How to know if a Horror game is good as a prototype?

Well, as the title says, I'm working on something like a horror game atm and I have worked my way through lots of blogs/movies/other horror games etc.
I have something like a prototype running (mostly atmosphere wise) but it seems to be really difficult to think of some good and fun game mechanic.
I don't know if my view is just biased because I'm literally too close to my own project to perceive it as "scary", but it does make me wonder though, how to even get feedback for a horror game in it's early stages, since they seem to rely so heavily on every little bit working together to create tension.

What do you think? specially when leaving out any cheap tricks like jumpscares, how to know that one is on a good path to scare people? ^^" is there maybe something I'm missing that horror game mechanics can be scary without any particular atmosphere?

I feel a little bit under some kind of pressure here, because so many horror games I have seen seem to focus on startling and anxiety inducing elements instead of tension, so I thought to myself I can do something better! or atleast something different! And really want to achieve good tension, a feeling of helplessness and fear. But I have never done something like this before ^^"

btw. if someone is interested, thats how my prototype currently looks like:


is that in any way looking like something horror oriented?XD

 

everyone is scared by different things so it will be hard to get a specific answer but atmosphere, & immersing the player into the world/story, will cause whatever you do to have a greater impact. Also, how did you want to scare them? give them that fright with the adrenaline rush or just have them scared so when they finish they are still tense/worried as they walk around the house getting creeped out by shadows etc?

Based on a quick poll in class I'm working on a concept involving spider clowns that lay eggs in cars & when the eggs hatch swarms of them come out of the car, just like a clown car in a movie or cartoon. But this is a different kind of scare/fear that isn't so reliant on atmosphere.

 

Honestly bro, what really teaches me about how to make my game a horror game I am making, just think about your nightmares you have, what inside the nightmares adds up to actually terrify you so much you wake up?
Aside from the monsters, what about the atmosphere in your dreams adds into the creepiness, etc?

Everyone is of course scared of different things, but learning from your horror nightmares is a good starting place, because obviously it really scares you in your dreams, so it must have some kind of psychological impact into *horror* I'd say.

Like me for example, my game is an Alien Abduction horror/stealth game (kinda like Alien isolation) except your on a UFO and have to survive and escape. Now the general sense of that doesn't sound very scary, unless - you have an idea of what makes it scary. Which comes to my nightmares - do I think Aliens are real? Idk I can't say, I mean I hope they do, but at the same time, I have an EXTREME FEAR of being abducted while in my bed, like serious fears. Do I think I've been abducted - no. But it's still a fear so strong I refuse to sleep in my room without my dog nor something to bash its head in with somewhere close by. It started when I started getting sleep paralysis, that's when my extreme fears kicked in.
Do I have lots of nightmares about it - no. But it's before I fall asleep - every single night I'm looking around my room for like 4 hours before falling asleep - in that mean time - I'm sitting there thinking what if it happened - what would they do to me, etc. Don't take me wrong - I'm not some UFO nut who thinks Aliens are out to get me. I just have a genuine fear of it, that's all(not sure if there is a medical term for it - like some people have Xenophobia - scared of other cultures, so not sure if there is an Alien Fear term lol.. Which is why I'm making my game, it's such a fear I want to face the problem directly and tell my story by making a game about what I fear exactly. Hopefully my fear will stop once I face the problem head on. Hopefully people will be able to relate and understand the story of my game.

But that's how I learn to make my game - use my own fears and build it into something.

 

I do want to recreate some feelings I had in my own nightmares, which included to feel close to bursting or being squished (thats also a reason why I want the main "character" to be an amoeba type of creature)
Going into a direction of feeling grossed out, rather than plain fear. Also having parts like dismemberment (parts of you can be eaten), helplessness (can only hide or flee) and working with peripheral perception (movements in corner of your perception etc.)
hm...so the ways to "scare" would be focusing on the environment, rather than the character, making contrast between beautiful and strange undersea world and creating feeling of danger everywhere, like in real life i want to create some enemies that act like real life predators, camouflage, different strengths etc.

edit: N1 you are right, your post came in while I was responding XD yeah I do take my nightmares as example and quite many elements I work on are actually based on them, like trying to create a oppressing atmosphere by being small and squishy and having predators being big and scary, aswell as tight tunnels and blurry vision for everything further away.
Oh and regarding ridiculous nightmares...did you ever have a nightmare of being a thin line, being crushed by rectangles ? or felt like a big rectangle being too big for the space that you are confined in? I had weird dreams...I tell ya...and thats one of the worst nightmares I ever had XD but I'm not particularly afraid of rectangles...or lines...lol

 

The writing in the walking dead (proper, not telltale) clearly showed me the difference between fear and horror. I have literally been horrified and emotionally drained without being afraid. I'm told to expect the same from 'that dragon cancer'.

Personally I would love to see more of that in place of the current standard of anticipation build followed by an expected outcome at unexpected time. I suppose to pull true horror off requires back-seating the mechanics and some clever writing though.

 

yeah, I was even reading that when people watch horror movies, the part of our brains for fear are not even activated, but things like problem solving areas, self reflection, awareness etc.
(thats just my curious me talking ;D)

I wonder though, how does one playtest such things? I mean most horror games work only once, since most of them are linear, so replaying it, it will be predictable what happens, so how do you make such a game better? getting feedback from alot of different people? Does that mean that for horror games, using your friends as playtesters just won't be enough? or is it a general problem with whatever game one is making?

 

You should watch this:

I meant it to skip to 5:46, but the embedding doesn't work with that. Watching the whole thing won't hurt anyway.
They don't explicitly have horror games as a genre in that list of games ordered by difficulty of making a minimum viable product for them, but I'd put it somewhere between FPS and action adventure.

Have you played Outlast and Amnesia: The Dark Descent? I found both to be among the scariest horror games that I've played. I'm sceptical though if much of that can be transferred into a game where you play such a clearly non-human character like a green blob. I think I'd have problems with immersion. Scope-wise you certainly made a good decision there, but I'm not sure if the typical horror genre works here. Have you looked into how high-stakes games create tension and fear, like Minecraft on the 1-life hardcore mode, or Roguelikes?

 

I remember there was a release a few years ago where they hooked focus groups up to heart rate monitors, cameras' etc but I think that was more of a marketing exercise...

I think Martin hit it on the head with immersion - if your player feels vested in your protagonist then you've mostly won the battle.

Ultimately bringing in fresh eyes and getting new player feedback as often as possible is the only measure I can think of short of hiring professionals to do 'what works' according to revenue generation - which is another good option. On that note, finding a good mentor is also a great idea for several reasons not in the least because it will really help your pitch if you ever seek funding. In the UK you can even get state support for paying a mentor's consultancy fees while you're starting up. If you thinking this is a viable commercial en-devour maybe talk to your local chamber of commerce.

If you are going with friends and family I wouldn't show them all at once as they will always have that first experience as a frame of reference. You're looking for good, not better than it was and your testers probably wont understand the difference.

With tangible design we show what we are planing to make to buyers throughout our industry as often as possible - we're making it for them to buy so it make sense to ask them what they want. They'll see everything from the drawings and CAD files through to prototypes, pre-production samples, tv commercials, print adverts - the whole lot before the factory is re-tooled for production. If they feel like its not scary/cool/whathaveyou enough we know before we commit to our design.

I suppose kickstarter is a kind of the equivalent but when you start this process (and I'd recommend sooner rather than later) be prepared to make some fundamental changes to how you view your product. Also you will need to summarize what you are building in such a way that you generate interest without 'giving the game away' pardon the pun.

Engine forums are the land of helpful but critical competitors so there will always be quite a bit of bias when feeding back on your product. We each have our own standards and values but in this the customer's desires should come first and for that you need the lowest-common-denominator's opinion.

 

It's funny you brought that video up, because it was exactly this video that made me think about my projects "basic concept" and that I have trouble(not saying that I can't work anything out, just that it seems quite difficult) to think of a horror game consisting of just one single mechanic when it's ALOT about immersion and atmosphere to work.

@Eric Darkomen thanks I think that was kind of what I was looking for, some things I couldn't really think of, like not showing the game to everyone at once, so that I get different feedback for different stages of the game thats always coming from the "first time" point of view. there should be enough feedback from everyone to work with that to improve the game. And then I can slowly increase the "audience"...

then there is still a question in my head, why would someone buy a game, if they could get a "beta" version for free?

 

You haven't answered this question yet: "Have you played Outlast and Amnesia: The Dark Descent?". And if you played neither, what horror games did you play?

I'd argue that both games actually have a core mechanic that can be pretty well prototyped: walking through a maze with roaming enemies that you have to run or hide from, since you can't fight. The problem with horror games is that a huge part of their appeal comes from aesthetics instead of mechanics. And those are hard to prototype and hard to produce on a high quality level at all. Imho Amnesia has about the lowest productionvalues that a game in that genre could get away with at the time of its release. So it's not a 1-person project to make something like that.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/57300/

 

I have played Amnesia(not sure if it was dark descent, aren't there more games out now?), haven't played outlast.
Actually I thought about it, that last time I was actually playing horror games and not just watching let's plays of them is some years ago, back then I couldn't deal with the anxiety they were causing in me. Thats also why i want to make something different....it's the same with horror movies, so many movies and games go for cheaps care tactics that actually make me feel very bad, while I personally prefer more subtle psychological horror and mystery.
Dealing with the unknown not plain fear, like I think blair witch project was doing also.

and yeah exactly, it's hard to find a way to prototype that into something digestable, thats also understandable for a potential tester. I'm repeating myself I think....

all I get from this here now is, that I should probably go and make a release the moment I think I have some basic game mechanics running and see how it's actually being perceived. maybe then it becomes clearer if what i imagine could work as basics, if it does actually horrorfy already or not.

 

Okay well my favourite horror games are survival horror - resident evil2, code veronica, dead space 2, alan wake so you give the player weapons but make the weapons scarce and surely not co-op (dead space 3). I guess the more helpless the player is the more scared of the monster(s) he will get.

 

I don't know if a prototype can answer the "is it scary" question- it seems like that is wrapped too much in aesthetics and window dressing stuff like lighting and art and sound. But I do think it can answer questions like: "Does the player feel weak?" "Is the player always needing more information to feel secure?"

 

Forgot to answer this on my last post. I don't think this is worth a thought at this point of your career. Making good games comes first, then getting people to play them and after that you can think about monetizing.

There are at least two. Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs is pretty boring from what I've read. The Dark Descent is seen by many as one of the scariest horror games out there and it makes the most of a tiny development budget. Imho there is a lot to be learned here for horror game indie devs.
Also it had an interesting twist on the hide-in-the-dark stealth mechanic. Darkness made you insane, causing nauseating image effects and ultimately unconsciousness. So you had conflicting needs that had to be balanced. You'll want to light torches and stay in the light to stay sane. But when monsters come you have to hide in dark corners and deal with the problems that come with it. Also they had a mechanic where even looking at the monster drove up your insanity meter. I found that to be insanely clever because what you can't see is often a lot more scary than what you can see. And I got through about half the game without ever really getting a good look at the enemies. It also hides low asset-quality to some degree.
There is a point to be made for "don't tell the player how he should feel" however, since that often causes a weird disconnect for players when they feel a lot different than the game says they should feel. It worked for me because I was actually scared. If I had been bored I might have disliked that mechanic.

Outlast had a significantly higher budget than Amnesia I'd bet. I haven't played through the whole game yet, but what I have seen I found pretty scary as well. I got the feeling that their choices in where to put jumpscares were very deliberate and carefully planned out. So I'd say this is a great title to learn from as well.

I often see jumpscares dismissed as a "cheap" tactic, but I don't think that is a fair assessment. A run of the mill jumpscare doesn't get me since I'm not easily scared and have a good feeling for when they might be coming in a horror game. The times I have truly "jumped" in my seat from being utterly scared by a jumpscare in a game are quite rare. Maybe between one and two dozen times in my life? And I played quite a few horror games. Outlast was really good in setting you up to be affected by jump scares. The imho "classic" approach is saving the jumpscare for high tension moments in the narrative that you often see coming, or plain random moments that often don't get you because they are too random and out of context. In Outlast I've been caught of guard by quite a few because they avoid the cliché scares and teach you that something is "safe" first, before they use that situation to scare you. MINOR SPOILERS: E.g. you had to walk past a seemingly dead guy in a wheelchair. Of course you think that he will jumpscare you when you get close, so you brace yourself and approach real carefully. But the scare doesn't happen, you learn that that part of the level is safe, keep on playing and after a while you need to backtravel past that guy again and then he jumps at you and the scare is so much more effective because you most likely didn't see that coming. Or once a jumpscare was behind a door, really random and probably ineffective for many people (it got me though because the audio was so well designed), but then just a few meters later there is the next jumpscare and you don't anticipate the next one coming so soon again, because that goes against the pacing that you know from other horror games.

Alan Wake has been mentioned by @Aiursrage2k. I found that game rather boring, because it was pretty easy, and I think I saw all but one jumpscare coming. The camera usually does something out of the ordinary, shortly before something happens, so it's almost never unexpected. Overall I didn't like that game even though the story was ok. Dead Space 1 and 2 were good though.

You should watch the "squirtyplay" videos by Jim Sterling. He covers a lot of S***ty horror games (also a few good ones) and imho there is much to be learned from those games. Plus he's giving you some insight in how certain things might be received by players.

And one last thing: I don't think taking personal fears and nightmares as a reference is a good idea. For example you might be scared out of your mind by snakes, and just having a snake in a game might scare you a lot. Others find snakes cute and it would not scare them the least bit. But if you are not scared by snakes, and you manage to set one up in a way that would be scary to you and other people that don't have a problem with snakes, (e.g. by making it really big, never showing it and implying its presence and malevolence through other means), then you might be up to something that affects a greater number of people. If people with a certain strong phobia still can play a corresponding part of your game, it might not be hardcore enough for people that lack that phobia.

 

WRITING is important, because horror happens in user's mind, not on the screen.
If you can't scare people with a cube, work on writing, till cube becomes terrifying.

IIRC there are some good RPG maker horror games that are worth checking out.

Also, see "Spooky's house of jump scares" on PC/Steam. It is free and has some genuinely great moments. "Great" means "Silent-hill worthy". Graphics are cutesy.

 

Hmm... this all just made me realize... I never have nightmares. Sometimes I think they are meant to be but never turns out that way. Like a werewolf pack came running in this past weekend. One second I watched them come over a hill in the distance and the next I was running with them in the middle front row until they turned to see me there then I laughed and obliterated them and the rest ran away. That is how nightmares are for me.

Anyway, I sometimes think older games did a better job on the horror games. They set the atmosphere very well in some games.

One game I played for the first time just this past weekend does a great job on the atmosphere IMO.

Realms of the Haunting

It's not nearly the same just watching it as playing it. But this video may give you a general idea anyway.

.

 

Yes I love horror style games, what I'd suggest is mimicking the movies, the way they build tension, tell a story uncover clues, how the music changes to play with the senses, playable teaser is a classic because you walk through the same corridor enough times to become used to the setting so when something else is there you get a fright scare.

But overall the movies are great ways for inspiration and the story behind it is iimportant too.

 

Maybe because dreaming in 8-bit just isn't scary?

 

hehe I must be treating on a less explored path....I have no story and the character is not human and still I somehow want to manage to get immersion. Btw. some games that were no horror games at all were frightening me more than some games that were meant to be horror games. Like as example Minecraft nights freak me out, because of never feeling secure from those damn creepers. Or then there is that old game "Stonekeep" it's same style like realms of Haunting, but it was merely a Fantasy/RPG/Dungeoncrawler, but it still freaked me out, due to limited movement and some very creepy creatures. It didn't need any kind of story for those things to affect me, just "caring" about what happens to me or my character or whatever I value...
Maybe thats what I should keep in mind for the development, that I somehow need to make the player care about the character, their involvement, that it means something to them to loose it and it's not just ending in frustration of having to redo everything when dying....btw. GarBenjamin, I like that video you posted it's very much playing with uncanny valley, which I think is also part of making it appear scary...make a familiar world somehow "odd" can add alot of tension and the feeling that the world is not as it seems.

 

FOX News scares me

 

Check out "Eldritch" and "Spooky house of jumpscares" I already mentioned.

 

First of all, you need to know what makes good horror game.

And good horror game certainly IS NOT journey through the darkness with piece of S*** flashlight and metric S***ton of jumpscares.

My point is, it's better to go for general feel of uneasiness and dread. The best horror games (Amnesia, SH2, Eternal Darkness) either didn't use jumpscares or used them VERY sparingly. It is better to scare people with something that is out there, they can't do anything about and which will kill them no matter what. Psychological horror, I mean.

Same goes really for great horror movies/TV series. Hostel/Saw/Halloween is more funny in a "look at him, such wounds aren't physically possible" way, than actually legitimately scary. While The Shining, The Exorcist or Twilight Zone... those brings out nightmares.

 

I loved Twilight Zone....and the Shining I also love a horror movie called "The Awakening" such beautiful subtle horror

 

Never heard of it, will have to check out when I'm in mood for horrors (currently I'm not because game I'm making is quite jovial and I'm afraid that watching horrors would affect it in a negative way).

 

idk im scared by like home invasion, nukes, airstrikes, police, stuff like that

heeby-jeeby crap is just hilarious .. lol

hmm.. the game STALKER was scary to me, really just because youre trying to survive and you die really easy in the game.. more like its really hard and you dont want to lose before you get to where youre going

some of the "secret project" videos for the game Alpha Centauri are really freaky/spooky
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8407FAE1DDDA0A31

idk thats all i know about horror lol .. not really my thing

 

hehe yeah it's a bit funny that i want to make a horror like game, but I don't really like horror games But I'm leaving my options open to maybe just turn it into something else if it doesn't work out ^^ like as example subnautica is not classified as horror game but rather as survival game and i think alot of people are scared by things lurking in that game XD and essentially my game is also about survival (and exploration, but that depends if i get my procedural system working or not)