I've wanted to post here about what I think makes a good horror game, but I didn't have the time and patience to. Now I do, so here I go :v
Firstly, I don't mean to talk like I'm experienced on this subject, but I've been doing a bunch of research in my spare time on the horror genre, and I'm trying to pinpoint what elements make a truly great horror game, and I still have much to learn.
Some of the first games I've ever played were survival horror games, such as resident evil, silent hill, system shock, the doom series and so on. Silent hill and resident evil are such great examples of horror just because they're what helped expose the better side of the genre to the general audience. A few things I've become familiar with is how to create a good atmosphere, what important aspects of the gameplay should be focused on, and how effective character design in horror is.
Firstly, atmosphere is important. One of the things I picked up from
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is that the best atmosphere is the one that makes the player feel uncomfortable. Things like foreign settings, awkward angles and even trivial things like low draw distance help create a pretty unsettling atmosphere. The game goes so far as to utilize a plot element into the scenery to give it a sort of personality. (Highlight for spoiler)
The scenery in question is Ellen's part of the story, where her personal hell is a yellow pyramid decorated entirely in the color yellow because of a traumatic incident where she was raped by a janitor in a yellow jumpsuit.(Highlight for spoiler). It may seem kind of dumb, but the implications made really strike a nerve and it works really well. With silent hill, which I take a lot of pointers from, there was a huge issue with the HD edition removing the low draw distance. A lot of people claimed that the fog added to the atmosphere, playing on the fear of the unknown. These people were pretty right, as the game seemed less tense without the fog covering up the scenery.
Second, gameplay in a horror game is really different from gameplay in any other genre. As the channel
Extra Credits stated, good horror makes the player feel unconfident and sometimes powerless. Instead of putting you in the position of a hero saving lives or being triumphant, a lot of horror games are more about survival in a dire situation which the player is unfamiliar with. Take resident evil 1 for example, you're a seemingly normal person, albeit with paramilitary experience, and the odds are against you. You start with no supplies, a little bit of ammo, a weak gun and no sustainability. You rely less on your offense and more on your defense, and your survival relies on your wit and how well you do by the few supplies you manage to find. I believe scarcity of items plays a large role in deigning horror.
A strange trend I've noticed is that bad game design in a few games actually made the game scarier and more effective. Taking silent hill for example, some of the bad design is poor camera angles, clunky inventory management, terrible controls and even the early graphics. The outlandish camera angles made keeping track of everything a little more hectic, putting the player on edge without being frustrating. The clunky inventory management also adds to the gameplay because it adds to that hectic-ness. Without a heads-up display, you had to rely on memory alone to manage your ammunition and health. Extra Credits said something about the bad controls making it feel like the character Harry Mason was an untrained normal person, complimenting the gameplay even further. And finally, the graphics...
There's a guy that I like to follow his content, and his name is
Jim Sterling. During his playthrough of 7 Days To Die, he talks about how bad or early graphic compliments the gameplay, and that a lot of modern games fail at creating a horror atmosphere because the graphics are just too pretty. Jim Sterling put it as "Horror is ugly", which I totally believe. The earlier horror games the scariest because the graphics are ugly. The monsters are horrible, ugly masses of polygons and the scenery is ugly and ambiguous. Modern games can recreate the ugliness by having good graphics, but having an 'ugly' art style. As far as art style goes, I've discussed a bit of that already in
this thread.
And finally, character design. I'll keep this one short and sweet because I've been typing and clicking through tabs a bunch. I believe the most effective character archetypes in horror are your normal, everyday joes. But like Silent Hill 2's protagonist James Sunderland, they're seemingly normal, but deep down the game brings out their "Inner monster". A lot of the enemies in Silent Hill 2 are physical manifestations of James' loveual frustration and self hatred. Pyramid head is a manifestation of James' guiltiness. This works partly because it makes the character richer and sometimes even more relatable. Most of what I've come to understand what a good horror character is comes from
this video.
And that's some of my thoughts on that.
