How do we fix the vidya horror genre?

How do we fix the vidya horror genre?

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make it a description, instead of a genre

less jump scares, more atmosphere

Original Silent Hil remake

More jump scares and more atmosphere.

"It" Wasn't good desu

no jump scares and no atmosphere

Learn to accept the fact that what you think is scary is not necessarily what everyone else thinks is scary and there is no such thing as "real horror".

Go back in time and Kojima to pocket PT until after the Konami split.

youtube.com/watch?v=wpkg2tcJJZ4
IT was never good.

More atmoscares and less jumpspheres

mass genocide of all unity devs

Make it float.

by making it float

this goes for all genres though

Hire the guy who did the special effects for The Evil Within. Only saving grace of the game.

A new Fatal Frame game.

Essential Tim Curry-core stuff?

This includes vidya

fix the sound design

>still not killer clown game
what the fuck are devs doing

Home Alone 2 the video game for Game Boy.

TODOS FLOTAN CARLITOX

Stop giving the player tools that make the horror trivial.

Make it clear from the start that the character can't die. What CAN happen, is some decisions leading to bad endings, like untold timers and stuff. A lot of the horror is mitigated when the player realizes that there is ALWAYS a way to reach your goal. What has to be at stake is achieving your goal in a good way or a bad way.

>repeating bullshit blogger remarks about horror

Make more games like Bloodborne. Seems like one thing at first but then subtly shifts to horror.

Less jumpscares, more atmosphere.

Psychological horror bordering on questioning game authenticity. I'm talking large amounts of COMPLETELY random events organized in such a way that you might end up questioning if anyone else has ever witnessed it and find yourself alone in the matter.

>subtly shifts
the whole setting is horrific from the start. It just goes from Bram Stoker to Lovecraft.

>limited items and heals
>can't actually kill monsters, just slow them down
>minimize jump scare, space them out enough that the player isn't going to be looking out for them
>make the player feel safe sometimes

desu survival horror would be alot better if modern devs would let you actually fuck up so you cant progress any further

Stop riffing on re4. Mowing down enemies in shooting galleries makes for a fun action game but dulls the vulnerability, and suspense necessary to actually unnerve you. They're not much more than action games with a thin horror veneer. The fundamental design of the gameplay should serve the horror.

Why does discussion about horror bring out the biggest fucking fedoras on Sup Forums?

Take a cue from titles like slenderman, SCP, and the halloween fan game. Instead of littering the map with easily dealt with minions instead focus on a single(or at least a small number) powerful entity that is an actual threat to the player.

Alien Isolation was a great horror survival game. Perfect atmosphere, perfect sound design, and it I don't know what black magic they used to optimize it, but it was one of the most optimized perfectly running games I have ever played. I was able to run 60fps at way higher settings than I expected.

>hiding in a closet in med sci
>two people walk by
>hear the alien screech, and a third person runs past screaming about the alien
>alien runs by and massacres them just out of sight, lots of shooting, screaming, ripping, and tearing sounds
>then, silence
>alien walks past me, stops, leans in close to the closet
>I hold my breath
>he moves on
>i exhale

it was like it was right out a movie, so damn tense

Because that's what horror "aficionados" are.

as much as some of Sup Forums likes to shit on Isolation, I enjoyed it as well. There were probably ways to game the system and reduce the tension, but I never felt comfortable enough to experiment with it.

Fun fact: There was a pre-teen orgy in the IT book. Stephen King is fucked in the head.

Get back to slow and clunky controls

The attention to detail was outstanding, right down to the sloshing of the gas in the tank of the flamethrower

Bueno chau.

By impregnating your mother . Hopefully she will bring another horror into this world

A player being good at a horror game ruins the horror aspect, regardless of weapons or tools, if you know how to play you won't be stressed unless jumpscared.

The guy did massive amounts of coke back when he was writing those books. Theres a reason why he still looks wired today.

SAVAGE

And people like you are the reason creativity is dead.

>"You can only write about things in this tiny subset that I find acceptable"

by taking away the any information about the game, make people literally jump blind into it, the problem is how to market such thing.

Mess with the player psychologically. Establish rules, then break them.
>Game establishes early on that save rooms are absolutely safe
>During the last stretch of the game, you can get ambushed by monsters inside them
A more meta scare would be
>Get spooked by monster, pause game
>Monster can still move and attack you

Give the player a way to feel secure, then rip it away and molest it in front of him. Games work on rules, so breaking the rules will screw with his head, moreso if other rules are obscured.. Naturally, you also want to keep this a secret. Don't publish guides, and put some events/scares on a percentage chance of happening, to keep people guessing. Maybe increase the chance of the pause menu scare if the game detects the player tends to pause when he spots a monster.

/thread

There was a game for the gamecube that would mess with you as your char went insane, to the point where I think it would try to convince you your save game was corrupted and unplayable when it really wasn't, if i recall.

Who cares at this point just make 90's gore porn fests and call it a day.

by eliminating the jump scare and OH NO SPOOKY LOOKING FACES OH GOD THAT PALE GIRL HAS WEIRD EYES AND AN UNNATURALLY WIDE GRIN I AM SO SPOOOOKED menace
There's nothing frightening about predictable cliches, and even when jump scares work, they're just annoying. We get startled by things, it's a basic survival instinct so we aren't as likely to die if a fucking tiger jumps out at us. It's 0 effort, and about as stupid as trying to entertain someone by telling them that they're now breathing manually and they feel very itchy.

>I don't know what black magic they used to optimize it, but it was one of the most optimized perfectly running games I have ever played

I think it's the fact that the game was 99% low poly corridors. That's not really that hard to optimize. Graphically, the only thing that was really all that impressive was the lighting and PBR.

I liked Alien Isolation but I can't overlook it's flaws and it has a big one, the AI is fucking terrible. The alien doesn't behave like a silent predator prowling for prey, it behaves like a spoilt brat trying to wake the family up in the morning by stomping around the house. Personally, I would have emphasized the audio aspect of the gameplay much, much more. They had things like humans firing guns attracts the alien but stuff like kicking a can on the floor or rifling through drawer, even when the alien is standing a meter away, doesn't attract it's attention at all. My alien game would have been less about crouching under desks in plain sight and more about trying to make the least amount of noise possible.

I always use Stephen King's Pet Sematary as an example. It was a good decently scary book, but I feel like for people who have lost young kids it would utterly disturbing and terrifying.

everyone in these threads always complain about jumpscares. but are they really that much of a problem? most horror games i've played have a lot of build up and tension to jumpscares but hardly delivers on them. The result is that it gets old and predictable really quickly and you have this constant feeling of blueballs from the lack of actual scares. I often find myself thinking games could benefit from more jumpscares and not less. That is, if the game is actually trying to make you THINK they are coming by its tense atmosphere and build up, it should deliver at least some of the time, or it gets boring in its predictability and "haha just kidding!" shit

Frictional is the only current dev that actually bothers to make proper horror games, and even then the spookiness of their games take a nosedive once you learn the "game loop", they overstay their welcome by repeating stuff too much and making monster encounters routine.
Fatal Frame is probably the scariest horror game I have ever played but it's also too long and formulaic, but it does shake things up more with more varied enemy encounters, horror is all about the unknown and if you repeat the unknown too many times then it just becomes... the known.

The stealth mechanics in alien isolation were so janky that I could never get in to it. It always seemed like pure luck whether I got spotted or not, and the alien seemed to alternate randomly between being way too easy to evade, and locking on to me with laser precision, regardless of my own behavior.

they need more monsters that are actually grotseque, vile or really unnerving looking.

Priorities of a horror game:
1.Horror
2.Fun
Priorities of an action game with a horror setting:
1. Fun
2. Horror

You are talking about Eternal Darkness. The majority of that "messing with the player psychologically" stuff was just jump scares. Some of the fake glitching was clever though very 4th wall breaking. The problem is after a few of them the jig is up and they just become a nuisance.

Less focus on cheap jump-scares and more focus on atmosphere and general creepiness.
Jump scares should be scarce and strategical. Like, have 4 or 5 in the whole game, place far apart. Let the player keep guessing when it is gonna come.

The fear of the jumpscare should be bigger than the fear of the jumpscare itself. Honestly, creepy and tension are more important in horror games than trying to scare the player. Being afraid =/= Being jump-scared.

WE ALL

FLOAT

HERE!

Make good games first, then add horror elements. The best method, though, would be to incorporate the horror into the gameplay mechanics kind of like how Fatal Frame does it. The simplest thing that developers trying to make a new horror game, I'd say, would be to avoid making the protagonist unable to do anything but run away from threats.

If you're gonna do that might as well get rid of jumpscares entirely. Nothing is more boring than constant hints there MAY be a jumpscare, eventually you get used to the patterns and fakeouts. Why not just make a game that is actually scary and unnerving? The threat of jumpscares is often just lame

>Monster that doesn't simply kill you.
>Focuses on constant harassment
>Hit and run attacks, to whittle your health down
>Traps areas and supplies
>Constantly stares from edge of your vision, running away when you move closer
>Can even taunt the player, in various fashions
>Out of bullets? You find a box of shotgun shells at the end of a hall. When you get closer, it snatches them and dashes into the darkness.
>Messes with lights/doors/radios to attract other enemies
>When you're low on health and all your supplies are exhausted, it walks up in plain sight, then delivers the coup de grace

I want a monster that constantly keeps you on your toes, and keeps you from accumulating too many supplies. It constantly fucks with you until you die.
The only issue is the AI would be too advanced compared to "Chases until you get in a locker"

release PT

There's only one jumpscares in the whole game and that was the bathtub

The problem with jumpscares is that they're not scary. They're annoying. Oh no I've been startled and my heartrate has gone up, thanks for this meaningful entertainment, game.

I agree, games nowadays are trying so hard to avoid jumpscares that they just become boring, the fun isn't in the jumpscare itself but in the possibility of there being a jumpscare in the next corner, if the game sets up the "no jumpscares" expectation then you don't really have anything to fear.
I actually prefer Penumbra over Amnesia because of this, the devs tried too hard to make "atmospheric" horror with Amnesia but it quickly gets boring once you realize how safe you are, I think Penumbra does a better job at actually being scary since the enemies more aggressive and it isn't afraid of spooking the fuck out of you.

there waas an atmospheric DOOM wad that took place in actual hell, that was really cool. I like atmospheric games like that, where it just feels like the world you're in is totally depraved and sick and you're stuck in it

The most important thing is: STOP LETTING YOU KNOW SCARY SHIT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.

Seriously, movies and games do this. You can almost guess when you are about to be scared with the music suddenly going away or getting more intense. Stop it.
Make it a steady thing. Make it unnerving.

any games that have a similar style to the TV scenes in the babadook?

youtube.com/watch?v=tthI2mOh-UE

The book is good

They think games aren't scary because its not atmospheric enough.
The real reason is that they're just too autistic to feel scared.

>these entry-level plens asking for even less jumpscares when that's exactly what made horror games boring

Actually make some new ones that don't automatically get classified as a watered down version of Amnesia or Resident Evil 4?

It feels like devs are afraid to make new horror games that don't fall into marketable categories. So they either have constant jumpscares for reaction videos, or commonplace action with some spooky set-pieces.

less jump scares and better game design i.e. like seeing pyramid for the first time only to look back and he's gone but still knowing he's still somewhere in the level with you

a horror game that's unpredictable, even from watching someone else play it

there was this japanese game called walking by a really obscure indie dev and it's probably one of the most tense things i've played. the atmosphere is mysterious, there are no signs for anything, and it doesn't use jumpscares to scare you, it uses "keeping you on the edge of your seat" to make you incredibly defensive at all times

>Frictional is the only current dev that actually bothers to make proper horror games
No, they make bad stealth games with horribly watered down gameplay and fairly decent stories. That's all. Fucking Vampire Rain had better stealth horror gameplay than any Frictional game.

>horror is all about the unknown
I disagree. Knowing what something is doesn't make it any less terrifying as long as what it is is inherently terrifying. For example, just because I know what a shark is doesn't mean swimming with one wouldn't scare the shit out of me.

less jumpscares isnt what made them boring, its the fact they had less jumpscares but still being games that had build ups to the jumpscare. does that make sense? the games are still designed around the build up of jumpscares but they came far less so it gets boring and predictable. horror just needs to trash this kind of thing and focus on something else

>walking along
>music fades away
>SUDDENLY THING POPS OUT AND LOUD NOISE
if that's your idea of horror, you have no right to call anyone else a "plen"

Let Swery finish D4.

i want a game where you're walking around a big empty house, with no music and enemies. and as you walk around you notice subtle differences, like maybe a chair that was there, is moved slightly or a window was open.

No, there is far more than that. And you are talking about the scripted stuff anyway, I'm talking about the sanity mechanic. It would do things like make your head suddenly explode for no reason. That is a jump scare.

Underrated

youtube.com/watch?v=RSY1aMt872M

GOTTEM

unironically this, it might create the hype again for that kind of deep horror

call me a pleb but this part form skyrim scared the shit out of me. it was this theieves guild quest where you go down into that tomb with the guy, and you get paralyzed with the arrow, and he goes to kill you and says "i will make this your resting place" and leaves you to die. just the thought that you are all the way down there, and that is where your death would be, and there is nothing you can do about it, and everyone above ground is totally unaware...Gave me the fucking chills. it was the lack of control and lonliness in death that really scared me

Reminds me of Fran Bow.

The book was gangbang.com

Is that the game that would keep closing itself and had that spooky face that would chase you around in a parking lot?
That was legit a really fucking scary game, I feel like analyzing that game to understand what made it particularly spooky for me.

I had the same experience.

this user linked it are you talking about imscared? that was a really good game too, part of the reason why I think was because it was so vague about what was happening and it gave you little to no time to understand which freaked me the fuck out the first time i played it.

No it's not l. Your head just pops off with minimal fanfare, tricking the player into thinking they fucked up somehow,

I doubt it will because, though novel for it's time, Silent Hill isn't actually all that good. Or deep. It's literally "An ancient evil awakes" with some Hellraiser and Jacob's Ladder plagiarism.

>cant actually kill monsters, just slow them down

No no no. This meme is for modern peedeepee bait shit tier games. The correct thing to do is give players the ability to kill monsters, BUT they have limited resources to do so, which means they have to decide which monsters they must kill and which they nee to run away from to avoid wasting ammo. This is more stressful on the player but also give them mre options, adding dept to the gameplay.


Your other points are pretty good though

>locking on to me with laser precision, regardless of my own behavior.
on the horror games topic, this shit and the lazy level design in Outlast 2 where the two things that made me drop the thing, wich is a shame because i loved Outlast 1 and the DLC

I agree

holy shit lmao

One of the things I admire about the movie is how much it pays homage to old cinema.

i'd like to add that this happened IN THE FUCKING SEWERS. 1 girl, and handful of preteen boys, go to the sewers, afraid to die, girl lets them gangbang her so they can die non-virgins... survive until adulthood... well fuck.