I wanna make a very scary horror game, any good development tips?

[Mother 3]

Let me get to the point first. I love scary games, especially ones like Amnesia, but I'm tired of all these Mascot Horror games taking over the scene and undermining the ones that are actually terrifying. Since I'm not too experienced, I want to start out with a sort of ship in a bottle, nothing too ambitious, something small but memorable. The kind of monsters I want to do are really gross and disturbing ones like bugs and parasites, since most monsters are just pale guys with no eyes and sharp claws (and of course stupid colorful toy things). I also will use small amounts of gore (limited to mangled corpses), no jump-scares, and utilizing liminal spaces and auditory phenomenon to frighten players. Keep in mind this is gonna start out small, and I might use one of those snap creation engines and push them to the limits a bit. Thanks for reading and give me some cool suggestions of what you like to see!

[Mother 3]

I also love the Cthulhu Mythos, so I'll use that as a primary source of inspiration (Don't expect anything from there, just homages).

[TwisterCat]

Don't make the same mistake as Layers of Fear, and such, constantly throwing jumpscares in people's faces. Build tension, sometimes nothing happening is scarier than the scares themselves.

[Scurrybt]

Avoid jump scares, let the disturbing atmosphere and events do the scares for you. While all the “intelligent horror movie snobs” tell you your story has to have deep commentary or slow burn pacing like Get Out, all you have to have is a horrifying premise like Smile or Saw to hook audiences and critics alike. Make sure to avoid slowing down the pacing to set up the story, faster paced horror stories actually work extremely well. Unlike what snobs say, add a decent amount blood and gore to your story, it will only raise the scare factor and make the audience remember it more.

[crunchyfrog]

Been around since the dawn of gaming in the 1970s. And I LOVE horror games.

I will give you two suggestions to stat with as the gold standards.

First Project Zero (or Fatal Frame, in the US). There's two of the most recent here on Steam, but better examples are the first two games for the PS2 or Xbox. These games are in the mould of the film "The Ring" - very Japanese horror.

But it's more than that. Mechanically they're much like the older Resident Evil games, where you gradually investigate an area, mansion or whatever, unlokcing bits by bit, and solving mild puzzles.

But what you should focus on is HOW they paint the horror.

You have a camera as your weapon to "catch" ghosts. As the enemies are ghosts, this means they can turn up at any time and it leaves you with the unease of not knowing when this is. The graphics are grainy (like an old camera almost) so it adds a certain level of obscurity to not quite knowing what you can see.

The sound design is bleak and often very bare so all this adds up to you using your mind to fill in the blanks - that's the ROOT of good horror. It's not what you show, but what you DO NOT show. It's why Hp Lovecraft is so effective.

So focus on learning from how they do this, when the audio cues hit, how they pace the game, and when the ghosts come out, and so on. Misdirection of getting you to focus on a puzzle is a great time to catch you off guard.


Next, Dead Space - the original.

This is a well known game of course much in the same vein mechanically, but that's not what makes this so good. Dead Space has THE BEST audio design bar none. Get yourself some good headphones (I recommend something like Samson SR850s - you can get from Amazon from around £30 and they punch WAY above their weight). Turn the lights off and focus on listening to all that's going on as you play Dead Space.

The audio paints the atmosphere of a derelict spaceship perfectly. The ambience is spot on. But more than that the stereo imaging of everything is precise - you can hear EXACTLY where an enemy is without seeing it.

So start with those two and learn the beats from them.

[Mother 3]

Originally posted by TwisterCat:

Don't make the same mistake as Layers of Fear, and such, constantly throwing jumpscares in people's faces. Build tension, sometimes nothing happening is scarier than the scares themselves.

thats what im doing, I will not use jumpscares

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by LiamDaMan:

Originally posted by TwisterCat:

Don't make the same mistake as Layers of Fear, and such, constantly throwing jumpscares in people's faces. Build tension, sometimes nothing happening is scarier than the scares themselves.

thats what im doing, I will not use jumpscares

By all means use jump scares - don't count them out, but use them VERY sparingly and only at the right points when they're not expected. See my above post for guidance.

[MoonC A T]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Been around since the dawn of gaming in the 1970s. And I LOVE horror games.

I will give you two suggestions to stat with as the gold standards.

First Project Zero (or Fatal Frame, in the US). There's two of the most recent here on Steam, but better examples are the first two games for the PS2 or Xbox. These games are in the mould of the film "The Ring" - very Japanese horror.

But it's more than that. Mechanically they're much like the older Resident Evil games, where you gradually investigate an area, mansion or whatever, unlokcing bits by bit, and solving mild puzzles.

But what you should focus on is HOW they paint the horror.

You have a camera as your weapon to "catch" ghosts. As the enemies are ghosts, this means they can turn up at any time and it leaves you with the unease of not knowing when this is. The graphics are grainy (like an old camera almost) so it adds a certain level of obscurity to not quite knowing what you can see.

The sound design is bleak and often very bare so all this adds up to you using your mind to fill in the blanks - that's the ROOT of good horror. It's not what you show, but what you DO NOT show. It's why Hp Lovecraft is so effective.

So focus on learning from how they do this, when the audio cues hit, how they pace the game, and when the ghosts come out, and so on. Misdirection of getting you to focus on a puzzle is a great time to catch you off guard.


Next, Dead Space - the original.

This is a well known game of course much in the same vein mechanically, but that's not what makes this so good. Dead Space has THE BEST audio design bar none. Get yourself some good headphones (I recommend something like Samson SR850s - you can get from Amazon from around £30 and they punch WAY above their weight). Turn the lights off and focus on listening to all that's going on as you play Dead Space.

The audio paints the atmosphere of a derelict spaceship perfectly. The ambience is spot on. But more than that the stereo imaging of everything is precise - you can hear EXACTLY where an enemy is without seeing it.

So start with those two and learn the beats from them.

I couldn't agree more with this post.

Great one crunchyfrog

[Incarnate]

Make sure the game is legitimately scary. You'd be surprised how many games screw this up...

Limit the filler puzzles and linear crap. Dying repeatedly and replaying the same scripted set piece over and over or looking up a walkthrough to find the solution to a convoluted puzzle is not scary. It numbs the player to the horror. Those sorts of things ruined Amnesia and Outlast for me. When you have more intuitive level design and logical obstacles like Condemned:Criminal Origins, the game feels less artificial and video-gamey.

Most horror tends to focus on backtracking, but I always found this game design insanely boring. Again, this isn't scary. Venturing into the unknown is scary, not checking stuff off a list, or wandering around in circles looking for a fuse.

Take a cue from the Thief series. Use sound cues, allow some exploration, creative platforming or stealth.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by MoonC A T:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Been around since the dawn of gaming in the 1970s. And I LOVE horror games.

I will give you two suggestions to stat with as the gold standards.

First Project Zero (or Fatal Frame, in the US). There's two of the most recent here on Steam, but better examples are the first two games for the PS2 or Xbox. These games are in the mould of the film "The Ring" - very Japanese horror.

But it's more than that. Mechanically they're much like the older Resident Evil games, where you gradually investigate an area, mansion or whatever, unlokcing bits by bit, and solving mild puzzles.

But what you should focus on is HOW they paint the horror.

You have a camera as your weapon to "catch" ghosts. As the enemies are ghosts, this means they can turn up at any time and it leaves you with the unease of not knowing when this is. The graphics are grainy (like an old camera almost) so it adds a certain level of obscurity to not quite knowing what you can see.

The sound design is bleak and often very bare so all this adds up to you using your mind to fill in the blanks - that's the ROOT of good horror. It's not what you show, but what you DO NOT show. It's why Hp Lovecraft is so effective.

So focus on learning from how they do this, when the audio cues hit, how they pace the game, and when the ghosts come out, and so on. Misdirection of getting you to focus on a puzzle is a great time to catch you off guard.


Next, Dead Space - the original.

This is a well known game of course much in the same vein mechanically, but that's not what makes this so good. Dead Space has THE BEST audio design bar none. Get yourself some good headphones (I recommend something like Samson SR850s - you can get from Amazon from around £30 and they punch WAY above their weight). Turn the lights off and focus on listening to all that's going on as you play Dead Space.

The audio paints the atmosphere of a derelict spaceship perfectly. The ambience is spot on. But more than that the stereo imaging of everything is precise - you can hear EXACTLY where an enemy is without seeing it.

So start with those two and learn the beats from them.

I couldn't agree more with this post.

Great one crunchyfrog

Thank you :)

[Candyy]

Playtesting

[$2 Hero]

You didn’t mention Stalker which means you don’t really know what scary is. Trust me amnesia and those games are nothing compared to stalker. It is what it is.

[AlienTestosterone]

It needs Alien hybrids.

[Pierce Dalton]

Make a boss that is a huge fly. The lord of the flies.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by YE24:

You didn’t mention Stalker which means you don’t really know what scary is. Trust me amnesia and those games are nothing compared to stalker. It is what it is.

I didn't mention STALKER because I described why. I wanted to give a starting point so they can get the framework down.

And Fatal Frame and Dead Space give the two things that are most important for gettnig it down before you can move onto others.

Namely the parts of obscuring, lighting, audio cues, misidrection through diverted attention, atmosphere and so on. Story beats and pacing. Dead Space for the precise audio.

You get that framework down, and note how it works then we can move onto the finer points of other games like STALKER which does indeed have great stuff in it. But it's NOT a good starting point because STALKER is a lot of different genres in one. So it's confusing to start with as an example.

EDIT: As an addendum, I would also add the first Silent Hill on the PS1 to this too. It has very similar obfuscation and the fog teaches you that point about what you DON'T see and you imagine being the most scary. If you've ever druiven in foggy weather you tend to be tense as you think you're seeing things in the swirling fog. It's how our brains work.

But on top of that, the enemy designs are good examples in Silent Hill as they';re deliberately vague too - the nurses are faceless, the small creaures (or kids depending on your region) are ill-defined as they're meant to be burned and disfigured. It all leaves your mind to fill in the gaps.

[Unexpected]

i suggest looking up those VHS style horror games that are trendy now, those people are legitimately talented at building up tension and good scares without being annoying about it