Observing the Darkness

Do you hear that, Players? No, it’s not a low battery notification. It’s actually a Halloween special, since October 31st is not too far away! For this post, we’ll be taking a look at those scary games for the spooky month. Grab your blankets and flashlights because we’ll be observing the darkness to see what makes these kind of games scary. Some Players embrace and revel in this field. So much so that there could be something here to ignite that creative spark for a game.

Now I am by no means a psychologist, book author, film director, or any of that, so don’t take any insights as blockbuster advice. I’m just a regular person here sharing my observations and speculating how they might be applicable. Let’s move things along and set an outline for this post. We’ll talk a bit about the psychology aspect, some popular horror elements, and brainstorm a bit for a game concept. (Anyone else hearing some ominous music playing from somewhere or is it just me?)

Viewing Fear Itself

Fear comes naturally to all of us. It is our response to possible threats whether they’re real or not. When we’re in a fearful situation, we all have our own individual responses to that predicament. If someone where to jump out from behind the screen to suddenly startle you, then you might notice shifts within your body. I mean things like your heart beating faster or your adrenaline levels rising. Maybe you’ll also yell or scream from the surprise because well it was a surprise. That’s a moment that is not normal and our brains hand the wheel over to our reactions.

Even though fear plays a role in making sure we have some self preservation, we’ve also gotten to know fear pretty well. We have ways to safely play with that emotion itself for fun. That’s why there are plenty of media options out there for horror fans seeking that next thrill. We’ll focus more on the game side of things. Don’t get too scared that we’ll go super far off topic into unknown territory, Players. Let’s look a little closer at what games do to play with fear.

If you’re looking towards making a horror themed game, then you’d want to have strong skills for setting the theme. I might even argue audio, visuals, and storytelling can carry the game more than its’ gameplay mechanics. These things give horror games a lot of power for drawing players in, but these alone aren’t enough for good traction in terms of player retention. Once again, games can be pretty complex depending on the scope or magnitude you want to achieve. (It’s not like ghosts are the worst thing right? Hmm lights are flickering… how odd.)

Captivating the Audience with Sub-Genres

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Once we have an idea, we’ll have to ask ourselves a handful of questions. Now that we’ve lured players into our spooky game, what’s going to be the best way to keep them immersed and invested? This part is tricky in this scenario because it really depends on the direction you want to focus the game with it’s sub-genre. Survival and action seem to be the most common, but there are also games more on the psychological side. We also have games that are all about the jump scares, and some that flip the script to let us do the scaring for each other.

Survival and Action

Survival and action horror typically go hand in hand at time of writing this as they are pretty popular. They are those story rich games where you are given the primary task of getting out of a bad situation either as yourself or as a character. These are the most well defined types for the horror game genre. There are many great characters that you want to cheer on and root for, terrifying creatures, and often a limited amount of resources available to push your way through to the end. Here’s an unordered list of what comes to my mind when someone says horror games, but there are many others out there for other examples.

Resident Evil
Silent Hill
The Last of Us
Dead Space
Alien Isolation

The thing with these types of games is that they are incredibly immersive. These games up in the list are from large companies. They have serious manpower there to have teams work together to build a great story paired with game mechanics that compliment the whole experience. Especially on the higher difficulty settings, you’ll often find yourself trying to figure out how to be conservative and efficient with your ammo. When a new monster is introduced, you may see how dangerous they are within the narrative in the form of a cutscene or quick time event to keep you on your toes.

Psychological

The psychological horror games are also fun to check out. These games are the ones that’ll mentally trip you out. The Silent Hill series deserves a mention here too for how the story develops. Amnesia is the game that I first think about when I hear psychological horror. Those two examples focus on their character cast, but some games might reach out beyond who is on screen. There’s a chance that someone will break out the meta card and shatter through the fourth wall to target you directly! I personally enjoy when games take that route for a twist.

Mechanic-wise, you’ll see often see effects that play with your perspective. New threats may appear on the screen or vision blurs a bit as your character becomes shaken. If the game takes a hammer to the fourth-wall, then you might see things pulled into the world that only YOU, the actual person playing the game, would understand.

Jump Scare

Jump scares are tried and true, so it is no surprise to know that many games use them. The bigger name games use a few pages from almost every sub-genre. The charm with the jump scare lies with the game’s handling of the predictable and unpredictable. Games take advantage of their audio and visual strengths to build up a sense of tension and then try to get you before you can guess what’s happening. That next jump scare could happen right now or after you look at that speck on the corner of your screen. Five Nights At Freddy’s is one well-known example of a game that played with just the jump scares alone at first.

Reversed Role

The reversed role where we scare ourselves is the type that would benefit more on being gameplay oriented than the others. You won’t really have large opportunities for story elements, but you can definitely include that in the form of side content. Multiplayer games like Dead by Daylight, Friday the 13th: The Game, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre pop up into my mind with this sub-genre. Here these games have an overarching theme for their map designs, characters built around specific mechanical concepts, and a community within their player base to have fun.

Reading into Mechanics

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Games just like other forms of media understand that taking breaks from the main action makes for a better experience. If a movie had explosions every minute, then it would be hard to build emotions, follow along, and pay attention to the other elements. This is another reason why games are involve various mechanics and they have their perks. Since we’re focused on horror games here, fear is the number one thing to build around. Let’s go over some and why they’re particularly effective.

Resource Management

This one is no surprise for being present in a horror game. It focuses on your vulnerability. It’s one thing for being vulnerable the entire time, but it’s another thing for running out of the means for defending yourself. Can you imagine being cornered by a monster and thinking you have a way out only to find out that you actually don’t? There are other flavors to this as well outside of the ammunition approach.

You’ll also be worried about how much health you have for your character. Healing items are going to be spread out, so you’ll need to make them last in order to not die before that next save point. You’ll be traversing the world more cautiously just knowing that health items aren’t just on every corner.

Even light sources can be included in here. Light is comforting in dangerous situations. The flashlight in your pocket not only helps you see what’s around you, but it might also be a brief deterrent for the dangers that lurk in the shadows. Without it, you’ll be left to your anxiety hoping that nothing takes interest in hunting you down.

Puzzles and Mysteries

For a game, a good puzzle or a mysterious door is often there to gently lull the pace of the game. These are opportunities for emphasizing the environment and maybe expanding on the lore of the world. However, those interactable objects in the environment could be guarded by danger.

The slower pace can not only offer a little reprieve, but it can also be used to build tension as well. Time constraints can be introduced depending on the situation. If you are trapped in a room with a beast running rampant, then you certainly don’t really want to have to solve a puzzle to open your escape even if it may be the only way. Maybe the stakes are even higher as a deadly trap has been triggered in the room and you only have a limited amount of time to find your freedom.

Stealth

Sneaking around has benefits from an offensive and defensive standpoint. If you catch a monster unaware, then you can use that opportunity to turn the tides into your favor. There are various ways to implement it too. You might get to conserve your precious resources or obtain some highly valuable intel about your target.

Stealth can be an option for threats that are far too dangerous to confront. That monster over there has you outmatched in every aspect, so you know that you’ll only meet your demise if you get caught. These scenarios really bring home the fact that you are still vulnerable and maybe even defenseless. They force you to be mindful of your environment and the noise you make while waiting for the danger to pass.

Player Consequences

In a stressful situation, a game that puts a great deal of weight on the actions you choose emphasizes the experience. Interactive visual novels can really take advantage of this one since they’re text heavy. Other great examples are games like Until Dawn and The Quarry. The lives of the characters in those two games truly rest within your hands.

However other sub-genres of horror games can involve your decisions in other ways. Minor cases may involve items you may or may not need depending on your inventory. You could also play with cutscenes or endings depending on what players interact with. A grand twist could be revealed at the end of the game if you decided to explore those nooks and crannies.

Being Aware of the Monsters

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Fans of horror entertainment have seen many renditions of the popular elements within the genre. This section is mainly about bringing attention to them. More often than not, there is some type of unsettling monster out there in the game’s universe. It can really be about anything. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to take an approach to something that has already been done. You might have a fun and unique twist yourselves, Players. (Just uhh keep your weapon of choice pointed away from me. Ha… thanks.)

The Biohazard Monsters

For lack of a better term, let’s lump zombies and parasite based threats in the biohazard group. These paranormal creatures are malicious mutants set on mauling the next unfortunate victim for their appetite. They’re popular and can be very intimidating to look at. However there is a ray of hope when encountering zombies because they aren’t invincible. Thanks to the modern setting that they often appear in, we can let our imagination wander along the topic of what we might do a post-apocalyptic world.

The Supernatural Monsters

The supernatural monsters are pretty common and have a great deal of variety. The thing with these monsters is that they are really just there to cause trouble. You won’t be able to even try to come up with a real logical or scientific reason for their existence unlike the biohazard group. Monsters here could be anything ranging from aliens to demons. I know werewolves and vampires are popular choices for spooky settings too.

The Human Monsters

We have to put people in here. There are many instances in the entertainment media where there’s that one person who is completely corrupted or broken and crazy things start happening. Honestly, a person being the mastermind behind twisted events is one of the more unsettling things to me. The human monsters have let go of morals, ethics, and everything that a sane person would have. Talk about spooky!

Summoning A Game Idea

Well how should we go about making a spooky game for spooky month? One thing to keep in mind is our own experience level across design fields. That’ll help us settle into a broad stroke and identify a particular element to practice building around. For me, I would want to focus more on the supernatural monsters and having one of them become a co-star that’ll stand with you, Players. This leads me to lean more on the survival and action combo of sub-genres. I think some inspiration from Resident Evil and Devil May Cry will help. It’s ambitious for sure, but that path offers a great deal of mechanic possibilities on both sides of the spectrum. From here, it really comes from flushing out all the pieces and figuring out how to put them together. The vision in my head was 3D, so that could be the direction with the game too.

Narrative

A team of demon hunters are investigating a castle that’s been morphed and twisted by a demonic creature. However, the team has been captured and separated by this crafty creature. They’ll have to figure out how to escape their prison, neutralize their target, and get out of there alive.

It’ll be up to you to help the hunters clamor their way through not only the halls of the castle, but also the legion of lesser creatures following orders from their liege.

Mechanics

I want to incorporate a little bit of stealth. Some monsters acting as guards within the castle may be too strong to brute force through right away. This also is an excuse for me to play around with enemy behavior and having something unique about the major ones present.

The hunters have universal actions like crouching, operating their weapons, and using items. However, it might be cool to have a specialty amongst each of them and points where you can switch between them. I’d guess one of the team members would be the scientist of the group and have an easier time identifying vulnerabilities and item specialist. Another member could be the heavy bruiser type with the proper protective gear for getting in there to rough up the small fries. Let’s say there’s one more member, and they’re the better scout.

So the idea of the flow is that you’ll have to find an exit and manage your way through whatever’s blocking the important stuff. If your weapon’s not effective, then you’ll have to be careful moving around or manipulate the monster’s behavior until you find something useable. Pass things around to the other team members until you reunite them to complete the mission.

The Scary Stuff

I’m going to need the monsters here to carry the game’s fear factor. They’ll have to be intimidating, dangerous, and have some size variety for the major ones. I’m not a fan of instant deaths, but particularly high-damage attacks could be on the table.

Hmm that really is all I had on mind right now. I will definitely need to sit down with it more. However the overall idea is to bring a dark setting together with a sense of tension and dread. The tension and dread parts mainly comes from introducing scenarios where you might get in there and start questioning yourself. Do you have the resources for that large encounter in the courtyard? What’s Plan B? Did you unplug the clothing iron before leaving? Speaking of which, did I unplug that thing?

Closing the Coffin

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Let’s wrap things up like a mummy and bring this night to an end. We spent a lot of time doing some analyzing on horror games today. The discussion covered a bit of what fear is and why we play with it in media before transitioning over to sub-genres in horror games. The sub-genres give a pretty good idea of how games amplify their ability to draw players into them. After that there was some game concept building practice.

Well I hope you enjoyed reading. Thanks for sticking around to the end or just jumping down here to read the ending. I appreciate you regardless. I’m not one to hop into many horror games, but I still find them to be fascinating. Feel free to send an email over to me if you want. I’d love to read your comments. See you on the next post, Players! (And don’t get bitten by the monsters. They like the crunch.)