Hints to do a *really* scary adventure game...

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Kinoko, don't forget that within the first few minutes, what you saw was something very blurry and indistinct. The monster wasn't shown at all, we just got a glimpse. And THAT sure is creept as hell! Then, later on, we saw the footage in the video. THEN we saw the monster... and indeed, the movie SHOULD have ended there, but somehow it didn't. I think the actors and directors managed to place the tension in Mel Gibson's character's family and life and generally in our own sphere, other than the "there's-a-big-alien-running-around" sphere. Which is an important lesson - it's much more creepy if, as Stephen King (my favourite author) always does, the center of the tension is the characters. The prom ball in Carrie is what it is mostly because of what we know of the characters, and the great injustice we've seen commited, and the things that happen to the innocent.

[SSH]

That's the thing, the great directors let your imagination do the work of scraing you. For example, Psycho doesn't have any gore in it. Watch the shower attack sequence carefully and you'll realise that you never see a knife anywhere near Janet Leigh. You see a knife, you see her scream, you see blood in the plughole, but you don't actaully see any violence. Not only is this more scary, but also saves money in the make-up and SFX budget

[Kinoko]

I totally think Signs was creepy, and I never agreed with people who bagged the movie because you saw the alien early (sure it was in footage, but you did see it clear as day, and they replayed it to make sure). I think it worked well because you knew what the "monster" was, but not exactly what the whole deal was. There was still a lot of mystery, but because the story focussed on the characters, one solitary family, and only took place where they were, the claustrophobic feel of the film carried it the whole way. I really, REALLY felt like I'd come close to feeling like I was in that situation, instead of just... watching a horror movie.

Which... is another great point. Claustrophobia is an excellent tool in horror, particularly for those of us that suffer from it in real life too ^_^ Signs worked for me as well because of it focussing on so few characters and following their movements only, which is where a lot of horror movies lose me.

Instead of constantly talkin g about Signs though, let me introduce another great horror (-ish) film, Langoliers. A -time limit- is a really, really great tool in a horror movie, and it would be even greater in a game. Not necessarily an actual time limit, but include the feeling of one. Langoliers did that well, on top of introducing a strange situation with only an isolated group of characters and a "monster" you knew nothing about apart from a sound in the background that got louder and louder (aaand a psychic girl who kept saying they were coming). Now I'm on the topic of that movie, it's also great to show the gradual maddening of a character, becoming more and more of a loose cannon and a danger.

I think overall the most important point is just having one or two things that don't make sense, that are just a bit off.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

And when I add to Kinoko's point by saying that The Langoliers is Stephen King's brainchild, like Storm of the Century and Rose Madder and The Shining, I think we can safely say that horror is most effective when done, as he does, with the characters in mind. Make 'em real, or the player/reader/viewer won't even care for them. Where's the horror then?

[Pelican]

I have to agree, that once you see the 'monster', the horror movie is over (at least in the case of Jeepers CreepersÃ,  : ). But I think brief glimpses of it are a good tool. Just so brief that you're not even sure you saw it. Alien is a good example - you didn't see the alien much, but it was still darn scary!

There's a game for the gamecube called Eternal Darkness, which had some good ideas. It had a sanity bar, and when this was low it would affect the surroundings. Statues turning to watch her movements, sound of banging on doors, and occassionally blood running down the walls.

Still, sounds are definitely the best tool. The first ever time I played Resident Evil, I was seriously creeped out whenever I heard the shuffling footsteps of a zombie, or the clicking of claws of zombie dogs...

However, both the games I refer to are action/adventures, so most of the scares come from baddies appearing abruptly. For an adventure game I would suggest a more subtle approach. Something like, you look in a mirror and see something standing behind you, but when you look theres nothing there, and when you turn back, there's nothing in the mirror. Or very faint sounds of footsteps. The problem is, unless the character can be killed, a lot of the fear is taken out of it. You will quite happily explore the haunted mansion, if you believe you are invulnerable. I guess the challenge is to make the player feel like they are in danger, without resorting to action sequences. And at the moment, I'm stumped!Ã,  :

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Pelican, that idea for sanity for that game is brilliant! Dark Eye did something similar - in the Berenice episode, when Berenice must rush to take her medicine, the rooms get all distorted and screwy. And Egeas (sp?) starts... seeing things.

People just don't often do this - play with the perpspective. Especially in 1st person adventures, like Dark Eye, this is a VERY powerful tool.

[Pelican]

Yeah, it was really neat, when the screen would start to slant as the sanity went down. And occassionally baddies would appear and overcome the character, and then disappear. On one occassion, I cast a spell with low sanity, and my character literally blew up, and then flashed back to normal. And there were one or two funny ones, where it would seem like the tvs volume was turning down. Trying to involve you, by suggesting you were losing your sanity too.  :

[Ozwalled]

Something I always wanted to do in a psychological-style horror game or movie was to use optical illusions on screen to mess with the player/ viewer.

AN EXAMPLE:
Presenting black and white, roatating spirals for a while then having the player enter a room that looks distorted due to the image aftereffect... but THEN having them come to the conclusion that there's absolutly NOTHING going on with the room at all. This would open the door for using actual graphical manipulations that are distortions later. All of this would be in the attempt to get a "WTF? Am I seeing things?" kind of reaction from the player. Of course, this might work best with the player character's descent in madness or whatever.

It's just a thought.

[Wogoat]

Ah, somebody brought up Jeepers Creepers, makes a great example.
The movie was so creepy through the first two thrids.  Granted, about a third through you get the extremley trite psychic lady giving cryptic warnings but I was willing to overlook that because the suspense was building up so thick you could eat it with chopsticks.
All of the scariness of that movie was build around the question: "What is it?"

When that is what's scary, as soon as you find out what IT is, nine times out of ten the scare is over.  Unless the concept of what it is is just as creepy as not knowing, but don't count on that.

That's why when you finally find out, 'oh, it's just some generic demon thing' it's a dissapointment.  For 2 reasons.
1) There's no more 'what is it' since you know.
2) And the IT, is...  well...  lame.  It had no backstory, it was horribly generic looking, and had no real motivation.  It's just something that kills you.  Big whoop.

The reason Signs was still creepy even after you see IT is because that's not what the scariness was built around.  You know from the beginning that they're aliens, what's so scary is the clostrophobic atmospehere.  And you already know somethings there, you know what it is, you just don't know exactly where.  And then when you know where it is at the climax, it's an entireley different scary becuase the kid is in danger.

Basically, once you show the monster, you can't depend on the monster to be what's scary, you have to use something else.  Because the audience is immediatley desesitized to the monster once they see it.

Hope I'm not rambling too much.

[DoorKnobHandle]

What I think is one of the best ways to go if you want to scare the player is
to introduce your evil "it" in a good way.

Let's take the movie "The Ring" (which was way scarier than "Signs" in my
opinion): The evil "it" always introduces itself by switching tv screens next to the
victim to this black/white noise. In the first victims case you learn that
and then you don't even know that this other guy is going to be the next victim
but as suddenly that tv switches to the noise next to him, it is really scary.

Also, always add music to situations where the "it" appears, like in 5 Days A
Stranger, where, before you can actually see the evil "it", this high violin tune
goes like a siren... That's an awesome example.

[HillBilly]

One thing that can make a game scary is dead bodies appering and disapearing. OooOooOo. Also, children toys is really fucking scary. I'm serious about this. I always find it more scary to find a abonded, silent old children's room than anything.

Some other stuff that's scary/good for the mood:

*Finding traces of blood in diffrent rooms. This indicates that the person attacked might still be alive, and can build up many suprises.

*If you're going for a bit unrealistic freaky horror, I would recommend something like this:

You're in a dark basement(or somewhere else dark/scary), with wind houling and the like. Suddenly, you encounter a door. When you open the door, you find a childrens room, with "music box" music, playing a slow happy song. See?! freaky.

*I find it more scarier when 3/4 of the game is mostly mystery(People disapearing, blood trace etc. Possibly just 1-2 dead bodies to begin with.) than just a bunch of people dying one by one. Then, on the last part, the dead bodies keep flowing.

That's all I can think of now.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I'd just like to point out that most suggestions of Hillbilliy's deal with memories. That is a VERY POWERFUL tool. As I recall, Dark Fall and Amber: Journeys Beyond relied on such things EXCLUSIVELY to achieve the creepy factor. It worked, because if well done it brings us much closer to the characters.

[Eggie]

I'd just like to say. I thiught the scene in Signs with the news story and birthday party videotape was pure cinematic genius. Completely saved an otherwise so-so film for me.

[Stalker]

The problem is, unless the character can be killed, a lot of the fear is taken out of it. You will quite happily explore the haunted mansion, if you believe you are invulnerable. I guess the challenge is to make the player feel like they are in danger, without resorting to action sequences. And at the moment, I'm stumped!Ã,  :

Exactly. I thought Dark Fall was really scary at first, for example...

Spoiler

when you enter the second floor corridor and the light starts dimming.

[close]

But when I noticed that you don't seem to die no matter what you do - at least I never died during the game, but maybe it's possible if you do something extremely dumb or something - the whole horror started to lift. That's what made games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame scary - you had no idea whether something is creeping up on you right now. I'm not a huge fan of "make a wrong step and die" adventures, but in a horror game, I think it's neccessary or the game won't work. I mean, it's hard to be scared of the huge scaly demon in front of you if it doesn't attack you.

EDIT: Whoops... the spoiler tag is HIDE, not SPOILER... my bad.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

As long as the DEATH GUI has a "retry" button, and as long as the answer isn't so strange and far-fetched you play through the same encounter umpteen times, fine by me. BUT... if the game achieves the creepiness WITHOUT having to resort to that... so much the better, yes?

[Blade]

It doesn't necessarily have to be death IMO. You've already spoke about graphic interfering, which I find a great idea. So, what I mean is like when player fails something for the first time then all of a sudden he gets somthing like blow in the head, screen shifts for a little while, objects get darker and blurry. Make it look like the character was attacked btu he doesn't know what struck him and he's clearly in bad shape but eventually he'll get through it. But such thing should happen only once through the game.

What I'd like to see in the story is a character who doesn't know what will happen. He starts to uncover things but he is a sceptic and always sees a reasonablwe solution or at least doesn't find his discoveries so strange. Put character's thoughts that will sound convincing and than at one point make the big blow - everythings unfolds into a real, existing horror, though most of the time it just looked like some evil intrigue.

Something similar to the child room with music box is putting voices of kids playing and laughing and then crying out loud in pain and sorrow. 

[Creed Malay]

A game on the gamecube called "Eternal Darkness" did something I haven't seen used elsewhere in terms of scares - it pulled little tricks and ticks aimed directly at the player - sillouttes of flies would crawl on the screen,  the volume will seem to be mysteiously getting turned down,  there''ll be weird staticy sound effects, stuff like that. There's a fairly complete list here - http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/gamecube/file/eternal_darkness_sanity.txt

Although they're all "startles" rather than creep outs, they help, after a hour of so of playing the game, to create quite a spooked-up atmosphere.

THe only genuine "jump" I've ever had playing a ameuter horror adventure game was in "Encolsure", which is one of my all time horror game favorites. It drips spooky atmosphere like a big soggy scary thing.

Davy

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Er... Creed...

There's a game for the gamecube called Eternal Darkness, which had some good ideas. It had a sanity bar, and when this was low it would affect the surroundings. Statues turning to watch her movements, sound of banging on doors, and occassionally blood running down the walls.

And the two following posts expanded on it.

[Creed Malay]

Well, that'll teach me to speed-read, then. Dammitt. But now I might as well say more.

Something I've often thought would add another layer to a horror game is making it possible to save NPCs. Imagine a game set in a haunted ship, lost in fogs ways out at sea, with six people trapped aboard with a big nasty lump of horror.  Generally in a horror game, it'd be "pre-ordaned" who would live or die, each character would be picked off at plot points or would survive until the end of the game exactly the same each time you played. What if it was posible for the player to save or doom everyone if they just make the right descisions - listen to or ignore the crazy psychic guy's visions, befrend or become a foe of the twitchy military guy, act fast enough when a nasty arrives on the scene and save a kid who'd otherwise get slaughtered, things like that, would all pan out into things happening  differently. You could wind up seeing the dawn in alone, or with all your comrades still around you. Making the characters rael and dynamic, and giving the palyer a chance to positvley effect the chgaracters "lives" would be much more involving, and spookier, than the normal running-on-rails nature of games plots.

Davy

[Adamski]

Eternal Darkness suffered from dire repetativeness, despite the nice sanity effects which added nothing to the gameplay. I was disappointed really, it was an interesting concept but the design was horrible.