So Sup Forums what genuinely terrifies you...

So Sup Forums what genuinely terrifies you? Me and a buddy are in the beginning stages of making a horror game and I want to avoid cliches and jumpscares. Tell me some things that really make you feel unsettled and scared.

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Biological things that can for some reason grow/form metallic looking parts seemingly for no reason. Example, there is a boss in the game Cryostasis that is basically a human body that has metal spider leg blades growing out of it's spine and walks around like that.

Humans with solid black eyes. As in, the entire eyeball is black.

This, I remember being scared shitless of pic related as a kid

The ocean or other deep bodies of water where you can't see very far. The open ocean in Subnautica or Stranded Deep did this well. Even if I'm in an area I know enemies don't spawn it still turns by stomach.

existing

The best trope in horror is giving the player some kind of false hope or reassurance, like another rational human amid all the monsters, and then turning that on its head. Silent Hill did this a lot, but there's still a lot to explore with it.

I'm afraid not of what is, but what isn't. When there's the signs of something, but there isn't anything is when I'm most afraid. I don't mean blood trails, or broken doors, or dripping blood. I mean questioning what I heard, or seeing something out of the corner of my vision, or a small sensation on an abstract part of my body.

the fact people will return near-priceless items to careless companies
the fact that retarded parents will turn down multi thousand dollar offers for development hardware and give it to their kid who guts it for upvotes
the fact that people still like the ps2 despite the fact its a steaming pile of shit if you remove its amazing library
the fact that even now people will ruin nice things in the name of casuals or diversity when they should be focusing on making a good fucking game

also the creepy shit in the xbox sounds, the ps2 disc read error, the long hang on bios when loading a scratched ps1 disc, the fact that somewhere there exists a reality where sony and nintendo released that combo machine and only 2 giants exist in the console world

typical scary shit - disturbing enemies and the like - but in an otherwise inoffensive environment.
some fucked up horror shambling towards you in broad daylight, while everything else is quiet gets to me.

OP here. Deep ocean gives me heebi jeebis but unfortunately our game isn't going to take place near or in bodies of water. I want to apply the same concepts of how dark, vast and mysterious the ocean is to our game. Keep em coming guys. It really helps to get new ideas.

Aliens and the complete unknown. Vague, but that’s all I got.

Body horror in general is terrifying, especially if you obscure a good bit of the figure, but you can tell even from its vague outline that there are parts that aren't where they're supposed to be.

Silence.
Ambient sounds should be used sparingly save for your footsteps.
Active sounds you hear should never be clear as to whether they're a real threat or not.
Also, things that change imperceptibly over time.

Shit like this. Fucked up proportions and joints at weird angles, jerky motions, etc. Maybe it's clichéd but it freaks me the fuck out.

Fake memories. Recently I've had people say things that contradict strong memories I've had, and it happens more and more. It's to the point where the next day I wonder if they actually said what they did the day before, because that might be the fake memory, and the real one is the one I've known all along. When two independent sources contradict my memory, or they contradict each other and become memories (which one is real? Or are they both real? Or are they both fake?) is when I become really afraid.

Things looking at you from around corners.

Hiding, and being force to move around while stuck in close quarter spaces while something unknown lurks around actively hunting you, hearing slow heavy footsteps.

Disabling the pause feature so there is no way to assess a situation or gather your nerves

First and foremost: No music. Like, at all.
Use atmosphere to instill fear

give the player a huge seemingly open space to play around in, but don't let them see too far ahead
you need to build up a sense of dread somehow by offering a seemingly large amount of freedom, when in reality something is restricting it
people are generally unsettled when they are offered a lot of things, but are also made aware that there are things being kept from them

>Pause Fatal Frame 3 to take a piss
>Hear sounds coming from my room
>Crying children, ambient metallic sounds, wind
>Look around the corner of my door
>Screen all film grainy on the pause screen
>A fucking black and white face slowly appears on screen before suddenly disappearing

Body horror disturbs me greatly for some reason I'm looking forward to playing this shit and have my heart pumping like crazy 24/7, Silent Hill is another one that did that to me.

something in peripheral view that you can only see in peripheral view where looking dead on at it makes it go away

alternatively severe schizophrenia

Shit you thought was safe but it turns out it wasn't. Like, if you had save rooms that are always safe and relaxing. Except for one time. Fuck you, you're NEVER safe.

One strong unkillable enemy that stalks an area can be good, but unfortunately the second a player figures out how to cheese them out the illusion shatters. The best game that did this was probably Metroid Fusion? SA-X will kick your ass and all you can do is run. Since the areas you run from her are so basic, there's no chance of cheesing her out and you just get high tension chase sequences.

Make your players fear death without doling it out too much. FNAF had the problem where it always gets autistically hard, and once you die 3 times its no longer scary. Of course, if the game is too easy then they'd no longer care either. Not only that, there are tense moments in non-horror games where you don't want to die or you'll have to lose special items or progress.

When you have to walk towards the Very Clearly Bad Thing. Like, in PT when you have to walk towards the ghost woman under the light. Or in White Chamber, there's a hallway with a traffic light. You keep looping back to the start as you walk through it, but the area gets more and more fucked as you repeat a loop and the traffic light changes from green to yellow to red. You're immediately aware something FUCKED will happen if you get to red, but you have to do it anyway

OP here. What settings would you guys like in your horror game? We had the idea of being a night stocker at a grocery store by themselves. Something familiar that we can turn on it's head and slowly transform the store into a silent Hill esque hell.

Makes me think about "secondhand memories". Like when you remember remembering something but not the actual thing that you remember remembering.

knowing from the beginning that something is slowly creeping towards you and if you get lost or hit a dead end then you can only wait for it to catch you

These are great guys keep em coming. We really want to make a good game.

Anywhere people would generally consider happy or safe. Hosptials, homes, and amusement parks are immediately disqualified due to overuse.

My future.
Other than that, awareness of something being nearby without actually being able to see it. Like motion detectors going BEEP BEEP when it's dark as shit all around.

Remove agency from the players. Give them tools to defend themselves, but make it so inefficient that it's better not to use it.

Horror thrives on relatability AND realism. The player needs to be able to relate to a great part of it for it to affect them. But take for instance, Alien, set on a spaceship in the future, but the people are very real. Take cues from that.

Lastly, context. Don't just throw a bunch of spooky shit together and call it a day. Coherency matters so that when things happen they have weight. Tell a story, it needn't be a deeply intricate plot, but you need a framing device in which things can consistently happen.

spiders and stuff from the depths of the sea

just google "deep sea fish"

You should work in your atmosphere. Take a book from the old jap movies. It's never about what it is, but how it leads up to it.
What will scare the shit out of anyone is knowing the fact they NEED to run, or blindly attack something, but never actually nail what it is or where it's coming from.

GHosts from SH4 are also a good example. Here's your safe rooms for half a game. After that, you get NONE. No pause or storage room is safe if you think you can dick around while you try to calm down. The more paranoid the player becomes, the easier he or she is to be scared by anything, even a carrot.

seeing a nigger walking towards me in the middle of the night

The thought of getting brain damage is my greatest fear.
I'd kill myself in a heartbeat.

pretty much anything from the original Imscared
game exits on its own, messing with files, confusing messages with sinister undertones
Being indirect with the horror is key, jumpscares are cheap and have no lasting impact

waking up one day and everything changes slightly, every day something changes and if you look back about a month ago then youll see that things are completely different. its a mindfuck

Memories are fucked man. Recently I was reading up on Proust, and how In Search of Lost Time is about involuntary memories. Now I'm considering reading it just for the topic of involuntary memories.

Make a simple run-n-hide from the monster game, but completely randomize what actually triggers the monster. Make the players hesitant to advance because it could mean that anything you do triggers the monster to appear.

This is a concept we wanted to deal with. Sort of like silent Hill 4. Everytime you wake up and go to work things are always different and changing. Obviously it would start very subtle and then by the end you'd just be waking up in hell.

Sure, fine, but you better have a good enough reason for it or it'll look like some random B movie. Its certainly unique, at least?

If you're going for that, maybe take a look at the layouts of some bigger stores like a Walmart? They tend to be homogeneous, and everyone's been to one, so players would be subconsciously familiar with it and that helps it feel like something is fucked.

The fear of the unknown - knowing something is haunting you, knowing something is fucking with you and it could take your life at any moment, but you have absolutely no idea what it looks like.

I agree, dread is much more scary than straight up horror e.g. gore or generic scary monster #521

G H O S T S
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Zombies have always been a fucking meme and ghosts are infinitely scarier. The only fucking game that realizes ghosts are fucking terrifying is Fatal Frame so it's not like you're making a game that derivative.

I honestly never understood the fascination with zombies. Fuck zombies and fuck the fact that they've saturated popular media.

>tfw you fear nothing thanks to that user breaking down that creatures just want to fuck, and that you should just fap like crazy to supernatural phenomena.

Never heard of it, what is it? There was some top-tier creepypasta I read once about not being able to trust memories/having new memories and not knowing where they came from but I can't remember what it was called.

This, but maybe not to the same degree. Give the monster patterns with some degree of randomness. Don't let people get so used to the monster that they do get past it easily, but don't let it just pop up in front of them randomly and instantly kill them.

an idea I've had for a survival horror type game is basically, you're in this massive unexplored land. You're flying this massive plane that can stay in the air for months at a time on a single tank of fuel, but you don't have enough food/resources up there to survive for that long.

So you have to use a wingsuit to leave your plane and explore the land below you, which is full of dense fog and all sorts of horrific giant creatures.

Once you get down to the ground level the game changes and you need to scrounge for resources while avoiding the lurking horrors. The worst part is, the only way to get back to your plane is to go deeper into these tunnel systems that will also be infested with horrors in order to fall out the other side on top of your plane again (time/space folding on itself)

Basically if you've ever read a book called the Night Land, something similar to that.

That sounds like a fun idea. I don't even know if I find them scary, but I always love seeing twisted fleshscapes in horror games, so if you can squeeze in a bit where everything in the grocery store is composed of twisted flesh making up the aisles (complete with products too) I'd buy it just for that alone. I'd also love to see some messed up Society, Videodrome or Naked Lunch style body horror, maybe of your colleagues fusing into the environment and becoming all deformed yet still recognisably human, preferably with them ending up as pitiable wretches than "big scary monsters".

GOOD FUCKING SOUND DESIGN

Check Darkwood for a perfect example

Dead pixels

Potentially interesting but your fucking explanation for getting back onto the plane is retarded. This idea just wouldn't work unless you were playing as Batman and had a fucking plane that could inexplicably pull you back up to it.

...

IMO, things that make a good horror game are:

-Great audio-design. The most important part of creating atmosphere, even more important than the graphics ever will be.

-Conservative use of gory elements and violence. This even more enhances the effect of those few times they may be used.

-Element of immersing the player. If s/he doesn't feel like being "there", but instead is observing a game -trying to "win", the result is failure. Thus things like minimal HUD and interesting locales / "puzzles" etc are important. Part of making the game immersive is also making the game's world interesting, make players want to explore them - even if it means exposing yourself for more horrors that lurk in the shadows.

-Similarily: playing with player's emotions and and understanding of the situation. One could summarize this as "mind-fuck". Giving fairly ordinary looking and feeling situations, maybe predictable looking event even, but somehow twisting and turning the whole situation upside down, boggling player's mind. This element truly is a work of art that not too many games get right, but what really makes good horror games shine through the rest. It can be little things, it can be pretty much anything, but you'll notice if its missing.

If you need good research material, play through the original Silent Hill games, 1 - 4. Jumpscares are practically nonexistent, with the disturbing imagery and haunting audio world creating atmosphere that won't leave your mind at peace even after you turn off the game.

In Search of Lost time is Marcel Proust's master work, 7 volumes long and of a length of over 4000 total pages. It's a long read, but the subject matter interests me.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time

Proust coined the term Involuntary Memory (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory) where small things in every day life bring up deep memories with no effort, rather than having to think of a specific memory. The memories may or may not be real, the main point is that you remember them suddenly through something mundane or familiar. That's the main theme in the novels, with Swann's Way being the most famous example.

Also, that creepy pasta sounds right up my alley.

open ocean at night

Don't make your monster anything recognisable. Especially don't make it humanoid. Don't let anyone get a good look at it either, the shark in Jaws was scary because you barely saw the fucking thing. Just let people know SOMETHING is out there and its not something they can pigeon hole as"zombie" or "ghost".

Honestly I would unironically just make a complete garbage mess of a model that looks like a bunch of random shit glitching out and clipping into each other, and then only let you see the outlines or silhouette of it. What the fuck is that thing? I don't even fucking know. 5 dogs, a tractor, a squid, 2 construction cranes, and a badly rigged person with horrible proportions.

I’ve never seen that setting before so it’s good you’re being unique. You should probably avoid any “deranged butcher” characters that people usually put around food settings though. Once your game becomes predictable in any way it makes it infinitely less scary.

Uncanny valley models.
Being alone till you're suddenly not.
A general atmosphere of despair.
Quick, jerky movements.
"I wouldn't worry about it."
Open spaces.
Sudden and uninterrupted silence for no real reason.

The feeling of being watched. The kind you get when you just know you saw something out of the corner of your eye duck out of sight.
Poorly lit areas. Not total darkness, but lit well enough that you can see, but only just and there are shadows being cast on every surface.

For really good horror, you want to instill a feeling of utter helplessness and pure dread. The player should feel that no matter what they do they can't escape. There is no hope for you here.

the T-Rex segments from the King Kong game are basically taken straight out of my nightmares. There is no place to run or hide, and if you do manage to lose it its going to kill the people you need to protect. Your only hope is that there is something smaller you can kill to distract it or to throw toothpicks at its ankles so it comes after you like a tidal wave of death.

Think of it as like the tunnels lead to portals that drop you into the sky far above your plane.

This could be expanded on further by having larger tunnels you could fly your wingsuit through, creating a risk/reward thing. It's more risky to try and fly through the tunnels down, but it's much faster and you don't risk being devoured by any of the creatures in the tunnels.

You could repeat this only larger levels as you progress through the game and get a small recon plane, and maybe late in the game your big plane runs out of fuel and you need to dive into a giant tunnel in order to refuel it.

In a sense, the type of horror you'd be trying to build is not only the monsters you face but by allowing the player to make choices that lead to them losing things, that's the most terrifying decision of all.

Please, for the love of FUCKING GOD OP, don't put in fucking notes or audio tapes for people to find. That shit is old and outdated. It's always complete fucking ass and I've never seen it work in a way I like in horror games

Loved ones dying unexpectedly
Also clowns.

Damn that sounds interesting. I'll try to find that pasta, but if I can't then for reference, from what I remember it involves a guy who's friend goes on trips studying jungle tribes and shit and comes back weirder each time, and starts bringing up memories that the narrator has no recollection of, and then he does, and then he starts having memories that he had never had before, etc.

I know it's a shitty description but you get the idea.

Don't you want to read notes of people going INSANE?

Terrifies me that I have to do around 6 exams sometime this year and I've forgotten the vast majority of it, not to mention, I've already spread several job applications and no one has called.

>Itchy...Tasty...

Original Resident Evil did it great, in form of residents' diaries and research reports.

OP here. No worries. We have no plans for that. The only voices we really want are monster sounds.

A long series of hallway lights going off one by one by one makes me shit bricks.

Also every time I hear footsteps and they aren't mine I freak out, especially if they lead to NOTHING.

I hope you find that pasta user. Worry not, the description has me hooked.

OP here this is something we plan on. Fusing parts where they shouldn't be and making strange amalgamations. One of our first ideas was eyeballs coming out of fingernails and stuff like that.

just wierd unexplained shit that never gets explained

like have a random second set of footsteps follow behind you for while

have some wierd guy hiding in the background who vanishes whenever you look at him

Searching as we speak, I actually want to read it again too.

That sounds pretty fucking rad. Just make sure it starts out cozy and then gets spooky. Even just working at night in a grocery store, where the lights make it so you can see clearly inside but outside the glass walls it's impossible to see, and you can't quite see the entrance because of the shelves but it's been quiet for hours who comes right at closing to buy groceries, and then suddenly you hear the doors slide and the rain outside for a moment over the suddenly loud BEE-DOO noise of the motion sensor, you stand up and call out "Hello? We're actually closing up...sorry", but when you walk over to the door there's no one there, just a puddle on the ground. The doors never reopened and there's no footsteps, just a single puddle.

And that's the story of how I said 'put me on morning shift or I quit'.

OP here again. Do you prefer combat or no combat? We've been debating and I think forces that you can't kill are much more intimidating but I'd like to get a consensus.

Fleshy shit growing on stuff still manages to make me uncomfortable.

Combat, but you have to learn that it actually does nothing and is probably more of a hindrance than anything

I know I'm gonna be a minority but I loved it in Shattered Memories. Rare items you can use to fend them off briefly and environmental objects you can use to grab so quick time or distance, but otherwise you're fucked if they get you for more than a moment.

No combat, never actually show "the monster". That kills all of the suspense.

Listen, if you do combat then don't make it painful to use like goddamn fucking Rule of Rose.

Personally I'd say very limited combat at the most but no combat is probably better. Combat requires you to engage with the monster, and every time you survive it becomes less scary. The most you should do is either distract it or drive it away momentarily, like blinding it with lights or something.

unsettling atmosphere. like other have said, good sound design is key in accomplishing this. no music, ambience here and there

You should include combat, but have it be ultimately useless against your foes. Something that only gets them to fuck off for a little bit.

Look into the aestics and creatures of ANNIHILATION

The movie was meh but if the characters and setting was used right it could make for an amazing game

That vidya is irrovakably headed the way of comics and movies, and perhaps the thoughtless masses of society as a whole.
Other hobbies are more fulfilling anyway, I suppose.

You wanna know what really scares me?

...el goblino...

Anything related to someone warning you not to look at something or that you're almost about to die. Especially on a psychological horror setting or something similar.
Like you wake up at night to your phone ringing. You pick up and it's a voice saying "Do not look at your wife sleeping next to you, get out of bed, grab your car keys and drive out of the city. This is your only chance to live. Go"

...

>something hunting you when you have no means of defending yourself
>classic dark corridors with diaries/logs that lead to a terrible, but not explicit realization

Found it. It's actually called "Esther" and it's on the Nosleep podcast, S10 E05. couldn't find a text version but their production quality is good.

The grifter

Very hard to pull off, but it'd be great if you could make the changes of the surroundings so gradual and seamless that the player doesn't notice until it's too late.
As in, you start exploring some house and little by little the corridors seem to get narrower and longer, the light dims and so on, and when the player finally notices that something is off and tries to backtrack he finds the way back is not the same at all, and the more he looks the more shit is different and the more frantic he gets. (this could be something that builds up from the very start of the game)

As for the monster or creature, I'd avoid direct exposure if possible. think slenderman in that you know something is stalking you, you can hear it sometimes and catch a glimpse, but unlike slender you never fully see it, it's only the sounds getting louder, the steps getting closer, the impression of a shadow next to yours on the wall, and perhaps for the "jumpscare" moment, if the player lingers too long and is caught, you could have it's hand or whatever come from outside the camera angle with one of those loud music breaks and you die.

I like mysterious, almost minimalist stuff that just kind of drops you in and leaves you to wonder what kind of shit might happen. Sad Satan did this really well. What other horror games do this?

Jumpscares and clichés get me every time

OP here. Seems like it would be better to do no combat. We're not super experienced programmers and this is a game we're making in our off time so adding combat mechanics seems like a bit of work that we could be putting towards better sound design and atmosphere etc.

Things that happen really quickly or suddenly, but have no sound to actually tip you off. The more subtle the better.

No combat is a meme unless you literally only have one monster. On the flip side, having monsters just tank damage because 'lol fighting is useless' is even dumber. Nothing takes me out of a horror game like awkwardly shuffling around monsters because I can't be assed to waste ammo on them.
Try letting players down monsters in a few shots but then also be stingy as hell with ammunition. Like, a double digit cap for the highest possible amount of ammo players could possibly accumulate through out the entire game or something.
You wanna shoot your way out? Fine, but you won't be seeing replacement bullets anytime soon and who knows whats around the next corner.

Make it unnerving. Jumpscares are good but use it once or twice at most. I think you should really invest in a good audio engineer. Good sound design is what makes an normal corridor an unnatural one. Put stuff that require people's attention to notice. Like the sound of a double footstep. Or something smiling out of a window but not in focus. Nothing more horrible than shoving the player with LOOK HERE SCARY MONSTER.

For me it's psychological scenarios such as those dreams where you want to open your eyes all the way but can't or you are behind a car but can drive straight. Anything that is chaotic in tone where the you has little control over what's going on is frightening.

But disarming scenarios alone rant enough to scare me. I need to feel secluded (similar to slender man), to scare me there would have to be a lot of effects on the side of the screen, blurs, static, surround sound quality noises. Screaming, wailing. The little things in the environment need to be fascinating so that you look at them for long periods of time and get the creeps. Stay away from making it cinematic.