What do you think makes a horror game WORK?

[ThatOne]

A horror game scary? Tense chase scenes, close calls, super fast running. But even with all of this i can't seem to get scared, outlast 2 really disappointed me. The only horror game that was genuinely good imo was outlast (I can beat it on insane mode about every try though now, in a hour or less..) and doki doki literature club, DDLC was amazing

 

[Motsu]

Reasonable jumpscares. Intense and disturbing animosity or environment. Emotionally depressing characters or plot. Psychological horror. Quick events and chase events.

I think plot is the major workaround for horror games.

 

[Wlel]

The atmosphere and the ambient. The detailed hard breathe sound, muffled scream from far away which will gives me a shivers.

 

[SirDogeTheFirst]

Knowing someone or something is always one breath away from you, but never knowing when they will show theirselves.

I prefer the tension over jumpscares.

 

[peelsdeeni]

Suite 776 is one of my favorite horror games because of the feeling of having to constantly watch your back.(i know it's made in 2019, don't at me)
For my horror games, I prefer the feeling of paranoia, of not knowing when you die, of not knowing when the big bad is about to get your ass.

Spoiler: minor game spoiler

In the game, Suite 776 there's a part where you get a note, the note says something along the lines of "Watch your back or I'll get you" and you get the note around early to mid game I believe. So there's just this foreboding sense of impeding death and paranoia

I personally really like it when the game builds up tension, makes you just wait for the other shoe to drop, but the shoe is invisible and you don't know if it actually will drop. And maybe the shoe is just a distraction.

IMO, while games like FNAF are really good, the repetitiveness does get to you eventually, and honestly, at that point, it's not true horror, it's more of a surprise that it just suddenly appeared there.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my TedTalk(and my unneeded opinion).

 

[longer]

Horror games work since I'm playing them at 3 am in pitch darkness with only the light from my screen to illuminate the room. Throw in my lack of clothing to create a feeling of exposure, then that's the ideal atmosphere for me to feel terrified.

 

[Ai-chan]

Ai-chan's most favourite horror games happens to be Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterflies and Corpse Party. They're of different genres, but they both work on the psychological instead of the metaphysical.

In Crimson Butterflies, you are constantly alone, with only a camera to protect you as your look for your twin sister in the haunted village. As you continue the journey, you slowly learn of the village's history of sacrificing twins to the god of the pit. Well guess what, you are a pair of twins, so it becomes personal now. Throughout the journey you constantly have to go through puzzles that make you think, ghosts that make you scream and mysteries that make you say, "Ah, so that's what happened." You'd constantly be screaming, "No no, go away, go away" throughout the night as the only way to exorcise ghosts are through the closeup when you focus your camera on them, looking at them through a small camera knowing that if you miss the snap, that's another swipe from the ghost and that's fucking scary.

Corpse Party is a game made on RPG maker. Despite that, it's still one of the scariest games even to this day. The contents of the entire game is a mystery and the journey even more so. Even despite having the walkthrough, you still get scared off by the demons and ghosts that constantly haunt you. And the endings, oh god the endings.

Ai-chan tried to make a horror game similar to Corpse Party some years ago, but some dudes that Ai-chan invited to provide added content complete changed the game when Ai-chan was away for a month. Instead of an Asian horror game, he wanted to make an Amnesia copy with American style of horror movies. What this means is, he changed everything into "unseen horrors, shock moments and a lot of swinging weapons".

Ai-chan was really angry by that. Asian horror is completely different. Asian horror works on the psychological, not on the unseen. In every Asian horror movie, you can clearly see the ghosts, and yet horrified by it. Why? Because we know it's a movie. We psychologically know it's fake. Therefore, we need more confirmation that it is a horror movie. By not letting the ghosts appear, we have been reduced to wondering what kind of movie this is. For example, the sounds that the kid in Ju On make as he crawls down the staircase is way scarier than a girl acting to look scared in a western movie where the ghosts are not shown.

We know it's all fake, so think from the viewers perspective. Shed away the philosophy of 'fear the unknown' because making others fear what's in your head is not going to work. People need to know what they're supposed to be afraidof.

 

[Armored99]

(Provided you're not playing co-op, then the whole game just becomes a lolcow)

I actually liked dead space 3 co-op, even though I never had anyone to do it with.

But then you have games like Metro 2033, which genuinely scares me at times,

Ehhh it had a few jump scares but not something that really got me.

So to spare you my train of thought, here's my conclusion: first of all, disempowerment.

i can see where you're coming from with this, but I think there are many different factors that are more or at least equal in terms as this factor. If I take Super Smash Bros and make controls more janky and disempower the player, the game doesn't just become horror or even scarier at all, but I will concede that making a horror game with worse controls can add to the horror. I remember the devs on dead space explaining why the character movement was sluggish.

But going from that term, that would mean FNAF is one of the best of the horror genre, right? You're given doors and a camera. You can't fight the furry fucks but you can "evade" them, right? So why does it get so boring after Night 3?

I wouldn't describe FNAF as best in terms of horror genre or even really horror at all. Its all just tension and surprise. It's not a game that keeps me up at night, trying to sleep with my back to the wall.

Here comes my next point: variety.

I get what you're saying by this point. A person eventually learns the rules of the game, and they start building resistance from repeated experiences with the same scares. However, to keep changing the game requires the teaching of new mechanics. A super mechanic heavy game stops being scary and just becomes frustrating, having to keep learning new things, especially if they stop being used after a point.

Things like art direction and setting CAN make a difference, but given the example from Modern Warfare where horror can be achieved even in broad daylight among war-torn Iraq, it shows that mechanics and engagement truly is king.

Just because they set up the scenario in your backyard doesn't mean it'll be scary for other people.

 

[Viator]

At it's root almost all fear can be traced back to one concept. "The Unknown." I find for horror, the more uncertain it makes you, in your reality, in your surroundings, in your future, the more effective it is at frightening you. What is more important than what is seen, is what is not seen. Often a failed horror explains too much in telling the story of what we should be afraid of. Monsters are scary because they hide in the dark.

 

[BenJepheneT]

Just because they set up the scenario in your backyard doesn't mean it'll be scary for other people.

may come as a surprise but not everyone on the internet is American, my man

i can be detached from the context of a profitable war and still find the same circumstances horrifying

 

[greyblob]

I haven't played mich horror games, but I believe why it works is the immersion. If you can have the player's whole attention, you keep them on edge, always expecting something wrong to happen, or hit them with jumpscare while they're distracted.
Insurgency (a realistic fps) feels like a horror game at times for me. You die before you can even react as a single bullet can kill you. You're fully immersed as you desperately hold an angle, focusing completely on what's in front of you. And here comes a bullet from behind you. It's often the worest of jumpscares.
So it all boils down to immersion, so much so that an fps game can be scary.

 

[Armored99]

may come as a surprise but not everyone on the internet is American, my man

All I got from that is you're not denying being a sand dweller.

 

[BenJepheneT]

All I got from that is you're not denying being a sand dweller.

well, i don't mind that, as long as I'm not being accused of being from Burgerland

 

[LadyIsak]

I think you're right on the money with disempowerment being a crucial part of the horror genre, at least in gaming — I'm thinking here of Darkest Dungeon (the first one, hah — sequel was just announced the other day), which works quite well as horror despite the flippant tone, because the mechanics are so punishing. And ironically, if you're having a good run, it ceases being much of a horror game at all, and becomes more of a comedic dark fantasy shtik: since like, if you're in control of the situation, it's no longer horrific; there may be stress but eustress is different to, well, the regular kind.

It's sort of like with PTSD, both the regular and the complex types — what ends up mattering, more often than not, isn't what happens, no matter how horrific, but whether you have meaningful agency while it's happening or right in the aftermath.