10 Ways to Evolve Horror Games

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Interesting article from Frictional Games.

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2012/04/10-ways-to-evolve-horror-games.html

Hey, that sounds like the stuff they did in the early parts of In The Dark Corners Of The Earth (consequently the best part, they should never have given you weapons)!

I thought the no weapons thing in Amnesia was great. Unfortunately you do lose something once you figure out the enemies are actually quite limited in what they can do (they disappear, some of their antics are superficial, etc) but overall it was very nice.

As he admits, this would be incredibly difficult to pull off, and I personally don't see the worth in it.

Silent Hill 2.

Did you really doubt if you were seeing things in the game? If so, kudos on detaching from the real world and into the role of the PC

Metal Gear Solid and Eternal Darkness nailed #3

Did they have you doubting there was really a dong?



EDIT: Cheap shot BTW, I haven't even played it

There was this GC game, Eternal Darkness maybe. It had a sanity mechanic that introduced a lot of elements which (IMO) improved the experience like monsters appearing to come for you out of nowhere (and having no way of telling them apart from real ones), even 4th wall breaking ones (eg, screen apparently turning off while you're walking about). It wasn't central to the game, nor was it so widespread you were expecting it all the time, but when they did come you'd appreciate them later (after the initial WTFness had passed).

I completely agree on most of the mechanics, though build-up and agency are the ones I support the most.

On the former, it's pretty much what I believe separates the modern horror films from Hollywood with those that are actually scary. Not crap flashing into an inch of the screen and screaming but rather sitting uncomfortably through an hour while expecting the worst possible thing evar (ie, whatever your imagination comes up with) to happen. It is subtlety that most effectively keeps you on the edge of your seat as, for example, a still camera image shows you the right kind of picture in the right moment. Will something come out of that cupboard? Is there a psycho with a knife waiting at the top of the stairs? Fuck me, just kill me now.

Agency is another huge topic. I was recently watching a LP of White Day (as per a recommendation in the Adventure forum) and the drop in tension that occurs whenever control is taken from you is most apparent there. It's when you're walking around, lighting 5-second matches that only help you see a meter ahead of you, that you're really scared. Once the game goes into cutscene mode to show the little girl crawling... well, you can be pretty sure nothing's going to happen to you then. FEAR had a similar problem: cutscenes (and some non-interactive moments like elevator rides) were fundamentally not scary because you know you can't die if you don't have options. It's when the goddamn ghost creeps out from below the desk like an epileptic cockroach for you that you freak out while trying to shoot it / flee.

Finally, first person view. Nothing puts you right in the place of horror as that first person POV. If only movies would adopt this... not first-person cameras like Blair Witch, mind you, but seeing through the eyes of a character how whatevertheshit rushes to kill you.

In fact I would strongly disagree. DC of the Earth had an EXCELLENT survival element in that it did give you wepaons that were either:
1) Mostly useless as combat would typically (although not always) mean death
2) or very little ammo.

I'm pretty sure that by the midgame, when you have to sneak into some Innsmouth building, you not only have some better weapons (rifle and machinegun maybe) but also enough ammo to disregard the stealth approach completely.

Yes. But then your opponent is a Shoggoth. Actually it makes sense since now you are helped by the FBI.

I especifically meant all the part with Innsmouthers (derp?), not the Shoggoth. You can even pick up their ammo.

As far as believability is concerned, that's not quite the point here. Maybe characters all around the world shouldn't be getting inside haunted mansions by themselves while armed with nothing but their wit, that would make more sense. But in the context of horror games, arming the main character detracts from the tension; DCotE did that after a rather spectacular first third of the game to the disappointment of many.

I don't get it. I think the survival part of the Horror was restricted to the point where is is believable that there is no other means to survive but to scavenge. When you are no longer surrounded by hostile forces alone, I can sympathize with excess ammunition and guns as long as the environmental horror is well done.

Yea, the atmosphere dropped considerably when you could actively fight back.

There's also the issue that making it retain the stealth aspect would also have been a bad idea, since the AI was too retarded for the job and eventually the level design just didn't support the approach properly, making it an annoying chore. When I reached Devil's Rock I just switched on godmode cheat so I could get to the ending, it was so tedious to actually play. Similar thing with gunplay, it was simply annoying. By far the strongest aspects of the game were: Adventure game parts of the first third, and chase/escape sections. The Shoggoth is a poor example because it was a bittersweet reminder of the BETTER parts of the game early on, a brief respite in the endless and inane combat and stealth.

These are some very good points being made, and I agree with all of them. I look forward to seeing someone with proper design ideas rising in this industry.

The reality of these points is that they actually apply to simulationist game designs in general, not just horror games. A lot of such games (FPS, horror, RPG, adventure, etc.) are about establishing the right sense of atmosphere and internal consistency and not giving the player cheap ways out of important challenges, and encouraging the player to rationalise their character's behaviour within the game world.


As for DCotE, t is the destructive capability of the guns and the way the player is expected to use them constantly in the later game that damages the experience most of all.

DCotE should only ever have given you a pipe or stick (which knocks enemies back or down but basically can't kill them) and a revolver with a 6 bullet canister that is very slowly reloaded, where you start dropping bullets and failing to reload the gun properly when your sanity gets too high (such as whenever an enemy is visible on the screen). Having the gun is an important part of that game, and needs to be there to provide that (if even minor or false) sense of security against the enemies, especially as a desperate final way out of a bad situation. They really failed to reinforce the feeling of a character thrust into a situation they can't understand or control when they introduced things like tommy guns and having to shoot "gods" to death.

I agree with the notion of minimalistic combat. It's sometimes better to keep combat in a game if only to demonstrate just how futile your attempts to resist are, make the player flee by choice rather than by default in an effort to make them feel all the more helpless. A good example of this implemented well would be Forbidden Siren. You COULD fight back in that game, but combat was almost always stacked in favour of your enemies, as you spend alot of time unarmed, which is about as useful as using harsh language. Better yet, NONE of the enemies in the game could be permanently put down, so all of your victories are at best pyrrhic. And god fucking help you if you wander into a section with a Sniper shibito. Or better yet, a FLYING sniper shibito. Finding guns in that game felt like getting a fucking gift from god, and acted as a little shining ray of hope every few levels.

One thing they really fucked up in Amnesia is how they provided players with another core mechanics they could feel comfortable with - scripted enemy encounters and "hide in the closet 'till the threat times out" resulting from them.

Also they managed to make sanity mechanics pointless and comfortable which is just retarded.

Still a very good and atmospheric game, but those fuck ups were glaring.

Yes, it really ruins the game once you figure out which events are just for show. I don't so much mind the whole easy restart when you die (even though it's lame the enemies disappear) but the show bits, while scary at first, get stale once you learn there is no bite.

They need an Aliens game where you're unarmed except for maybe a motion detector and you have to set your ship to self-destruct and escape without being killed. Maybe you have some kind of portable control unit for the main computer so you can close/open doors at will and one of those cattle prods for a momentary defensive method but you can't actively go on the offensive.

IDK, it's scarier when you can't turn the tables and are vulnerable to a tangible enemy than it is to have some spooky noises and things moving around to startle you.

I agree with this.

About the Minimal Combat part of the article - this really has to be done well not to be a huge detriment to the game. A game has to respect some conventions specific to the medium (as a safe option since a huge majority of developers do not and never will have the capacity to break them properly), and throwing a player into what's otherwise built almost entirely as an action game, but not giving them the ability to fight for some arbitrary reason (or as the trend has beenrecently, no reason at all) is a horrible thing to do. If I'm playing, for example, a non-severely-crippled humanoid in a haunted house, I expect to be able to (attempt to) at least kick a ghost in the unmentionables, even if it's wildly ineffective. Especially if it's wildly ineffective. Removing said option altogether is a very gamey thing to do in a game genre that's supposed to be immersive and atmospheric.

I really enjoy the Frictional development blogs, they always make strong points. Many of these were absent in Amnesia, though, hope they remedy that with 'A machine for pigs'.

I would like to see the minimal combat more fleshed out in future games, giving you weapons useless against the enemies. The problem of that, as mentioned in the article, it's that as players we're already conditioned by FPS's and other games, and, if given a weapon that's not effective against the enemy, the first reaction's always "I'm not doing him the enough damage" instead of "I should get the crap out of here", it requires swapping the mindset completely, but I would really like to see a game like that, you get a weapon and get a rush of power, only to realize your weapon does thing and you fall again into helplessness.

This could be coupled well with a good horror open world, give the weapons another purpose other than shooting the bad guys, maybe breaking windows or blowing up lock, with the downside that the noise could attract monsters in the vicinity.

Operation Flashpoint-style combat. Good luck on fighting hordes of monsters.

Let's hope Frictional can actually produce a good game implementing some of these ideas, and not just clever blog posts.

I think the Souls games proved that you can have a pure combat game that's still intense and scary at times. The gameplay just needs to be cleverly designed around the context of the game. And I always found the running away parts boring in horror games, because I knew I'd get away if I just followed the obvious path they set out for me. The only games where they succeeded and made running away intense was Clock Tower and Metroid Fusion.

There was a neat twist of the whole "you can't have horror with weapons" thing in SoC - in X-18.

I'd even argue it was more effective than comparable location in a game where you can't fight effectively, because getting constantly attacked and having nothing to shoot was doubly traumatizing in a game where you typically shoot things to solve problems.