i always thought system shock ii was one of the best horror game of all times because of the setting... the areas are opened, there are no horror music nor sounds made to make you scared, and you really don't expect much more out of the game than a mere crappy retro action game until you realise zombies will breathe in your ears once they are too close to you. In this case, a natural setting that avoids horror cliches is what makes you tremendously scared in the end.

I've only spent a few seconds thinking about this, so my ideas aren't really well-formed, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents as well...

I liked the suggestion about underwater. While I don't particularily like the idea of playing underwater, what if it was something more along the lines of you have to cross a river, the water goes up to your waist (or hips, or something). Halfway across you are attacked by some monster hiding in the depths and you have to scramble to the other side while keeping it off of you.

Another thing you NEVER see in horror games, is a living world. It's always you against the zombies, or you against a crazy psycho in an isolated little world, where there are very few non-enemy characters. What about being someone trying to survive a monster attack with NPCs everywhere panicking and creating all sorts of confusion? Sure it's done in film all the time, but how many games are like this?

Quote:Original post by dashurc
Another thing you NEVER see in horror games, is a living world. It's always you against the zombies, or you against a crazy psycho in an isolated little world, where there are very few non-enemy characters. What about being someone trying to survive a monster attack with NPCs everywhere panicking and creating all sorts of confusion? Sure it's done in film all the time, but how many games are like this?

Doom 3 started that way. There were quite a lot of people in the space station when it hit the fan.

Personally, I think it subtracts from my fear to have more people around. I end up trying to protect those around me, rather than worry about myself. It might work if I'm a character that's unable to fight back, though. Watching the other people get yanked into the shadows, one at a time, might be a little discomforting.

Its alreay been said, but go with rooms (so movement is constriced) with many ways for enemies to come from, the fear of the unknown.

I just had an interesting thought. It seems to me that the best time to be scared is the time when you just took a moment to get relaxed. Could we tie in the movement of the character into the timing of an enemy attack at all? It is obviously a gimick and should be used sparingly (lest the player discover it) but I think it could scare the pants off more than a few people.

I recall in FEAR that there was one long hallway which you had the scurrying of noises all around you and you wouldn't even see an enemy. After you finally get to the end and think you are safe it was then that the enemy sprung out. And it was a super fast enemy that you could pretty much only kill if you used slowmo to slow his movement down. It scared the socks off of me and my friends.

This sort of effect with an intelligent enemy could really enhance the mood. Better yet take that less is more concept and put the noises in every once in a while... but with no enemy that shows up. Do that a couple of times and then hit them again with the monster. I would think that it would raise up the anticipation because it is a huge unknown.

Perhaps make the timing of it random? One run through of a level you'll get 2 of them in a row and anther you'll have 5 spots where nothing shows up. Basically you add in the audio element to it.


Also what about a chameleon enemy? It would stand still until you were really close to it. At that point it would make a sound and once you look straight at it it would jump out at you. Perhaps when you look straight at it it'll reveal itself for just a second with an evil smirk on its face before it attacks. The point isn't to have something sneak up on you, rather it is to scare the socks off of you because it wasn't expected. FEAR had an element like this where they'd randomly throw a freaky little girl onto the screen for no apparent reason.