Other Scarey Game topics: What makes a scarey game...scarey? NOTE: I don't intend for these topics to stack up too much but I do want to find out about the topic. I will continue making new chats as new topics are brought up. What exactly is a "cliche scare"? I know that you can't have something jumping out of a door or corner every 2 seconds and you can't have something dead on the mysteriously dark and foggy pipes, either...but is it ok to switch up the dimensions? Do cliche scares include things falling from ceilings or crouched in corners? Would the dead, bloody body of a dead young person in the fetal position in the corner be as cliche as the dead, bloody body of a random man on the pipes? And what ever happened to suicide victoms and chains? And what is the difference between cliche sound and non-cliche horror tracks? Is it OK for a backround track to have things like movement, chains, screams, and whales or is that better to have programmed into the game? Now what about cliche places? orphanages, hospitals, and insane asylems are used but how does that mesh in with the cliches when it is overused? -Ajain

Im cool with cliche scarey elements, but ONLY if they're not the main focus.

If a dead guy on some pipes only ADDS to a scarey ambiance, then Its so much better than if the dead guy on the pipes IS the scarey ambiance.



Theres alot of cliche things that work just fine. I like the idea of things dropping form the celeing (I respelled this word a hundred times. nothing looks right...). The only catch is that in FPS games, its hard to see things drop from the celieng (ugh.).

The other thing about keeping the player scared is that you cant over do it. THink about this: You're walking through a house and theres dead corpses of children everywhere. You're shocked initially, but not that shocked. you're thinking more like "eww, dead kids".
Now, suppose the house is just creepy. Theres creaks everywhere you walk, and you can sometimes hear wispers. Subtle things that keep your hair on end. And you open a door, and see a body on the floor, and you realise its a kid holding a teddy bear. Its head has been shot. Thats alot more scarey than a room fullof dead kids. Also, theres alot more you could do wiht the later situations. Suppose that you get a little bit closer to the dead kid, and it rolls over. That will cause a jump. and then suppose it's eyes open, and they look at you. and then it sits up, and blood starts dripping down its face from the bullet hole. By that time, the player doesnt know what to do. Is this a cutscene they shuld pay attention to, or should they run in fear?
And then the kid stands up and starts walking towards you all creepy sort of like Samara/Sodoko in the Ring(u).


I think this is what scarey games need more of. The cliche stuff is cool, but should only add to the tense feelings. The true creepyness hsoudlnt be cliche. But, without the cliche things going on, the scareyness that does define the game doenst have as much impact.

for one thing its ceiling...I think...

and another thing:

you slightly contradicted yourself...you first said that the cliche is ok if it isn't the main focus and used the dead buy on the pipes and said it was ok if it added but wan't the focus, then you went on to go to an equivalent dead little person on the floor...there is not much of a difference and the pipes guy could even add more scariness if the focus...

example cut scene:

you are walking down a hallway and ahead of you, from around a corner you see a dead guy thrown onto the pipes where he hunches over. Then, as you walk past you are expecting to see something horrific in the hallway. You start walking on because the "lack of psycic activity" bar starts flashing (lets say its a ghost/entity based horror game) and then the "corpse" grabs you leg. would that not be scarey?

as for comming out of the ceiling...if it is a 3rd or 1st player view (not that there is really such a thing as a 2nd person view, but...) you could just have the ceiling give way and something drop down...or even have something fused to the ceiling...or maybe just stuck there with something...

-Ajain

It really doesn't matter much if you use "cliche's". A good game is worth replaying, a good book worth rereading. When you've heard a good story it's worth hearing it again. As long as it is told as good as it was before.
The problem with cliche's is not so much that the same thing is being rehashed, but that people start assuming that a certain thing is all it takes to be funny/scary/etc.

For example, a skeleton is not by definition scary. Like the skeleton in a biology class room. The surroundings make it completely unscary. However the same skeleton in stranger's house that you're visiting because your car had a flat tire and you didn't take a spare is marginally more unsettling. For one, you don't have much choice to be there. Secondly the skeleton is out of place and thus raises suspicion.

Reusing the same mechanics gets boring, but don't go out of your way to avoid everything that's been done before. It's like bruce lee quote from one of the forum members:
"Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, and add what is uniquely your own"

Also, cliche scares can be very useful because they're conventions. They lead the player to expect certain things. ie. in Doom3, any dead body you see is likely to get up and start trying to eat your brains as soon as you turn your back (at least the bits of Doom3 that I played).

Things are often more scary if they're unexpected. Say you walk past a dead body, and it twitches. The player is liable to turn around and shoot it immediately because "everyone knows" that dead bodies in horror games are after your brains. However, what if the body is twitching for some other reason? I dunno, it's being eaten by giant mutant killer microbes or something. Or it's still, posthumously, trying to get away from whatever killed it. Which, incidentally, you can see as a faint shadow on the wall in front of you as you stare at the (suddenly not so scary) corpse...