Quote:Original post by Kuladus Or subliminal flash horrofic images on the screen, ala that game, whose name i forget ... where the guy can turn into a monster.
It was The Suffering, and it was a terrible idea (at least the way it was implemented). It was annoying, not scary.
In fact, the game is basically a catalog of what not to do in a horror game.
Hmm, I quite liked that game. The first couple of images were scary, but then yes, they kinda over did it. The other thing they did, was freeze your character and have monsters/dead ppl etc appear right next to you, alo slowing the game down. Much like Doom3 did.
Sound for me stands out in a scary game. Doom3 for example (and yes it scared me to hell !), the darkness would'nt have affected your senses if it weren't for the eerie voices all over the place (like the devil going muh hah hah hah hah imedietly after the first outbreak takes place).
I think that you can if you really want to scare the player you might want to break the 4th wall. Like in Eternal darkness:
Your character is in front of a door. Opening it, you enter another room... and there are 3 monsters comming you way. You shot this one in the head and he falls on the floor. Suddently your character doesn't moves! A message saying "Input failure, please reconnect the gamepad" appears on the center of the screen. You hurry like like if you had a demon inside to disconnect the gamepad and to get back to action.. but unplugging and plugging it back doesn't fix the situation! You see your HP is nearly zero now and you reconnect again and mash the buttons at lightning speed.. but your character is dead...
But then again you appear just before you opened the door and your character screams "This can't be happening!".
True fear ;)
But then again, after playing for a while you could recognize the fake situations from the real ones. But I bet there is a way of making this kind of thing work for all the game... like only saving when you exit the game and everytime you play it get's erased... you die and it really is game over..
Here's an idea: You are forced to venture into a completely dark room. A sudden flash of lightning reveals this huge monster inside the room, just sitting there. You have to walk right past it to open the next door.
“[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” - Thomas Jefferson
Quote:Original post by Ajain ...what is it about scarey games that has the ability to scare you s**tless?
I've heard that sound has something to do with it but silence in a dark hallway can be even more ominous that a slow funeral-esque march...
I've heard darkness has something to do with it but it is just as ominous to have a corner ahead of you in the gorey techno-wired space station in daylight as it is with only a flashlight(you know you'll just keep the flashlight on the corner, anyway)...
Graphics, I know, do need to be somewhat good because a charachter with a 3 x 3 pixel head and a 2 x 7 pixel chainsaw isn't scarey at all, but graphics make many-a games (although some games with bad graphics are better than ones with awesome graphics)
so what is it? I don't get it! How are scarey games scarey!?
-Ajain
Well there a number of things that can make a game scary. First, the graphics MUST be dark and misty, this makes the player feel depressed. Second is the element of surprise. A scary-looking monster must come out from somewhere where you least expect it, such as a wall or floor. This will scare the heck out of you. No scary game is good without blood, of course, because it can make some people feel a little sick when watching it. Last of all, music is probably the most important part. Play a horror game without the music and you'll see what I mean. Proper sound is needed to bring emotion into each scene. Well that's pretty much it. -fantasydragon
Resident Evil doesn't get enough credit! The remake is -so- freaky. I've played every single game in the series thus far, but the remake for GCN truly takes the gold. There is the creature in it named Lisa, kind of a hunched over woman, weaing rags, humpback, wearing someone elses face. Her hands are bound by chains and a prisoner block. Freaky as hell. Scariest moment though: Going back through (yes, going back through..., thats RE for you) this living room full of windows I'd gone through a dozen times before safely, and the windows suddenly shattering and zombies POURING, crawling, stumbling in. I YELLED at the screen. Crimson heads were also a very terror-inspiring aspect.
"First, the graphics MUST be dark and misty, this makes the player feel depressed."
Although it may be true that a game that is too dark and misty would make a player feel depressed, it's completely untrue that a game has to be dark and misty to be scary. System shock 2 is a perfect example of this. The 'anomalies' of your suit might make you see ghosts of the pasts and you could argue that this is 'misty', most of the game is bright and still horribly spooky.
The first game i played that seemed to depict the essence of Evil rather well was probably Silent Hill for PS1-PS2. Now that game was freaky, you play a man called Harry Mason, who while driving to the resort town with his adopted daughter Cherryl Mason, almost runs someone over and drives off the road. When he awakens, he's in the deserted and misty city of silent hill, with strange monsters lurking in the shadows and Cherryl no-where to be found.
You have free reign within the city, and you have a radio that crackles whenever enemies are nearby. Sometimes hearing strange siren's while the world turns dark, and everything gets a corrupted look to it. You basically travel through the city trying to find Cherryl and piece together what the hell's going on in town, was a really good game. When i played Doom 3, i found a number of design similarities, though i still perfer Silent Hill over Doom 3 for creepiness..
I'm not too experienced in the ways of scary games, but here's an idea...
Take some completely normal situation, and amplify it... I can't think of any other way to describe it, but here's an example.
Your character is exploring a house. The lighting is not the best, maybe some lights are flickering, or casting shadows. The music could be something like an old children's song, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but played out of tune, slowly, on a broken sounding piano. As you walk through a hallway, you here the sounds of children playing upstairs. The sound, however, could be heavily reverbed or something to give it a sort of haunting, distant sound. You approach a stairwell and hear a loud THUMP ... THUMP ... THUMP ... from upstairs, getting louder. As you get closer, the thumping seems to be coming down the stairs. You get closer and closer, expecting some horrific monster to come out and kill you. Right before you are about to cross in front of the stairs, a rubber ball bounces down the last of the steps and rolls across the floor. You wait, expecting something to happen, but nothing follows the ball. You can still hear the kids playing upstairs. You climb the steps and enter the room where the children's voices are coming from, and enter. The room is completely empty except for a beat up phonograph playing a scratchy record, from which the voices are coming from.
So, we have a normal situation: kids playing upstairs, children's songs, a stray ball... but it's amplified and distorted to the point where it is just completely eerie and sends a chill up your spine.
Anyways, I'm not sure how well that kind of thing would work in practice, but I imagine if done just right, it could create a very lasting impression.
Queeble: YES! This is exactly the kind of scary stuff I was talking about. It might be even more effective if when you first enter the house it's all bright & sunny, then as events progress you can see clouds flying by through the windows. It's sunset and a bank of dark clouds comes in, leaving just a bit of clear sky to show the last reddish bit of sun shining in the windows. Then suddenly it's nothing but clouds, rain, thunder, lightning, wind making the shutters bang against the house. When you find the record player, instead of having a blinding flash of lightning (this is what the player expects)...have the storm die down & get eerily quiet. I know I'd be damn curious to see what'd happen next...and yet dreading to know.
This is what it's all about. Make things seem to mean more than they do on the surface, put in eerie juxtapositions of normal stuff & freaky stuff. Turn the player's expectations on their head, and they'll be begging for more.
If a squirrel is chasing you, drop your nuts and run.
