Why does a game have to be ''survival horror'' to be scary?

You could just as easily create an RPG that scares the bejesus out of you.

The problem is that people took a single game (resident evil) and tried to make an entire genre out of it. Virtually every single ''survival horror'' game on the marketplace is a knock off of resident evil. It''s old, it''s lame, and it bores the crap out of most people that I know.

Now, if you really want to scare people - you need to throw convention out the window. I''ll use 2 films as an example.

In ''carrie'', the girl''s hand didn''t originally shoot out of the grave in the end (in the book, that is). It was added in the film, and it turned out to be the single scariest moment of the story. Flash forward to present day; people would expect that sort of thing, and it wouldn''t shock anyone if it happened.

The process worked fairly well at first, but it quickly grew old. Build tension. Slowly release tension until things ''seem'' safe. Release tension. AHHH! these days, that doesn''t scare anyone. We know the serial killer is about to burst through that window. lame.

Kubrick took a radically different approach when doing his film adaptation of ''The Shining''. We see the stalkings with knives. We see what the attacker is going to do. It''s blatent. And yet - it still scares people.

You need to do the unexpected. That''s the only way to really scare anyone these days.


Thanks,
Etnu

Sometimes I think I know what I really don''t, but then again usually I do know what I don''t, but just don''t realize it, maybe its because I am so young, but then again it could be because I am insane.

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Original post by Ganryu
Hmm... I believe there is a quite unique game in this genre on ps2 in fact. It''s called Fatal Frame, and you use a camera to kill your enemies. Basically you walk around in 3rd person, and when you use the camera it changes to first person.

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It''s not unique; you just use a camera instead of a gun.

Interesting, the game I''m doing is a "survival horror" I suppose. I''m really banking on me implementing the AI properly though to create a good experience. If I can''t get it right then it''s mainly another graphics demo -_-

The premise of it is, instead of the "zombie bursts out of the closest and slashes until you shoot it down", the (one) enemy is going to try and wear you down as long as it can. It''s going to adapt to where you are, how you are reacting (Got good aim? It''ll try and stay out of sight. Jerking around at every little sound? It''ll try to get you to waste your precious little ammo by quickly flashing by) and get you to the point where it can come in and finish you with little effort.
It is much, much faster than you. It is much more quiet than you. Even if you hear it coming, you won''t know how it''s coming. Maybe it''ll jerk out, retreat and quickly run another route to get behind you while you think you''re still chasing it. Maybe it''ll wait, hanging above a doorway and drop on your head. Only to jump off and go back into hiding. Maybe it will slowly roll a pop can down the hall, and attack you from behind while you''re looking at it. Or maybe if you expect that, it will come from the front. You don''t know, all you know is that if you make the wrong choice it will be on you in a second.

So essentially what I''m trying to do is give depth to the enemy. It''s not human, it''s not something you''ve seen before, but it''s still smart . And that''s a scary concept.

As many have said, sound is VERY important to creating an atmosphere. This includes both the music (if there is any), and the environmental sounds. A good example of sound usage is System Shock 2, which achieved an incredibly scary and suspenseful atmosphere. There are these monkeys, which hurl energy balls at you, and they are quite dangerous. Often during the game you hear the sound of a monkey somewhere around, but a lot of the time you wont run into one of them - sometimes you will. And sometimes, you will run into a monkey without any warning at all. Many of the other enemies also make sounds like this, and its VERY well done.

The absence of sound can also be very powerful. Imagine you are on a spaceship, and there is the constant background drone of the engines - it changes in pitch and volume as you move about - but its always there. And then it stops. You dont know why, and you dont know if its bad, good, or irrelevant. The use of silence in this way is a very good technique.

As mentioned, lighting is also very important, but everyone so far has said that it should be either dark and gloomy, or at a normal lighting level. Dont forget that flickering, or unusual coloured lighting can also put a player on edge (yes, i''m aware these effects can be included in dark and gloomy - but i felt they should be pointed out). Things such as smoke or fog can also be good, although overusing them usually isnt such a good idea.

I dont think anyone so far has mentioned unusual geometry in the environment. You''d be surprised how much a person can be unsettled by a room that doesnt have right-angles joining the walls. Slanted floors are also included in this - but keep in mind that slanting the floor for too long at a time might get annoying.

Manhunt can be considered a horror game

how about eternal darkeness, this game play with the peerception of reality of the ingame character that sometimes you don''t know if the things happen become your character is insane and has hallucination or if it really happen (they has a fear stat) i was impress to see that my character react to every single sound like the fire crack

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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Original post by LockePick
The premise of it is, instead of the "zombie bursts out of the closest and slashes until you shoot it down", the (one) enemy is going to try and wear you down as long as it can. It''s going to adapt to where you are, how you are reacting (Got good aim? It''ll try and stay out of sight. Jerking around at every little sound? It''ll try to get you to waste your precious little ammo by quickly flashing by) and get you to the point where it can come in and finish you with little effort.

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Sounds vaguely like the original concept for a game called Prey, except in that game each attribute was embodied in a different enemy. Don''t know what happened to the project, but there was a lot of ink spent on it once upon a time, might be worth digging up to see what they had when they gave it up.

ld

I think the single most terrifying game I''ve ever played, personally, is Clock Tower for the SNES. You''re a twelve-year-old girl in this house full of psychos (well, there are like four psychos, but one of them is your grade school teacher) with three of your friends. Through the course of the first few stages of the game, you get separated from your little friends, and every so often you''ll meet one again, or find her corpse. The dangerous parts are made worse by the fact that there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop the attacker except scream and run, and unless you know the game map very, very well, you''re pretty much boned. The girl takes forever to fumble doors open or get into a closet when you hear something scary, and they bad guys sometimes will find you anyway.

It''s all painstakingly scripted, and if you play through more than once or twice you''ll start to see the triggers and behaviors, but that first time, it''s a very engaging experience.

This is what I did in the pen and paper world -- I was the GM.

First the players were all mortal. They also had fairly good backgrounds which weren''t uninteresting (a deputy mayor, an anglican ?minister? and a shell shocked church grounds keeper). The time period was after world war II some where in rural UK. They were all living in some small town.

The way I kept them freaked was first they were mortals and there were supernatural things around them. Mortality is a scarey thing. The next thing was that I didn''t tell them what was real, I told them what they preceived. I also took away their character sheets, I made all the rolls, they just said what they''d attempt to do and other player sort of things. I periodically checked things like courage, willpower, conviction and so on to see how well they coped with the events. Sometimes they''d fail checks, become paranoid. The shell shocked vet would flashback. The priest found himself questioning his faith. The deputy mayor wasn''t a hero in the slightest and had to live with the guilt of delegating dangereous tasks to others.

The enemies that they rarely encountered and knew every little about were vampires, werewolves and the like.

After running the sessions I learned the following. Numbers take away from the game. The only time one should see numbers and even then it might be questionable is character creation. Players get scared if you hit their character at the core, nothing hurts more than loosing a limb -- both literal and not. That is to say, imagine if your charater''s wife is horribly killed and you show that. Or your character''s arm is amputated. Or make the character really like something and then take it away. Messing around with character preception is very effective. Not being able to trust oneself is pretty scarey and you''ll definately feel helpless and paranoid.

To make this in a computer game would be really difficult. The first thing you''d need to do is come up with a very detailed setting a small town would be somewhat easy to do. Then you''d have to have lots of things you can do in it, basically as close to a virtual world as you can get. You''ll need an incredibly smart AI. The AI''s main purpose will be to play the opponent that is the antagonist. THe antagonist should have some goals -- get something from the character perhaps get revenge on the character... Once that''s done, the AI should be let loose to do its business. The only thing is that comming up with an AI that can do that would require an insane amoutn of work, but there are some good short cuts one could take.

One feature that i think would greatly add to the tension factor of these games. Is to remove healing at anytime, instead make it so that character can only rest and patch up their wounds at certain times and places. After all player will be far more on edge if their character has to limp away bleeding from the pursuing zombies rather then using a "magical?" green herb and some paper to heal their injuries at any time.

Also the enemies could be a lot harder to kill or require special weapons or attacks in certain areas in order to defeat. Afterall if you think about it a pistol is not going to have much affect on an animated corpse.

Think about it 3 zombies come crashing through the door behind you. You''re armed only with your police issue revoler, 12 rounds and the knowledge that it takes a bullet through the nerve at the top of spine to bring down a zombie. So you have two choices stay and fight or leap out the window and hope there is something soft between you and the ground below. And so you have to ask your self, do you feel lucky? Well do you?



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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document