1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

What's your favourite Horror Game and Why?

Penumbra (predecessor of Amnesia)

I liked this game instantly because it has that realistic physics i always wanted too see. This way the world feels both real and interactive. The game is still the best in this regard. 

After playing for a while, it really managed to frighten me. Other games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill did not work for me, so i found it surprising a video game can be that scary. First person is a must, believable world also helps here. They did not use jump scares.

It is also very good at story telling, mainly by reading notes you can find in the enviroment. The game constructs the story early on and does not throw you into something without background or reason.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

What environment scares YOU the most?

Claustrophobic and dark without much action and room for exploration.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

What Creature/ Enemy scares YOU the most?

Enemies you can't kill.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Do YOU like Maze's/ Labyrinths? 

Not in 3D. People have very different sense for navigation, mine is bad, so maze could be a show stopper for me.

If you want it, make sure the enviroment does not look the same everywhere so people get lost.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Do you enjoy Puzzles/ Riddles?

Yes, absolutely. Puzzle / Exploration works better for horror games than shooting monsters i think.

27 minutes ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

do want to use a Maze/ Labyrinth, although I didn't realise that Navigation would be an issue until now. If the Maze was unique enough and included a Map as part of the Game, Would it still be a "Show-Stopper"?  

Hard to say without knowing more about your motivation for the maze.

However, i say i like exploration and narrow enviroments, but i also say i don't like mazes... although both can be similar. So i'll point out what i don't like about mazes as i imagine them in a game:

Repetitive, so boring (even if you stress me with monsters, which makes it just worse.).

Not knowing how large the maze is, so not knowing if there is a chance to get through at all.

Missing motivation to get through at all, eventually what comes next is just another maze.

You need to prevent this thoughts to come up. Eventually the story prepares the player to the maze and makes it interesting, so thinking: Ha - finally i am in this mysterious maze there have been so much talk about, now see what happens here...

A map of the maze would be a too trivial solution - if there is a map, then why a maze at all?

A whole game about multiple mazes in 3D... that's no good idea i guess.

43 minutes ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Lastly, What characteristics of an enemy scare you, apart from not being able to kill them? (for example; Clowns appearance).

Spiders... although such primal fears are not that original. In general i'm hard to scare and to be honest i do not understand well why some movies scare me but others do not... it's black art to me, something psychological... can't give a good answer.

I don't play that much horror these days, but the Half Life series left a lasting impression. Specifically Half Life 2.

Ravenholm would be the environment from that game. It's tense and terrifying. There are no friendlies around, it's all dark and quiet until something leaps out at you. There isn't much ammo so you are forced to scavenge and use makeshift environmental weapons.

As for creature, it's the Headcrabs. They aren't individually all that dangerous, but in a game where healing items are few and far between, their ability to sneak up and jump at you from any angle is terrifying. Not to mention their rapid possession of friendly/neutral characters.

Mazes are only interesting in so far as they are preventing you from escaping from something. They don't do much on their own. But given the right pursuing minotaur, they can be effective.

Puzzles are great, but don't typically have much to do with horror?

One of the scariest things I can think of from a video game wasn't a horror game at all, but it is something you should be able to apply to a new design.

The game System Shock 2 takes place on a space ship.  The crew are either dead or have been changed into monsters, and the ship is filled with rogue robots, turrets, and other creatures.

Weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, and... well, everything is in limited supply and can be hard to find.

There's these monkeys... they're small and fast, so they can be hard to hit.  They jump and run, and they're small, so they sometimes come from unexpected directions. And they have a psychic attack where they throw a glowing ball of energy at you, which can be quite damaging.

The horrifying thing isn't encountering them though... it's hearing the sounds of a monkey, somewhere nearby through the game's fantastic surround sound. You don't always know if there are one, or if there are several.  You don't know if they can actually get to you, or if they're somewhere you can't immediately access. You're low on health, and low on supplies, and there's this dangerous unpredictable thing somewhere nearby.

Definitely the most nerve wracking thing I remember from a game, if you can replicate that feeling and build on it you can create a great horror experience.

I dont play any pure kind of 100% horror games like for example Resident Evil or Silent Hill or the games with lots of torturing going on. Also i dont consider Half-Life to be a "Horror" game, but it has some elements of it.

The last games which i played with a few horror elements: "Beyond Two Souls" and the recent "Doom". But thats it.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

I've never heard of "System Shock 2" before, I'll definitely add it to my research. 

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

I'll add "Half-Life" to my research.

Seems you're quite young and don't know the classics?  Here's some more for your list:

Amnesia of course, which successfully started the Indie Horror genre.

Outlast (the first one): Jump scares, very terrifying

and maybe the older Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of Earth: Adventure / Shooter

oh, and Dead Space / Alien Isolation (both more Shooters than Horror)

2 hours ago, Finalspace said:

Also i dont consider Half-Life to be a "Horror" game, but it has some elements of it.

Yeah, it's not a horror game per se, but it is thematically quite horror-laden, and some of those sequences...

On the topic of horror sequences in non-horror games, I'll make a pitch for Halo 1, specifically the first encounter with the Flood in "343 Guilty Spark", and the endless horror of "The Library".

These games all play with the same base elements as Sythem Shock - ammo is scarce and precious, health packs are virtually non-existent, the enemy just keeps coming at you in huge numbers from every direction, and the lighting is... well... dim at best.

4 hours ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Just wondering (It may help me with my research), is there a reason why you don't play Horror Games or is it simply because they don't interest you?

I dont like games which are built on pure violence, but games using horror or shock elements are fine, when not exaggerated.

Example games i dont like: The evil within, Postel, etc

But i have no problem playing zombie games, like left 4 dead or the last of us.

I like the game Amnesia because it's just weird but I had to stop playing it after I had nightmares about being in an empty building. Right now I'm playing Halloween themed Mario hacks because they are scary but fun at the same time. I played this one that was a haunted house that you have to get out of but the twist is that you don't know you are in a house because the house is a cave! Very cool and it's stuff like that which makes me want to play horror games.

Oh and there is another reason why i dont play horror games: My wife cannot handle horror at all and she watches me play a lot. So i dont want to scare the hell out of her.