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[Worldwearygamer]

Hello all. I haven't designed anything in a while, and was thinking of starting up again. I was interested in making a survival/horror game. When the idea came to me, I started thinking: what is it that makes a survival/horror game good? What kind of things are universally frightening? I've been doing research on popular games of the genre (Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Resident Evil, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, etc), but I wanted to know what other developers thought about it. So... what do you guys think?

I can't give out any details other than the fact that this would be a 2-D, overhead game. I'd be happy to hear anyone's input.

[Blodyavenger]

I always liked low quanitity of ammunition or breakable stuff. Make melee weapons breakable and use minimum ammount of ammo in your maps. That way you'll have to control your weapons status in fear

This option could be balanced trough "Game Difficulty".

[Worldwearygamer]

I was actually thinking of going one step further; your character will be quite defenseless to most (if not all) of the enemies and obstacles. There will be new abilities to be unlocked, in the style of a metriodvania progression, but very little (if any) in the way of combat.

I'm more interested in the approach used by Amnesia, or the indie game "Ao Oni". The characters are defenseless against the monsters, which makes the monsters all the more scary.

I'm sorry that I can't get into specifics. There are some ideas I want to keep to myself, and others that are still forming. Thank you for replying though!

[Charybdis]

For me, the most important aspect of a good survival horror is a weak and vulnerable protagonist.
One of my favourite survival horror games is Demento. Also, I just finished playing Siren: Blood curse. The levels where you control the little girl are the most scary. She has no weapon. All she can do is sneak and hide and run if spotted. That's what gets my adrenaline flowing.
I love resident evil 4&5, but I wouldn't call them survival horror. They are jolly good fun zombie shooters. Same goes for games like F.E.A.R., Doom3 and Dead Space. Not to say these games can't be scary, but in the end they come down to being about seeing bugger all and loud bangs, rather than creeeeeeepy atmosphere. And I prefer the latter.

[Pineapple]

If you want a game to be genuinely scary, put control of the antagonist in the hands of another player (if you can support multiplayer) rather than AI.

There's a Source mod, Hidden, that is terrifying to play. A team of up to eight gun-toting players faces a single nearly completely invisible, extremely fast, melee-only, but fragile opponent. The invisible player, or the hidden, has several scare tactics up his sleeve, and though all rather insignificant in nature (creepy voice taunts that are louder the closer you are to them, the ability to pick up and throw objects, the ability to pin dead players' bodies to the walls and ceiling, etc), a creative hidden player can use them to construct pants-shitting scenarios to put the other players through.

While playing as the gun-wielders in Hidden is scary, playing as the hidden is a rush. It only takes a few hits to die, so stealth is paramount. It's very satisfying to scare the other players, though, and that's why, even though succeeding as the hidden is significantly more difficult, it's much more fun than otherwise.

[XRA]

messing with anticipation and expectation, I think.    I'm thinking about similar, are there survival games where the Player has no way to fight back?.. I have that Amnesia game but haven't played it yet, maybe I should..

[bart_the_13th]

Then you guys should really play Ju:on on Wii..
It's funny that the scariest game is actually released on a console that suppsedly cheerful LoL

[FK in the Coffee]

A complete sense of helplessness really makes a great survival horror game, imo.  Giving the player nothing to defend themselves with and/or making weapons useless against enemies is a great way of giving some genuine scares to the people who play your game.

Fear is triggered by a perceived threat.  If you're armed to the teeth with heavy weapons, there is no threat.  The enemy you're up against needs to be more powerful than you are in order to instill any sort of fear.

Also, making the world a sort of alien place using things like lighting and sound is a great way to unnerve your player.  Fear of the unknown is one of the things that makes our nightmares so damn scary.

[Nitromatic]

Heh, I am working on survival/horror, and I am a big fan of ol' games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

Player has to be vulnerable, not much to fight with, to heal wounds. And no place to hide! (save rooms are good, but maybe one of those wasn't so safe anymore, eh?)

Darkness, fear of unknown is always effective. You don't know when next attack is coming. Make player slower when he suffers from damage.

Itchy. Tasty.

[G-Factor]

I love games with a creepy atmosphere built up through journals, audio logs...etc. Some games use these techniques to paint a picture of normalcy before the catastrophic events that lead to the protagonist's situation. Games like System Shock 2 and to a lesser degree Bioshock did this pretty well.

Funnily enough...the one time I got genuinely creeped out wasn't even a horror game. I was playing Morrowind and had made my way deep down into a dungeon and found a makeshift dwelling. I searched the area and found a journal. I can't remember exactly what was in it but I do remember getting freaked out by its contents. Then I suddenly realised damn...I'm in this psycho's 'home' and I'm way deep inside a dungeon with no-one to help me should I encounter this monster.

I HATE the overuse of 'boo' tactics. That goes for both games and movies.

[Tiderion]

I think that you might best study horror movies first and then look at games to see how the scare tactics are translated.

Surely, being vulnerable by either being exposed, armor-less, or lacking suitable arms or ammo. Another good one is putting save point far and few in between. These pale in comparison to good use of visual and sound debilitation.

Visual:
Fog
Lack of light
Strange camera angles
Scripted effects

Sound:
Silence
Creepy music
Children Laughter
Abrupt sound effects

[Theophilus]

Knowing when to use something. The player should have a limited supply. He should have to be careful and know when he should use something. It adds to the challenge, but it could get annoying, so be careful with this technique.

[McMutton]

Discussions about bringing forth fear are my favorites. I had asked a question in the same vein over on Polycount, and had a number of responses that you might find helpful:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47639

[gimymblert]

@OP
A chicken player of course

[Fifth]

Hmm, everybody familiar with this game these Japanese guys came up with within Mario 64 about collecting the red coins while being chased by a 1up?  Yes?  Good.

It's odd, but while watching the videos you can feel moments of genuine terror, even being well aware that the tiny thing following Mario is beneficial.  But from close misses to unexpected brushes, losing track of it, then finding it pounding ruthlessly at the other side of a wall, or else being caught as it rushes silently into view, dodging it, anticipating it, mis-guessing it, fearing it...  This little green mushroom can seem downright terrifying.

There are lessons to be learned here, I just know it.

[Twitch]

Lots of tension, and never letting the player feel too powerful or safe. Monsters aren't scary if you know you can easily kill them.

System Shock 2 was great for this. Your weapons broke all the time, and enemies very infrequently respawned half way across the map. Since there was alot of backtracking, you never knew quite when something would pop around the corner, even if it was an area you'd been through before, and doubly so because you knew there was a chance your gun would jam as they came at you swinging a lead pipe.

[DeadPixel]

Hmm, everybody familiar with this game these Japanese guys came up with within Mario 64 about collecting the red coins while being chased by a 1up?  Yes?  Good.

It's odd, but while watching the videos you can feel moments of genuine terror, even being well aware that the tiny thing following Mario is beneficial.  But from close misses to unexpected brushes, losing track of it, then finding it pounding ruthlessly at the other side of a wall, or else being caught as it rushes silently into view, dodging it, anticipating it, mis-guessing it, fearing it...  This little green mushroom can seem downright terrifying.

There are lessons to be learned here, I just know it.

What I'm taking from that video is that investment in your character/scenario is very important.  For me the rush of anticipation and fright comes from knowing he only needs that one more coin to complete his goal, and yet many times he comes within a fraction of a second of losing it all to something he can barely avoid and has a distinct sense of inevitability.

So if you can get your players heavily invested empathically with their character, so much so that the character becomes their proxy, then you're going to scare the shit out of them constantly.

[thedaemon]

Anticipation.


I know it's a short one word answer, but really that's what it comes down to. It's not what's happening now, it's what might happen around the corner.

[baconman]

Inevitability. Or even the illusion thereof - you can postpone the fact that you're totally fucked, but that feeling that you'll inevitably make that one mistake that will condemn you to certain doom is a tremendous feeling. Along with that little touch of unfairness and uncertainty that *perhaps* you're still doomed, even if you DON'T make a mistake.

You want terrifying and Mario? Somewhere on YouTube there's a SMB hack that gives you 999 FRAMES (not seconds!) to clear each level. A few levels on that, as you can imagine, are totally insane. You don't even want to imagine 8-3!

It's no small feat, but one player ACTUALLY MAKES IT. All the way.