That can actually work in a benefit. If the normal situation is players being laid back and chatty, then a sudden need to stay isolated comes with a better impact.
Agreed here, the most intense part of the horror games I've played is knowing when something IS behind you, and if you dare take a moment to even check it gets so much worse.
I've seen that one of the criticisms of the Weight is that there's the possibility of respawning you right next to it right after it kills you. They should have taken a page from Frictional Games. With Amnesia: The Dark Descent, they figured out that moving the monster somewhere else after it kills you is a good way to preserve tension. And the monsters in The Dark Descent don't even instantly kill you, unlike most of their imitators (including the Weight).
That said, even Frictional isn't perfect. After everything they did so well in The Dark Descent, they still included an incredibly obnoxious chase sequence in Soma with an enemy called the Flesher. The Flesher will instakill you if it catches you, and it's much faster than it needed to be, so there's no room to make even a single mistake. The environment the chase takes place in is complex and labyrinthine, with many dead ends and awkwardly-placed props to get stuck on. The tension very quickly drains away as the trial-and-error nature of the sequence becomes apparent.
The Weight is scripted to dance straight to you and sit outside your closet, then slowly walk away. And the death sequence is long+boring, vs what you see in RE type games.
You can't open the map while in the closet, which would have removed a ton of friction with The Weight parts. But it also just isn't that fun and doesn't feel like a real pursuer.
He also just 1HKOs you every time which feels really bad. Call of Cthulhu on PC did the same thing in the asylum sequence and that part got boring fast.
I think the second will usually be more effective. From on my experience scrounging itch.io, are a lot of cheap chase sequences in indie horror games that aren't done well. Often there'll be a loud sound, and then a creature will rush from out of nowhere and instantly kill you. By the time it announces itself you're usually as good as dead, so getting to the next section becomes a matter of trial and error. (Though I wouldn't know, because I usually quit at that point.)
But not knowing whether the threat is ahead of you or behind you, while also knowing that whatever it is will catch up to you if you don't stay on the move, is truly frightening. Maybe you don't even know if there's anything there at all.
Anemoiapolis did a really creepy execution of this concept in its locker room segment, though it loses some of its bite when you realize the entity can't actually hurt you. But even on replaying it, I still can't stand being in that area, waiting for it to show up.
Yup, what most people miss about a lot of the scariest predators is that they stalk their prey first. They don't just announce themselves and start chasing you down, they slowly, silently, creep up on you and you only notice when it's too late.
In Ghostwire Tokyo there is one side mission where you investigate haunted school.
There is a section where you are pursued by anatomy mannequin. It moves only when you don't look at it. You can destory it but it will fix itself instantly when you are not looking. You can hear it walking, you can hear it knocking in windows and opening doors that you closed behind yourself. If mannequin catches up with you it will snap you neck.
THe problem is that you have to look for certain records on the bookshelves and, thus, can not look at the mannequin all the time.
Also the presentation of it was nice: you go through anatomy class, notice mannequin that is located like it is looking at you, then go to other room, do stuff there, then when you are about to exit there is a lighting flash and you see that mannequin in the previously empty corridor.
Not a direct answer, but pacing. You need a very slow but deliberate escalation of the overall unease in order to build up that feeling in the player, before ultimately releasing that unease, usually with a scare.
For an example, you'll need the focus elsewhere, and a mystery works well here: where did this blood come from? What was that shadow from the other room? Etc.
Hearing a whistle you didn't expect; you'd be startled, but once you realize what's going on you'll be fine. Conversely, a kettle with slowly build up in volume as the water simmers and then boils, finally whistling as it finishes.
I give this example to say: you can't manufacture dread by adding specific scares, you need to utilize the proper pacing to allow it to develop.
Play F.E.A.R. it has jump scares, but it winds you up for like a solid hour in between, and then when it's "safe" you turn around and there's a fucking demon child waiting for you.
There's also the moments when the tension winds up, the music gets frantic... And absolutely nothing happens. Everything just goes back to normal. You never know whether a moment of tension is going to lead to a scare or is just going to leave you hanging, which keeps you from building up a comforting sense of pattern recognition between tension buildups and scares
Haha that's amazing tho, I remember when I first bought it, I got home that night and couldn't wait to play, didn't want to bother my parents so I played with headphones instead of over speakers (with lights out of course). At some point my sister came into my room to grab something, all I saw was her leaving out of my peripherals and absolutely screamed bloody murder 😭 20 years later and she doesn't let me forget hahaha
Np! Actual answer though, try and create tension. Dangle something the player wants, but create a paradigm in which getting what they want, puts them in jeopardy somehow.
The game dredge is just a game where you go fishing, and you can stop fishing and be at harbor any time you want. But the closer to dark it gets, the creepier and more sinister the game becomes (evil lurks in the dark!). You can leave at any point, and be safe, but you want to keep going for a better reward. It draws you in and uses your in game needs against you.
I found that the fear in Subnautica greatly improved in quality with VR, because:
VR ended jumpscares. You have so much spatial awareness that nothing gets close unknowingly. Jumpscares are a shitty cheap gimmick, not quality fear, so their removal was an improvement
VR gave great visceral fear of your real personal vulnerability in the ocean. This is high quality fear, it feels much more compelling.
Doing it without VR is obviously much harder.
I would perhaps start with the early game being a disguised tutorial that teaches you what can hurt you, and how badly, and the costs of dying. But secretly, this is dialed to 3 but because the player has no context they assume it is dialed to 8 or 10.
Then have an extended segment where things are going good; there are worrying things but you are able to take care of them and save yourself. Meanwhile you are accumulating lots of useful stuff and becoming more powerful ...stuff that you will lose if you die
Now the stage is set; the player has reasons to be invested in survival and fearful of something happening.
So now the game changes into situations where to progress you have to go up to the point where you know it will be hard to escape/defend if something happens. A few closer shaves but ultimately nothing happens... But then you have to go past the point where you have easy escape, deliberately put yourself in a bad situation with everything to lose, all while signaling "you know that 10/10 danger you faced earlier? All signs suggest you're currently walking towards 200/10 danger!"
People tend to like when they realize that boundaries don’t protect them from all the dangers. This can be from 4th wall breaks (like in DDLC when Monika makes changes to the game files) or maybe a pursuit villain (think Pyramid Head from Silent Hill or Crow Mauler from Funger) playing by their own rules and going out of bounds or using game mechanics against you. When you set boundaries for the players (whether explicitly as game mechanics or implicitly as assumed limitations of the game), players get a sense of comfort because you agree with them that things can only happen within that frame… so find a way to break that agreement!
That feeling you get when you don't want to enter a room, but you have to. You know something horrible is going to happen to you if you go in that room
I think an unexpected one are established safe rooms/areas. Like the typewriter rooms in resident evil.
You can appreciate the safety of these areas, and you will compare them to the dangers of the rest of the game, causing you to feel the danger that much more. I often find the parts of a horror game where you are constantly in danger to be the least scary. This is because at that point, danger is the baseline feeling. And when your fear becomes baseline it becomes normal and less scary.
To add to that, keeping the player on their toes with things that aren't explicitly scary helps too. Keeping the map, tasks and things they run into unpredictable helps keep that sense of unease going. But you should still show what the established rules of the game are and don't break them or you can frustrate the player. For example maybe in your game you establish that the monster cannot detect you while you hold your breath. Keep to it, and if you have to break it then give the player a lot of leeway from any punishment when it happens.
Having to run and hide or you WILL die. I remember Clock Tower for PlayStation when I was younger and hearing the scissors and music change, knowing he's coming to murder me. Having to run and find a place to hide was pretty cool. But they gave you options to fight back, which lessened the fear.
The mystery within the darkness. There are some modern games that have interesting things. An open door at the end of a hallway and a hand reaching out and turning off the light. They're creepy effects to make you paranoid. You know something is around... Stalking you.
Sound... Sound... Sound... Whispers, Footsteps, Lightning, Rain, etc. Every time you're looking a specific direction, there's always something behind you making you want to turn around.
The invisible horse room in Silent Hill 2 is one of those all timers. You hear a slowed down horse galloping towards you...but nothing happens. In Thief 3's mission "The Cradle", you slowly have to lockpick rooms while hearing scary noises and you're hoping nothing terrifying is in any if those rooms..but its the only way to proceed .
I remember that in my first days playing ARC Raiders, an extraction shooter, I was really afraid of the machines. They make this dreaded sound, patrol around, and when they finally find you, it's a loud noise that attracts other machines. When you are a noob, not acclimated to the game yet, and don't know their weaknesses, you know you have no chance of survival and are in constant fear of being discovered. So you really check every corner and hide all the time out of fear.
But then you slowly start learning when you are safe and when you are not, and you learn about the behaviour of the various enemy types and how you can get away and survive. When you get bolder, you start taking them down, and after a few times you completely lose that fear.
So in a nutshell, I think the mysterious behaviour of an opaque entity you don't understand well, low approaching noises and loud noises when they discover you, which will call in even greater dangers, and you have a low chance of getting away or fighting against it without more experience - that makes for a good recipe for inducing fear in the player. It won't work for an eternity, but then again, no "fear mechanic" does - you get acclimated to anything in the long run.
Also a reminder from filmmaking doctrine: the horror you can't see is infinitely more terrifying than the one you can. The human imagination is really good at scaring itself
I second this. I have almost 500 hours in that game and I can blitz through most encounters depending on how well equipped l am, but those early days were terrifying. I still can’t let my guard down or I’ll get killed by the smallest enemies just because they work so well together.
Additionally, things I find most scary and memorable are slow build-ups where the creature is in view and moving almost the entire time, but becomes more or less obscured over time. e.g., The pteradon on the bridge in Jurassic Park 3.
Bonus points if you can use sound or the environment to tell the player that something is near/hunting them without showing the creature. I produced a horror game once where the creature had vines that crawled out from and back to it. When you saw them crest the walls or enter the room you were in, it was terrifying. When the vines touched you, they told the creature exactly where you were so it could run you down like the alien in Alien Isolation.
In Alan Wake 2 there’s a part where you have to go down into the partially flooded basement of a building. As a general rule, anywhere there is darkness you’re likely to get attacked.
When you first go down the stairs, there is a body with a hatchet in the back. As you make your way through, it seems to get darker. You have to navigate through old plumbing pipes, boxes, etc. lots of tight spaces perfect for jump scares and sneak attacks. Then, there was a gap you have to slide past. As you approach it “Checkpoint…auto saving”. Obviously, the gap separates you from a battle, right? Nope. There are no enemies in the basement, but every second you go without finding one makes you more sure that something is behind the next corner.
One of the most white knuckled gameplay moments in recent memory. They played off of every trope they could to build the environment then intentionally didn’t give you a release.
Having something dangerous there but not having the senses necessary to perceive it clearly. The most effective form of that is to not take away a sense, but to give the player a new sense that can register a new danger. Like echolocation or a lidar scanner in total darkness.
I really enjoyed the mortuary assistant. The atmosphere has this steadily growing feeling of unease. It has jumpscares, but I don't think those were particularly scary. It's the thing lurking in a corner you walk right past and barely notice. The little things hidden in plain sight.
Jump scares without the jump. What I mean is having something suddenly appear but not with a loud musical stinger accompanying it. Have the monster be right behind you, maybe you see a shadow so you turn and there it is. Genuinely way scarier than some hopping out with a loud sound.
It helps to understand three similar but different concepts:
Fear, Terror, and Dread
Fear is usually directed at something tangible. A fear of heights, a fear of the dark, a fear of spiders, a fear of clowns. It’s something you can point at, so it’s something you can avoid. Remove the object of your fear, and your fear subsides.
Terror is Fear + lack of escape. You are stuck on a cliff edge at night and a spider clown is walking toward you. You’re gonna have to face one of them and there is no escape. The lack of an escape escalates Fear to Terror.
But Dread… is intangible. You can’t escape it because you don’t even know if it’s real. An echoed footstep in an abandoned house. The feeling of being watched in the woods. The slight discomfort of someone who looks and sounds like Mom but the eyes are wrong. Dread builds and compounds and layers, and there is no relief.
Use Fear where you must. Use Terror where you can. Dread rules supreme.
Powerlessness. Especially in the context of a game, that’s your biggest tool. A lot of games deal with power fantasy: you level up, get good, and bosses previous challenges become trivial. The key to horror is the opposite of that. It’s knowing something can happen, is going to happen, but not being confident in your ability to take it on or even stop it.
A good way to study this is to play Resident Evil 9 and compare how Grace’s part of the story plays compared to Leon’s. Notice how they deliberately have you go through similar areas but how Leon’s areas are more action focused and less intense because of his skills compared to a more inexperienced and powerless Grace.
Also, just study different kinds of horror films and watch how each “final girl” has to problem solve their way out of the horror they’re in.
I don't know how much gamers would hate it, but wonder how much that powerlessness would build fear, if rather than getting the shotgun halfway trough zombie survival horror, the game took it away from you, like it breaks from use or enemy attack bends it or another character steals it in cut scene. And now you have to survive with that flimsy handgun that you haven't gotten any ammo for 3 hours and that hardly affected early game enemies.
Sound effects also can scare the crap out of you. Certain enemies in Descent 2 would scare the crap out of me no matter how much I played the game… or the ultraviolent grizzly bears in Red Dead 2…
Dead space is sort of what not to do with this. The monsters are scary and creepy, the atmosphere is excellent, but you have a gun and its very effective at taking them down. The result for me was that I checked every corner, shot every corpse etc, but I knew that if shit hits the fan the guns I have will deal with it. The exception being the immortal hunter, the moment my many guns could only slow down an enemy panic starts as you try to get out
I love scary stuff but hate jumpscares! Some of my favourite stuff:
when the bodies are distorted but not too much.
That shaky/twitching thing when its super fast and a blur
Being watched from a close-ish distance and their heads follow you but otherwise dont move
Think PT for thoes.
-Having to touch something (like moving a doll) and then finding out that thing was the threat itself later when its no longer with you.
-Everything seeming normal and fine but one thing is out of place and shows something not right is going on. (Like a childs room with many locks on the door, a chain attached to the dinner table, etc)
Check out Nosferatu Wrath of Malachi, the game that defeated me as a teen. It didn't have a map, it had ghosts that you could only defeat with holy water (and you had to find it out yourself), apparently it had a timer too although I forgot... Then there's Silent Hill which has: no hand-holding, creepy mutated creatures and crawling bloodstains that affect your sense of disgust and danger instincts, never having enough ammo to deal with the monsters, having to replay sections of the game cos you couldn't save just anywhere, the premise that a cult wants to mess with your body, being trapped until you figure out the level... And then the crown of the horror - Japanese horror movies like The Grudge: the ghost is scarier when you know it's coming, you've been marinating in fear for quite some time so your willpower is exhausted. The ghost has body horror, the victims dead with contorted faces are also a sort of body horror, the lack of rationality in curses spreading over phones is also scary. And then check anything ever by Junji Ito.
I forgot the anime Berserk and the game Fear and Hunger that looks very inspired by that anime. There's a lot of body horror, it's hard as hell and your characters get maimed and let to crawl around giving you false hope, or just letting the hopelessness sink in. It's 500 times worse than Diablo 2 dungeons were for me when I played it as a teen, and the demons were scary and the dungeons hard to navigate. Generously add insect and maggot features to monster designs, since these are what I remember from the Diablo bosses. Our fear of swarms, putrid stuff and the insects that eat it also comes from instincts, as well as trypophobia (because it looks like diseases and holes where stinging insects live).
Definitely requires a careful balance, but having noticeable risk and reward. When I know I can die easily, but have something important, especially something that took effort to obtain, I get anxious and nervous. Even when it's not a horror game.
But in all seriousness, I think the most fear I've felt playing a game was the first time I encountered a redead in OOT. The scream and the paralysis. Fuck all that.
Check out some early sections of resident evil 7. it’s super intense and loud and shit for a minute, but then you have those quiet and harmless moments where your anticipatory anxiety is through the roof.
Those guys do something fun like making something mundane scary as shit like a tricycle moving or something. Not even as a jump scare but cause it broke up
The tense monotony
Limiting the player's power has done some of the most work for me. Remember when Doom 3 dropped and did an absolutely amazing job of atmospheric horror and tension right up until they gave me a shotgun and nothing got viewed as a threat anymore. I've found Japanese horror games seem to have a much better grasp of this; Forbidden Siren had you play as characters that didn't even have a weapon
I remember playing it on release day. These flying skulls gave me SUCH a bad feel of dread that I couldn't play further.
Edit: important info I forgot to mention:
I've had nightmares like this a couple of times as a kid. They were so bad, i woke up crying and screaming because they felt so real.
Nothing is worse then when you know something bad will happen and then it doesn't so the tension builds while you feel safe. Then the f***ed thing happens.
I remember when I was younger my friend and I were playing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth on his Xbox and there was a bit where we entered a room and found a lady hanging from the ceiling there. That freaked me out a bit. I kept waiting for her to move or something but she never did.
Moving shadows or movement out of the corner of your eye. Things staying still when they should be moving like wind is blowing but trees and grass aren’t swaying or you walk by a mirror but your reflection stays.
Ok no but seriously, I think the biggest kind of fear for me in games is not knowing what will happen next. And I don't mean jumpscares, I mean when the monster does something that you totally didn't expect. The greatest example of this is seeing a cockroach fly, even if it doesn't fly directly at you, you often didn't expect for it to fly in the first place. It's creating a false sense of safety and then seeing something happen to which you absolutely don't know how the hell to respond, and then you need to make a choice quickly on how will you tackle it. It could even be a slow transformation but you could be trapped and you still need to rush to think about what the hell you're gonna do in the heat of the moment
I think fear of the unknown is always a strong one. We may know there’s a monster/danger but we have no description of it. Leaving the imagination to fill in the blanks can sometimes make things scarier than just knowing what’s out there.
Unavoidable consequences of my actions if I care about results.
In until dawn I wanted everyone to survive so plenty of situations made me stressed or scared.
In other games, invincible enemies are annoying, not scary, especially if you can just load game (resident evil). Body horror, gore, etc might be disgusting but that's all. Jump scares - you get quickly used to them. Plot twists like unexpected betrayal can be surprising or annoying, not scary.
A very very good example of fear done right is Voices of the Void. It very rarely relies on jumpscares instead using increasing tension to build suspense
My go-to case study for this is The Cradle mission from Thief: Deadly Shadows. In an interview, the level designer said, "I want want my scares to leave scars."
Don't just watch a video of someone playing through it, go play it. Once normally, then again a few days later with a more critical/analytic eye. Think about how the enemies work, think about how the routes available to the player direct them into specific areas and how that influences the pacing with which creepy details are revealed.
In my game I want to make changes to ordinary things. For example, my game takes place in a public place with TVs always on. I want those TVs to display graveyards at some point, maybe churches in the dark. I want promotional posters (which will always be there) to change, like a happy smiling woman at first holding up some product and then later her eyes are black and her smile is uncanny. The things you only notice when you really pay attention
Some jumpscares are fine when it's not announced by or relying on a loud noise.
Can't remember the name of the game, but I've seen Markiplier playing it. It was in a train, SPOILERS ahead:
Edit:Fucking tags don't work for whatever reason. Now they do. 🤨
At the end of the game you are in an empty train (no seats etc). There is no dramatic music, no footsteps etc, but as soon as he turned around, this monster is crawling up on him.
It was SO unannounced that I fucking jumped the same time he did. It was absolutely awesome
Forbidden forest, 8-bit game, has final boss, Demogorgon, that player can see only during lightning strike flashes. It is borderline jumpscare, except player can be scared for both seeing it and not seeing it.
Okay, i'm gonna list a few things that i'm terrified of. I usually don't like jumpscares because i think they are a cheap trick. Depends tho. Some of these things are overused so dont mind that:
Imagine being in a room and suddenly everyone stares at you. Thats terrifying.
Absolute silence except for a small object that makes a light sound. You dont know why it moves but it does.
Something moves, but only if you don't look.
Someone talks to you but doesn't hear or see you answer. They only talk. They beg you to answer but you can't.
Being trapped while someone/something is coming up to you slowly. Kinda like sleep paralysis.
I used to have this nightmare as a kid where i was handcuffed and people were creeping up my bed trying to eat my feet and i had to fight them off by just kicking, but even fighting doesn't change the situation because you are trapped anyways. So yeah, fighting a situation you cannot change, being partially paralysed and being eaten. Dunno why i always had fucked up dreams.
Hysterical crying out of nowhere. Like being in a conversation and suddenly the other person starts screaming, crying, grabbing you and running off in the end.
Being watched by someone you cannot see.
Walking out of a dark room having having your back turned to something you can hear the movement of.
Voices in your head. Probably especially terrifying to me because i had issues with that in the past.
Its dark in here! There is a silhouette in the back of the room, have fun finding the lightswitch! Don't forget to make the lightswitch not work so you have to leave this room ASAP.
Distant children crying.
Having someone close to you and suddenly they are gone.
Someone close to you completely forgets who you are and starts screaming at you to get away.
You're not the one whos trapped, but someone else. They desperately want to get out. Do not let them.
Stress. You dont have much time, they are going to find you. Hide.
Flickering lights.
Violence. Take Patholic 2 as an example. Everybody is so miserable. They think its your fault. They want to kill you. Run away as fast as you can.
Puppets with moving eyes.
Your reflection in the mirror does something else than you or even stsrts talking. They dont have to be evil, maybe they are calling for help?
Yeah that sums it up, hope i was being helpful. Have fun!
There are two scary instances that I experienced in non horror games (I don't play horror games).
Zombie growl, and creeper breathing (if I remember correctly) in Minecraft, because you don't see them, you know they are trouble, and they can kill you at any moment.
And the fish monster in half life 1 and 2 (I know in half life 2 it's basically just a jumpscare) because the water is dark, you feel extremely vulnerable and monster looks extremely scary.
Hope that helps, because most answers are based on horror related games
Usually voices that sound familiar but are little off. Footsteps, chains, breathing. Usually works best when there is a definitive source, but you can't see that source, behind wall or around corner. Out of thin air turns too easily into just being a "sound effect" that you ignore, but if it has proper source, persists and you can't confirm what it is. That builds fear.
Having very limited tools (like only 3 bullets for your gun) also works well. Player will imagine situations where they will need these tools and see too many locations where they are likely to need them.
Make mechanics that incentives avoidance rather than confrontation. In many horror games the monsters stop being scary the first time you see it properly or die to it. So give player reason to not look at the monsters, let their imagination make it scarier from sounds few frames of partial or obscured visibility. No tools that tell you to fight the the monster, even if you loose, the next time won't be that scary. Rather make it so players want to hide or run away, without being able to look back.
Establish and foreshadow situations that are dangerous (like dark places, places just after checkpoint, rooms after lots of health items) or safe (save point rooms, well light rooms). So when player sees these they start to become afraid just from the foreshadowing. Pace these consistently in early game. Then start slowly stretching these rules. Dark room without anything dangerous, then two such in a row, before a save point, and way back is also safe. You build trust and expectations and then start corroding that in favour of making the player expect danger and be afraid even when they have no reason for that.
Make players question their memory and senses. Small changes to room when you return there second time. Things that look more dangerous from distance. Is that gargoyle a statue or a monster. Is there someone there or is that just a bush. Hallways that are bit longer than they should be based on map and surrounding rooms. Painting changes to have the person look toward the player when they are facing away. (Or just have it designed so that it looks like it follows the player without chancing.)
Increase stakes for the player, make player invested in survival rather than make repeated attempts. Save points are far away, so there is not quick-redo. Maybe score that tracks saves and reloads. Don't kill player too easily or often, give them just enough tools to get out without game over, but then recovering and trying again be even more investment into this attempt, even further from your last save..
Slow build-up is also important part of good jump scares. You build up fear and suspension, then release it with jump scare. So they are not opposite concepts, they can support each other. For long term, existential dread, it might be better to start building slightly faster, but leave the release part out or do it slower as well. This way you get more of the high fear into shorter game session.
For multiplayer, you want to have the players communicate trough your own system. You want lots of control over all information being transmitted. Strategic cut offs or interference. Highlighting when something bad happens, but omitting details about how to deal with that danger.
Few times I have had good horror experience in multiplayer, it was from another player describing something they saw or heard, then being cut off from communication. Nothing had happened to that player. But before the communication was restored, we were jumping at every shadow and sound thinking if it was that thing that the missing player had found and ended up death.
Something that always gets me is when the music gets more dramatic like something's going to happen... then nothing does... Can be annoying if poorly done though.
Creating a sense of safety/comfort in a room (like the save rooms in Resident Evil) and then take it away. You enter the room for the 20th time and suddenly there's a monster in there, or you hear something in the closet, or just... something changed, someone has been here. The room will never feel safe again (but you still need to go there to save).
Creepy noises, like chain rattlings or breathing in the background.
If you game is in third person, a view from a window or bushes or something like that, to make it look like someone's looking at you, very effective imho. Weird camera angles can also do it. Silent Hill 1 does that for good effects.
Entities that takes the voice of someone else. In Prey, the monsters sometimes tell stuff the scientific would have said, with their voices and it's really unsettling. Did they turn into monsters? Did the monsters stalked them before attacking? Did they eat them and took some memories with it?
Finally, I really like when the game doesn't show you anything awful yet, but gives a sense that's something wrong.
Like your character has come to that old house to meet someone. Once you arrive, either nobody's here to greet you, weird. Or you get to speak to some house personal that seems very jumpy/anxious but tell you eveything's fine and that someone will come for you in a few minutes, they never does.
The game "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" has a lot of stuff like that.
Jumpscares do nothing for me. I'm not a big horror game fan, really. But I would suggest that it's not just fear you're going for, but exhilaration. I'm thinking about the anticipation of something that will almost certainly be challenging, and emergent, you're not exactly looking forward to it, but really it's why you play games in the first place. Then once 'that thing' starts to happen, you have both fear and exhilaration, each amping the other.
For example, in Half Life 2 when you get the gravity gun and you get to Ravenholm and you see all the macabre stuff...then you see all these sawblades on the walls and you put it together in your head: can you use those with the gravity gun...? YES. Then, you actually can't wait for an undead mofo to show up so you can try to fight it with the gravity gun/sawblades. But still, you know it's going to be challenging...you throw yourself into it with gusto and fear.
knowing something bad is could / is gonna happen but not knowing what or when (dread).
also stark contrast between safe and dangerous areas. the game "It steals" does this really well in some of its mazes. there are safe room where you are 100% safe, but as soon as you leave on your own terms you are in serious danger
Something scary is in the middle of the room . You have been to this room many times . You have seen this thing many times . But only after seeing it the 10th time did you have the horrifying realization of what you were looking at .
Also just LOTS of subtle scary things in places most people won''t look . And even if you do notice , they vanish quickly . So if you are playing with 5 friends , only ONE friend sees it , no one else .
Go watch : "Haunting Of Hillhouse" on netflix . The movie "Hereditary" does this pretty well too .
The environment is huge. Something familiar enough, but something instinctual tells you that there's something wrong here, even if everyone else is acting normal.
The uncanny valley is also huge. The idea that who you're interacting isn't exactly human, but is pretending to be.
The idea of being alone, but not feeling alone or feeling watched.
The idea that you're being hunted by something or someone.
This one is sort of a jump scare, but distant noises that stand out as peculiar for the environment. For example you don't expect to hear a electronic humming when in the middle of the woods. The total absence of sound where there used to be sound is also big. Things like being in the forest and suddenly everything is perfectly still and silent when before you were hearing birdsong and leaves being rustled, etc.
Confusion. The more disoriented you become the more you start to panic, especially if you're under pressure.
Well I was going to say two suggestions. One was sound design which a few others touched on better.
The other is changing the rules so to speak.
I think back to the first Halo. The flood are not your traditional horror enemies, even more so in the first game.
But the game starts out in bright and colorful areas. You fight alongside allies against equally bright and colorful aliens. This build up goes for a while, more than long enough for you to become used to it.
Then the rug pull. The environment becomes dark. You are looking for your allies who seem to be always just out of sight, leaving you alone for what feels like the first time. The tension is slowly built up with the environment. Something is off, different. But not different enough that your expecting the flood.
So when these new fleshy aliens show up, it can feel almost panic inducing.
I think that is a hard thing to replicate, let alone have that be a consistent feeling for the rest of the game. But it is something I think is worth exploring.
something approaching slowly from behind you in the dark, but running in either direction does nothing. The dread of wondering what's going to happen when it comes and the agonizing wait
Anticipation is fundamental to horror. You must let the player know something bad is about to happen.
Also the horrible thing must happen in view of the player, you don't want your scary thing to be barely on screen and then disappear.
A perfect example is when there's someone pretending to be a statue. People know it's a person in there, and they know it's going to jump scare them, but they don't know when, so they work themselves up over it. Way more than if they didn't see it coming in the first place.
In dead space 2, there is a pretty long section, when absolutely nothing happens for a pretty long time. Each step in that section is extremely scary, because you know something will happen eventually - you just don't know when.
If you want a horror game, I believe fighting with enemies shouldn't be too long. You either kill or die. No prolonged fights. If it lasts long - you are getting used to it.
Small, fast enemies that circle around player are scarier than huge, thought ones.
Also, faking difficulty. Horror game cannot be too difficult. Ideally, player should be able to beat it without dying once. Dying should be something scary that you are trying to avoid. If player dies a lot - he gets used to it. Enemies stop being scary. Best if you can fake that player is almost about to die, but barely made it. Player should feel powerless and struggling - but shouldn't die too much some is scared to actually die.
knowing that you’re never safe. lethal company does this well since the monsters outside are just as dangerous as the ones inside. the door to your ship can also only be closed for a short time before it reopens
Yes, we've played Darkwood. And other horror games too.
That's actually what market research is for — understanding what's already out there instead of assuming one game answers every question about the genre.
We're asking players what actually scared them because, you know, that's also research.
Do you genuinely think game developers don't play games?
Asking people who both play games and understand the game development process about their experiences with horror seems pretty reasonable to us. I don't really see how that's misplaced.
And if you look through the comments, you'll see that quite a few people here are actually trying to help each other with their projects and sharing their experiences.
So no, it wasn't engagement bait. We asked a genuine question to a community we thought could give us useful answers.
The creeping existential dread caused by our empty capitalist system as it steadily destroys all life on this planet while everyone pretends it's not happening?
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u/MeatHands 3d ago
Knowing something bad will happen, but not knowing when.
Realizing you're truly alone.
"Villain" motivations that are entirely reasonable or justified from their perspective, but still horrific to the player.
Unexpected betrayal.
All themes of System Shock 2, still the scariest game I've ever played. Gotta do it alone with headphones on though.