Some Ways to Make a Good Horror Game

I've been playing through Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the newest psychological horror first-person adventure game by Frictional Games (Penumbra), and it got me thinking about how a good horror game is made. I've not finished the game yet, but I can tell you without a doubt that it is the scariest game I have played in almost five years.  So what exactly is it about Amnesia that games like Dead Space or Silent Hill: Homecoming don't have? What does it do that works so well?

Frictional also did a decent job with their previous title, Penumbra, which plays similarly to Amnesia with one exception: they give you weapons in that game. Without weapons, Amnesia feels like a nightmare. All you can do to survive is run and hide like a five-year-old who thought he saw the boogeyman in his closet. And even hiding won't save you--the monsters are smart, and they'll hunt you down relentlessly.

The game utilizes a physics engine that I think works really well. You look around with the mouse, but you can also interact with virtually anything. You can pick up objects and throw them; indeed, sometimes you HAVE to throw them out of your way so you can keep running. You can also push objects in front of doors to try to bar enemies from coming (not that it will stop them for long, but a little breathing room is always good, right?), and you also use this engine to open and close doors, peek around corners, etc. Oh, and if you think you're going to be clever and throw a chair at an enemy in an attempt to hurt it or slow it down... don't. Just trust me on this.

But one thing that really sets Amnesia apart from most modern horror games is this: subtlety. For the first half hour to an hour or so of the game I didn't see a single monster. In fact, I was actually pretty bored. I was walking around a dark house, throwing chairs about because hey why not, and watching as windows closed on their own or doors blew open and closed in the wind. It was so riddled with cliche and I was shocked, because I really liked Penumbra and couldn't believe this was made by the same people. I expected the monsters to be dull or unoriginal when I got to them. How wrong I was.

The first time I saw a monster--I don't know if this is scripted or if I was just unlucky--I saw it at the corner of my character's eye, running off down a hallway. I literally gasped out loud and looked down the hall, only to find nothing there. I stood there for a moment, debating what to do next. Curiosity killed the cat, as they say. So onward I went, chasing after it, following it into the room it had fled into. It was gone. "Okay," I thought, "Whatever. Maybe I didn't actually see anything after all. Touche, Frictional. Touche." I turned around to leave the room, thinking I might go back downstairs and throw some more furniture around, and there it was, this dark monstrosity. I didn't get a very good look at it because it immediately scrambled after me. I panicked, turned around, ran toward the wall, cornered myself, and was killed in seconds. SECONDS. The monsters in this game do not screw around. If you get caught, you're done. If you try to get a good look at them, you're done. If you stop for too long to try to decide where to run, you're done. Plain and simple; they hurt like hell. You need to MOVE.

See, this kind of horror is effective because it obeys one of the biggest rules of horror: leave it up to the mind. A monster stays scary as long as you can't see what it looks like. The best way to mess with somebody is to let their heads to the talking. In Dead Space, you can see monsters coming at you from across the room and can calmly lift your one-hit-kill-machine and blow it away. This makes them less scary the more you see them.

Monsters don't need to be horrible, monstrous sins against nature to scare you; they need to be concealed, clever, dark. They need to hide in wait in the shadows, constantly making you question your surroundings. Is there something behind me? I don't know, but I don't want to find out. I'm just going to keep on walking. I didn't hear any sounds. There's nothing there. Just walk. Go.

This is the best way to make a horror game because it really tries to force the player to do things they don't want to do. Doom 3 follows the darkness rule pretty well (too well, in fact--I just refuse to believe that future space marines don't have the technology to tape a flashlight to their guns or something), but you can easily down any creature that comes your way. It scares you, but it doesn't dig into your mind and truly terrify you the way games like Amnesia or Silent Hill 2 do. In Doom, if the monster is there, you know it. In Amnesia, you think the monster could possibly be there, you heard a noise, but you'll go check it out, see nothing, and immediately become paranoid about every little movement you see. It's brilliant, it keeps you on your toes, but most of all it scares you.

Another topic: the music. Games like Dead Space or Doom 3 often use musical cues when monsters are near, with the ever popular violin strum as they appear or jump at you. This is an effective tactic in movies. It helps build up the suspense and put you on the edge of your seat. In games, this means that a monster is nearby, so ready your weapon and get ready to kill something. Or get ready to run if you're out of ammo. You know it's coming, and that puts you at ease. In games like Amnesia, you'll walk into a room, and a monster follows you. If you're careless you wouldn't even know it until your body is ripped to shreds by some Lovecraftian abomination. The music is there, but it's only meant to build the atmosphere and set the mood. This is effective because it's music that moves you, tells you that danger is constant. It doesn't just take a break because you need to run to the bathroom--the danger is constant, so be ready or else.

And finally, my favorite subject: the mindscrews. These are optional, of course, but are effective and a must for psychological games. See, you can mess with the characters all you want. But if you really want to creep people out, start messing with the player. The best example of this is in Eternal Darkness. The game employed a "Sanity Meter" (as does Amnesia) that effects how the game plays. The more your character sees monsters or stands around in the dark, the higher it gets. The higher it gets, the more the game messes with you. You'll walk into a room filled with monsters, you have no health, and oh God you're gonna die, but then they all disappear with a flash. In Silent Hill 2, you'll walk into a room and end up on the other side of the building somehow. Eternal Darkness also makes you think you've just erased your save file, or that your TV shut off. Things like this are designed to disorient the player, and if not overdone they can be really effective in blowing your mind.

Let me just close by saying that I don't hate Dead Space or Homecoming or any other game that I talked about. They're all decent games in their own right, they're just not very good horror games, based on my opinions described above. Everyone has their own tastes, though. If nothing else, I just really hope developers stop making action-oriented horror games. They almost never scare me, and if a game is marketed as a horror game then that's a big problem. I'm looking at you, Resident Evil 5...