![]() ![]() Horror is like a spice that defines a dish. More about that later! Lesson 3: Scares alone won’t make a horror game Instead I think one should aim for a third route: making the players think about actions in a more narrative fashion. I don’t think either of these solutions is optimal. Another approach is to instead skip much of the gameplay (think Dear Esther): if there are no mechanics, there’s nothing for the player to exploit – problem solved, right? Some games solve issues of player exploitation simply by making the enemies extremely hard (think Dark Souls): they make sure the monsters are just as hard to beat as they look scary. So their behaviour ends up going against their will. ![]() At that point the game no longer felt as entertaining.Īnd the crazy thing is that the players complain when this happens! They probe the system for flaws and choose to exploit them, yet want the dogs to remain scary. Amnesia: The Dark Descent had similar issues towards the end, where the monster encounters were just that, not supported by any other aspects. Instead of becoming mazes of fear, they instead became mostly… annoying. We thought it would be good enough for a scary gameplay section to have a maze and some monsters. This became apparent in certain maps in Penumbra. If you have a game that only relies on jumpscares – figuratively throwing people off a cliff in a barrel – few people will consider that fun. Even if they survive unscathed, the whole ordeal would be a horrible experience. But if you put someone in a barrel and push them down a cliff, chances are they will not find the experience fun at all. Under controlled circumstances the experience of falling is thrilling and fun (at least for a good portion of people). The basic purpose of a rollercoaster is to simulate the sensation of falling. You could draw an analogy between horror games and rollercoasters. This paradox requires game developers to be careful in how they deliver the experience to the player. This is the paradox of horror as entertainment. The basic emotion of horror is not a pleasant one – yet people play horror games wanting to experience horror. Still, the lessons here are at the core of the craft of making scary video games. There’s quite a bit of overlap with other genres, especially any games that aim for a narrative-heavy experience.Īnd finally – this is by no means an exhaustive list. That being said, I don’t see these lessons as only useful for horror games. In the past 9 years we have learned a great deal about horror games, and to celebrate the occasion, I wanted to share 9 lessons we have learned over the years. Many times the standard industry tricks just won’t work, which makes one think about game design in a different light. This makes designing horror games different from designing within other genres. What is important is that the experience is a spooky one. In a horror game, the activity is not at all as important. ![]()
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