What Goes into Making a Good Horror Game?

Horror genre is one of my favorite, both in movies and games. I like stories where stakes are high, and that's the reason why I prefer stories based on Sci, Fantasy, Disaster and Horror instead of Realism of present day. Now I don't hate them, and try to experience everything that entertainment medium has to offer but when given a choice, I prefer to experience stories that have at least a little bit of Sci Fi/Fantasy/Disaster/Horror twist.

So, it's no surprise that just like a lot of other people out there, I love to play horror games. Throughout my gaming years, I've played number of horror games and watch several movies,,, and observed them closely. There are a lot of elements that make a good horror game like good sound quality, creepy soundtrack, atmosphere,,, you know the usual stuff.

But I think the most important element is the lore and/or the story. If we look back and observe best horror games in the game industry, we can see that most of the critically acclaimed horror games have good stories, likable characters and background stories.

The lore IMO really brings the game's world to life, and makes it more believable. Background stories and legends told by the locals stay with you throughout the game, and make the game more scary. Even if the story is more grounded and doesn't feature the most over the top monsters of all time, due to good lore, even an ordinary enemy becomes pretty scary and the title becomes a genuine horror game.

A level about which you have had heard rumors from the locals and read about its creepy past in books, becomes a lot more scary because you know what you are getting into when you finally enter that level. This is something that big ass monsters in latest Resident Evil games can not provide. The blood, guts and jump scares don't stay with you, and don't make the game more creepy. What makes the game more creepy is a good atmosphere, good story and flawless execution.

System Shock 2's graphically outdated, simple and ugly looking enemies and empty corridors are way more scarier than blood and gore of latest Resident Evil games. Silent Hill 2 is way more creepier than Doom 3. I think that's because of good story and lore that brings the game's world to life, along with strong atmosphere and strong direction.

These elements can make even a non horror game pretty creepy. Shalebridge Cradle in Deadly Shadows is good example of that. Same goes for Half Life 2, where you are told that no one goes to Ravenholm because of xyz reasons. And when you finally arrive in that area, things become even more intense.

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Lore and context helps a lot. IMO, the scariest stories are the ones that leave you to figure things out yourself. But I'm going to go a step further- creature design and scare tactics. One of my favorite horror games is Cry of Fear, not because of the story, which is honestly more or less a Silent Hill ripoff minus the cult. But the monster designs, sounds, and scare tactics are all top notch. It's incredibly subtle, but it really, really has an atmosphere that gets under your skin. Better than most other horror games.

System Shock 2:

-Tight rigid corridors

- limited resources

- infinite enemies

- clunky unreliable weapons

-, hearing enemies before seeing them (thank you Doom).

- Humanity via audio logs.

Resident Evil 2 :

- Baptism by fire, defy expectations; open with the player thrown into the thick of it in an open city.

- Likable protagonists

- Mysterious and unpredictable antagoniast (Mr X)

- Unstoppable/relentless antagonist on a constant crescendo (Birkin)

- Sense of urgency or low point (Sherry infected, Ada dead and obligatory countdown)

- Cinematic without being obnoxious

Stalker

- A sense of place

- Punctuated by horror sections rather than redundantly overdone

- The player is made of tissues

- Upgrades do not make you god like Dead Space

Oh I have my pointers :D Since horror games are one of my favorite genres as well ^^

Most will likely mirror or touch on similar thoughts though as TC.

Peaks and valleys: A good Horror game does NOT run on full action all the time, in fact a great action game will likely always be tense due to reasons below, but the actual action? Not that often, a good horror games has the balls to let the player wander around, and soak in the atmosphere, read up and process (or dread) what lurks out of sight and out of reach.

Sound: I can never stress just HOW important sound design is in horror games, likely way more then any other genre. One of the few areas I can give Doom 3 credit is in the ambient sounds the voices in the machinery and the hollow "thumps" of machinery, or in SS2 where you often had the dangerous creaking sound of the entire ship being on breaking point. Sound does much, but one thing I do NOT like (that some rely on heavily) is sudden "chok" sound quos, It does not built up tension as much as discharge it. Having more then a few of those, will prevent the buildup of tension.

Player not all powerful: Some of the best Horror parts or horror games does share something very basic: What lurks in the dark is far FAR worse then you. In VTM:B The Ocean house Hotel confronts you with something that does not care about your weapons or abilities. In Amnesia you simply can not fight, in the first RE games, while you could fight, it was far more of a desperate last resort.

Most telling is perhaps Call of Cthulhu, where the first 1/4 of the game is a tense descent into horror, but then you get a gun, and the ability to fight back fairly effectively, and any notion of the horror vanishes from the game. It is simple, why fear anything when the player is the most brutal, powerful effective killer in the story? Not unlike being a freaking terminator.

Do NOT show a lot of monsters at a time (or all the time): Look a common mistake most modern horror movies, and majority of games make, is that they show the "monster" early on, which will stop the buildup of tension any further, and the rest of the game (or movie) it is a struggle to either come up with bigger or more terrible monster designs, which often fails. There is a clear difference between a monster show, and horror, they are NOT the same. And we often end up with some place that is overrun by monsters.

Story: In truth you do not need a good story, most of the best Horror movies have a fairly simple plot, even crude, but the story they make never breaks, same with games, a good horror game, does not need a great story, but it does need a consistant story, in order to help build atmosphere.

Atmosphere: Atmosphere is an odd thing, to me this is consisting of: story sound, and visuals, you need the story as a foundation for atmosphere, sound is the threads which weave the atmosphere (try watching a horror movie or game without sound, and you will get what I mean) And the visuals as pillars on which the tapestry of sound can be hung. I do not think the visuals are the most important part of atmosphere, but they all work together to create the stage for the play. STALKER is a great example of this, but atmosphere is not unique to Horror games, all games needs this. It is the same for all genres, it is just that Horror games might rely more on this part.

Make monsters make sense and be a good character: A good ghost or monster, reflects some dark part of human nature, plays on our fears, Something that looks grotesque does not translate to a good monster. But what they are, and what they are capable of. The horrors of the Alien is not really how it looks, but what it represents, and how it exists, move, eat, what drives it. The ghost from Ringu is in no way horrible to look at in itself, but it is WHAT it is that is the horror. Random bloody pulp of an antagonist is NOT scary.

I would say if a horror game can capture the sense that you're always being followed and watched by something you hope to never see, and if the game can diminish your sense of power over that feeling, then it'll be a pretty good horror game.

Atmosphere, really really really good audio and lighting design as well as technique, and the most important creative, unsettling, mind-bending creature design.

I always thought that the creature designers in Souls games are far and beyond in any game I've played and I wish they focused their efforts on other horror ventures rather than the classic Souls framework. With their character design I really think they'd be able to make a decent third person horror game that could rival Silent Hill, Resident Evil and The Evil Within.

Love horror games but they seem to becoming more and more rare these days. Still extremely sore and salty about the cancellation of Silent Hills. I think I'll always be to be honest.

Pacing.

Anything else can be suspect, you nail pacing, you got a good horror, fucking anything. Film, game, whatever.

Sickness. That may sound like oversimplifying (or generalizing), but so be it. Sickness, first and foremost, makes good horror.

One word: atmosphere

Everything System Shock 2 did.

Sound FX, music, pacing (i.e. tension), the uncanny. Everything.

Good post.

Grenades, helicopter boss battles, infinite ammo, explosions and raptors = best horror game

Being alone single player..the only noise/voice you should be hearing aren't your partner "Oy Jill can I have a bloody sandwich, cause I am bloody hungry". but of monsters/ghost of whatever. :P

I still think the first Dead Space will be forever my underrated favourite horror game. Ignoring the fact you can literally pump yourself full of tools and customisation to make you slap around necromorphs a lot quicker it still had a few aspects of the general conception that I loved.

1: You are not a Soldier you are not a jar-head gun toting maniac with years and years of experience with guns and killing stuff. You are an Engineer, that's like being the damn scientist or a random bridge builder in any horror film, you know, the guy that is probably an extra that gets killed while the protagonist goes off and survives through the plot.

2: So because you're an engineer, your primary lines of defence are actual mining tools that the workers would use from the ship. Granted some may resemble your standard shooter axioms but at least they are creative(save the traditional machine gun blaster thing). Wielding the line gun, the rip saw all felt familiar but felt and looked unique. I mean general work tools IRL would do some pretty nasty shit to humans if they were used on them.

3: Your main indirect objective is to fix a damaged ship. I thought this was pretty neat in terms of general story and game development. I mean you're an engineer, you're intelligent and suited for this situation that doesn't necessarily involve directly killing anything, your goal is to survive with what you're given a long the way. This means you're travelling all over the ship and not just waltzing around corridor after corridor, you're actually going into the back routes and unconventional gangways only the engineers had access too(as opposed to the general crew). Almost similar to those scenes from Titanic where you get glimpses of the engine room and you're seeing those giant pieces of machinery moving at threatening pace, in Dead Space IIRC you're asked to go down to all sorts of places to jump start engines and what not .The natural chaotic nature of the destruction as well where sometimes you'd literally be walking around in space exposed compartments.

4: The claustrophobia of space and its threatening presence throughout the game. You aren't getting off the ship until you've solved the mystery/got the ship started going again, you can't go outside at all because you have an air timer, you wear a suit that is built for these occasions that you never take off because of the chance of being knocked into space on a ship that is falling apart, any route taken could lead to the cold outdoors. Taking all this into account and then realising your only traversal is within the ship and how little that is compared to the oppression of space.

It's the reason I still really enjoy Dead Space 2 because you were still being 'Mr Technical Engineer' instead of "lol bro we gon' kill all the shit!", the devs still incorporated the fixing and tweaking and the restarting of all this space machinery in order to progress, and you just feel that if Isaac was just some random dude he'd have been slaughtered years ago.

I'm all for the protagonist being somewhat of a nobody and letting the devs find or creative unqiue ways to deal with the horror. This is why I probably like Silent Hill more than Resident Evil, because even in Silent Hill, despite getting guns, they're not your typical automatics that you can kit out and improve, I mean in Silent Hill 2 the best thing you get is the rifle; it's slow, cumbersome, reloads VERY slow, and on top of that there's almost hardly any ammo. James Sunderland picking up that piece of wood at the start and bashing that thing over the head with it was no doubt more apt than him doing a combat roll to the side, taking out his desert eagle and capping it in the head.

Good Horror games:

Silent 1-3

P.T.

Eternal Darkness

Amnesia 1

Bad horror games:

Everything else

Copy what the good stuff does, ignore all the other crap.

Lighting and sound design.

Powerlessness often goes a long way too, you can achieve a lot simply by taking away any guns and tools that a player may be used to

1) Atmosphere

2) Good usage of lighting

3) Survival elements if not survival alone

4) Excellent sound design

5) Alot of blood

6) And some fall of the chair , screaming loud , " i dont want to enter this room " scary situations

Agree with this, but then it's up to the devs to conceive a creative, but believable, way for the protagonist to overcome unnatural, unbalanced odds. Odds in which it seems the player cannot traditionally win in any way.

For example Sarah Connor in the first Terminator film, one of the classic horror subjects of unstoppable force pursues helpless creature. Technically she only survives because of external forces and timing(Yeah I'm aware it's a film, but that's the plot), and lets the machinery of the factory do all the work for her while only surviving by the skin of her scrote.

@misterpmedia: Dead Space 1 is brilliant.

Not gonna focus on the rest, but this is an absolute problem with that game. The story is that you are not a soldier, mechanically you are marcus fenix. Your mining tools glorified pistols, rocket launchers, mine launchers, and machine guns. Isaac is an engineer in those games in the same way that Mario is a plumber in Mario Bros. Cosmetically that might be true, but as far as conveying that in gameplay? **** No.

I get what you're saying here and I guess I do feel the same way to some extent, but then I also realise it's a videogame and it also has to be fun to play, not be 100% accurate and haha. I don't think using spanners and wrenches to dismember necromorphs would have been 'mechanically fun'. But I mean... lets say a builder or any hard labourer that deals with every day regular machinery and tools could walk into a home depot type store and kit themselves out pretty heavily and still be pretty efficient at killing. Pistol? Nail gun. Buzz saw weapon? Strimmer, and so on and so on. Do I think they had to make it some what familiar and include shooter gun type axioms? Definitely. Do I think it takes away from the engineer aesthetic? Not entirely. I think they could have done without machine gun though.

I think a really good set of headphones are necessary for enjoying a good horror game.

There were times I was paralyzed with fear when that crazy thing from Soma appeared in the deep. The audio had a ton to do with it.

Also, the scariest games are always the ones that you have no way of defeating anything, and your only option is to stay alive.

Same thing happened with me when I was playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

FEAR is still best Horror game. and horror action games like that are fine.

but walking simulators like amnesia, SOMA etc are very boring. waste of time

Would it have been fun for a triple A game? Who knows, they didn't even try, they made Resident Evil 4's shooting system with moving. I get why those gameplay decisions were made, I also agree that on balance Dead Space is pretty enjoyable (I couldn't get myself through that sequel, Isaac's dumb girlfriend ghost, and that scene where she tells him to let her go, only for him to be like nah, we can still **** in the afterlife was like NOPE!), but centrally that's the type of stuff that bothers me about video game stories.

It's that type of stuff that makes The Last of Us a better game in a lot of regards, not that it doesn't have gamey shit, but the principles of that story and tone are done through the mechanics. A lot of deliberate animations, no regen health, less bombastic set pieces, your arsenal is a bit gimped, even something like how the melee works in that game is meant to highlight what a brute Joel actually is in that world. There is a commitment to that fiction that isn't there in a game like Dead Space, and well a lot of games.

All you need is fear and suspense, without those two, you dont really have a horror game.

I think Outlast brought some nice ideas to this discussion. Easily one of the more frightening games I've ever played, and you cannot even use weapons. Basically, the more in danger your character is, the more scared you will be. If you are equipped with a Rocket launcher and can clear out a room filled with zombies in an instant, they wont scare you much.

Basic things like atmosphere, realism, sound design, etc play a big part of course.

Horror games are the best. Especially the ones that make you scream the most. lol

Dead space was easily one of my favorite games last gen. The gameplay was engaging, having to aim for limbs added a different element for shooters. The story was and setting seemed so good as well. Landing on the ship and not just being swarmed by necromorphs, but also having to constantly deal with the ship that was falling apart along with learning about the marker.

I still don't see why people like the TLOU so much, the pacing was slow, the gameplay was pretty boring. The story wasn't engaging. It's one of the very few games I returned after 2 hours of playing it. It seemed like everything went into the presentation, the AI they showed off that would make incredibly tense fight sequences never made it into the final version. They just ended up with a lackluster game, brutal combat (I think condemned did that better), and a story that didn't really pay off till much later.