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[TwistedJenius]

I realize that indie first-person survival horror games aren't the most popular or widely talked about genre on these forums but since that's the type of game that I'm trying to make, I'd really love to get the perspective of other developers about this kind of game. 

For any of you who play these games, what would you like to see from them in the future? 

What are your thoughts on the issue of balancing fear and gameplay?  Would more complex gameplay help to improve these kinds of games (which are often known for minimalist gameplay), or would it distract the player from the fear they are experiencing? Or would the combination of complex gameplay and fear just be overwhelming overall?

And speaking of fear, what are your thoughts on jump scares vs. creepy environments/disturbing imagery? 

What are your biggest complaints about games in this genre?

Are there any of these games that you have as a particular favorite, that you would recommend or hold up as an exceptional example of this genre?

And most importantly, how do you think the genre should evolve? What do you think would make these kinds of games better?

Needless to say, I'm asking these things because I'm currently developing a game like this and would like to improve on what has already been done in indie first-person horror and perhaps help to move the genre forward, even in just a small way.  Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[ThemsAllTook]

Ahh, this is relevant to my interests. I like the genre, but a lot of the games in it just aren't up to the quality I'd want to see.

What are your thoughts on the issue of balancing fear and gameplay?  Would more complex gameplay help to improve these kinds of games (which are often known for minimalist gameplay), or would it distract the player from the fear they are experiencing? Or would the combination of complex gameplay and fear just be overwhelming overall?

I think gameplay complexity would complement fear quite nicely. Lots of opportunity to get the player concentrating hard on something and expecting a system to work a certain way, and then changing it up and catching them off guard.

And speaking of fear, what are your thoughts on jump scares vs. creepy environments/disturbing imagery?

The thing that gets me most in a horror game is for it to make me question my own actions and perceptions. Jump scares and creepy imagery are both a necessary part of the mix, but subtlety is key - for example, instead of having a mangled face suddenly take up the entire screen and scream at you, have something scripted to peer out of the darkness as the player is walking by a room, so they just catch a glimpse of it and it's gone. Fear comes from the unknown. If a scary monster follows a predictable pattern and can be studied and understood, it's no longer scary. Don't give me the tools I so desperately want in order to analyze your game world. Make me keep second guessing myself.

What are your biggest complaints about games in this genre?

Outlast has been getting a lot of praise lately, but I felt like it did everything wrong. All the grossness and violence got in the way of the creepiness. The dark portions where you have to use night vision on limited batteries seemed more obnoxious than scary. There were a lot of scenes where terrible things are done to the player character, but no matter how immersive a game is, I don't find that effective. Attack me, not my avatar (ideally without breaking the fourth wall - tricky, I know!).

Are there any of these games that you have as a particular favorite, that you would recommend or hold up as an exceptional example of this genre?

Sadly, none that I've played have really hit it out of the park. All of them have some fatal flaw or wasted potential. Maybe you can change that.

And most importantly, how do you think the genre should evolve? What do you think would make these kinds of games better?

VR has a lot of potential. The extra immersion on its own can make a game much scarier. Eye tracking could do some cool stuff for sure - if you know where the player is and isn't looking, you could, say, place something in their peripheral vision and hide it when they look directly at it.

Good luck with your game! I'm looking forward to playing it.

[TwistedJenius]

Thank you for the detailed comments!

Lots of opportunity to get the player concentrating hard on something and expecting a system to work a certain way, and then changing it up and catching them off guard.

That's interesting; I hadn't considered that approach before.

Don't give me the tools I so desperately want in order to analyze your game world. Make me keep second guessing myself.

It's great when people can so succinctly state what they specifically want like that. That's exactly the kind of input that I was hoping for.

I also agree with many of your points about Outlast.

All of them have some fatal flaw or wasted potential.

That's a big part of why I decided to take a crack at developing one of these types of games. They all seem to be lacking in some way, or as you said, "wasted potential", as if something just wasn't followed through with properly or done well enough. It's almost frustrating to watch and that made me want to just see what I could do with it myself. I really don't think this genre has reached its peak potential yet. I feel like there's something still missing from it.

Good luck with your game! I'm looking forward to playing it.

Thank you! I'll be sure to keep everyone updated on its progress.

[Armageddon]

Outlast has been the only game to scare me in recent years, and to be fair it was only one small section in the game.

Phenomenal game though, so great and enjoyable to play. Very well polished in every area.

[TwistedJenius]

Outlast has been the only game to scare me in recent years, and to be fair it was only one small section in the game.

If you don't mind me asking, which section of the game was it that made such an impression on you?

It would be interesting to know in order to try to figure out what's really effective for scaring people in games. 

[Danny Hayes]

I actually really liked "Amnesia: the dark descent" as well as it's sequel: "A machine for pigs". Not seeing the creatures that haunt you is a great tool for use with the imagination in horror. Also less asset work for an indie team!

 I think the reason most other indie horrors are under whelming, is because a horror has to immerse you and make you believe in it's world and the isolation there, before it can make you scared. And unfortunately as soon as the player sees a crappy low poly model or bad sound effects/music that immersion can go straight out the window. You really need a team/skills that cover each aspect really well so the player forgets they're playing a game.

The most common mistake I feel indie horrors make is re-using assets or gameplay. If horror is meant to surprise you, then having the player repeat similar tasks or seeing rooms that are the same as other rooms or something is a no-no for me. It's difficult to achieve variety on a low budget though.

[s0]

less jump scares, less grossout imagery, more diverse settings than "dark empty building", less use of darkness in general.

[TwistedJenius]

DanHayesGamer-

Yeah, I can definitely see how graphics quality (and variety) could impact the player's immersion into the game like that.  Of course as you pointed out that does make it more daunting for indie developers.

Obviously almost all games, big or small, reuse assets.  For some genres this really isn't such a problem, but I can definitely see how it might be one for horror.  The issue of reusing gameplay is even trickier.  On the one hand it's good to give the player variety and surprises, but on the other hand it's not good to spring things on them too quickly. You have to sort of balance variety with giving them time to learn the mechanics and how the gameplay works which means that you also can't change it up too quickly. Though admittedly that's usually not a problem with most indie horror games.

C.A. Silbereisen-

I agree with you about less jump scares and less grossout imagery. Your comment about "less use of darkness in general" reminds me of something that I've been contemplating. Does anyone think it's possible to create a brightly lit horror game that is still effective at scaring you? Is it possible for a game to have "sunny lighting" and still be scary?

[Armageddon]

This doctor in Outlast is what scared me. It's the first part of the game where I felt vulnerable because he had already captured me at the start of his section. And when you're in areas with him it feels very unscripted, like he just walk wherever he pleases unlike the AI in the rest of the game. Keeps you on the edge.

He's only in two locations in the game and he's insanely good at finding you, but it's not annoying because you can quickly run away from him if you're smart. You only have a small five second window to do anything while he's around like getting a door open before he returns and sees you. The two areas are designed so well for this and it never feel unfair.

The things he shouts at you are the creepiest though, you never hear that sort of stuff in games.


There's a HL2 mod called Underhell that actually made me close the game because it was so scary. Only time I ever did that. In the mod there's a main story campaign and then there is an open world level of the main characters house where you solve puzzles. As you solve more and more some strange things start happening around your house and you begin to uncover some dark things that happened there. It's more interesting than the main game imo. There's a part where you need to go into your basement and turn the power back on. Well obviously it's dark but it's still daytime outside. So I ease down into the basement with my very dim flashlight and look for the power box. There's a basement window looking out into the backyard and I looked up through it and there was a cut up head just outside the window that then moved away. Alt+F4'd that one.

There's also a HL1 mod called Mistake -1. You play a mentally unstable person in an asylum and one day you wake up and everyone is gone. As you progress through the corridors some scary stuff happens, never any monsters though. At the end of the mod you find out you killed your daughter and the way it's revealed is pretty gut wrenching and made me quite upset for days.

There's not really much that scares me so maybe I'm the wrong person to talk about this. First person or third person it seems like it wouldn't matter, horror is horror. Third person you could have fun with the player model the way Spec Ops: The Line did, changing it and doing some Eternal Darkness mind bending stuff. Or like the glitch Scarecrow sections in Arkham Asylum were pretty creepy. Stuff that reaches out and directs itself towards you as the player makes things hit closer than just having a lowpoly model pop out from a black fog. I'm rambling.

[Gatlink]

I don't really play those games, I couldn't even finish Dead Space (the atmosphere is what got me). So I can't be of any help with gameplay and such.

What I wanted to share though is an idea. I really liked the first Alien movie, I think that some of the thing it does could be perfect in a game.

The first thing is that for quite some time we don't really see the monster. It's there, no doubt about it, but it's an invisible menace. It goes with the feeling of being hunted, even to be played with like a cat plays with a mouth he's going to eat soon. A game with only one invincible, strong and nearly invisible opponent can make for some good moments.

The other thing is the cast. Imagine that the player is Ripley: she sees her colleagues die one after the other, an omen to what will happen to her if she's caught. Many first person horror games I saw didn't bother with NPCs other than the monsters(be it for technical or design reasons, or otherwise). This is a lost opportunity I think, as NPCs can serve to show what's to come, as I said, or turn their back on the player, adding more menace to the existing one, or project their own fears on the player. It's a double edged sword though, as poorly written characters can destroy the veracity of the situations (as was said before with any asset of the game).

[s0]

Does anyone think it's possible to create a brightly lit horror game that is still effective at scaring you? Is it possible for a game to have "sunny lighting" and still be scary?

I can think of 2 possibilities for this off the top of my head:

1. Try to leverage the contrast between the bright sunlight and the "horror" imagery and gameplay for scares. Try to make the player feel unsafe in a place most people would normally associate with safety.

2. Desert/wasteland setting

[Ammypendent]

Does anyone think it's possible to create a brightly lit horror game that is still effective at scaring you? Is it possible for a game to have "sunny lighting" and still be scary?

I can think of 2 possibilities for this off the top of my head:

1. Try to leverage the contrast between the bright sunlight and the "horror" imagery and gameplay for scares. Try to make the player feel unsafe in a place most people would normally associate with safety.

2. Desert/wasteland setting

One other thing I could add is that instead of darkness, you could really make great use of thick fog in lit outside areas. The advantage of that is that you could make use of many things to trick the player's perception. Perhaps a moving shadow is nothing more than a bird, or that monster looking thing with glowing red eyes is just a street stoplight in front of a weirdly shaped tree. Then of course you can always make use of sounds happening just outside of the player's vision.

[TwistedJenius]

Armageddon-

Thank you very much for all of the insights, that's some great stuff!

It sounds like the more possibly subtle, but still deeply disturbing psychological stuff is what can really make an impact on the player. There's always some question about how obvious you need to be with stuff in order to get the player's attention, and it's good to know that the kinds of things that you described above work that well. 

Also thank you for mentioning some additional games/mods for me to check out.  I hadn't heard of a couple of those.

Gatlink-

I really like your ideas regarding NPCs.  I might try to implement something along those lines (assuming that I'm actually able to pull it off properly; as you pointed out, it could be detrimental if not done right).  I'll have to see what I can do.

The idea of making the video game equivalent of the first Alien movie would be beyond awesome. Though comparing any project to Alien is a bit intimidating, especially for an indie project. The film wasn't just an outstanding monster movie, but it was arguably a cinematic masterpiece.

But I agree that it definitely does provide some good cues as to what a really good monster game might look like and in a more general way, provides something to aspire to.

C.A. Silbereisen-

That first idea in particular is very interesting. If you were going to go that route I would think that you might want to base a whole lot of the core gameplay on those principles of contrast. You could probably build an entire game with original gameplay mechanics off of that idea.

Ammypendent-

Fog is definitely a good tool to use in horror games, but I admit I hadn't really considered using it in the daylight like that before. That could probably create a very eerie atmosphere indeed.

[Captain Uzi]

I want more games to be Psychologically scary, instead of jump scaring you. Think Outlast and Slenderman. Outlast was scary for the first hour, then the jump scares wore off, and it was 3 hours of boring game. Slenderman, relied purely on jump scares without much atmosphere at all. I found it incredibly boring and not at all scary. I like horror games, I just feel some recent popular ones don't meet the levels they should. A few jump scares is okay, but psychological scaring, more complex stories/gameplay and less cliche locations are the things I feel are keeping most back.

[Captain Uzi]

Ahh, this is relevant to my interests. I like the genre, but a lot of the games in it just aren't up to the quality I'd want to see.

What are your thoughts on the issue of balancing fear and gameplay?  Would more complex gameplay help to improve these kinds of games (which are often known for minimalist gameplay), or would it distract the player from the fear they are experiencing? Or would the combination of complex gameplay and fear just be overwhelming overall?

I think gameplay complexity would complement fear quite nicely. Lots of opportunity to get the player concentrating hard on something and expecting a system to work a certain way, and then changing it up and catching them off guard.

And speaking of fear, what are your thoughts on jump scares vs. creepy environments/disturbing imagery?

The thing that gets me most in a horror game is for it to make me question my own actions and perceptions. Jump scares and creepy imagery are both a necessary part of the mix, but subtlety is key - for example, instead of having a mangled face suddenly take up the entire screen and scream at you, have something scripted to peer out of the darkness as the player is walking by a room, so they just catch a glimpse of it and it's gone. Fear comes from the unknown. If a scary monster follows a predictable pattern and can be studied and understood, it's no longer scary. Don't give me the tools I so desperately want in order to analyze your game world. Make me keep second guessing myself.

What are your biggest complaints about games in this genre?

Outlast has been getting a lot of praise lately, but I felt like it did everything wrong. All the grossness and violence got in the way of the creepiness. The dark portions where you have to use night vision on limited batteries seemed more obnoxious than scary. There were a lot of scenes where terrible things are done to the player character, but no matter how immersive a game is, I don't find that effective. Attack me, not my avatar (ideally without breaking the fourth wall - tricky, I know!).

Are there any of these games that you have as a particular favorite, that you would recommend or hold up as an exceptional example of this genre?

Sadly, none that I've played have really hit it out of the park. All of them have some fatal flaw or wasted potential. Maybe you can change that.

And most importantly, how do you think the genre should evolve? What do you think would make these kinds of games better?

VR has a lot of potential. The extra immersion on its own can make a game much scarier. Eye tracking could do some cool stuff for sure - if you know where the player is and isn't looking, you could, say, place something in their peripheral vision and hide it when they look directly at it.

Good luck with your game! I'm looking forward to playing it.

Oh also, I agree with literally everything this guy said.

[TwistedJenius]

Outlast was scary for the first hour, then the jump scares wore off, and it was 3 hours of boring game.

That's another good point.  It seems like no matter what type of scare you're going for, it's kind of difficult to keep that up for hours on end.  The player either eventually gets bored or exhausted.  Many people seem to work under the assumption that longer games are better, and for some genres that's probably the case. But I'm not sure if that's true for horror.

Even though horror games tend to be shorter than other games already, I still can't help but wonder if 4 hours + might still be too long to hope to maintain any level of consistent or quality fear in the player.

But yes, I think you're correct in that psychological fear is definitely something to shoot for.  On a side note, I'm hoping that just the basic premise of the game that I'm working on will, at the very least, break some of those "location clichés" that you mentioned.  The game is called "Reptile Zoo", which should give you an idea of the kind of location where it takes place. 

[rosholger]

i haven't read the whole thread so i apologize if this have already been said but here we go.
even though this example is neither first-person or horror i think it applies.
so when i was younger i played diablo 2 a lot and i found long segments with no enemies really creepy. i find that it really builds tension when you know that any second you could find enemies that would wreck you, but you didn't find them. basically what i'm saying is that the jump scares don't only scare you when they occur but also when they don't. though the length of the scare-less segments need to be fine tuned so that they don't deteriorate into taking a stroll.

tl:dr
the thought that a jump scare could occur builds creepy tension, but it needs to be released.

[unsilentwill]

One thing stands out with Penumbra/Amnesia is the use of physics for opening doors, picking up objects, etc. The majority of video games gloss over this and the entire scene is basically painted on the wall. This becomes a serious flaw in horror games, as they try to make you feel helpless but artificially. I think a player feels truly helpless when they think of a solution that nearly works, but the supernatural or evil or whatever overpowers. For example, if there's a hammer on the table and you can use it to bash at the enemy, but it just makes it even angrier. Don't empower, but don't completely strip the players agency either: let them try and fail, then run like hell.

[The Translocator]

A couple of suggestions for very specific ideas:
A section of the game where there are actually people right in front of you, a large crowd, who could help you, but they don't. They don't even see the *thing* trying to kill you, even when they look right at it.
Another section of the game where someone you know comes to save you, but disappears.
If you do work with VR, make a core part of the gameplay blinking. Enemies you have to stare at or they move, and they get closer even when you blink. Things appearing or disappearing when you blink.
As has been said already, make things that should work, not. Your gun (if you have one) won't fire. The door won't open. The lightswitch only turns the light on for a split second. The light from outside the window starts to kill the enemy that is immune to everything except light, but then the curtain swings shut.
Try to avoid blood and gore. When you lose "health", make the screen slowly get darker.
Have where doors take you change (i.e. you just came out of a safe spot, you see something trying to kill you and run back into the save spot, but it's become a long hallway instead.
Things that change instantly when you look away. Imagine looking at a mirror, seeing yourself, turning around, turn back and the mirror is shattered/has writing on it/there's something behind you that you didn't see when you turned around/your reflection is completely gone.
If there are enemies you have to look at, make mirrors a core gameplay mechanic- you have to stare at them through the mirror.
If you have a gun, have an enemy that makes you misfire.
Make it possible to shoot out mirrors/windows/lights.
Multiple shadows when there should only be one...
If there is any sort of letter in the game, make the last word cut off partway through a sentence and run off the page.
Sound effects that sound like they're coming from behind you *in real life*.
Level layouts that would have confused M.C. Escher.
Windows that show it's not raining but when you go out the door it is but the windows still show that it isn't raining.
The only place to run is into an elevator with a flickering light, and you know something is going to be waiting for you at the top...
Have a jumpscare that occurs *while the game is saving*, *during a story cutscene*, or *after you die in-game*. Nobody will expect them.
Give the game a unique aesthetic (monochrome would fantastic... perhaps colors could be *added* the closer you get to enemies, but the game also gets darker.)

I could probably think of a few more, because I think a horror game that isn't rated M would be amazing.

[MorleyDev]

One thing I feel the first Amnesia did really well was it transitioned from "monster oooh hide" horror to a more psychological horror. It's inevitable that the player builds a tolerance towards fearing your monster, you need to find something else to hook them in when that happens.

This is the problem with outlast and slender, they never evolve or become anything more than "Oooooh monster scary ooooh", and that wears off after awhile.

Spoilers ahead:
In Amnesia, the game starts revealing things about your characters past and what they did, cultivating in the flashbacks to the torture your character inflicted on others. It was incredibly effective I felt, making you realise your own character is a monster and being horrified by the things they did before they lost their memory. This is a pretty good hook, revealing the mystery of the plot to you whilst still keeping you disturbed.