What's scary in a game?

[Crimson Wizard]

If your game is going to have a big evil antagonist, what form is most effective in terms or horror? As far as I can figure, there are three big types of horror antagonists. First, some sort of murdering psychopath or something, but grounded in reality with no supernatural ties. Second, a powerful, unknowable evil, like an Eldritch abomination. Or finally, a middle ground, like a cult of ordinary psychopaths that worship/get their power from the evil power. I personally think that cults have been overdone, but that could be because they are the most effective.
Thoughts?

I think that there's really a way to make a man of political power both evil and scary. More, the society that he rules can be very scary. As anian mentioned just before - "Unkown is scary, being vurnerable is scary, things that we can't control are scary". Being a little man in the society governed by cynical money-makers (for example), who control corrupted goverment brunches, and knowing they can do to you anything and you have no - absolutely no - certain way to hide/defend from them, - can be very scary.

Not sure how this may be used in game though. I just wanted to point out there could be other sorts of horror stories besides "classic" maniac/ghost/monster ones.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

99.9% of horror either makes me laugh or makes me wince in an 'this is awful' way, so maybe my observations will be of value to some of you who enjoy being scared and have thicker skin.  For me, the effect in a game or movie that works best on me is a sense of unease or disturbance, the subconscious suggestion by the events in the film that something horrible and eldritch lies just ahead.  It's this sense of deep foreboding that, when done well, can drag the viewer/player kicking and screaming into the narrative and make them more sensitive to scares and events that prey on their sanity.

The only game that's ever left me with that sense of foreboding was Call of Cthulhu and that's mainly because it was fairly faithful to the whole Lovecraft mythos and the general 'strange visions and realities' at work in much of Lovecraft's writing.  I've always found his work to be, at its very best, unsettling, a great compliment I can't extend to most genre authors like King.  Koontz too writes some unsettling stories, though I've never enjoyed any of his novels and none of them that I've read have been adapted to games.

Back to Cthulhu, there are some genuinely creepy moments to the game, like when you're first walking around the foggy town of Innsmouth looking at all the strange looking people, none of whom want you there, and then not long after there's the whole harried escape sequence from some of the more 'changed' villagers.  The constant sense of unease and dread that props up the narrative just never really existed for me in games like, for instance, Silent Hill, which were clearly not written for mentally mature audiences but for teens and people who think that gore and shock events are 'scary'.  This seems especially true of the later games, which focus more and more on some kind of combat mechanic and collecting crap than they do any kind of cohesive narrative.  The same goes for the Resident Evil games, really, though in their defense they were never meant to be more than a schlock horror sendup from the beginning that grew in popularity far beyond Capcom's expectations.  

If you like feeling creeped out or just uneasy for awhile I'd definitely recommend Call of Cthulhu since it's one of the very very few games that worked for me on that level, though I admit the gameplay is far from perfect.

[Wyz]

Apart from the three traditional antagonists I can name one that could be by far more frightful. What if the antagonist is in fact the protagonist. But not in a way it is immediately known, the further you get in the story the more you are going to question if what the protagonist tells you is in fact the truth.

He might have double personalities and he slowly learns about this fact (like that movie that I'm not going to name, or I'll spoil it)

Or maybe the protagonist is fooling you too, and you do not notice this until late in the story.

[Crimson Wizard]

Hah, Wyz, I wanted to mention that idea.

Okay, then, here's another one. Make it twist, let player control zombie character being pursued by angry villagers. Depict the horror of realizing your soul and consciousness are locked in the rotten, crumbling body, and that no one will gonna help you, at least not before he shoots your brain.  

[Anian]

Unease is probably the "best" feeling I can end a horror game/story with.

Nightmare on Elm street left me scared to fall asleep, Disney's Snow White had me fearing a witch will come passing by the window and see me in bed and steal me, some of Lovecraft's work also makes me feel strange (is that creak in the wall just the building or are there rats in it). But uneasy, like you lost some of your innocene and dogmas that were connecting you to the rest of the world and other people, shattering a pivot you were basing your thoughts and yourself as a person, as a human - that is what keeps on bugging you long into the night - that is scary.

What Prog said about Cthulhu, nothing specifically has to happen, just a tension and sensing something is wrong is enough for me. I don't need to see a room filled with blood or have a monster jump out of the fog - it is far worse to hear a monster waking around in the fog, watching you, feeling it's breath on your neck, always in the corner of your eye - it's not that my imagination is more horrific than somebody elses, but my imagination will tap that which scares me the most (based on my personality and my experiences throughout my life).

[blueskirt]

I second what anian said. An horror game succeed when I'm scared to progress forward, when I fear what may lurk around the corner, even when there's absolutely nothing. It doesn't means that scares are not important, without events that are out of the ordinary every now and then, I will eventually calm down, but it's mostly a matter of thick atmosphere and unknown.

Okay, then, here's another one. Make it twist, let player control zombie character being pursued by angry villagers. Depict the horror of realizing your soul and consciousness are locked in the rotten, crumbling body, and that no one will gonna help you, at least not before he shoots your brain.

It's a bad idea, because hating zombies is a feeling shared by all. Make it an human being chased by more human beings and the psychological aspect will ramp up. And now I just thought of a game idea, but unfortunately lack of balls from mainstream publishers/developers and/or the controversy it would generate would discourage anyone from doing it. Plus they would probably screw it up, or prove once more that Truffaut was right. Too bad, for it would be damn scary. Oh well.

[pilferinloot]

Three things: Inability to escape, having to think fast and knowing there's danger but not knowing where or when. If anyone remembers Shivers, that game always did it for me.  The idea of being stuck in a museum for the night where a few mysterious deaths occurred sounds overdone, yes? But having to find the horror in order to beat the game was a good twist. You didn't want to have to go after it, but you needed to. Not to mention it had a rather unsettling soundtrack.

For those that feel this fits under the 'startle but not scare'  category, both the Laura Bow games are better examples. Especially the end of the second one. I hated having to solve the puzzles quickly, knowing there was a rampaging murderer in the next room and he wanted you dead. It's the whole one-misclick-and-you're-dead idea, it's not the scariest for sure, but it tends to keep a person on the edge of their seat.

As for antagonists, anything involving a group of suspects, all with motive to do something awful but with no real evidence against any of them tends to be on the scary side. This ties into the whole idea of imagination based horror, especially if you're stuck somewhere with the people mentioned and escape is not possible. Who do you choose to avoid?
Of course, this is all opinion. Just throwing stuff out there

[blueskirt]

Another thing that fit/complement pilferinloot's point on inability to escape: Keep your players powerless and vulnerable, always. Give them a shotgun and non clunky controls and your game will switch from horror to action.

[Babar]

99.9% of horror either makes me laugh or makes me wince in an 'this is awful' way...

I haven't played that 0.1% of games that don't do this. I don't think I've ever been scared by a videogame. Maybe I should try Call of Cthulhu.
I've been "shocked" a couple of times, but yeah, as mentioned, that really just ends up irritating a person.

Blood soaked walls also make me groan. They just seem silly and overused now. And most "cult member" antagonists seem cheesy, and not scary.

I'm probably the wrong person to talk on this sort of stuff...I almost never have any nightmares, never in my life seen a scary horror movie (is there such a thing?)- not that I avoid them, just that none that I've ever seen were scary.

I suppose it depends how you handle it. People have been mentioning using people instead of monsters to 'humanise' the horror, but I'd think that an animal or monster would be more scary....you can't really reason with them. But then again, some people would just think "they're just dumb animals, what is to be scared?"

But yeah, from my limited experience, I'd say insane, illogical things masquerading as normal, the unknown, etc.

* Babar feels he's had this conversation before....

[Chicky]

Give them a shotgun and non clunky controls and your game will switch from horror to action.

...and give the zombies assault rifles and your game will suck balls!

[Virgil]

I haven't played that 0.1% of games that don't do this. I don't think I've ever been scared by a videogame.

What do you think would scare you then, Babar?

[blueskirt]

I suppose it depends how you handle it. People have been mentioning using people instead of monsters to 'humanise' the horror, but I'd think that an animal or monster would be more scary....you can't really reason with them. But then again, some people would just think "they're just dumb animals, what is to be scared?"

I don't think they should all be humans. I love lovecraftian monsters and co. as much as the next guy, even if I'm getting tired of ghosts and scary little girls, but in the idea Crimson Wizard posted I thought lynching mob chasing human would be better. But that's just me.

[Dualnames]

I haven't played that 0.1% of games that don't do this. I don't think I've ever been scared by a videogame.

What do you think would scare you then, Babar?

Babar is so badass, that he could kill Nemesis and Pyramid Man, without bullets.

[Virgil]

I haven't played that 0.1% of games that don't do this. I don't think I've ever been scared by a videogame.

What do you think would scare you then, Babar?

Babar is so badass, that he could kill Nemesis and Pyramid Man, without bullets.

He laughs at your fragile dependence on bullets and weapons!

[mkennedy]

One could think of some monsters as just a type of animal that is unknown to you. But if the monster is supernatural in Nature than it would probably be scarier.

That game somebody suggested where you play a zombie and have to avoid the angry mob actually would be one I would like to play. The reason zombies eat people because is NOT because they are evil, but it is because they can't help it, eating people helps dull the pain of being dead. Rather than eating people I would have them eat Spam and drink spoiled milk that comes from undead cows. After feeding them spam the zombie would regain their whits and then you could engage them in conversation like you would a normal human.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

eating people helps dull the pain of being dead

This is only one interpretation of why zombies consume the flesh of the living and it isn't even a 'popular' one (ie, used often).  The only movies I've ever seen this explanation used were the Return of the Living Dead films, which were great fun but had nothing to do with the Romero films.  Romero never gave an explicit reason why they consume the living; it's one of those things that seems more unnerving when you don't know, and generally it's the lack of knowledge and the why that makes us feel uneasy in films like this.

[MMMorshew]

Maybe it has already been said, but what always makes me feel nervous is the moment when you realize that the horror you go trough wasn`t created or thought of by a human being or a human mind (I dont`t mean the author of the game with that, but rather the `something` inside the game that is responsible for the hero`s situation).
On the other side, at the end of a creepy horror game I always need a relaxing, good ending where the hero has finally survived the dangers and lives happily ever after. Maybe not that cheesy, but you get the idea. I don`t like dark and twisted endings, I am a bit too sensitive in those things. 

[LimpingFish]

I like ambiguous endings, myself.

I don't mind "happy" endings that make sense, nor do I mind downbeat endings if they are appropriate.

I don't like sequel-setup endings, or cheap "you thought you were safe, but you're not!" endings.

I will admit to being a bigger fan of endings than I am of beginnings.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Or the 'reworked' endings some sequels do to try and justify themselves when the first movie made it pretty clear the bad guy was dead?  I hate those the most.  Oh look, Johnny didn't really kill the bad guy, it was just some trick or treater in the same mask who we never saw (until now).  BRILLIANT!

[InCreator]

You can make scary game with using only text.
KGB (a.k.a Conspiracy) comes to mind. Game was based on little graphics and lots of shocking text. For example, you ended up in a meatshop, lit the switch and saw meatbags on your screen. Upon inspection, TEXT described what's inside bags... and it worked. And it still scared you shitless, without any animations, gory images, eerie sounds etc.

KGB is an excellent example how to make game scary, intense and exciting with good writing only.

See for yourself!

Also, most frightening is usually players imagination. As someone said, "without imagination, there is no fear".
So don't go all the way giving clear picture of the shock thing. Leave something for player to imagine, because it'll be times stronger than whatever you can present. Mysterious note, sound, etc could invoke alot more fear than that screenful of spiders eating zombies eating kittens you painted for 4 hours.