The Horror Game Conundrum

Introduction

Horror media is one of my favorite genres when it comes to movies, books, podcasts and yes, games. I have long felt that when it comes to games, there are some unique design challenges that are very hard to overcome due to the way that the medium works, and I wanted to highlight them in this article. Most of them are present in non-horror as well but are far more damaging to the experience in a horror setting if they are not handle the right way.

The problems I am about to highlight can be found in all games, from AAA titles to smaller indie titles, and the existence of these problems do not mean that the games are bad; as I said, it is one of my most favorite genres after all! It does just mean that making a game of this type has some additional challenges for the Game Designers to consider, and some more “behind the scenes” stuff that needs to be hidden from the Player as best as possible.

I also want to mention that I love all the games I mention in this article, even when I criticize parts of them!

Conundrum 1: What is a horror game?

Much like when it comes to movies and books, I kind of feel like classifying horror as a genre is a little bit weird; first of all, there are so many types of horror experiences that have very little to do with each other – both a splatter-filled gore-fest and a slow paced existential dread-filled introspective story are categorized under the horror umbrella (“Horror Umbrella” is a good band name btw!). So, whenever someone says they are into horror games, I can’t really tell what they are really into without additional information.

This is a bigger problem when it comes to other genres in general too, for example: saying that you are into sci-fi carries the same problem where it could either mean that you are into “Star Wars” (side-note: “Star Wars” is closer to fantasy than sci-fi, in my opinion) or “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, or maybe even “Frankenstein”, which was the first widely recognized sci-fi story. That’s quite a wide range.

I do, however, think this distinction is much more important when it comes to horror, as it is so incredibly heavily reliant upon the mood the game is trying to give to the Player, even more so than the actual gameplay (I will get more into that later on).

There are a few sub-genres that are commonly used in gaming, such as Survival Horror, which carries more of a focus on the panic of the situation you are in due to lack of resources rather than the horrific story itself (though that absolutely helps too, of course). But even inside this sub-genre I would say that there is not a huge overlap between a game such as the original “Resident Evil” or the brilliant “Signalis” when compared to something like “Resident Evil 5” or “Dead Space” when it comes to the mood and experience.

 A lot of non-horror classified games also have some really good horror sections in them: the “Bioshock” games have some very effectively scary parts, “F.E.A.R” flirts quite heavily with horror throughout the game and even the “Legend of Zelda” series has some pretty creepy sections. How should they count on the horror genre scale?

When googling “Best horror game”, a list is presented with a long row of games, most of which I would agree with, but there are some questionable ones in my mind; should “Bloodborne”, no matter how excellent it is, be classed as a horror game? It certainly has horror elements in it, and it is loosely based on Lovecraft stories and lore, so maybe? How about the original “Dead Rising”? It has zombies in it, sure, but the tone and mood of the game leans much more towards comedy than horror. How about “Prey” from 2017? It is also on there. There are more examples too, which reinforces my belief that horror is a weird genre to specify.

So, for this first section of the article, I have no answer on how to solve this outside of coming up with more sub-genres, which isn’t really a good or viable solution either. I just wanted to highlight it as something to keep in mind when talking about or designing horror.

Conundrum 2: The gameplay is often not that interesting

This point does not apply to all games in the horror genre, especially not the games of a more action-y nature or survival horror – this point is more aimed towards the games that tend to be of a slower pace, and especially the very large subset of games where you have no means of defense against the horror threat that is most likely chasing you down.

What I mean with this point is best explained with a thought experiment: if you take your favorite horror game and mentally remove all the horror mood from it, what do you actually do in the game? What is the actual gameplay that you would be left with? In many cases the answer would be “not much at all, really”! In a lot of cases, you would be left with something like:

• Walking around and exploring the environment.
• Picking up and reading notes with exposition.
• Performing menial tasks, sometimes in the form of simple puzzles.
• Hiding from an enemy that will kill you instantly if you are found (more on this later).

Now, this is not anything bad in itself – there are many non-horror “walking simulator” type games that are excellent experiences that follow this type of gameplay: “Gone Home”, “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture”, “Dear Esther” etc. I do enjoy this type of game that is more of an interactive experience rather than brimming with gameplay, and that works well in a horror setting too of course!

The main point I wanted to bring up here is that, many times, the gameplay tasks you have in the game has very little to do with the fact that you are playing a horror game, but rather tend to be menial tasks you have to do as an excuse to have you moving around the environment so that the horror stuff can happen to you rather than you being an active participant of the horror. And it does work, as a lot of games have proven, but I think it could be made even better!

What I would like to bring up as a challenge for designers is basically for the actual gameplay that you do in the game to be tied closer to what the game is about rather than largely unrelated tasks that is merely meant to keep the Player busy so the monster can find them. For example, in a game where my character is stuck in a location with a predator chasing me down, it would make a lot of sense for me to try to make traps or otherwise trying to come up with ways to disable the threat.

Matching the gameplay, story, and character motivations closer to each other is something that many games in different genres struggle with (referred to as “ludonarrative dissonance” using fancy words), but if your game relies almost entirely on story and mood, it is far more important that those are at the highest level of quality.

Conundrum 3: The difficulty

Horror games have a pretty unique problem when it comes to the difficulty level in my opinion: they need to feel like they are extremely challenging for the Player, but they if they are too challenging, the experience can be ruined. Let me explain.

Fear is an emotion that works best when facing the unknown – we as human are conditioned by nature to fear things that are unknown, be it situations we haven’t faced before or a person or creature that we can’t fully see or understand. That is why it makes sense why so many people are afraid of the dark; what could be hidden in there? Who knows! This is also why a lot of monsters in all types of media get far less scary the more you learn about them.

So, bringing this back to the topic of difficulty in a horror game: the same thing applies here! The first time you enter a scary or moody situation is going to be very effective and evocative on your mind, but if you fail the sequence and have to do it again, the magic will be gone. Even worse, if you fail multiple times, the magic might even turn into resentment towards that section of the game instead of a fantastic bit of horror. To tie this back a bit to the previous section (Conundrum 2), the less “fun” the gameplay is in itself, the bigger impact having to redo a section will have on the experience.

For me, the biggest problem I have in many horror games that I otherwise love is when they add forced stealth sections where you need to sneak past or otherwise hide from some monster, and if you are spotted it turns out to be an instant failure, probably due to my character being split in half (or worse).

When I respawn and get to try again, the magic of the situation will be completely gone, and what remains will just be a (often quite poor and somewhat boring, since it isn’t the main focus of the game) stealth section with a lot of trial and error. When I get through it, I will not feel “I can’t believe I survived that situation!” but rather “I’m just happy I won’t have to do that again…”.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph of this section, the game needs to FEEL like it is hard and that I survived by just the smallest margin available – that’s where a lot of the tension in such a section comes from, and also the accomplishment the Player feels after having finished it. But if it actually IS hard, then the risk of having to replay the section many times increases, and that has a big impact of the enjoyment of the game. This is a very hard nut to crack for designers of this type of horror game, whereas a game that is more geared towards survival horror has a much higher resistance to it just by the fact that most of the tension and mood come from the gameplay systems rather than the story and set pieces, so replaying them can even be pretty fun after you fail as you can try something new.

Conundrum 4: The pacing

Nailing the pacing while making a game is always very difficult, and also an extremely crucial thing to get right, as a poorly paced game can very easily kill the enjoyment of any game, no matter how good the story or gameplay may be. Much like in previous sections though, it is even more crucial in a horror game!

You see, for any emotion or sensation that a human might feel, there is going to be a threshold for when you will receive diminishing returns from it; whether it be happiness, sadness, anger, or fear - after a while that strength of the emotion will start to numb as the sensation continues. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are, for example, less happy 24 hours later, but we cannot keep up the euphoric high of the initial peak for that long as that would be exhausting for both mind and body, so the emotion evens out into something more manageable after some time.

Imagine watching an action movie that is all action scenes – even if they are extremely good scenes, it would start to get boring after a while if that is all you get for an extended time. You would need some downtime where other things happen so that your emotional response can reset for the next scene. Hopefully, the movie would also use that downtime in a clever way to give you more reasons to care about why the next action scene happens too so that you get more invested in how it will play out.

Back to horror! I would claim that fear and feeling tense is one of the strongest emotional responses we as humans have access to – it is what acts to keep us alive, or at least it did further back in time to a higher degree. It can have huge physical effects on the body, causing it to freeze up, induce sweating, speeding up your pulse, making you feel light-headed etc. By this I mean that it is an exhausting emotion to have, even more so than most of the other ones.

Now, these bodily responses are, weirdly enough, the ones we want to have while enjoying horror entertainment! But we want them in moderation, and we don’t want them to stick around until they lose their luster.

For a movie, this isn’t generally as much of a problem by the simple fact that they tend to have a shorter runtime of 1.30 to 2 hours or so (especially horror movies tend to be on the shorter side for this reason). A game can last much longer in most cases, unless they are a shorter experience like the “Slenderman” example I used in the last section. For a longer experience, you will need to plan out downtime.

Downtime is when things are safe for a while and you can shift gear from panic and fear to something else, for example learning more about the world, environment, threat, or characters. Maybe have some nice scenes together with your supporting cast (if there are any) or let the Player take some time to restock their inventory or do some safer exploration before they are then eventually tossed back into the action.

This will let the Player reset their emotional stakes a little and they will then be much more susceptible for the experience you want them to have again afterwards. If done smartly, the stakes can even get raised afterwards if you, for example, have spent time during the downtime together with an ally and the next scene is them put in danger – the stakes will be elevated even further then.

A Few Good Examples and Recommendations

Here are a few modern-ish horror games that I really enjoyed and that have navigated past at least some of the challenges I outlined in this article in different ways. I have consciously chosen games with a wider range of experience, all the way from the more “walking simulator” experience to action focused survival horror, from the indiest of indie games to big AAA productions, to give you a wide range of examples. Enjoy!

Alien: Isolation

“Alien: Isolation” is a really good example of a game that has, if not outright solved, at least addressed most of the issues I have brought up in this article in some way. It also happens to be one of my favorite horror games, so you can see this as a strong recommendation to try it out if you haven’t already! It is, in my mind, one of the finest horror games available at the time of writing.

I will probably do a deep dive on the design in this game at some point in the future.

Signalis

This is a modern game that made to mimic an older style of survival horror – more similar to the original Resident Evil games than the more recently released ones. It also has a very cool horror aesthetic that looks to emulate PS1 style graphics.

It has very well-made gameplay, pacing and story/mood and it feel old-school while still playing really well by today’s standards. Highly recommended!

Still Wakes the Deep

This is the game that inspired me to write this article in the first place, and while it does run into the problems in section 2 and 3 from this article, it was still an experience that was fantastic due to how well made the rest of the experience was.

The setting on an oil rig in the 70’s is extremely cool to begin with even before the horror begins, and the story, mood and pacing are good enough that it carries the less successful parts of the game in my opinion.

Dead Space

This entry goes both for the original and the remake, as they are both excellent games! This is by far the most action-packed game I will recommend on this list, but it is firmly a survival horror game, so it fits comfortably here!

The gameplay in this game is strong enough that it would be a very good game even if all the horror mood was removed from it, but it becomes something really special with it! It successfully makes the tasks you perform in the game make sense from a plot and character view, as your protagonist is an engineer rather than a soldier. This also means that most of the weapons you have to defend yourself with aren’t meant to be weapons at all to begin with, further lending believability to the world and character.

Story, mood, and pacing are very good and lift the excellent gameplay even higher. Highly recommended if you haven’t tried it yet!

Faith

This is a very interesting game trilogy that emulates games as they were back in the extremely early days of gaming on Atari consoles and its contemporaries. You can really only do two things: move and present your crucifix, but it is more than enough to create an extremely creepy atmosphere. All voices are modulated to sound like they were generated on that old hardware, and that certainly elevates the creepiness level greatly.

The only thing that hints at this not being an actual old game are some terribly unsettling cutscenes that play out, which are rotoscoped from real footage (primitive motion capture, basically!), and they are far more fluid than anything that was possible back then, but these scenes are extremely creepy, much because they stand out so much to the rest of the game.

Killer Frequency

In this game you play as a late-night radio host working the night shift at the radio station when odd calls start coming in that hint at something strange is going on. Due to circumstances in the story, you will have to handle taking emergency calls as well, and the story soon escalates to something rather creepy.

You have to juggle those duties while still running you radio show, while being stuck in the radio station. A very cool premise that is executed really well!

Conclusion

Making horror media in general is a pretty unique challenge as it is both very easy and hard to do; add some darkness and some creepy sounds to any situation and you’re more than halfway there already! If you then play a loud sound and flash something on screen (doesn’t even really matter what it is), you are almost guaranteed to get a frightened reaction out of almost anyone. But does that constitute a good horror experience, especially in the long run? I would like to claim that it doesn’t if that is your one and only trick. Jump-scares are one of the tools available to the horror game makes, and it is an important one, but it should never be the only tool.

Especially when it comes to longer forms of horror experiences like games tend to be, there needs to be something more to it to keep me going and putting myself through the mild self-inflicted torture of my body going into fight or flight mode. And that is what is hard: finding the balance to get to that “extra”. The longer your game is, the harder it is going to be to keep up a Player’s engagement with the mood and atmosphere if that is all you have to push you forward.

We are currently in a period of time where we as horror game fans are “eating good”, as the younglings of today say; we are getting a lot of good horror games from both big AAA developers and Indie developers, which was not the case for a long time. For a while, it felt like Indie developers alone kept this genre of games going, and I’m very thankful for that! We are also getting many types of horror game, everything from slow paced experiences to action-driven survival horror games. I do hope that this trend continues going forward to and that even more developers take a stab at the genre.

If they do, I hope that maybe they can come up with even more clever and inventive ways to overcome some of the inherent difficulties with the genre that I have outlined here to increase the quality of the games we get even more!

//Jocke