:o I'd like to enlist the secrets to make a scary adventure SCARY. Graphic style, sfx style... everything. That's my dream and I've never done something scary ^^

Well, play Pleurghburg with a notepad right next to you so you can list scary stuff... because, atleast in my opinion, Pleurghburg was scary at some points.

Not to mention Gabe Knight at points, or Phantasmagoria, or The Dark Eye, or Harvester, or Black Dahlia, or Midnight Nowhere...

Here's a couple of tips, though: as Midnight Nowhere and Black Dahlia proved, however good the atmosphere is, if gameplay is bad (BD had too many gratoutious puzzles, Midnight Nowhere just had plain bad gameplay and puzzles) the game dies. Similarly, if the game is good and intriguing, like Harvester, BUT if, like Harvester, it has a bad ending, the WHOLE game ends up spoiled.

Spoiler

Harvester placed you in a very weird town with very weird characters and one hell of a backstory... and then at the end tells you it was all a virtual-reality dream made by people who wanted to "make" serial killers, and therefore placed them in the virtual and twisted town of Harvester to de-sensitize them utterly. I never replayed the game which up until then I was loving.

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Those game names smell commercial... And I own exactly 2 commercial adventure games, so...

Heh. Yeah, and quite old, to boot (except for Midnight Nowhere). But despite their forthcomings, they're all worth a try, AND worth a buy, even - except for Harvester and Midnight Nowhere. Those are worth trying, but not worth buying.

I said this recently in another post, but I can say it again:

I believe it was John Carpenter who once said that as soon as you show the monster the movie is over. This ties in pretty well with Rui's disappointment with Harvester (I haven't played the game myself).
You have to build tension throughout the game by dropping small pieces of the puzzle for the player to find. If you leave too many clues the player will know what to expect before it happens and the tension is gone. If you leave too few clues the player will feel unsatisfied. And never go for the "it was all a dream" ending!
The stakes have to be real and the monster has to be real, else the fear will not be real.

Example:
If you're making a game about a werewolf terrorizing a village you start with a mysterious death and rumors. (ACT I)Somebody saw something they can't explain and some people talk about a werewolf. The player is in a cottage in the woods at night to investigate a second murder together with two companions (one who believes in werewolves and one that does not is the classic setup). Earlier in the day he has found some footprints that looks like a wolf but are too big. Something is moving in the bushes outside. You can see two red eyes in the dark. Suddenly it comes running towards him. He closes himself inside the cottage as the creature pounds the door. Sudenly it's quiet and when you look outside nothing is there. (This starts ACT II)
The player ventures into the woods, following the tracks from last nights attacker. He comes upon the beast's lair complete with the bones of victims. The doubt about the existense of the monster are now removed. When in the lair the player is surprised by the werewolf returning and must hide. The animal passes close by and you can now show the player parts of the monster (a snout or a paw) just to give him some idea of what he's up against. The player makes a narrow escape and now has to prepare for the task of killing the beast. (Assembling a team/setting a trap/gathering ingredients for a potion/whatever) (And finally ACT III)
The player returns to the lair, things do not go according to plan (maybe one of the team's members are killed) suddenly he is face to face with the monster and kills it. The werewolf turns out to be the rich farmes that nobody liked or something like that. - The End

Very crude but broken down it's like this:
ACT I - Introduce the characters and the problem, gather evidence.
ACT II - Get the player in trouble. At the end all doubt about the existence of the monster is removed.
ACT III - Kill the monster.

Well... Something like that anyway...

Well, yes. I completely agree with this analisys but there's still something I've doubts.
I'd like to "put all togheter" the points that make a GAME scary. For example:
-right music in the right place
-sounds in the right place (of course, right sound)

but what I'm really asking is: what about grafics? what about what the player SEES?
I tought: render 3d scenes? and what about the character? or maybe collect photos and videos and put togheter with digitalized stuff? I dont know...

Quote from: YOke on Wed 02/02/2005 13:08:51
If you leave too few clues the player will feel unsatisfied. And never go for the "it was all a dream" ending!
The stakes have to be real and the monster has to be real, else the fear will not be real.

Oh, you can... if you have a very good reason.

Examples... oh well, those would be spoilers. Hm. How do I do this? Anyway, I can think of three examples, one game and two movies.

Very vague hint for the game:

Spoiler

It's from Konami and a bit dated now.

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Name of game:

Spoiler

The bad ending of the first Silent Hill.

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And the movies... oh, well. I guess I can't find a good way to give hints for them. Just look at them if you are pretty sure you know which two movies I mean - both are pretty well known.

Spoiler

Jacob's Ladder and to a lesser extend Devil's Advocate (the one with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves... could be named "The Devil's Own" in the US, though.

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.

As for the topic itself... rendered graphics look very sterile most of the time, unless they're professionally done. Unless you want to have a sort-of-sterile setting like a space station, I'd advise against it.

And yes, music is EXTREMELY important for the scaryness factor.

Well, the main emphasis of adventure games is story, so why not read a few horror books for ideas? You can get some from your local library, so you don't even have to spend money on research!

Or if you're not much for reading, rent or buy a few horror movies. You could invite a few mates round and quiz them about what bits of the movies they found scary.

Good luck with your game.

You should have a go at Stranger by Night By fivetrickpony (in the medium games list.)
That was pretty 'scary' and i really liked the way the graphics were done - it gave great atmosphere  :o

Yes, I saw scary films and read scary books, but i do not think that story is enough:
for example, try to see my now-coming game, Jack Trasheater. At first I wanted to make it a scary game, but graphics made it another thing.
So, I think story is nothing without environment.. but HOW to realize environement "strong" enough?

Well... 5 Days a Stranger and 7 Days a Skeptic had a great "claustrophobic" atmosphere - but Phantasmagoria, which you would think would need that kind of atmosphere too, being a haunted house and all, didn't; it went for the "supernatural-and-madness" atmosphere. The Dark Eye went for Poe, and built the game in the style of Poe.

I guess your questions about "environment" call all be boiled down to atmosphere, and there isn't ONE right atmosphere to be made - there are several, which may tie in with the story or even enhance it or lead it down unexpected paths.

Graphics, now... well, I think that, as long as they're consistent, it works. Enclosure had some VERY tense moments, and it's AGI.

Dark Fall also had some pretty tense moments. In the case of that particular one, the atmosphere was of intense haunting and lurking evil. Overall, it did wonders. Harvester did too, if we come to that. Harvester failed in the ending ALONE. The rest I loved (though it's not considered a very good game at all, it seems).

One thing I've noticed with games that had scary graphics that actually worked.

It's generally pretty standard graphics except there's SOMETHING that's a little off.

For instance Silent Hill was just a LITTLE too dark.  Not dark enough so it couldn't be played, but a bit darker than it would probably be, which made it unsettling.

Or the previously mentioned 'Stranger' AGS game, the sprites were rather standard looking, put against backgrounds that although you could understand what they were, were just really blurry.  Which gave a very unsettling feel about it.

'Dark Eye' had characters be photographed marionettes, which gave them many possible poses, but left them all very stiff and expressionless, which constantly creeped me out.

but I think above all, writing makes scary games far scarier than and graphics could.  Good writing can salvage sub-par graphics.  Superb graphics can't save a bad script.

Something that a lot of "scary" movies seem to have in them is big tension builders that turn out to be a false alarm. This is followed shortly after by a sudden scare (usually accompanied by a loud, sharp, shrill noise). This sort of tactic gets the viewer on edge, lets them calm down a touch (though they're still expecting something if they're a veteran horror viewer) and then hits them with the scare when their guard's down.

It's a tactic rarely used in games, from what I've seen.

Quote from: Ozwalled on Wed 02/02/2005 18:10:32
Something that a lot of "scary" movies seem to have in them is big tension builders that turn out to be a false alarm. This is followed shortly after by a sudden scare (usually accompanied by a loud, sharp, shrill noise). This sort of tactic gets the viewer on edge, lets them calm down a touch (though they're still expecting something if they're a veteran horror viewer) and then hits them with the scare when their guard's down.

It's a tactic rarely used in games, from what I've seen.

Well, this really depends on how you want to scare people. If you want to just have a "shock" scare (sudden noise, makes you jump, heart rate increases, etc) then this is fine.

But if you want to REALLY scare someone (can't be alone, turn on every light in the house, can't sleep clowns will eat me, etc) you really have to depend on atmosphere and tension.  The master of this is, was, and will always be Edgar Allen Poe, and his close second is Hitchcock. Both of them were absolutely brilliant and their stories terrifying. Yay!

Here are my thoughts about this.

I think it's very hard to do effective 'scary effects' of the first type. I think you should have a sort of action game, where the player has not much time to think, just time to ACT. In those situations, 'scary effects' like sudden noises, flashes, and all-that-stuff can be useful.
BUT I think in adventure games like ags ones this cant be done - not with the standard shape of the games. So I suppose that an adventure game is just a Poe book:
I gave a Poe book to my girlfriend as a gift. She likes scary story.
I also note that adventures descend by Interactive Fiction,  so our adventures are the 'electronical' evolution of Poe's novels!

Conclusion: I think there are many small things to do something scary, and as said in the post before, something that makes me NOT to turn off light, to run quickly in the dark walkway in my house (sounds silly)... This can be only caused by the sensation given by the Game. And this sensation is not only gfx or sfx, but all atmosphere (and not 'environment' as I said) togheter. The question is... HOW render ATMOSPHERE?

HOW to make and Adventure Game without action sequences that scary??

QuoteHOW to make and Adventure Game without action sequences that scary??

You already asked that, everyone who's posted has tried to answer it. It's not easy to figure out, since it's actually an emotional response, and it's impossible to know for sure what triggers it, unless you really know your way in the field, like King, and Poe, and Barker. Note how I only say writers - maybe that means that story is chief. HOW to make the story an adventure game requires careful planning. What sort of planning? It depends.

...I could go on, but I think I'm re-stating points.

IMO, some rules for scary games:
*Let some exciting/horrible events not happen in the beginning of the game. Lots of example can be given about it.

Spoiler

In the first level of 5 Days A Stranger (and lots of other horror games, books, movies etc.) , you only meet the characters and get informed about the story in the game. It makes the player to feel him/her inside the game and sympathize the player character. Then the horrible events happen and you get scaried.

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*Let the player not informed about the horrible event which will happen soon.
You are walking in a dark street, alone. You see some bloodprints beside a corner, then hear screams from there. Now you can easily imagine there's "something" beside the corner; and whatever you see there, it never frightens you.(unless the street is in the real life :)Ã,  ) (maybe it attacks you suddenly after a few minutes when you get relaxed, but it doesn't really scare the player).

*Make the player feel he/she is defenceless. It's too hard to scare the player if s/he got a shotgun, and could kill the enemies in the game. So the better thing to do is not to give the player any weapon (except for the ending of the game.)

*Surprise the player.
The most scaring element of Lost In The Nightmare (err, the game which I'm working on it  though lots of people found it horrible, so guess you should play its demo for an example to the scary games) is to surprise the player.

Spoiler

Especially the toilet of the alternate version of the hotel, after you found your police ID. Something interesting happens after you read the envelope in the sink, when you raise your head to the mirror.
And after you found the lost campers "hanged", you try to open the door behind you. But it's locked, so the player thinks s/he has forgotten to do something in the previous screen. But when the player turns back...

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Quote from: YOke on Wed 02/02/2005 13:08:51
I believe it was John Carpenter who once said that as soon as you show the monster the movie is over.

Mostly true, but was anyone else freaked out by the movie Signs? I sure was, and you saw the monster in that within the first 5 minutes (and much clearer about halfway through the movie... ). I was still freaked out right til the end because of the sheer atmosphere. It was just like Wogoat said, very normal settings that just got to you because there was -something- a little off about the whole thing. I think nothing is scarier and greater at creating tension that "unsettling". You have to put the player in a position where they KNOW something's up (and if they're playing a horror game, they'll generally know anyway... but just bring it home), but they have to use their imagination at the start.

As far as sounds, it is hard to give tips because you really just need a good grasp on horror to know what to do. There are so many different tactics, but I can tell you that I was quite freaked out playing 5 Days a Stranger by myself, even during the day-time because of the light whispering you could hear in the hallway. My personal opinion is to make most rooms silent, with maybe the places of particular danger having something like that; something quiet, but strange and threatening. Something that shouldn't be there. Give objects sound effects though. It sounds silly, but the sound of pushing a box or closing a door and getting a really genuine, non-quiet sound can be very effective in an otherwise quiet room.

As for graphics... well, I personally think simple but realistic is best (though Pleurghburg did it really well with simple yet ... slightly cartoonish graphics).

Sounds, that is one of the keys to building tension in terms of horror in the gaming (and movie) world. Now this is one of the more difficult things to pull off well. You must use sounds that people relate to..something that is similar to what they would hear on a daily basis if the room was quiet and they listened...also, to amplify the tension, apply those sounds to the horror aspect. For example, I will use Signs since it was addressed earlier...the aliens movement...you did not see them, but you could hear them..their footsteps, how they moved seemed hurried rushed, desperate to find someone or something. you have to make the horror seem believable, even if it clearly is not. Pull the person in with sound, and realistic aspects taking a unrealistic twist. I am probably not making much sense..but it's early in the morning..need caffiene