So we took a in depth look at horror games today, and all the little tricks they use to make clean underpants and a steady pulse a foreign concept to the player.
Games use stories to pull us in and make us go from playing a game, to having an experience. When you play a horror game you need to make sure the player is as immersed as much as possible because if you lose them even for a second to “pfft that's a bit daft” you will never get them re-immersed in the story. So their great to learn narrative design from.
whats so scary?
Games have a one up on all other mediums when it comes to horror because its interactive, your the one being hunted, your the one hiding in the closet and its you who has to try and make it out alive.
Inciting Fear
How do they keep me up at night? well here are a few tricks that are used and reused time and time again to make you spend another night with the light on.
Body Horror
typically people don't like seeing the human body being twisted up in a monstrous inhuman form, for a few reasons. usually when this kind of horror is implemented its a human that being transformed and for good reason, first off it makes the player instantly feel their stomach turn as they imagine the kind of pain the person must be in. along with the uncomfortable feeling it gives the player when they see what was once human move in a way that is anything but. a good example of body horror would be movies like ‘The Thing’ or the village chief from ‘Resident Evil 4′
Remove control or perception from the player
whats worse? being stuck in the middle of the ocean with a shark, or being stuck and not being able to see it? Games like ‘Silent Hill’ do this really well, having to manually aim at the enemy to shoot them, with them creeping closer and closer till you have to turn and run. But you can only turn and run by stopping the manual aim, turning around to face the other way and then running for your life. This makes for a really tense experience. it only takes a second or two to do but with the pressure of the monsters coming closer and closer robbing the player of their movement is a great way to create panic.
But an even better way, how about limiting the players vision? This is one that's sure to make the player feel their heart beat out their chest. a great example is ‘Fatal Frames’ camera, where the only way to defeat enemies is to take a photo of them. sure it doesn't sound like much, but it means you have to swap your third person view for a first person one. Making the player lose all peripheral vision, both immersing themselves in the experience as they have to see through the lens of a camera and leave themselves blind to everything around them. you’ll miss that extra vision when its gone.
Unstoppable Force
Everyone has experienced this one, and has their own favorite. whether it be Jason Voorhees from ‘Friday the 13th’, Freddy Kruger from ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, Nemesis from ‘Resident Evil’ or Pyramid Head from ‘Silent Hill’. Even the little guy with the scissors from ‘Clock Tower’. The idea behind them is while you can slow them down you can never truly stop them, leaving you the player as the hunted. making for a feeling of paranoia as the player makes their way through the game looking over there shoulder not knowing when the big bad was going to catch up.
Building Tension
this one is done by all the subtle means you have to throw at the player. the gradual build up of ambient noise, slight twisting of the camera to show something was off, lack of music, foot steps, a flash of something dashing across the screen, making the player walk into the thick fog, seeing the perspective of the monster. all great ways to build the tension where the player knows somethings going to happen they just don't know when. the tricky part of building tension is that nothing is scary twice, so you need to be keeping the material you throw at the player fresh, foot steps behind the player can get real old real quick so you need to break it up with other tactics to keep the player on edge.
Imply Horror / Show Horror
this is a tricky one to pull off both for the fact you have to choose, do i want to show this or do i want to leave it up to the players imagination. both very powerful tools. question is what will scare the player more, seeing the horror unfold or letting the player know its happening but leave the details to their imagination.
Jump Scares
the cheap and easy way to scare the player. but when used well can knock a player clean off their chair, true story, may be part of why I hate them. this one however needs to be used with the tension building techniques to utilize it to its full potential. however like all horror tools it needs to be used sparingly, otherwise it turns into more of an annoyance rather then shock value.
so in short how do you make a good horror game?
Use tension.
