ideas for horror games (mapping/lighting/gameplay)

[The Urchin]

So I did some more thinking on the subject and have a few more notes for you.  One of the main things is that the game doesn't really need to be "scary" to the player, because lets face it most people won't get scarred by a game unless they are young and that's not really the age range for most horror games.  The important thing is that you portray that the pcs are in a situation that would be frightening in real life.  Let's look at George Romano for a minute.  Possibly the best horror movie director ever.  Where his movies scary though?  Not in the slightest.  BUT he portrays events that in real live would scare the shit out of anyone.  Same with newer horror movies, stuff like saw or resident evil.  Not really scary but definitely a scary situation.  Your main concentration should be on graphics, setting, and audio.  So, say you have a typical town tileset.  To make it more horror esque we would want to first revise the graphics to be dirty, beaten down, destroyed, ect.  Cracks and holes in walls.  Overgrown plants.  And in my opinion gore.  Without it you are left with basically nothing more then a suspense thriller.  Let me explain the definition of gore here, I'm not necessarily talking about loads of blood and guts(but kinda), but things like a raw fleshy looks to the enemy, visible muscle, body distortion and evolution, i hope you understand what I'm getting at.  Kinda like your typical zombie look.  Now for your setting, darkness will always portray a more horror look.  Say you have a room with wires you need to splice to say open a door.  The player would have to turn off the circuit breaker then splice the wires in the completely pitch black room.  OR a second option would be that they could also find a flash light to make it easier.  Outside areas with thick ground fogs work nice in horror.  Notice I said ground fogs, not normal ones.  This would probably require a little scripting but say make the fogs only overlap tiles marked with a certain terrain tag.  Now as for audio there are several ways to take it.  The BGMs are very open, their is many ways to make horror music.  From slow to fast from bass to piano.  So I really can't make many suggestion on the subject it's more of how the designer thinks the music would match the setting.  BGSs are also game dependent and more so map specific dependent.  Say your inside an old house.  The floor would probably squeak.  Maybe you have zombies trying to get in so groans, thuds, hammering, maybe a breaking window here and their.  Or if you have a chain saw murdered then a distant chain saw would probably do well.

 

[CERU]

I cannot stress enough that you should not place things for no reason. Especially gore. If you place too much gore in your game the player will be desensitized to the gore within your game. Allow gore to be a shock for the player by using it carefully and sparingly. There are also tricks you can use to display gore, meaning that the gore may at first be hidden in some way but appear to the player in a special manner.

It is important to choose everything carefully.

If there's writing in blood on the wall you have to think who wrote it. What was their intention. Where did the blood come from.

It's important to think carefully because your project will reach a higher level of quality.

It's also important to carefully chose your storyline. Horror games have great potential for interesting storylines. Try to be original!

 

[Lestat.br]

If you want your game to be scary, you need to be careful with the tilesets.

RTP Tilesets won't scare anyone. I have a technique of creating tilesets, its kinda weird, but it works. Search Images on google that show what you are looking for and do a bit of modification, ripping and resizing and add to the tileset. The walls, the floors, the chairs, whatever. It will look a bit crappy somehow, but realistic, and not RTP-ish. It's essential to do variations of the tiles. If it looks repetitive, it will call the players attention too much about this, also it will look too bad. Also, a basic resource is dynamic lights, but little light, because the realistic tileset with light variants, will look even more realistic, and scarier. Also, try making contrasts. Like, in a living room, maybe some spider webs, or whatever, nothing too shocking. And then, in the underground, much blood and bones. Because blood everywhere, bones everywhere and dead bodies in each corner, will finish off your possibilities to scare the player.

I hope I helped

 

[CERU]

If you want your game to be scary, you need to be careful with the tilesets.

RTP Tilesets won't scare anyone. I have a technique of creating tilesets, its kinda weird, but it works. Search Images on google that show what you are looking for and do a bit of modification, ripping and resizing and add to the tileset. The walls, the floors, the chairs, whatever. It will look a bit crappy somehow, but realistic, and not RTP-ish. It's essential to do variations of the tiles. If it looks repetitive, it will call the players attention too much about this, also it will look too bad. Also, a basic resource is dynamic lights, but little light, because the realistic tileset with light variants, will look even more realistic, and scarier. Also, try making contrasts. Like, in a living room, maybe some spider webs, or whatever, nothing too shocking. And then, in the underground, much blood and bones. Because blood everywhere, bones everywhere and dead bodies in each corner, will finish off your possibilities to scare the player.

I hope I helped

If you have photoshop you can simply edit RTP styled tilesets to make them better suit your project ...

 

[The Urchin]

I cannot stress enough that you should not place things for no reason. Especially gore. If you place too much gore in your game the player will be desensitized to the gore within your game. Allow gore to be a shock for the player by using it carefully and sparingly. There are also tricks you can use to display gore, meaning that the gore may at first be hidden in some way but appear to the player in a special manner.

It is important to choose everything carefully.

If there's writing in blood on the wall you have to think who wrote it. What was their intention. Where did the blood come from.

It's important to think carefully because your project will reach a higher level of quality.

It's also important to carefully chose your storyline. Horror games have great potential for interesting storylines. Try to be original!

So you can stop nay saying everything I say.  You aren't really even in to horror, your into new age "horror" (which in reality is generally suspense thrillers, ugh!)  If you notice I'm discussing real horror here.  Your comment about blood writing on the wall? Who said anything about blood writing on a wall?  How simplistic, unoriginal, and Scooby Doo.  Honestlly I haven't heard many original things come from your side just repeating what everyone else said in different terms.  (I alone had already covered all your good points along with many others.  And I will beg to differ with your bad ideas because they ruin the nostalgia of the good old fashioned horror genre.)  So while you may think one thing others don't, mainly the whole male race who wants to shot a zombies brains all over the wall.

Look, all I'm trying to say is don't try and conflict with others opinions because some people would also conflict yours.  Instead of specifically picking out a comment because you don't agree and being like "WRONG WRONG WRONG!" how about you try "I personally like games with less gore, but that's just me."

Because how can you say a good old fashioned horror show is no good?  The world deserves mass gore in all sorts of media, and they obviously want it if they would watch movies like Hostel(not a horror, but not the point) or Saw.  Those movies blew up. 

 

[second_crimson]

Okay, I don't see where CERU said that gore was bad. CERU said that gore shouldn't be everywhere if it carries no purpose. The same is true for nearly everything in horror games, or games in general. If it doesn't have a purpose, why is it there?

You cite two gory horror franchises, Saw and Hostel. But the gore in there HAD a purpose. It helped set atmosphere, mood, further the story, etc. Neither film just had blood on the wall and didn't explain it or have a reason for it. Neither game had purposeless violence.

Oh, and good job stereotyping the male gender and assaulting someone else's taste.

 

[CERU]

Let me clarify. Gore is fine. I don't mind gore. But I wanted to make the point that pointless gore is pointless.

I don't dislike gore. In fact, I really wish they would have released Resident Evil 1.5 because the gore actually worked to create an intense atmosphere for the game.

But as for shooting a zombie on the wall thats fine. But you also have to think about how much power you are going to give your player. If your player feels what it faces is easy to take on, or not much of a threat, he is not going to be scared. So carefully balance the strength and or number of your enemies with the firepower or melee weapons you give him. If you have a game where there are many many zombies then increase the number of zombies to a number that makes it seem like you can't take them all on, but you can. Make them hungrier. Or you can take the classic survival horror approach, and scatter few ammunitions around but only place a few zombies in each room so your player can dodge the zombies. Maybe make them not quite so hungry in this situation. Or make them hungrier for an extra challenge.

It's all up to you, the game maker, but I do urge you to think of things carefully.

And there's no reason to bicker over silly things like these. Just because my opinions differ from yours, and I state my opinions strongly, doesn't mean that they're not just opinions and a game maker can take whoever's advice they want to, or no one's at all.

 

[The Urchin]

Let me clarify. Gore is fine. I don't mind gore. But I wanted to make the point that pointless gore is pointless.

I don't dislike gore. In fact, I really wish they would have released Resident Evil 1.5 because the gore actually worked to create an intense atmosphere for the game.

But as for shooting a zombie on the wall thats fine. But you also have to think about how much power you are going to give your player. If your player feels what it faces is easy to take on, or not much of a threat, he is not going to be scared. So carefully balance the strength and or number of your enemies with the firepower or melee weapons you give him. If you have a game where there are many many zombies then increase the number of zombies to a number that makes it seem like you can't take them all on, but you can. Make them hungrier. Or you can take the classic survival horror approach, and scatter few ammunitions around but only place a few zombies in each room so your player can dodge the zombies. Maybe make them not quite so hungry in this situation. Or make them hungrier for an extra challenge.

It's all up to you, the game maker, but I do urge you to think of things carefully.

And there's no reason to bicker over silly things like these. Just because my opinions differ from yours, and I state my opinions strongly, doesn't mean that they're not just opinions and a game maker can take whoever's advice they want to, or no one's at all.

It's more the fact that whenever I made a comment referring to gore you automatically said "don't use pointless gore" as if that was what I'm saying.  If you read my post at least a little I explained my meaning of using gore and how to incorporate it, and it is nothing how you seem to think it is.  Otherwise you wouldn't have said anything.  (and if you noticed I completely ignored your first post, only finally reacting upon your second reply to my posts.)

I'm not bickering just trying to tell you I don't appreciate it. 

And as for hostel and saw having a reason for gore, well duh, what do you think I'm talking about?  There is a point to mass gore, and from what we were discussing in the first few posts the style of game the original poster is thinking of is a zombie killer game.  Where you in fact are strong enough to fight off zombies, the thing that makes it a horror is the zombies.  It could be daylight in the desert and it would work. (ie. Resident Evil 3[awesome movie by the way])

HORROR MOVIES/GAMES DO NOT NEED TO BE SCARY!!!!

The point of horror is in fact just that, horror, gruesome, blah blah.  While you think horror means scary it doesn't.  That would be the whole reason you have;
A)Horror movies
B)Scary movies
Just because they co-relate doesn't mean they are the same thing.

So basically your talking about a completelly different type of game Ceru, and I'm not trying to say your wrong.  But just your thinking of a different style of game. (That I honestly don't enjoy obviously>_>) 

As far as your game goes Ceru, I wouldn't consider it a horror what so ever.  Scary, i guess, but not really.  Your game was a suspense thriller, like I've pointed out in many posts, not a horror game.  Not that it's not a good game because it seems like many people enjoyed it.

Basically I believe your generalizing horror to a huge scale when it should be broken down into different categories.  Or more so that horror is one of these categories, the categories coming down from the genre that I can only think of the term "Dark Fiction".  Growing up in around 80s horror and b films my whole life has led me to complex labeling of dark fiction, because you can't just say horror for around 50 different types of stories/movies/games.  Where devil's rejects and night of the living dead are horror.  Stuff like Cerepulum and fatal frame are suspense thrillers.  Likewise, movies like The Crow would be more like dark drama.  But the way you explain horror would include movies like The Crow, which is not a horror.

Just wanted to explain my thought process so you understand where I'm coming from.

I have not assaulted anyones opinions, just explained my own and got assaulted for mine.  And crimson learn to take a joke, humor makes the world a better place.  That includes the use of stereotypes.

 

[CERU]

You don't appreciate that I disagree with you? I'm allowed to have my opinions. It's my prerogative .

The point of horror is to be scary. Scary is not a genre, but horror is. Horror movies are intended to be scary. What horror means: "an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear: to shrink back from a mutilated corpse in horror." Oh. Gore and horror can go hand in hand. But they don't have to. Japanese horror does not rely on gore as heavily, but it is still horror.

Btw, f.y.i. games like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, SIREN, Clock Tower, Haunting Ground, etc etc etc all belong to a genre called "survival horror."

And please, don't try to tell me what my game is. It's survival horror.

Btw, when did I assault you?

 

[saikyo765]

Thanks for all the ideas and comments guys.
I'm definately liking what I'm hearing.
Especially the "limited supplies" and such.
Also when you leave your imagination to make yourself scared. That makes me want to do more enemies then just zombies...
I'm going to try my hardest to make it as scary as it can be.
You guys inspired to really work on this.

 

[CERU]

Thanks for all the ideas and comments guys.
I'm definately liking what I'm hearing.
Especially the "limited supplies" and such.
Also when you leave your imagination to make yourself scared. That makes me want to do more enemies then just zombies...
I'm going to try my hardest to make it as scary as it can be.
You guys inspired to really work on this.

No problem.

Limited supplies is scary, but make sure that you give the player just enough supplies to survive, but not enough to take down every single enemy. It's an art, really.

And YES! About the imagination part. One of the best examples of this is in Resident Evil 2 when you learn something else is lurking in the police department, you hear its roar, you know its out there, but you don't see it until much later! So basically, try leaving clues that things are out there, unseen. Like some people have suggested, footsteps, or even leaving gore can make you wonder who did it.

Whether you follow through with showing the creature/person/etc is up to you, but I think it will leave players with a feeling that something was lacking if you don't reveal it. No matter what you reveal, however, it's probably not going to live up to the scare that the player originally felt when found out something was out there, because we're always more scared of what we don't know.

 

[saikyo765]

Thanks for all the ideas and comments guys.
I'm definately liking what I'm hearing.
Especially the "limited supplies" and such.
Also when you leave your imagination to make yourself scared. That makes me want to do more enemies then just zombies...
I'm going to try my hardest to make it as scary as it can be.
You guys inspired to really work on this.

No problem.

Limited supplies is scary, but make sure that you give the player just enough supplies to survive, but not enough to take down every single enemy. It's an art, really.

And YES! About the imagination part. One of the best examples of this is in Resident Evil 2 when you learn something else is lurking in the police department, you hear its roar, you know its out there, but you don't see it until much later! So basically, try leaving clues that things are out there, unseen. Like some people have suggested, footsteps, or even leaving gore can make you wonder who did it.

Whether you follow through with showing the creature/person/etc is up to you, but I think it will leave players with a feeling that something was lacking if you don't reveal it. No matter what you reveal, however, it's probably not going to live up to the scare that the player originally felt when found out something was out there, because we're always more scared of what we don't know.

Agreed.
A few more questions.
Do you think larger character sprites could help make the atmosphere a little better? (+larger chipset)
Maybe I'll take some realistic textures for the chipset..
I want to make each map have its own details... almost NO repeated objects/items...well I know there would have to be the same items for similar interiors, but still.

 

[CERU]

It's up to you to change the characters, but remember that large characters require larger chipsets.

I suggest using photoshop (if you have it) to add patter overlays to your chipset (but make sure the pattern repeats properly when placed over tiles and walls! You can also change the color of chipsets, or make them darker, its all up to you.

Do you mean each map as in each room or as in each area?

 

[SPN]

Most of the good points, while disputed over, have already been made, so I'll pop in to give a simple example of what I think could make for a pretty intense scene.

Classic mansion setting.  Classic group of dudes who experiemented on various strange things, and conveniently disappeared recently.  As you make your way through the ground floor, nothing is happening.  Dead silence...or is it? (imagination taking control) Maybe it's your mind just playing tricks on you, but you start hearing small noises, seeing little things here and there, and nervously pass it off as nothing more than mind tricks.  While exploring more of the ground floor (as most of the doors are strangely locked/barred) you find a room with a torn journal page.  It's fragmented due to deterioration and such (very little information revealed), but apparently some kind of breakthrough was made, and that's about all you find out at this point.  You take the old key on the table.  From this point on, you start hearing louder, more prominant noises every so often (low growls from downstairs, footsteps from upstairs).

You come across a long hallway with a sketchy wooden floor.  Your flashlight doesn't quite make it all the way down, and in the darkness, you can almost see a figure. (using the unknown) Just standing completely still, facing towards you.  You start to venture forward to check it out (completely classic, I'll explain later) when the weak floorboards give way and you find yourself in a dingy basement room.  Boxes line the walls with rotten food which you don't even--ACK.  What the heck was that?  A faint scratching noise can be heard from the other side of the locked door.  The noise is accompanied by a heavy breathing sound that practically wets your pants right there.  The noises stop, and dead silence returns.

As your options dwindle, you aim your flashlight up to the hole that you fell through...just as the batteries die on you.  As the light quickly dissipates, you could've sworn that you saw that figure peering down into the hole at you, and you become frantic.  In the almost pitch black, you find the door, and try the old key that you found.  It works, and you enter into a large room with small piles of boxes here and there (you wouldn't be able to see enough to get this good of a description, mind you).

Here's the fun part.  You can't see squat, and there's something in the room with you.  You have to make your way through the large room to the door leading upstairs back to the main floor.  Turn up your volume and use your ears.  Navigate the room, and when you hear the heavy breathing get louder, soil your pants and run in the other direction.

Will you try to reach the door leading back upstairs, or will you daringly try to lure the creature into the room you were in and lock it in?  If you pull that off, could it climb out of the room back onto the main floor?  You'll have to keep exploring and find out.

Explanation of the classic: In just about every horror/scary movie, the protagonists are so freaking curious that they'll go anywhere just to find out what's going on.  From the old, "Hey, let's check out the basement...my flashlight probably has a few minutes of light left and I could've sworn I heard noises down there!" to the guy actually returning to the dang camp in Cabin Fever.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy post, my mind just gets carried away sometimes with ideas I could never make a game out of. D:

Edit: About the figure at the end of the hallway part...did anyone else find it downright freaky in "1408" when the man in the other building was just staring at the guy in the darkness?  I don't know, but that creeped me out.

 

[shiroun]

-Small protagonist cast.  I'd say no more than 3 or 4 people.  It'll make the game harder and create the correct atmosphere.  You can't really have a horror movie with like 20 people mobbing together.  How the hell are you supposed to fear anything or anybody with like 20 uber zombie killing machines?

I believe House of the Dead had like 17 Protagnostic, uber killing machines. They killed them off in various ways, such as... limbs cut off, chainsaw cut body, Axe through body, Genitals shot, then eaten (That was funny shit, he was like leaning over like "AUGH", and the girl touched him, and he started getting more pain from getting excited, and he crippled)

 

[saikyo765]

Was thinking what about showin flash movies in RMXP. doing cutscenes in flash.
What do you think?

 

[Mikee]

You can easily make it scary, or at least creepy, using rpg maker.  A suggestion is creating a sense of abandonment, or loneliness.  Kill off your other characters, or get them lost earlier in the game.  When you're with other people, you have more courage, when you're alone, you're helpless.

 

[The Urchin]

-Small protagonist cast.  I'd say no more than 3 or 4 people.  It'll make the game harder and create the correct atmosphere.  You can't really have a horror movie with like 20 people mobbing together.  How the hell are you supposed to fear anything or anybody with like 20 uber zombie killing machines?

I believe House of the Dead had like 17 Protagnostic, uber killing machines. They killed them off in various ways, such as... limbs cut off, chainsaw cut body, Axe through body, Genitals shot, then eaten (That was funny shit, he was like leaning over like "AUGH", and the girl touched him, and he started getting more pain from getting excited, and he crippled)

Huh?  Maybe the movie?  I remember like 2 or 3 in each game.  Never saw the movie, yuck, cheesy video game knock offs.