DOOMs. They are the scariest game in the world. I hope doom 3 is like those.

[edited by - wannabe 1337 on March 27, 2004 1:01:58 PM]

Have you ever played Ecstatica? Everything in that game scares me.

i beat manhunt some time ago and i found the game to be scary. not horror movie scary but a on edge scary...what im try to point out is that in the game you take so much damage and saves or few and far apart so when a enemy is walking right past you while your in the shadows you get scared thinking of what will happen to you if he finds you, also if the last level they throw in allot of cheap scares

kinda off topic but anyways, one day had a idea for a multiplay horror game thing is lots of people say multiplay destroys the all the horror in a game i want to know do u guys agree. Apperently capcom does because they didnt want voice capablity in outbreak because it would destroy the horror.

One thing that would make horror games more frightening would be to remove healing from them. There could be a few points during the story where they character has a chance to rest and recurperate and restore themselves but the rest of the time they have to avoid injury. You could go one step further and have injury effects such has the player gets shot in the leg during the course of a fight and now they have to limp through the rest of the game. OR there arm is broken preventing the character from using two handed weapons anymore.

Anothing that would work well would be tension and pressure. Early on the player is infected by a zombie bite, and there body is slowly being consumed, The player could see the effects in game as well as on the status screen. The only option is for the player to find the cure within some unknown time period.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

hm, i can''t really say what''s really scary, because the last time i was scared by any media was about 10 years ago when i was watching beauty and the beast and i was afraid everytime the beast came out. -_-.

but, i think the thing before any horror is immersion. immersion must be set up - the player has to believe he''s there. then its a clear road from there to create fear (suspension, Boo!-effects, etc).

Cipher

Silent Hill did well, but I generally found that even though the enemies were often hard to find, or would creep around you and sneak up on you, they weren''t that tough when you actually engaged them. Clock Tower was an old SNES game, and you were a little girl. That was scary. Knowing that a trained monkey could whip your ass, and finding your dead little girl friends around the house, and ocassionally actually having to run like hell from a villain were enough to make you cringe every time you reached for a doorknob.

But I don''t identify well with little girls, so I''d say that the best scary game experience I''ve ever had was Marathon. You''re an invincible warrior with a pressurized powered exoskeleton on, and you''re trained with every weapon in the world, but you never have any damn ammunition. You fight off hordes of aliens, often with just your fists, and throughout it all you''re thinking, "Damnit! If only I had access to one freaking weapons locker, this invasion would be over right now!" but it never happens, and so you live check-point to check-point on what you can find on corpses and the rare handful of shotgun shells that your allies manage to beam through the hull for you. Awesome game. It''s that tension that does it.

The problem with trying to make a video game feel like a horror movie is that horror movies are scripted for maximum plot value and tension, where games have to depend a little on the player''s ability. If every close call was scripted, the player would eventually expect it. When the zombie hand grabs you, you first look around for something that you can shoot that will fall on it, and failing that you pick your escape route that you''ll take after whatever deus ex machina the designers have chosen frees you. You''re detached, and it just becomes a puzzle game with gritty texturemaps. And if you make the game so dangerous that you actually get into situations where you have a 5% chance of survival, you''ll only get through that part one time in twenty, which sucks balls, gameplay-wise (and was a problem with manhunt, believe you me).

I think your best bet is to either come up with a bunch of clever video game cliches to match the horror movie cliches (never let the player get full HP, give him as ass-kicking new gun in a cut-scene and have him lose it in the same cut-scene, put exactly one bullet in the game for every zombie and make him kill one with a knife for every time he doesn''t score a headshot) or else just go for pure atmosphere and hope that spooky sound effects and nerve-racking fights can cover up the fact that your game is basically a 3D version of the Adventures of Lolo (Resident Evil).

hmm, the ammo remark is a good one. What if the player started with all the ammo their ever going to go?

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

Stuff I think makes for a good scare, or to put you on edge for a future scare.

1. Make things move. Shadows and lighting are excelelent for this trick. Dont make monsters all that often instead give the feeling that they are there by makeing things move. Yea can really get creative with that.

2. Sounds, Slight sounds. Lamps swaying on the roof. papers russling in the wind.

3. Dont over use things, "Zombies grabing at your from the floor... bla bla bla" we all know the feeling of walking thought a room and arm shoot out at you when you do it, when you go back and forth 1-2 times you realize hey they dont come out and kill me. SO, if you really want it to be good after they wet their pants the first time you throw something like that at them dont let it happen again. in stead next time make something just as scary happen from a diffrent position. keeps player thinkings, gets them twice.

4. Hullucinations. well its fun. make things look like stuff like dripping blood. example. you enter a room and look thought the window its dark and you see something draining down the wall player kind gets creeped out, then later you acctually go there and it didn''t even happen. not for everything but its still kinda fun to play with.

5. the definite device to scare is to make sure they are on edge, and stay that way. even if your in a bright room dont give the player a break make their imagination run wild when they look out a window. make everything seem ok then when they walk over to the window to investigate the items on a desk near it <THAWP!> window breaks. still its about the positioning by the mood has to remain. can''t let them have a "Safe spot".

6. its also good not to over do the monster things, I personally hate walking into a room full of zombies killin them all leaving. geting a key and comeing back only to find the same zombies waiting for me. Make things change. you go thought a dudes house one time and kill somethin there. you come back later all the lights are off. the windows are all broken. no monsters here... or are there... *grin*, another thing thats good is to mix some things up. even if hard. if theres a guy that you meet and hes barly alive on the ground move him around from game to game. it could be likely that out of shear chance or luck or some thing you did, made him survive. or get a little farther. Just try not to make it so obvious, or mix that up too.

7. movement, yes I already mentioned it. but suttule movement can really freak someone out. not just movement of shadows. but anything. grass for instance. if you look out side and its a solid image not much is scary. make the grass move like something small is stawking thought it. make the door move back and forth. the gate in the distance.

thats all I got, prolly some it it was already mentioned and all. but I think its a facinating way to make a game. well have fun causing people to hide under their beds. XD!

OOh, cool idea. How about having some monsters being able to disarm the player. A creature runs at you, and it knocks your really cool weapon flying, now your character is much more vulnerable and has to run away and lose the creature before he can come back and get his weapon.