Hey Guys,

Developing a Horror game at some point leads you to jumpscares and shocking moments in general.

I would like to know, what you do, to create atmosphere or to scare the player!

I saw this fps creator game on youtube called "mental". It really did a good job with jumpscares. (yeah markiplier is really loud but this video is just a good example)

I want to show them to you:

#1 Pretty simple, I did that too in Hunted 1 : Spawning objects behind the player

https://youtu.be/Pda44H0NIWY?t=3m35s


#2 Text prompts that are ment to unsettle the player ( wich is a pretty cool idea )

https://youtu.be/Pda44H0NIWY?t=4m28s

#3 Fast moving enemy - maybe a special script?

Thats a very cool one and I really would like to know how to do this:

https://youtu.be/Pda44H0NIWY?t=5m57s


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Tell me your collected knowledge about jumpscares or any other Horror related stuff!
Looking forward to your opinions and infos!

- Duchenkuke

I think sound plays a big part in anticipation, i was waiting for a jump scare in the video bod made of the old house he made for the free model thread .

yeah thats a nice example ! Thanks Sounds are 80% I'd say. Thats why I spent so much time creating a frightening soundtrack.

Jump scares are the poundland of horror games, they're cheap and tacky, you can do much more with a decent atmosphere, good story, and music.

yeah but sadly many players dont apreciate deep atmosphere that much... I often read such things as "not scary" or "lame".

But there is also a decent amount of players that notice it and apreciate it.

I am trying to find out what possiblities there are with gameguru and thats why I wrote this thread. Maybe there will be added some fresh ideas here!

That's a bit harsh, they are a bit overdone but you have to have at least one in a horror game.

i agree music and sound effects are very high, you can't create tension without them.

i kinda agree with belidos except i dont think it's the jumpscares themselves that are cheap and nasty but more often just the game is a poor excuse for a story and the entire "horror" is jumpscare after jumpscare - though for some people this is scary and they love it (look how well slenderman did, and personally i think it's terrible).
in my opinion horror should be self created by your imagination, jump scares should be present but natural or random (think mimics from prey - i.e. any mimic could potentially cause a jumpscare but not all of them will and while you can script some events or pre place them most of them will be random).

this also leads to the next point which is the enemy, s/he/they need to be scary, a lot of the recent games have gone for cultists and of course there's the classic zombies/mental patients but it's not as important what they are and rather how they are - i think it's far scarier to face a near invincible enemy than it is to face hundreds of the same enemy (think nemesis from RE, or the alien from alien isolation - my personal favorite horror game... but it needs to be right, too hard and people will quit, too silly and people will hate it, you need to have a good reason for the boss to be super tough.

and finally distractions, it's far easier to scare someone if they're not expecting it, all the music and the sound effects in the world wont help if the scare is super obvious (hyping up the sound & effects is great but also a big give away) so giving the player lots to focus on at times will allow far easier scares than other times... i'm sure anyone who's played the original RE still remembers the dogs in the windows or the first time you turned around from reading a note to see the bad guy stood behind you in countless other games.

True, one or two, well done ones, maybe, but they're very much overdone though, one of the most common lines I hear reviewers use when playing new horror games is "i bet there's going to be jump scares in this", closely followed by something along the lines of "yup, i told ya, this is trash, can't they think of something more imaginative".

I agree in your opinions.

What I think would be awesome: An enemy that is barely visible that means, he is sort of transparent.
That would be really frightening I think. Don't know if that is possible though..

Haven't I told you to get behind texture work! This is easily doable using such.

"Mental" is a prime example of a game with atrocious level design being made famous by simply being youtuber fodder.

Making Horror games is great though. You can cause really stupid outrage.

There are plenty of reviews on my previous horror releases all stating different opinions on why my games do or do not work so I will just keep this short (unless you want me to ramble on about how and why I designed these games the way I did) and put up a list:
Whenever I designed a horror game I made sure to have

1.) an unsettling plotline
2.) an uncomfortable environment
3.) a constant sense of dread and danger
4.) tangible threats (enemies) and intangible ones (what might lurk in the dark, things you see that don't attack you and can not be touched)
5.) A large amount of doors, broken corners and dark alcoves where something might just be hiding.
6.) Sound, sound and sound again.
7.) Variation. Every new level should have a slightly different approach and add something new to them creeps.
8.) Enemy design. Back when I released my games, the enemy models I used where still fresh. Now a lot of them are overused. However, I had a larger variety spread throughout the levels by using shader effects and retextures. Thus some of them can truely only be found in my games. Had I known how the indie scene will degrade through the advent of steam greenlight, I had further modified all models I used.

Try to not have terrible voice acting that you recorded with a digital camera and you are gold!

The creepiest part is that I released Euthanasia 7 years ago

Pics:


















Vids:



There are plenty of lets plays and videos of different levels of euthanasia. Sadly I deleted my own ones when I quit game design way back when. I should rerecord and reupload a full playthrough, but there are several on youtube.

This is thanatophobia. A short horror game I made for a contest way back when. Depending on your screen settings, this might be too dark.

I had a few more intelligent and better written horror games in the works, sadly none of them ever made it to be playable...and yes, some of those had very few or no weapons. I never bought into the whole "no guns makes it sooo much scarier" hypothesis...it depends on how its used. For example: I'm supposed to play a healthy young man in the game "outlast". Why can't I kick a deranged and degraded psychopaths off a ledge or at least push him away? (: So you could argue that I have only released horror themed shooters rather than "true" horror games. You know, if you want to be a snob about it.



-Wolf

Damn it, now I really have to learn how to texture stuff.... AHHH !

Those games look interesting! I will check them out on occasion.

And with the recording.... you mean yourself.. right?

The best jumpscares in my opinion come from this film...



The combination of the sound is what really does it for me. Those facehuggers always creeped me out.

Still, always after watching some of your stuff, I feel so mediocre lol...
But it's also a motivation to get better!

Good work wolf!

The cat is thinking, 'I could take that thing, maybe after I've had a mother nap".

If you need lessons on building a scary atmosphere you could just watch a few Hitchcock movies.

That film always baffled me, they spent a lot of time getting the alien looking and moving awesomely, the whole film was just awesome with its effects, but one scene let the whole film down, they made alien in the chest bursting scene look so comical, i mean look at the way it runs off, there was no attempt to even make it look realistic at all.

@ Belidos. It was 1979, I think the effects were okay for the time myself. The budget was likely an issue here as well. I'm not really a fan of Alien, but I can't really say the effects were awful. Personally, I think Hurts acting in that scene was the worst part of it. Sure, today it does look a little comical, but so do many other films scenes from 1979. I also think it is not helped by the many parodies done of it. Once you have seen them and watch the original again, you tend to see the funny side of it. I'm pretty sure back in the day, most people were horrified

My favourite Horror game of all time is Res Evil. The dog jump scare is probably one of the only ones in a game that has actually made me jump. I don't much like any of the other RE games though, oddly enough. RE 2 was okay until I realised there weren't going to be cool mid boss encounters like the original - the start was good though.

Modern horror games do nothing for me. I don't find them scary. They can make you jump but only because they blow your eardrums with loud noise to achieve it. They also rely on everything being really dim and dark. The best jump scene I've encountered in RE as mentioned above did not rely on the scene being in darkness. It was fully lit and still made you jump out of your skin. It probably worked because of this and also the fact it didn't really have any jump scares before it. You were also a good way into the game at that point. Most modern horror games tend to give the impression that there's going to be a jump scare at any moment, all of the time, from start to finish. People are therefore prepared for it and so they do not work.

To make a jump scare work you need the audience to have no idea it's going to happen. Difficult in ways, as all the old methods that have worked over the years have been done over and over and so we are acclimatised to the tricks. I don't know, imagine someone watching Eastenders and suddenly they put in a jump scare. That would most definitely work No-one would be expecting it in Eastenders.

Be original. Don't copy done and dusted ideas if you can avoid it. There's way too many awful horror games out there already. I'm going to be brutally honest here, I think GG needs some serious boosts in several areas before a good horror game would be viable. I've seen several games with fairly amazing visuals that are still knocked because they have the standard someones walked past a door trick or someones standing at the door trick. There's just too many of them. Even the latest Res Evil game does it and well, GG is never going to match those visuals.

The visual effects in a majority of the film were astounding for its time, and even stand up well now, it's just that one scene is such lower quality all round, almost a completely different style, i actually know one of the guys who worked on the Alien models (David Middleton) and he says that scene disappointed him because they were rushed to do it and it wasn't their best work, would also explain Hurts performance if they were rushing that scene, because he is in no way normally that bad.



Oddly enough, one of the best jump scares i ever came across was the original silent hill, the scene in the school with the locker.

You know it's coming, the locker is rattling and banging as if something is inside, you know if you open it something will attack, but when you finally get the courage to open it you still jumped out of your skin when the creature inside jumps out at you.

I don't know if it was the atmosphere, the build up, or what, but it made me almost hit the ceiling, i've yet to find a jump scare that has that effect on me

To be honest, I was willing to roll with the chestburster scene. What took me kind off out of the movie was the full reveal towards the end where you can see that its just a bloke in a costume

Cryostasis has a decently crafted horror atmosphere and setting as well.

A costume that my friends dad had a hand in making

If the player doesn't appreciate (or worse, notice) the atmosphere that has been created, then, the atmosphere hasn't been created very well. It isn't something you should be able to just turn off or 'tune out of'. If the atmosphere is done correctly, it will feel ubiquitous and un-escapable!

Atmosphere, created by visuals, sound design and subtle hints/clues, if done correctly, will give you the most terrifying experience you could ever have. Throw in a couple of well thought out jump scares and you are onto a winner.

Cheers

Jay.

first time i played through alien isolation, just after the first "sighting" of the alien and it kills the guy in the cut scene, when you run to the tram... made me terrified because of the music and the heartbeat sound combined with the traumatic waiting...... and on later play throughs i realised the alien never even comes

Who told you that and in what context?!

That aside, a good horror game does not just "scare" the player. Lets be honest, we are all adults and for the majority of us that just doesn't happen. It also needs to craft intrigue, let the player have his little victories and be engaging in all other regards.



-Wolf

i'll just leave this here....

uagh thats nasty.... wow