\nBy Thomas Grip<\/i>
Edited by Kira<\/i><\/p>\n
It has now been over 9 years since we released Amnesia: The Dark Descent. That is a bloody long time, and feels like we should celebrate that by talking about the craft of horror games.<\/p>\n
Horror games are quite a different beast when it comes to the game industry at large. Most other genres revolve around what the player does<\/i>. In a turn-based strategy you take turns doing strategy:<\/p>\n \nInto the Breach<\/span><\/p>\n \n\u00a0In a first-person shooter you shoot things from a first-person perspective:<\/p>\n \nDoom<\/span><\/p>\n \nIn a Match 3 game you match three thingies:<\/p>\n \nCandy Crush: Soda<\/span><\/p>\n In a horror game, the activity is not at all as important. What is important is that the experience<\/i> is a spooky one. This makes designing horror games different from designing within other genres. Many times the standard industry tricks just won\u2019t work, which makes one think about game design in a different light.<\/p>\n In the past 9 years we have learned a great deal about horror games, and to celebrate the occasion, I wanted to share 9 lessons we have learned over the years.<\/p>\n That being said, I don\u2019t see these lessons as only useful for horror games. There\u2019s quite a bit of overlap with other genres, especially any games that aim for a narrative-heavy experience.<\/p>\n And finally \u2013 this is by no means an exhaustive list. Still, the lessons here are at the core of the craft of making scary video games.<\/p>\n Lesson 1: Horror is not enjoyable<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n The basic emotion of horror is not a pleasant one \u2013 yet people play horror games wanting to experience horror. This is the paradox of horror as entertainment. This paradox requires game developers to be careful in how they deliver the experience to the player.<\/p>\n You could draw an analogy between horror games and rollercoasters. The basic purpose of a rollercoaster is to simulate the sensation of falling. Under controlled circumstances the experience of falling is thrilling and fun (at least for a good portion of people). But if you put someone in a barrel and push them down a cliff, chances are they will not find the experience fun at all. Even if they survive unscathed, the whole ordeal would be a horrible experience.<\/p>\n The same is true for horror games. If you have a game that only relies on jumpscares \u2013 figuratively throwing people off a cliff in a barrel \u2013 few people will consider that fun. This became apparent in certain maps in Penumbra. We thought it would be good enough for a scary gameplay section to have a maze and some monsters. Instead of becoming mazes of fear, they instead became mostly… annoying. Amnesia: The Dark Descent had similar issues towards the end, where the monster encounters were just that, not supported by any other aspects. At that point the game no longer felt as entertaining.<\/p>\n \nWell this is a familiar face.<\/span><\/p>\n \nLesson 2: Players are working against you<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n For a horror game developer, the worst enemy is\u2026 the players. Seriously, if we could sit around and make games without having to worry about what the players will do and think when playing the game, life would be so much simpler!<\/p>\n As mentioned before, being scared is not a pleasant feeling. Therefore the players will try to optimize the feeling away, often unconsciously. In the end, the players will ruin the intended experience for themselves.<\/p>\n Take the demon dogs from our first game, Penumbra: Overture. The game takes a bunch of time to build them up as creepy monsters that stalk the dark mines. However their AI has some weaknesses that some people are very quick to catch. Hence the dogs become easy to defeat, and are no longer scary.<\/p>\n \nCan’t get me. I’m on a box.<\/span><\/p>\n \nAnd the crazy thing is that the players complain when this happens! They probe the system for flaws and choose to exploit them, yet want the dogs to remain scary. So their behaviour ends up going against their will.<\/p>\n Some games solve issues of player exploitation simply by making the enemies extremely hard (think Dark Souls): they make sure the monsters are just as hard to beat as they look scary. Another approach is to instead skip much of the gameplay (think Dear Esther): if there are no mechanics, there\u2019s nothing for the player to exploit \u2013 problem solved, right?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think either of these solutions is optimal. Instead I think one should aim for a third route: making the players think about actions in a more narrative fashion. More about that later!<\/p>\n \nLesson 3: Scares alone won\u2019t make a horror game<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Horror is like a spice that defines a dish. You cannot do without it, but you can\u2019t cook a dish solely out of spices either. That would be just gross.<\/p>\n As an example, let\u2019s take three horror movies I consider to be at the top of their genre: Alien, The Exorcist and Ringu. All three movies deal with very different subjects, have different styles, and are overall different from one another. But there is one thing they have in common: they all have very few scares in them!<\/p>\n Instead each movie is mostly about the characters, the discussions, the anticipation of the horror \u2013 building up the atmosphere and the dread of things to come. Very little time is spent actually facing the horror.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get back to our roller coaster analogy. When you think about it, the actual roller coaster ride lasts a very short time. Most of the time is spent doing things like buying a ticket, standing in line, and hearing other people scream. All these actions are not superfluous extras \u2013 they build up for the actual ride, and are crucial to the overall experience.<\/p>\n When we first made the study section of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, we implemented a ton of jumpscares. Books fell down from shelves, doors banged, pianos started playing and so forth. But as the map became more complete, it felt like something was off. So we reduces the scares to just a couple, and instead focused on letting the player learn the castle\u2019s mysteries. At first we were afraid this would make the level too boring \u2013 but as it turns out, spacing the scares apart made players much more scared than previously.<\/p>\n \nIn horror, less is often more.<\/span><\/p>\n Lesson 4: Fun gameplay is just too\u2026 fun<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n In a horror game more than any other, the players go in expecting to have a bad time. And as designers we want them to feel anxiety, despair, and a whole array of negative emotions. But gameplay \u2013 because it\u2019s so damn engaging \u2013 tends to counteract all these juicy emotions.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s use Dead Space as an example. When I started playing it, I was really scared, walking around slowly and peeking around every corner. Then, about an hour in, I learned how to kill the monsters, and what tricks I needed to survive.<\/p>\n \nDead Space 2 promo art<\/span><\/p>\n \nAll of the fun, none of the horror!<\/span><\/p>\n \nNot only did I get good at killing the monsters, I thought it was great fun! The things that used to terrify me now became a source of amusement. Instead of dreading the monster sounds they now made me excited \u2013 oh great, another necromorph to dismember!<\/p>\n So where did the fear go? It was simply overshadowed by the rewarding gameplay.<\/p>\n Us humans tend to have this thing called attention, and we only have a limited amount of it. If the game is constantly engaging the player with thinking about their aim, checking ammo, and looking for loot, there\u2019s no room left for much else. In other words, the players\u2019 brain will lack resources to frighten themselves.<\/p>\n The early designs of Amnesia: The Dark Descent included genre-typical weapons, and even guns. We also experimented with very elaborate puzzle set-ups, everything from swinging chandeliers to redirecting rays of light. All these caused the same issues as Dead Space. They were too fun, and took attention away from what mattered: getting scared.<\/p>\n Eventually we decided to reduce the \u201cfun\u201d elements the gameplay had \u2013 and it paid off.<\/p>\n We saw this very clearly when watching Let\u2019s Plays of the Amnesia games. Since players didn\u2019t have things like combat to pay attention to, they reacted to things they might not have even noticed in other games. A vague sound, almost like a footstep, was suddenly a reason to look for the nearest cupboard to hide in. Had the players minds been filled with thoughts of loot boxes, they would have never reacted like this.<\/p>\n \nLesson 5: Narrative is a core element in good horror<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n So if engaging gameplay can be counteractive to the horror, and you need to be careful with the scares, what do you fill a horror game with?<\/p>\n While no silver bullet, narrative is a big part of the equation.<\/p>\n By building up a narrative, us game designers can make game worlds bigger and more intricate than they actually are in-game. We can prime the player into doing a lot of the scaring for themselves.<\/p>\n In order to explain this, let\u2019s take a random image let\u2019s take a random image of a quaint town:<\/p>\n \nAww, I wanna go there. \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n \nThis feels like a great place for an evening stroll, right?<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s give this image some backstory. Put on some spooky music, like the Amnesia soundtrack<\/a>, and read the following:<\/p>\n \nIt has been two weeks since a huge storm cut the town from the rest of the world. All means of communication are down.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nToday, our emergency services received a call \u2013 it just started out as static, a joke that kids would play, but then the screaming started. The screaming of people, then an otherworldly roar, nothing a man nor beast on Earth could make. I had to find out what happened to these people up the serpentine road from us.\u00a0<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI am now here, yet no one else seems to be. It\u2019s like everyone vanished. But as the cold sun sets down over the mountain, I get a sense of unease\u2026<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n…And now look at the picture again.<\/p>\n \nThe worst monster of all is leaving the lights you’ve been murdered horribly.<\/span><\/p>\n \nNot so cozy anymore, right?<\/p>\n A new context leads to re-interpreting the environment based on this information, and get into a different mindset based on it. While you previously admired the view, you are now scanning it for signs of danger.<\/p>\n A big part of horror takes place inside a player\u2019s head. And by fueling their imagination, we can turn a cozy village into a place of terror and despair.<\/p>\n Looking back on which areas worked in Penumbra, this component became apparent. The most loved environments were those where players could use lore and environmental clues to fantasize what happened\u2026 and what could happen. The expansion, Penumbra: Requiem, lacked a lot of this background information. So despite us designing some of our best puzzles and implementing interesting visuals, Requiem was received quite badly. Without a strong narrative component, the players didn\u2019t get the experience they wanted.<\/p>\n \nLesson 6: The world must feel real<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n In order for a horror narrative to have proper impact, the world it takes place in must be taken seriously by the players. But what does \u201cserious\u201d mean? Grey and brown tones with no cartoonish elements? Not quite.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s draw a parallel between real and imagined worlds. If you suffer from nightmares, there\u2019s a trick to that: make a habit out of knocking on walls, tables, or whatever is closest to you. Eventually you will start doing the same when you\u2019re asleep. However, when you knock on walls or a table in a dream, your hand is likely to go through the surface \u2013 that\u2019s how you\u2019ll know you are in a dream, and no longer need to be afraid of the world around you.<\/p>\n Making horror games is basically a business of creating nightmares. But it\u2019s hard to be successful when you have a bunch of players (those damn players again!) constantly doing the equivalent of \u201cknocking on surfaces\u201d, simply by playing the game. As soon as they discover some sort of glitch the immersion of a terrifying world breaks, and it takes a long time to build it back up again.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at an example from Penumbra again. In Penumbra we want the players to imagine that the demon dogs are \u201creal\u201d, implying all the traits (demon) dogs possess. So, we want players to be worried about encountering a dog, and hiding from it. However, some players \u201cknocked on surfaces\u201d by messing around with the environments, and figured out that the dogs can\u2019t reach you if you camp on top of a box. So, whereas a real dog could jump up on the box and chomp the player up, the AI dog cannot. Therefore the fantasy of dogs as \u201creal\u201d is lost, and the game loses a bunch of its scariness.<\/p>\n \nThe intended<\/i> reaction when encountering a demon dog<\/span><\/p>\n \nBecause of this effect, game developers have to be careful about how they construct environments, and what tools they give to the player. There should be enough things to do to make the place feel real. But not so many as to aid players in breaking the illusion.<\/p>\n Lesson 7: Keep it vague<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n You know creepypasta and scary photos you can find on the internet? Almost always the thing that makes them scary is that they leave a lot to the imagination. Seeing a silhouette and glowing eyes out in the corner of a photo feels threatening. A close-up glamour photo of the same monster does not.<\/p>\n \nAAH! What IS that?<\/span><\/p>\n \nOh, just our good friend Terry bringing us a gift. (by ThiccBoiMyers on Discord)<\/span><\/p>\n \nAs mentioned before, much of the horror comes from simply not being sure what the hell you\u2019re looking at. It\u2019s when there is a gap in our knowledge, a certain amount of uncertainty, that horror can really shine. This is especially true when you combine it with some sort of danger element.<\/p>\n It is quite common in games to make sure the player understands the systems in place as clearly as possible. This often results in some really daunting tutorials. Of course for some games, like fighting games, it\u2019s important to have in-depth knowledge about the systems to be able to optimise the game. In horror games we actually want the opposite!<\/p>\n A vague and uncertain game system is like a creepy photo. You can make out enough to get an idea of what\u2019s going on, but there\u2019s still room for the imagination to go wild. Let\u2019s use the health meter in Resident Evil as an example. Internally it is an analog property, a decimal number from 0 to some value, but the player will only ever know that it has \u201cthree\u201d states. This strikes a great balance between giving information and being vague, and helps crank up the tension.<\/p>\n The sanity system in Amnesia: The Dark Descent is similarly vague. You know scary things \u2013 whatever those are \u2013 lower your sanity, and bad things \u2013 whatever those are \u2013 will happen if it drops too low, so you don\u2019t want to risk it.<\/p>\n This was not always the case. We started out with a pretty straightforward gameplay system, hoping players would play along with it. However, people either game it or got frustrated by it. When we tweaked it so it was much less clear how it worked, it sparked player\u2019s imaginations and it was much more enjoyable.<\/p>\n \nAlex isn’t looking so good.<\/span><\/p>\n Lesson 8: Players need a role<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n All stories are driven by the characters that are contained within it, and how a plot plays out is determined by the characteristics of these characters. Just imagine how different Jurassic Park would be if the annoying lawyer guy was replaced by Judge Dredd! So, in order to get the most of any narrative, it is crucial to establish roles.<\/p>\n Games are no different. The role that a player inhabits will determine what actions they have at their disposal, what their goals ore, and so forth. Knowing the character is a vital component in order for the player to be an active part of the story.<\/p>\n Yet this is one of those components that many horror games forget. You are often thrust into a story as some generic character. Often the thought behind this is that the player would \u201cplay as themselves\u201d, but this is not how any narrative really works. In order to properly parse a story situation, you need to understand what kind of person is dealing with it.<\/p>\n Say that you come across a corpse. You are playing as Sherlock Holmes, a corpse means a case! You will want to search for clues and try to solve the mystery of how this person died.<\/p>\n Now imagine you\u2019re playing as a flesh-eating ghoul. Now the same corpse is suddenly dinner – yum!<\/p>\n \nAn alternate universe where Daniel is turned into a ghoul. Bon appetit!<\/span><\/p>\n \nIn most areas, horror games are well beyond your average game in terms of narrative. But for some reason, a large portion of horror games just fail to set the player role properly. It\u2019s strange, relying on a narrative backbone, yet losing so much of the atmosphere by not defining the player role.<\/p>\n Another big reason for defining roles is that it can help with some of the issues addressed earlier. For instance, it can limit the number of actions the player feels is rational to take. For example Penumbra\u2019s protagonist Philip is a physics teacher, so while he could perhaps fight some demon dogs, it would be more logical to run and hide from aggressive humanoids.<\/p>\n This lesson we clearly learned in SOMA. At first we thought about having a non-speaking Simon with very little character. However, this made player distance themselves from the events. Things got a lot more personal when they played as a character who was reacting to what was happening. While players previously wouldn\u2019t ponder the strange events in-depth, Simon pushing them in the right direction it worked much better.<\/p>\n \nLesson 9: Agency is crucial<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n When I talk about agency, I\u2019m not talking about the CIA. What I mean is agency of the free will kind. A game that has a lot of agency lets the players make decisions and feel like an active part of the narrative.<\/p>\n This is closely tied to the previous lesson. Not only do we want to give players a role, we also want them to own that role. They need to feel like they really inhabit the character they are supposed to play. A game can achieve a lot by combining agency with keeping things vague \u2013 and letting players decide to take uncertain decisions.<\/p>\n Say that you are faced with a dark tunnel \u2013 dark tunnels are pretty scary!<\/p>\n Now imagine that the game explicitly tells you that your goal lies beyond the tunnel. There\u2019s no choice, you gotta go in. And if the game forces you do something, it will also make sure you do actually have the means to complete this quest \u2013 in this case get to the other side of the tunnel.<\/p>\n \nWhat’s the worst that could happen? \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n \nBut what if entering this dark tunnel was voluntary, or at least presented as such? The game vaguely tells you that there might be something important there \u2013 but you don\u2019t know, and might also be a certain death. All of a sudden the tunnel feels a lot less safe. By adding agency and making entering the tunnel an uncertain choice, all sorts of doubts pop up in the player\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a number of other ways to add agency. Say the player needs to do something unnerving, like Amnesia\u2019s Daniel drilling into a corpse to get blood out. In the game it is clear that there is no other option. Overall reactions to this was not very strong.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEg662HTBxlYXWM0OlvmppkrjZ7-WmhQMe6eewwMNlKWDwD_sCsZRpgmkBTYk2UDd6M1PC_grbp74jtFHUZTXSd1FwkQXbZDQzLgdHnfyPgqAv29cqdaDf9cPjdvno4mh9tTWFOaFB4_T2jE\/s1600\/590380-screenshots-20180308011040-71e6b.webp\")
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