What's a good gameplay gimmick for horror games?

what's a good gameplay gimmick for horror games?

Establish rules, then break them (i.e. safe zones becoming unsafe or the pause menu/inventory open not actually pausing the game)

never make a game please

the more enemies you kill the weaker you get

eventually you die in one hit

eventually you start to walk like a cripple

eventually you become a creature and must eat innocents to survive, changing the game completely

You have a magic tome to draw power from.

The more you draw power, the deeper you fall under the power of dark forces.

You have to be powerful enough to save your friends and family, but if you go over the line you end up sacrificing them for power.

i find it weird as fuck that games dont do that. like the evil within. why dont they fuck with you like that? the game would be 10x more scary, and itd fit the theme completely

You know what this reminds me of? That one time in Resident Evil 2 when zombies appear in the opening door loading screen

cause the player would shit themselves the first time, get mad, then close the game and never play it again

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The gimmick is there's a skeleton inside you reading this right now.

Permanent death. No matter how scary you make your enemies, they lose all of their effect once you die to them and see that it only causes a "You died" screen and then reloads an earlier save. If you stand to lose all of your progress each time a creature appears, they will maintain their spookiness throughout the game.

For a good horror game, you either go with permadeath, or no actual threats at all (Scratches style) with masterful suspense upkeep.

why is PT remembered as the best horror game in recent times when it's literally a walking simulator? Surely there's more to the genre.

>there will never be another game like Eternal Darkness that fucks with the player

What a shame

Suddenly a scary face pops up on the screen and makes a loud noise. It'll immediately kick the primal survival instinct in all of us we used back when we hunted our shit and whatever we hunted would charge at us head on and jump to our face level and it'd also add the inherent fear all humans have of loud noises.
You can also combine this with the setting being in a pretty dark place also exploiting another innate fear in humanity, the fear of darkness.

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Lots of guns
They don't actually harm or hinder the enemies in any way

SH4 was literally built around this concept

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>have to wear a headset with working mic to play
>can only hear the creature prowling through the headphones
>[/spoiler]it can hear you talking and breathing, the louder you are the quicker it finds you[/spoiler]

pt was ok in the first couple of floors but then it was just memes

A game that doesn't present itself as a horror game. Think of some ad for a mario like game that is actually a gritty gory psychological horror kinda thing.

How about a monster that chases you, as per usual, but its goal is to torment you. So it pins you, takes off one of your arms, then skitters away. Gameplay mechanics get harder as you lose yourself

monsters animate at a higher frame rate than the rest of the game

The purpose of fear is noticing and being afraid of things that don't seem quite right. PT used repetition excellently to trigger this fear.

Games are already perfect for horror games. If you're watching a scary film you can always look away and plug your ears, then come back when you think it's gone. To progress in a game you have to face that shit head on

is that even possible to do?

I feel like only half the game is interesting. A bit before the part where everything goes red it starts to be kinda not scary and more of the same. I didn't play it myself as i dont own a PS but I watched a few playthroughs with no commentary and only the first few floors are really scary.

I dunno, maybe I'd be saying something else had I played it myself.

This is great. Make the player fear the actual software.

I had an idea for a horror game where the more you encountered Monsters, the more stressed you get.

The only way to ease your stress is with a music box, but the music box also gives away your location to the monsters.

Opinions?

halo 5 animated enemies at thirty frames when far away or when a lot was going on and sixty when up close so it’s certainly possible

Yeah, just have 30fps animations for everything except render enemies at 60. the game would still have to be running at 60 though, so smooth camera panning and such would make it not as out of place looking for enemies to be 60

I like the concept but I think the music box is a little shoehorned

literally amnesia

Something similar you can do is have monsters rendered completely different than the rest of the world.

I can't tell if that would make it sell better or worse as twitch bait.

Text logs where some guy is going craaazyyyy...

You are a fool. The second you start betraying the player's trust after establishing mechanics the game becomes frustrating, not scary. If you just start randomly changing the rules, it's not fun.

Never design a game.

So monsters would just have faster animations since it all has to be interpolated, unless you want to actually skip frames.

Thank you, I will only create streamlined games according to the Design Committee™

I think the idea is precisely to skip frames (or to have every frame repear) for any animation that isn't the monsters

Glitches

What the fuck now that's something that strikes fear into your soul

the best trick of REmake by far is when the game breaks its established rules by having a zombie burst through a door. same for RE2 with the zombies appearing during a scene transition.

Maybe something related to the plot

Like, if it is a priest running away from demons, he prays, but demons can hear him praying

Just use the gun mechanics from Receiver, makes anything a horror game.