Homemade Horror game!

Well hello ol' chums! Long time member, first time poster.

So, to cut to the chase, me and me mate are developing a third person horror game and thought we would try to be a wee bit social and share some progress we are making. It is a time consuming, heart tearing and blood sweating work to try and make a game, or even get started, but boy oh boy is it fun!

I would like to say that we are working out of the basement, but that would be a lie (neither of us have a basement in the first place). I am a newly graduated, freelancing Graphic Designer and 3D Artist and family man, currently working with illustrations for schoolbooks aimed at children and grown ups with special needs and me mate is an ol' classmate with background in 3D Modelling and Digital Special Effects.

We do this on our precious spare time and sleepless nights.
Me myself, I am responsible for the manuscript, concept art and main part of the character models while the other guy does the game environments and most of the programming.

Some of our goals are:
- A game that tells a personal journey while being scary as heck.
- Few but dangerous enemies.
- Hopefully a clever story and plot.
- Lots of collectibles and secrets.
- Decent looking graphics and responsive controls and fun gameplay.
- To start a dialouge with gamers and get some thougths and opinions on the way.

The thought is to update this thread now and then and later in the progress start a dev-blog. I will get into some more gameplay details, inspirations and stuff if people are interested. Hope to hear from ya'all!

 

Ah, seems like I posted this thread in the wrong place, well I hope we got this right now!

As I rambled about yesterday, me and a mate of mine have started working on a horror game in our spare time. The manuscript is a work in progress but we started to work on a demo not long ago after several drafts of the first chapter. While I'm still working on the concept art to nail down the feel of the characters, the other guy (I like to call him that for some reason) have been reading up on architecture and how to create scenes for games. We do have some screenshots from one of the blocks that is used as the introduction area. But do keep in mind that these are only the models and still have texturing and polishing awaiting.

As of right now we are testing out many of Unitys functions and existing scripts and commands.

I will come back with some thoughts and questions later on about what makes a horror game terrifying and hope that it might catch your interest.

 

What makes a good horrorgame or movie? I'm not really sure, it is not like there is a handbook for it out there or otherwise there would be hundreds of scarygames out there that manage to avoid the uncanney valley or just not boring the player in the end.

One thing that many gamers and reviewers talk a lot about is variation. If the game becomes predictable, the feeling of fear dissipates and the player becomes numb. But how do you make it unpredictable for a whole game? Or a movie?

Building up tension is an aduivisual challenge where the developer tries to find the right suspense without the game becoming dull and uneventfull. Jump scares works for a while, but becomes a gimmick before long if overused. A feeling of being watched is nothing if there is no sense of danger involved. But put to many panicky situations that stresses the player, you might lose them because of rage quitting or that they just tire. Also, it seems that as a rule today, the line between a horror game and gory action game is very thin.

It is a challenge that we now tries to overcome. It is like trying to balance upon a string of rope over the Niagrafalls while a pack of hungry crocodiles riding bloodthirsty pirhanasharks bites at your ankles.

So, to sum it up, what makes a good horror game in your opinion? What scares you in games?

 

In my opinion a good horror game has to have a good story, and it shouldn't show to much of what is going on (no full view of monsters etc) to keep players on the edge of their seat and not fully on there all cool and relaxed.
When you can clearly see something it takes away a lot of the scaryness imho.. Like you said, not too many jumpscares.. maybe 3 or 4 max?

Some proper games to look at for 'maximum spook' are games like the early silent hill games (mainly 2 and 3 in my opinion) and Amnesia.. and play with lighting, I think that is a really important factor in horror games.

 

I think that you should focus on exploration, place a lot of lists, notes, maybe computers and make monster that have specified mechanics (it is scared of light, human voice or something like that).

 

Whew, long time no see. Been really busy with everyday life and me freelance work as of late. Much is going on at the moment but slow and steady wins the race I heard? There have been some rather exciting developments in the game, but that is more under the hood rather than on the visual department.

What can I say? Well, we (that is the glorious two man team of myself and grumpy oul' Mr. K) have taken a lot to twitter. Character models are coming along just fine and the lore and legends are being developed as we speak. We want to create the feeling of a living, breathing world that has been twisted and emptied by demonic influences. You are isolated, afraid and hunted.

An oul' school project of ours, called "Science Fiction in Space" will be getting some makeovers and a new life in the game as watchable animated episodes on the telly's found around the world (not unlike the TV-series in Alan Wake). New enemies are considered and tested all while collectibles are evaluated.

We also got some fresh concept art for those who are interested.


Well, this post feels more like a lite update rather than those deep thought ramblings I started off with. But what can I say, sometimes ye just have to get into the good stuff, even if it has been more than a half a year since last.