1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

What's your favourite Horror Game and Why?

Penumbra (predecessor of Amnesia)

I liked this game instantly because it has that realistic physics i always wanted too see. This way the world feels both real and interactive. The game is still the best in this regard.

After playing for a while, it really managed to frighten me. Other games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill did not work for me, so i found it surprising a video game can be that scary. First person is a must, believable world also helps here. They did not use jump scares.

It is also very good at story telling, mainly by reading notes you can find in the enviroment. The game constructs the story early on and does not throw you into something without background or reason.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

What environment scares YOU the most?

Claustrophobic and dark without much action and room for exploration.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

What Creature/ Enemy scares YOU the most?

Enemies you can't kill.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Do YOU like Maze's/ Labyrinths?

Not in 3D. People have very different sense for navigation, mine is bad, so maze could be a show stopper for me.

If you want it, make sure the enviroment does not look the same everywhere so people get lost.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Do you enjoy Puzzles/ Riddles?

Yes, absolutely. Puzzle / Exploration works better for horror games than shooting monsters i think.

27 minutes ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

do want to use a Maze/ Labyrinth, although I didn't realise that Navigation would be an issue until now. If the Maze was unique enough and included a Map as part of the Game, Would it still be a "Show-Stopper"?

Hard to say without knowing more about your motivation for the maze.

However, i say i like exploration and narrow enviroments, but i also say i don't like mazes... although both can be similar. So i'll point out what i don't like about mazes as i imagine them in a game:

Repetitive, so boring (even if you stress me with monsters, which makes it just worse.).

Not knowing how large the maze is, so not knowing if there is a chance to get through at all.

Missing motivation to get through at all, eventually what comes next is just another maze.

You need to prevent this thoughts to come up. Eventually the story prepares the player to the maze and makes it interesting, so thinking: Ha - finally i am in this mysterious maze there have been so much talk about, now see what happens here...

A map of the maze would be a too trivial solution - if there is a map, then why a maze at all?

A whole game about multiple mazes in 3D... that's no good idea i guess.

43 minutes ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Lastly, What characteristics of an enemy scare you, apart from not being able to kill them? (for example; Clowns appearance).

Spiders... although such primal fears are not that original. In general i'm hard to scare and to be honest i do not understand well why some movies scare me but others do not... it's black art to me, something psychological... can't give a good answer.

I don't play that much horror these days, but the Half Life series left a lasting impression. Specifically Half Life 2.

Ravenholm would be the environment from that game. It's tense and terrifying. There are no friendlies around, it's all dark and quiet until something leaps out at you. There isn't much ammo so you are forced to scavenge and use makeshift environmental weapons.

As for creature, it's the Headcrabs. They aren't individually all that dangerous, but in a game where healing items are few and far between, their ability to sneak up and jump at you from any angle is terrifying. Not to mention their rapid possession of friendly/neutral characters.

Mazes are only interesting in so far as they are preventing you from escaping from something. They don't do much on their own. But given the right pursuing minotaur, they can be effective.

Puzzles are great, but don't typically have much to do with horror?

One of the scariest things I can think of from a video game wasn't a horror game at all, but it is something you should be able to apply to a new design.

The game System Shock 2 takes place on a space ship. The crew are either dead or have been changed into monsters, and the ship is filled with rogue robots, turrets, and other creatures.

Weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, and... well, everything is in limited supply and can be hard to find.

There's these monkeys... they're small and fast, so they can be hard to hit. They jump and run, and they're small, so they sometimes come from unexpected directions. And they have a psychic attack where they throw a glowing ball of energy at you, which can be quite damaging.

The horrifying thing isn't encountering them though... it's hearing the sounds of a monkey, somewhere nearby through the game's fantastic surround sound. You don't always know if there are one, or if there are several. You don't know if they can actually get to you, or if they're somewhere you can't immediately access. You're low on health, and low on supplies, and there's this dangerous unpredictable thing somewhere nearby.

Definitely the most nerve wracking thing I remember from a game, if you can replicate that feeling and build on it you can create a great horror experience.

I dont play any pure kind of 100% horror games like for example Resident Evil or Silent Hill or the games with lots of torturing going on. Also i dont consider Half-Life to be a "Horror" game, but it has some elements of it.

The last games which i played with a few horror elements: "Beyond Two Souls" and the recent "Doom". But thats it.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

I've never heard of "System Shock 2" before, I'll definitely add it to my research.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

I'll add "Half-Life" to my research.

Seems you're quite young and don't know the classics? Here's some more for your list:

Amnesia of course, which successfully started the Indie Horror genre.

Outlast (the first one): Jump scares, very terrifying

and maybe the older Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of Earth: Adventure / Shooter

oh, and Dead Space / Alien Isolation (both more Shooters than Horror)

2 hours ago, Finalspace said:

Also i dont consider Half-Life to be a "Horror" game, but it has some elements of it.

Yeah, it's not a horror game per se, but it is thematically quite horror-laden, and some of those sequences...

On the topic of horror sequences in non-horror games, I'll make a pitch for Halo 1, specifically the first encounter with the Flood in "343 Guilty Spark", and the endless horror of "The Library".

These games all play with the same base elements as Sythem Shock - ammo is scarce and precious, health packs are virtually non-existent, the enemy just keeps coming at you in huge numbers from every direction, and the lighting is... well... dim at best.

4 hours ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

Just wondering (It may help me with my research), is there a reason why you don't play Horror Games or is it simply because they don't interest you?

I dont like games which are built on pure violence, but games using horror or shock elements are fine, when not exaggerated.

Example games i dont like: The evil within, Postel, etc

But i have no problem playing zombie games, like left 4 dead or the last of us.

I like the game Amnesia because it's just weird but I had to stop playing it after I had nightmares about being in an empty building. Right now I'm playing Halloween themed Mario hacks because they are scary but fun at the same time. I played this one that was a haunted house that you have to get out of but the twist is that you don't know you are in a house because the house is a cave! Very cool and it's stuff like that which makes me want to play horror games.

Oh and there is another reason why i dont play horror games: My wife cannot handle horror at all and she watches me play a lot. So i dont want to scare the hell out of her.

1 hour ago, Swift Katana Studios said:

It's interesting how effective horror games are when developed correctly. Amnesia is definitely "Scary" holding a lantern around dark corridors, waiting for the "Gatherers" to appear creates an intense environment.

What was your favourite part about Amnesia when you played it?

I just like being in the dark and not being sure where to go. That's what makes the game exciting.

I love horror games. I have to admit that I don't actually play a huge number of them, since I'm usually pretty content to watch videos of other people playing them (plus it makes it easier to analyze what works well and why), but if there's one that really stands out I'll make a point of actually playing it myself, preferably before I know too much about it.

On 2/18/2018 at 9:45 AM, Swift Katana Studios said:

• What's your favourite Horror Game and Why?

I couldn't possibly pick just one, but two of my recent favorites are P.T. and Doki Doki Literature Club. I think the thing that impressed me the most about both of these is how well-executed they are. Neither one of them are fully original -- even Doki Doki Literature Club's best twists have mostly already been done before in some form -- but the fact that they fully commit to what they're doing (albeit in different ways) makes them sets them apart. I think they're both worth playing for yourself if possible, although unfortunately P.T. is very difficult to get your hands on. I'm super lucky that I got a chance to actually play it. Fortunately, watching videos of it is a pretty good substitute, since the interactivity is pretty limited (that's actually true of Doki Doki Literature Club as well, but fortunately that game is readily available and free).

I'm also a big fan of games that occasionally do something completely inexplicable, such that it's uncanny and jarring even within the main game world. Players can prepare themselves for monsters/jumpscares/etc. if they're expecting them, which might limit their effectiveness, but throwing something that's just so weird and out of place that the player couldn't possibly have expected it is almost always powerful. P.T. had some especially good examples of this: listen closely at 3:14, for example.

On 2/18/2018 at 9:45 AM, Swift Katana Studios said:

• What environment scares YOU the most?

I'm not actually sure that the choice of environment matters at all, as long as it fits the game's story and aesthetic. For example, I do not believe that Doki Doki Literature would have been scarier if it had taken place somewhere else, and there's certainly nothing inherently scary about its actual setting. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That said, I do think setting is critically important to a good horror experience, but I think most of the energy should be dedicated to making the world seem interesting, beautiful, and relevant to the story, rather than to making it "scary" in some generic way.

Two of my favorite environments are in Riven and INSIDE (neither of which are strictly horror games but have a few genuinely frightening moments), since they help tell the story in a very literal way (almost everything in the environment exists for a reason and tells the player something about the story), along with being just incredibly good looking.

On 2/18/2018 at 9:45 AM, Swift Katana Studios said:

• What Creature/ Enemy scares YOU the most?

I actually tend to like the classics, e.g. ghosts, aliens, spiders, skeletons etc., and I think now might be a good time to start featuring these in games, now that they've largely fallen out of favor and are thus no longer boring/predictable. Much like environments, though, I think it's possible to make almost anything scary when done correctly. Likewise, even the most innately frightening characters can be rendered stupid and non-threatening if executed poorly.

On 2/18/2018 at 9:45 AM, Swift Katana Studios said:

• Do YOU like Maze's/ Labyrinths?

In real life, definitely, but they sometimes don't work quite as well in a video game, since it can be frustrating if they're hard to navigate. I think it's generally best to use a maze as something mostly aesthetic (and also not too challenging to traverse) rather than a challenging gameplay element in itself. I'm also not really a fan of those procedurally generated mazes/environments, since I'd much rather have a curated experience that someone put deliberate thought into than a randomized maze that turns out just to be the same five models repeated over and over again.

On 2/18/2018 at 9:45 AM, Swift Katana Studios said:

• Do you enjoy Puzzles/ Riddles?

Yes, in fact, I think they might be one of the only gameplay mechanics that are particularly suited to a "pure" horror experience, because they leave you completely unable to defend yourself and at the mercy of whoever designed the puzzles in the first place. Most other common mechanics empower the player in a way that can give a sense of safety. Plus, puzzles require a lot of focus and are especially good at completely distracting the player's attention from, for example, something sneaking up on you from the shadows.

On 2/20/2018 at 9:46 PM, Finalspace said:

I dont like games which are built on pure violence, but games using horror or shock elements are fine, when not exaggerated.

Example games i dont like: The evil within, Postel, etc

But i have no problem playing zombie games, like left 4 dead or the last of us.

This is interesting to me, since in my estimation The Last of Us and The Evil Within are pretty similar in terms of violence, and with most of The Evil Within's violence being against things that aren't even "real." That said, I do think violence is often used as a crutch in place of things that are scary on a deeper level.

On 2/18/2018 at 3:49 PM, swiftcoder said:

Puzzles are great, but don't typically have much to do with horror?

Like I mentioned above, I actually do think puzzles have an especially good relationship with horror, but are there any other mechanics that you feel are especially relevant to horror?

On 2/20/2018 at 2:12 AM, jbadams said:

The horrifying thing isn't encountering them though... it's hearing the sounds of a monkey, somewhere nearby through the game's fantastic surround sound. You don't always know if there are one, or if there are several. You don't know if they can actually get to you, or if they're somewhere you can't immediately access. You're low on health, and low on supplies, and there's this dangerous unpredictable thing somewhere nearby.

One of my favorite horror experiences was in the original Tomb Raider. It was frightening enough when a giant tyrannosaurus appears out of nowhere and eats you in one hit in a game that didn't even involve dinosaurs up to that moment. What really scared me was that later on, the tyrannosaurus music started playing for no reason (due to what I can only imagine was a bug), but the tyrannosaurus never actually showed up, so I was just left waiting for a long time, wondering when it would appear.

On 2/20/2018 at 3:26 PM, Swift Katana Studios said:

(...) I feel people don't play as much Horror Games as they did in the past.

I think the genre may have declined a little bit over the past couple of years, but I think horror games are actually much more popular now than they were, say, ten years ago.

I played some horror games, but I dont enjoy these pure jump scare games, because they feel cheap. When I play a horror game, I expext a good story, that sucks you in and creates a goal, so you stay until you finnish what you have started.

For example in Outlast, your goal is to write an article about an asylum, but you get trapped. You get to care about what is happening and you want to know, what happened there. That is your driving force.