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!

[Slim]

My suggestion is work on the story, atmosphere and presentation over the design of whatever monster you want to go with.

Secondly, making your monster more ambiguous and less discernible will create a way for the audience to use their imagination to fill in the horror that they are afraid of. I mean, it's natural to become desensitized to things that you are exposed to more and more and giving a threat more of a "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wtf is that" sensation could be more memorable.

Or just make a duck or fuzzy bear do jump scares. People say that scared them.

Edit: Did they seriously censor the word "holy"?! lol

[crunchyfrog]

Slim eredeti hozzászólása:

My suggestion is work on the story, atmosphere and presentation over the design of whatever monster you want to go with.

Secondly, making your monster more ambiguous and less discernible will create a way for the audience to use their imagination to fill in the horror that they are afraid of. I mean, it's natural to become desensitized to things that you are exposed to more and more and giving a threat more of a "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wtf is that" sensation could be more memorable.

Or just make a duck or fuzzy bear do jump scares. People say that scared them.

Edit: Did they seriously censor the word "holy"?! lol

EXACTLY!

Again I'll mention HP Lovecraft (maybe the OP should perhaps also research by reading some of his short stories for guidance). He excelled at painting pictures where he REALLY didn't tell you much about the monster or scary stuff. He let your imagination fill in the blanks.

As I mentioned with Silent Hill and Fatal Frame, these excel as good examples of this. I'd also add that though it was overused during the 2000s, darkness itself is a great method of obfuscating things too.

Perfect example - look at the PT demo that Konami put out. Though you can't easily play it these days, seeing the videos of play where the woman who eventually attacks you is hiding right just out of vision really freaks you the hell out.

They use not only this distance and darkness to obfuscate things, but they use flash frames and distraction (like using mirrors to make you jump from your own reflection) to put you on edge too.

These are tenets you really should nail down as they're perhaps the most effective tools.