10 Ways to Evolve Horror Games

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Very true. But it's possible that it works so well in Stalker because it's a relatively realistic shooter game first with some scary locations / encounters thrown in. If the entire game consisted of running through dark corridors and popping monsters left and right, I'm pretty sure the horror effect would be lessened.

Why do people fap to Silent Hill?
It isn't scary at all

Thief is a much better horror game than every single shit on consoles.

Both AvP PC games (not the abominable console turd from 2010) were pretty good at being tense and nerve-wrecking (maybe not technically "scary" though) at the same time having full arsenal available and proper character controls (instead of narrow FOV and retarded gimped controls "u can't move while aiming lolololololol" that console survival horrors shooters with monsters tend to utilize).

But can you tell me why?

Thief is a horror game now? Why, because of a couple creepy maps? What kind of asinine statement is that to even compare to Silent Hill's mindfuckery and atmosphere? I guess Half Life 2 is a horror game too.

But what is an Horror Game? It shouldn't matter that it isn't a horror game. It has portions that are better at doing horror than many full-scale horror games, and on that basis it is a good example of doing it right.

In fact, that is part of the reason why it succeeds. Let's face it, most designers out there are at most only moderately competent at what they do. So when you ask one of them to make a horror game with the skills they've got - a game which is defined by its clever, moderated use of the features that define it - you instead end up with a game which is so full of "horror" that in practice there is nothing "horrific" or scary about it. It gets over saturated by heavy handed tactics. When you tell someone to work on content with horror as a background element or afterthought in a larger picture, they will often find it easier to restrain themselves and succeed at the "horror in moderation" concept.

Silent Hill is a horror game now? Well yeah it's really scary watching how PS1 spits blood trying to render those 5 meters of view distance because it cannot into 3D as you randomly try to kill a monster which disappeared from a static camera view by simply moving away.

SH has no mindfuckery and no atmosphere. It's just a BOO MONSTER BEHIND THE DOOR #195 annoying shit. And yeah - Thief actually has creepy levels - unlike SH.

Resident evil is billed as a 'survival-horror' game. If RE is one and Thief is not, i don't even

That's because retards buy games based on labels. Sometimes the people playing a particular genre tells you more about that LABEL than its wikipedia description. Take for instance RPGs. Look at Biowarian audience. It dwarfs us many ( 2-3) orders of magnitude over. These people are mostly social misfits trying to find something to parasitically attach to. So Role - play.

Silent Hill was scary... until you realized how easy it was to outrun anything you can't easily kill. Of course I strongly believe gameplay that makes you feel helpless and weaker than the horrors you are facing in a game is more important than environment(sound effects, music, graphics) to make a good horror game instead of a virtual horror theme park. Which is exactly why I think the Oceanside Hotel part of VTM Bloodlines was one of the weakest horror sections in that game.

Openly attack a bunch of zombies and haunts in Thief, or even Trickster minions, and see what happens. SH is arguably better than Thief on a purely environmental level, which is obvious for a game centered on the horror all along while in Thief: The Dark Project the horror is only a part of it and limited to some missions only. On SH again, gameplay-wise, despite ammunition scarcity on higher difficulty levels it doesn't really make you feel helpless against strong and threatening monsters.

Seriously, compare the Trickster with SH final boss. In one case an enemy that is virtually unkillable through any direct approach and that you have to sneak very close to to take down. In the other another typical arcadey final boss that is far less scary too. Seriously, even the FMVs are better in Thief. Nobody had a sufficiently frightening experience to the point of being eye-shattering in Silent Hill, for one.

tl;dr Silent Hill was only disturbing and unsettling a, while Thief had genuinely scary moments.

Great article.

I wish more combat in games was by way of setting traps using ingredients found in the environment. Same for melee attacks using items found in the environment(wooden stick, board, metal rod, hammer, etc). Maybe it has a random chance of flying out of your hand while swinging and you have to run and pick it up while being mauled by a creature.

With the traps, maybe you find an area on the map that's like a hub, set some traps, then venture out from there, if you're attacked, run back to your bunker, hopefully the monster will be weakened by any traps it ran into and you can beat it down with your stick, rod, hammer, etc. But make it intense so if the player accidentally lures more than 1 creature they may have to change tactics and will have a further rush knowing they barely were able to kill 1 creature the last time and now they're about to die.

I didn't see any mention of audio in that article. I think that's a huge part of horror games. Not cheesy shock tactics like movies but well done systems that arouse the player. In my game I make moving audio sources that move along waypoints playing sounds of a horde of terrifying monsters. If it heads away from the player it fades out, if it makes a turn and comes towards the player, it builds in intensity, it can't be seen, but if it gets close enough to the player it instantiates a wave of monsters(not a horror game, but scary dungeon crawler).

Amnesia's engine (isn't it the same as Penumbra's?) seems ripe for setting traps or using the environment to your advantage. Sadly in Amnesia that isn't really possible other than hiding in closets. It was pretty lame that the monsters just wack through things if they are in the way. Would have been nice setting up barricades that actually slow them down. Also would have been nice to set up some pitfall drops or boulder drops, but I get that wasn't the intention of the game. Still, rather than having disappearing monsters, they should have allowed them to be killed.

I agree. Ambient sounds are almost always cooler than constant music.

That would all be well and true if Thief didn't explicitly require you to kill monsters and undead as part of various mission objectives. A level which has the potential to be genuinely scary - Return to the Cathedral - was ruined by the retarded objective to kill all the Haunts, for instance. You also point out that it was possible to outrun most enemies in SH, which is true (and intended, afaik, you're expected to avoid combat whenever you can), but the same is true to a hilarious extent of Thief Zombies, where you sometimes run around chased by a horde of slow and absolutely non-threatening enemies - Down in the Bonehoard is the worst example of this. Finally, the Trickster wasn't scary. Neither was the painfully silly final SH boss.

Different strokes for different folks, of course, and almost no games manage to create fear mostly through their gameplay mechanics - not every game can be SS2 (before you get the assault rifle and become superman). Still, I thought SH succeeded at creating a great atmosphere of being isolated, and trying to navigate a confusing and hostile environment. It wasn't a terrifying experience, and didn't really have a lot of jumpscares (Skyway clearly hasn't played it, but when would he find the time between kotor playthroughs?), but I do think it's a good horror game, all things considered. It helps that the audio is fucking amazing.

I do think that sneaking has a lot of merits over fighting as a core gameplay mechanic in a horror game, but it has to be carefully designed to not break immersion. The Cathedral in Thief, for instance, was good because the haunts/ghosts were very attentive, which forced the player to keep their distance. That was another thing Amnesia did well, for all its other faults - it greatly discouraged getting close to enemies, or even looking at them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that hiding can be very empowering in certain situations (most "human" levels in Thief), and a horror game would need to carefully avoid this effect.

I don't think you understand that consoles = SHIT SHIT SHIT no matter what.

There was no Xbawks achievements to emotionally engage cretins or decline when Silent Hill was released. Besides, the consoletards would bitch on the piano puzzle in the school area of SH because it's too hard for total dumbfucks, and baaw again over all the other puzzles of the game and on why they failed to get the best ending because they were too oblivious and stupid to find out a certain potion and toss it on a certain NPC instead of killing the same. I just consider Thief better in the horror part because I found it more scary compared to Silent Hill, but I still consider SH a good action/adventure survival horror game, that unfortunately will get all sequels from now on to be as faithful to the original as Thi4f will be, or even worse: go full popamole shit like the latest Resident Evil. It's more a personal opinion than anything my preference for Thief on the horror part.

I wasn't targeting you in my galactic sarcasm death ray. TBH, I never really got into the SH series too much other than 2 and 3 and I think they were OK, though yes I do agree they weren't so "BOOO!!" scary as much as it was just kind of disturbing/weird.

You're right, though. It is a personal preference as to which works and doesn't work. Amnesia, for example, tensed the fuck out of me even after I realized the monsters weren't as menacing as they appear, but a few around here said they weren't feeling it. Guess the same can be said about Thief and SH.

Clock Tower (the SNES one) did most of these well. You never really questioned if something was real, and though there was some freedom to explore there wasn't a whole lot of it, but it nailed everything else on this list.

Light sources. Candles blown away by wind.
Your mouse control your right palm, protecting the flame of the candle held on your left hand.

I'm a fan of all the cheesy horror and spooky ghosts of the 80's and 90's. Think haunted mansion and Monster of the Week.

I loved that haunted mansion level in Blood. Can't recall the actual name or which mission pack it's in, but it featured costly candles and stuff going out and moving around. Really fun. Undying oozed that sort of thing, especially when the dishes and knives fly at you.

Hitman - Meat King Level.

read a gamer's post where he said he got his dad to try it out and when the monster first showed up the guy went straight for it because he wanted to see what it looked like

Exactly.