
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Oh noes I did it again!
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I recommend looking up "willing suspension of disbelief".
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People will always become used to what ever visual clues you apply. Random sudden deaths just become annoying not scary and boss monster where you have to go through some stupid repetitive rigmarole to kill them is lame.
Scary is all about hardware not software. Hardware that creates a fully immersive environment, the controls everything you see, hear and for the ultimate shock factor feel. Really want scare people, then provide a usb electro shock adapter which you attach to various portions of your anat
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Doom3 did a pretty good job of achieving a lot of terrific affects that lead to various responses from the player. It affects my sons a LOT more than it affected me, but that is to be expected -- younger people are more vulnerable to fear inducing stimulation such as things popping up, sudden lighting changes. And I have to disagree with the "Doom 3 was just 'eat lead...'" comment since running out of ammo happened often enough that one definitely had to be careful which weapon to use and when to use it..
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Big loud noises and beasts jumping out of walls can make you jump, sure - but that's really the lowest level of horror, surely games could aim a bit higher?
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Care to elaborate?
Surely, these are the most elementary aspects of "scary" but really, I am unsure it should go much further than that. Another aspect of Doom3 that was pretty awesome was the flying attack babies! Those cute little pupae could swarm on you and disturbingly make quite a meal of you if you are not good with a shotgun and have a place to run away to. But "fear" comes from the desire to avoid unpleasantness or otherwise shocking, jarring stimuli. I'll agree that it is very elementary, but w
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"fear" comes from the desire to avoid unpleasantness or otherwise shocking, jarring stimuli.
The easy, day 1 of horror school approach is the jarring stimuli you mention, which are typically hard-wired into our fight-or-flight reaction. But consider the series of events in Doom 3 when the lights go out and a demon bellows from a just-revealed compartment: You almost immediately resolve into the "Fight" status, pull out your shotgun, and apply liberally to the demon's face till it stops moving. After a few instances like this, there isn't really a v
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I agree -- Doom 3 did a lot of things that people tend to forget (including me) when discussing how it wasn't scary. After all, while a little duct tape would've helped, the flashlight/weapon trick was very well done, the sound was brilliant...
But, it did have that problem -- it became a little too predictable, to where it was almost cliche'd where stuff would pop out of. If you creep along slowly, it's not as scary as it could be, because you're expecting stuff to pop out everywhere. If you charge in like
Re:Gameplay mechanics (Score:4, Interesting)
A core component of fear is "what you don't see" may get you. Darkness would seem to be requisite to that end. But I am sure other methods could work as well. There was this movie where this glass house was actually some sort of hell machine driven by a bunch of captured spirits. It was scary because not only were the spirits ghoulish, but you could only see them through special goggles! That could easily be exploited in a game... not the special goggles, but the simulation of them. The movie causes one to imagine there are lots of spirits around them that simply cannot be seen... "what you don't see..."
Parent
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It's correct moron.
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Well, if you had unlimited ammo of the most awesome weapon, then the game loses its challenge pretty quickly. You could just BFG the level and move on... look, a rabid rodent! BFG!!!! Now it's rabid rodent paste. It's good when they do interesting things with interesting weapons. And I also tend to hoard my best gear saving it for last. I have just come to accept that as normal gaming behavior.
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I disagree, Fear 2 did scare me despite not ever feeling like I was about dead. Some of that was due to the creepy cutscenes. I'm not alone either in thinking that cutscenes or scripted events, like "ohmigod, that shadow isn't MINE!" are frightening.
Lesson: I guess some people aren't scared by scripted events, others can be.
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Scariest level I ever played, to this day, was the first time I played the opening level of Unreal. 100% scripted, and I don't think you even get a gun till the next level.
Scripting done well is scary, scripting done "well you've stepped on this obvious trigger, now something happens" isn't. The key issue is ensuring the player doesn't feel like they know what's going to happen next.
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Alone in the dark, anyone?
It pretty much had everything you mentioned. Way too easy to die, creepy atmosphere, odd camera angles, spooky music, and a story line intended to creep you out.
Too bad that the series stalled long ago. I wonder what it could do with a modern makeover. In horror games, perhaps borrowing FPS engines went a step too far, becoming a subset of the FPS genre. Horror isn't about killing, it's about waiting to be killed.
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Very good thoughts.
This is what makes, say, Clock Tower [especially the first] or Hellnight, incredibly frightening.
Keep it scary (Score:2)
Making a horror game is well and good, but when you recycle the same scare tactics over and over through an entire game, it's very easy for it to devolve into a simple action game with surprise moments. Ie, Doom 3 and Left4Dead. Both good action games that I've enjoyed an unhealthy amount of, but neither are very good horror games. Play them for a few days and they quickly stop evoking any fear because it's just more of the same.
I have not played FEAR or Dead Space -- do you think they're better horror g
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Good game, don't get me wrong, but marketing it as survival horror is imo not correct.
Undress Britney (Score:5, Funny)
The only game that has truly given me a scare was the undress Britney Spears game.
She starts out fully clothed, and you have to perform a task requiring a reasonable amount of concentration. I think it's something like move the mouse through a maze without touching the sides.
After the first round, she says something to you but you can't quite hear it so you turn the volume up. She does take off an item of clothing though.
Same again after the second round, so you turn the volume up a bit more. Or maybe this bit wasn't in there... just the first and last round
Half way through the last round a vaguely scary face appears in place of the game coupled with a loud scream - made even louder by the fact that you now have your volume cranked right up. That made me jump.
Another good one was a video I saw on youtube - a car is shown in the distance driving along a winding road until it goes behind a building or something and never comes out the other side. While you are trying to figure out why it hasn't appeared on the other side a scary face appears coupled with a scream.
While playing a horror game you expect scary things to happen, so it's not a big deal when they do. Not so much when you are undressing a pop star...
So... I guess the answer to the question is to put naked pop stars in your games.
Re: (Score:2)
I looked and looked for about 15 seconds, but couldn't find _ANY_ differences. Then a picture of that damn exorcist chick flashed up and made a helluva loud noise. That startled me pretty good. But one girl in the office saw it and literally fell out of her chair.
I think the compare thing is pretty good, because
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http://www.extremefunnypictures.com/funnypic602.htm [extremefunnypictures.com]
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Well the things you describe are really just startling. Something pops out, catches you by surprise, and you jump. Overuse of that technique is pretty much the definition or poorly made horror.
Good horror, I think, is more about what you expect to see, what you think you might have seen but can't be sure, and what you don't see at all. It builds an idea in your mind, suggests the most awful things, and then leaves you to fill in the gaps with the worst thing you can imagine. Because really, once you've
Eversion; subvert expectations. (Score:5, Interesting)
This: http://zarat.us/tra/offline-games/eversion.html [zarat.us]
Don't let the screenshot fool you. It is anything but a Mario clone. If H.P Lovecraft and Stephen King got together, and decided to make a 2d sprite-based platformer, with the intent to CREEP YOU THE FUCK OUT, it would be that. Short game, you could beat it in under an hour if you wanted, though to get the 'good' ending needs a little more work.
Seriously. If you want an example of a game that starts cutsey, but ends on the other side of screaming horror, play that. Preferably, at night, with the lights out. Just don't let a young child play it, or you'll be dealing with a kid having nightmares.
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Slashdotted or something, at least for me. Anybody got a mirror?
Dungeon Master (Score:2)
...was the first (and prolly the only) game to scare the shit out of me.
And it bears our all the points made in the article.
Left 4 Dead horror game? (Score:2)
Religious items are not scary (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it is important to know that culturally specific items such religious items which are supposedly scary are not universal. Things like the Devil, angels, and demons are only scary in a particular setting. Very few people outside that world even understand WHY it would be scary.
Why is a pentagram scary? I have no idea. They are nice to look at, but why they are used all over id Software games makes no sense to me.
Skip the pentagrams for more universal items.
Re:Religious items are not scary (Score:4, Informative)
It's not really supposed to be scary, I think, it's just decoration appropiate for the setting, which can increase the creepiness.
People aren't supposed to go "Holy crap, a pentagram". It's supposed to create associations. Pentagrams are associated with satanism, which is associated with dark rituals and invocations of demons.
A stain on the floor is not scary by itself. A blood stain is worse, especially if you find it in a dark alley. A blood stain, which makes it obvious a body was dragged into a hole in the wall, on the other hand, makes you wonder who died there, why, what came out of that hole, and whether it's still lurking somewhere. That is what is supposed to be scary.
In the same way, a pentagram isn't scary by itself, but is supposed to invoke thoughts of just what the hell has been going on in this place, and what kind of horror could be lurking behind the corner.
Parent
Fatal Frame (Score:5, Interesting)
To scare the hell out of me, I absolutely love the Fatal Frame series. Some people say its strong point is having a camera instead of some powerful gun and some people say its strong point is having to look at the ghosts face-to-face and very close to effectively defeat them.
Though I kinda agree with those two theories, I think its "scare power" comes from something else: the fact that the ghosts are "innocent". In FF, like in some Japanese horror movies, the concept is that the spirits are not aware that they are dead, how scary they look and that they can hurt people: they just want to make contact.
For the sake of comparison, consider F.E.A.R.: Alma surely is scary, but there's little doubt she's one fucked up girl trying to kill you. In FF3, however, you have to deal with the ghost of a 5-year-old girl who keeps screaming "daddy, where are you" and whose attack is pulling your arm to call your attention and look at you pleading. That attitude, plus the realisation she's dead, creeps the hell out of me.
Huh? (Score:2)
Left 4 Dead was scary? Seriously?? It just sounded like a fun "hey let's kill a hundred of NPCs a minute" type of game to me. You know what game was really scary to me? Duke Nukem 3D, for its Octabrain. If you wanna make it scary, you need a monster slightly taller than you, very ugly, that dwells in the dark or underwater, that screams in a scary way and that you can't get rid of easily.
Zombies aren't scary, mostly when you're pointing a shotgun at them.
By the way, are there any good modern 3D games that e
First X-Com (Score:2, Insightful)
Just go back to the grandparents (Score:2)
The granddaddy of them all (well, really two) have a lot to teach us: Resident Evil on the consoles and Alone in the Dark on the PC. There are really only two things that matter: the camera and the resources.
Camera: we can't be allowed to see everything. Horror movies exploit this by giving us a limited range of view, setting the movie at night, etc. RE and Alone in the Dark didn't always let us see everything; an enemy would be hiding off screen and we could only just hear them. That works. It taps in
Terror and getting killed not directly linked. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the GameCube title 'Eternal Darkness' the devs. used all kinds of tricks, ranging from subtle control 'issues' to a full BSOD, unbeatable enemies, and flies crawling around the screen that looked like they were in your living room (versus artificial game constructs). The overall effect was to render the gamers perception of the game state in doubt during play - reinforcing the game rule that exposure to supernatural creatures would drive a character insane. There was an antidote to this as well, so this was no cheat. It was tempting, however, to forgo the 'sanity potion' just to see how bad the progressively creepier 'bugs' got.
Oh - and it was actually very difficult to permanently die during these episodes, although during play, the character appeared to die, but immediately 'flashed back' to where she was right when the possession/demon encounter/bug began.
Combined with the generally creepy atmosphere of the game, thanks to very good art and design, made the game scary and fun to play.
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Aliens Vs Predator as a Marine (Score:2)
The initial level is pretty much empty. You walk and there is the creepy atmosphere and you keep walking. You walk, expecting something to jump out at you any second, but it doesn't. You walk and... wait, I think I... HOLY FUCK! DIE DIE DIE!
Then there was the one level where a large open room with a cat walk above. After nearly buying the farm about 6 times, I just stayed in there and waited. For 30 minutes. I sat, in a corner, twitching at every sound, doing nothing for 30 minutes. And I was not bo
Re:How to make games scary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't call FPSes shoot'em ups, it's amazing how many people don't know what a shmup is these days. I've seen a thread about "best shmup" where half the responses were "Halo".
Parent
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While you have a point in terms of 'accepted terminology' the OP has a point regarding the actual question. Many FPS games are setup under the "if it moves, kill it" philosophy of game design. This doesn't work well when what "moves" is suppose to scare you. If you have the power to kill it, eventually regardless of all the other work put into making it scary, it becomes boring.
How many people got bored of Doom3 once it became apparent how predicable the monster 'hiding' locations were, regardless of whethe
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It can be done well. In HL2 you can kill anything that's a danger to you, but some parts of it are still seriously creepy. Like Ravenholm, for instance.
The scary aspect doesn't come just from the danger. It's the whole setting, the headcrabs, the zombies and sounds they make, the screams when they burn... Also the scarcity of ammunition and large amount of enemies makes it difficult if not impossible to kill them all by simply shooting them.
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I am sure some of you can kill everything in Ravenholm with the crowbar, I can not.
This nails Ravenholm. Even though I have replayed that level several times, it still creeps me out becuase I am always making a decision about when to fight and when to run--and then what am I running into? I know what is coming, but I have to be ready. The constant decision makin
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I don't know, the ready availability of things like saw blades made it possible to kill all of them.
But it's true -- it was in the setting, and the sounds, and the Fast Zombie screech. The environment was also, in many ways, set up to feel claustrophobic -- even moreso than crawling around vents in the original Half-Life. Some of this was the actual, physical environment -- having to sit in a corner and wait for the zombies to walk into your trap.
And some of it was the fact that even when you had a moderate
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I usually had a ton of ammo, cause I would always save ammo "just in case" so I'd never end up using the fun guns all that much....
Also, in some areas the zombies just kept coming, so you could keep killing them, but you could never "get them all"
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I would always save ammo "just in case" so I'd never end up using the fun guns all that much....
I had to make a point to -- pace myself, and then say "Ok, it's time for something to explode!" and toss a grenade. The situation didn't really call for it, but I'd know there would be another dozen grenades I wouldn't need somewhere...
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I would agree with that. The most intense "ohshitohshitohshit" moments I've ever had in PC gaming go to Splinter Cell vs. Mode
Being one of two unarmed* spies trying to sneak through the shadows to get by a couple of trigger itchy mercs, searching for you with flashlights. It was a combination of both the sound and the visuals, but in that 0.5 second of time from when the flashlight hit you - to when the bullets started ripping past your face... well it was just the most intense thing I've ever experienced i
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I remember Blood. It *ruled*. It's a damn shame it's never been ported to a more modern platform - presumably the Build engine wasn't open-sourced in the way that the Quake engines eventually were. I may have to find a suitably-old PC to install Win 98 and a 3dfx card into.
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Not really it'd just piss me off and I'd never play the game again..