How do we fix the horror genre?

How do we fix the horror genre?

I know where this is heading

on topic
>stick to 1 setting
>focus on sound alone
>have a timer event for enemies to appear behind the player
>no jumpscare
>have ambiguous voice whisper now and then

stop using jumpscares.
try to use the gameplay for once as a way to scare people.
be creative with your monsters.
have a decent artstyle instead of distracting me with shitty realistic not realistic polygons.
make the game fun

>no weapons
>enemies kill in one hit
>you can run like 1 second
>no inventory management
>main character is voiced by a donkey in heat

Is that John Cena

exterminate all preadolescent teenagers

eat its face

Make the game set on a bus.

make the game on a bus for this dude

lynch the shit outta it

Hate to sound like a shill, but Darkwood recently did an excellent job:
>No jumpscares. Instead rely on tension and "foreshadowed" threats.
>Eliminate the "safe zone." Your safest location is also your deadliest, and there's a five minute span where you literally cannot leave it, but being there is not 100% safe either, requiring you to always be at attention.
>Strong amount of atmosphere is centered on musical cues and ambient sounds.
>Enemies can't always kill you in one hit, but you have low health and can get fucked up easy - fighting them requires timing, and your only weapons can break easily and unless you have another prepared, you're shit out of luck.
>Fatigue is your deadliest enemy - run out of stamina, can't get healing items, all your items are broken, enemies are well aware of where you're hiding, can't stay out of the light because nasty things hide in the dark, it will all add up and be the death of you.

Wasn't the guy who killed him let go with a slap on the wrist?
>canadians

Too mentally incompetent or some shit to go to trial so they locked him up in a loony bin instead. Now he's out and going to kill someone again when he inevitably stops taking his medication.

He was found to be not criminally responsible because of insanity, lived in a mental institution for a few years, and then gradually was given more freedom where he could live the intitution for a few minutes, then a few hours, then up to a day, a few months ago 9 years after the killing he was released and is allowed to live independent.

he could leave the institution for a few minutes**

This gonna be gud thread.

More jump scares.

Give the games an actual story like FN@F

Subtlety

dont try to make a horror product that exists to sell copies, just let people tell the stories they want to tell, provided that they're at least decent

This. Season 3/Lost Highway/Inland Empire are so striking in the way Lynch films and edits that I'm surprised more people don't copy him. Fucking episode 8 mang. Hell, fucking Fire WAlk With Me's convenience store scene from The Missing Pieces.

Yeah, people like to conveniently not talk about that his doctors said that he didn't take his medication he would revert to his previous schizophrenic state, and there is nobody ensuring he actually is taking his medication.

bring back atmospheric horror point&clicks, pic related scared me more than most of these youtube jumpscare-fests.

>No jumpscares but have enemies spawn behind the player
These seem like mutually exclusive concepts.

Enemy zero for sega Saturn kinda sounds like that

Ho do you actually make your hair stand like that? Is he using gel?

It just comes naturally. I have long hair with a lot of volume and it does the same thing whenever I wear a hat.

Just the sense of design of whatever supernatural event or entity it wants to show is great too, like those boilers, the famous black lodge, pitch black hobos, disfigured and misshaped men, the new arm, garlands disembodied head, the tulpa destruction sequences, sarah, the horse, etc

much better than any sort of horror monster

The problem with horror is that everyone wants something different. Some people want shocking frights, some want suspense and tension, some want creepy and disturbing. It also relies on the player themselves trying to immerse themselves. You have to be open to being scared to actually get scared.

The core problem with horror games is that eventually they have to give in and reveal the monster/threat/whatever and then you can rationalize it and it's no longer scary. It loses its potency. Nothing ever continues to be scary after you close the game. It's why I could post a random photograph of a forest at night and it would be scarier than 90% of horror games. Imagining what might be there is scarier than actually knowing.

Jump scares are cheap but if you don't include them then the game feels impotent. If you know that the game is never going to try and jumpscare you then you can distance yourself from the other spooky elements in the game.

I'm definitely the type who wants more suspense and tension as I'm not a huge horror fan in any medium, but I do like experiencing it every now and then. Playing Evil Within 2 right now and it's definitely got me nervous, and actually being able to fight lends to that. You can't mow down enemies as much as RE4 but you're not quite as weak as other survival horror either so I think it strikes a nice balance.

More or less, I don't think much of horror walking simulators.

The "no jumpscare" meme is a cheap way to feel patrician about horror games.

Jumpscares are great when used correctly and at the right times. It destabilises the player and puts him on the edge, afraid of it happening again.
I believe a great horror game would have:
>a few well placed jumpscares
>immersion and environment
>mystery and lore, making the player stay and keep playing to find out what's going on
>limiting the player's power over the enemies / not making enemies feel underpowered
They may be scary but once you kill a few, then it's just a nuisance

This is one of the best horror games I've ever played and it has all of the above. It takes hours of story and immersion before we even know the enemy exists, but once we find out, oh boy are we in for a ride.

I think people only shit on games where you can't fight back because there are so many bad ones. I don't see why being able to fight back makes it scarier.

Offer something else beside horror.

What's better?
Horror with limited combat and low chance of death, or highly combative with constant fear of death?

Scratches suffers from "adventure game logic syndrome" where it's often not clear what you're mean to be doing and the puzzles have obtuse solutions.

I assume it's partial native merican genetics. I have the same thing if my hair gets too long it's actually fucking annoying.

There's definitely a lot of cheap and bad games like that, but knowing at times you're going to be in a fight or die situation, to me, is always more tense then another run and hide situation.

The issue is you're giving it the "Give it good X"-style argument. You just describe a positive, without a way to ACHIEVE the positive. What constitutes as a well-placed jumpscare? What's the hard limit of a 'few?' What makes it qualify as a jumpscare? Why is it that the only way you can endorse scaring people is by some epilepsy-inducing clusterfuck of screeching and vibration? Because that's what jumpscares are. They don't SCARE people, they SURPRISE them. If I wanted a game based on surprises, I'd play one of a billion fucking quickdraw minigames.

Has his choped up body been leaked online?

...

The problem with making death a threat is that there's no real consequences. It's scary the first time you come face to face with the monster and get killed, but then you just reload, and every time after that it's no longer scary, it's just a pain. You know what the monster looks like, you know how they attack, you know what to expect if they catch you. You're no longer motivated by fear but rather by not wanting to game over.

It's not him you fucking retard
No

>I don't see why being able to fight back makes it scarier

Because you know that at some point you have to fight ugly big monster(s).
If you have no means to defend yourself then its pretty clear you will only run and hide from the ugly bastard(s).

Not him. The killer eat his eyes. and had the nose and ear in his pockets.

We put a chastity belt on your mother.

>How do we fix
You can't. You're only capable of bitching and moaning. You're not cut out to 'fix' anything, so the point is moot

Banish stealth/hiding forever
Add combat always

Why is fighting them scarier than running from them? Knowing they can be defeated kind of diminishes their scariness.

A good jumpscare is one which would work even without sound. It plays with your expectations, and induce lasting fear. A cheap one just induce annoyance because of the sudden sound and imagery, but is forgotten right after, like when someone startles you.

(You)

Jumpscares should be a POSSIBILITY in games, not a cutscene kind of thing nor pre-programmed in any way.

It should happen more along the lines of getting scared by those flying hands in Ocarina of Time, for example - turning back and finding out enemes creeping on you by chance, even old Doom knew how to do it despite being action packed.

Omnipresent tension that makes it possible to get spooked, never deliberate attempts at starting the player.

because defeating them does not free you from the horrible scenario you're in: i.e you may kill this aberration, but so what? You're still stuck in silent hill. On the contrary, not being able to defeat them implies that you COULD be able to defeat them, if only you had a BFG9000 you'd smack the shit out of whatever retarded ghost is hunting you, or at least that's a possibility. If you kill the enemies yet aren't saved from the situation, then that induces despair.

The last time I got legitimately scared in a game was Oblivion when the game froze for a split second and I thought it crashed when I hadn't saved for a long time. The camera swivelled behind me and a Guard's potato face clips partially through the screen and he yells STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM at 1000 decibels.

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But the same is true of running. You can run but you're still in the haunted mansion or whatever. You're still not safe even after you get away. And not being able to defeat them implies that they are non-threatening? What? This really just sounds like frustration at games that don't let you just kill your enemies.

What's worse is that he legally changed his alias, and is scott free without anyone knowing his true name. Also, chinks look the same.

we need more horror games that aren't solely focused on the model of 'everpresent tension with some jumpscares to fill the void'.

that's the problem with all horror now desu. they try to build up this creepy atmosphere so hard and then dump some half assed design of a monster on you to try and freak you out. it wears you out and you eventually just stop caring after a while. like, with FNAF, since you're always afraid of the automatons coming for you you eventually stop getting scared.

we need more emergent horror - creepiness that becomes apparent more as you play through the game and by the time you've figured everything out you're already too far in. Instead of having a game take place in an asylum or a dark cave, give the player breaks and times when they think they feel safe. don't rely on a system of checkpoints and players having to solve a puzzle to get around some baddie, make it so that the player becomes unnerved as they play through the game. and then drop the bombs on them. trying to force people into getting scared isn't the answer.

I see youre here every night aswell

Not that guy, but I think its more about options. If you cant fight back, theres only one option: Flight.
If you can actually fight back, you could shoot at it but its still uncertain if it is any use, like the ghost lady in The Evil Within 2 which is, unlike every other enemy, unkillable

So was it ever ingame explained who that ghost was ? Found that flashbacks in the mines but still couldnt make a rhyme out of it

>And not being able to defeat them implies that they are non-threatening? What?
I mean like in the sense that being able to kill the monster does not free you from your peril. Like, if you're hunted by a practically unkillable monster, you can imagine that if you could just kill him you'd be fine, right? If you can kill the monsters, it just demonstrates that something that should be so ultimate is still not enough to save you.

Plus if you can fight back your power doesn't feel as restricted, which makes enemies scarier because it doesn't feel like they're protected from you. In games you can almost always fight, fighting is almost a default option. No fighting means that the enemies aren't too strong, it just means your hands are bound. Fighting, albeit shitty, dangerous and cumbersome, makes the player feel "wow, this game is hard!". A killable monster becomes a credible threat because it's more integrated into the game world, a spoopy unkillable monster feels almost like a cutscene.

or somthing idk lol

Silent Hill 1~4 are the only games that did it correctly. Everything this guy said is absolutely correct.

Silent Hill did it correctly because the game gives you FREEDOM to go about as you wish. Horror games nowadays feel more like an interactive movie.

Also, the gameplay is one of the main parts which should make the game scary. Silent Hill 1~3 did it very well because you barely had any control of your character. You could run, but if you wished to fight back, you were constantly frustrated because the controls sucked, which made you more scared that the enemy will get you. I mean, how is a game scary if everytime an enemy appears, you get a QTE that makes your character do a super katana slash sequence that turns it into dust?

Also, it is important to make the story legitimately creepy and not just some "I am lost in the woods and there are monsters around me" which modern horror games have become.

bmup