New Horror-Game Mechanics

[Estocavio]

How about have the antagonist as a regular human being for once? I can guarantee that humans are more malicious, deadly and psychotic than any deformed monster.

Claudia Wolf (Silent Hill 3) and especially Eddie Dombrowski (Silent Hill 2) do nicely to fit your quota, even though you fight hundreds of monsters along the way.

If they replaced the monsters with raving lunatics that would work

Um, no. Not in a million years. The entire premise of Silent Hill centers around Alessa (or an anonymous evil force if you're sticking to SH2) molding monsters out of her victims' psyche. The protagonist is then forced to face these Inner Demons, grotesque abominations that symbolize various things about their own subconscious. Making the role of "raving lunatic" into a horde of grunts rather than a developed individual would completely ruin the deep story-telling.

True - It wouldnt work in Silent Hill as it is, but think of the cultists; They may have messed up the story a tiny bit, but they were just as misanthropically heartless as the monsters, if not almost worse. Which is why a game based around this concept alltogether would be necessary.

 

[Wayneguard]

I would like to see a game that puts some emphasis on the survival aspect of survival/horror. For example, I think that it would be neat for a post-apocalyptic hero to have to scavenge for food to keep his energy up, scavenge for gasoline and other shit that he can barter with for more shit or use to his advantage. Idk... something like that. Biggest thing is the need to scavenge for food and water though.

 

[benafuda]

I had an idea a while ago, not really a gameplay mechanic but something to scare the bejeezus out of the player:
So for the whole game you never have access to guns of any sort, and when you pick up items, an onscreen prompt would say
"pick up x item?".
So I was thinking for one room in the game, there would be a single gun on a table, and when you go to pick the gun up, instead of the prompt saying "Pick up the gun?" It would say "*Use* the gun?". If you press the key or button normally used to pick up items, the camera would switch to 3rd person, your character would pick the gun up, point it at their head and pull the trigger, killing themselves.

 

[Guitar Gamer]

I have heard the idea of "you can't fight you only run" here a lot but I don't quite get it.

I believe the best way to make something scary; is to make it inconsistent.
Maybe the first time you blow off the monsters head with a shotgun first try, then when you set down your shotgun to open a door you look back and see that it disappears.
"Whatever" you assure yourself, "This steel pipe will suffice with enough practice"

sometimes when you hit your antagonist it will merely flinch, unbenounst to you it is giving you an opportunity to high tail it out of there, you assume it is an opportunity to hit it again and try that, the pipe gets stuck in the abominations head and now it emits a high pitched amplified by the acoustics of the pipe in hits vaguely mouth shaped orifice.
You book it away.
Later on you find that the monster can run as fast as you and it corners you, you try the pipe trick again to no avail, the monster kills you, perhaps you should have listened to the mad ravings of a lunatic who kept screaming to your face that "the heavens are

your only salvation

" and climbing in the attic was a better idea.

Inconsistency I believe, if you let the player ever know that there is a surefire way to win then they have gained certain stability in their fight against the demons and even tier own insanity.

 

[cheese_wizington]

The rape mechanic. It's an infinite quick time event that if you fail you'll be raped.

 

[Darquenaut]

Although not so much a direct play mechanic, I think it needs to be emphasized that the main character has to be a character the player can relate to. This, for me, is integral. I want to actually give a damn about making sure my characters dies outside of having to reload from the last save point. Give me a solid back story, a reason for why I should care about the character - bonus points to the supporting cast as well. Why should I care about the characters other than to win the game and get a few achievements? Horror, good horror, is based on narrative and how the characters are changed through the ordeal. I've only played a few horror games that have accomplished this (and no, Alan Wake was not one of them - far from it, IMO), and I hope it becomes better implemented in the future.

 

[Daniel_Rosamilia]

Enemies that adapt to the surroundings you're in.
Let's say that after a fierce gunfight, you escape into a submarine and you sit a coupla hundred fathoms down.
If you're there long enough, the enemies will adapt to that (gills, fins, all that water-evolution jazz) and attack you, leaving you to go WTF?!?!
I'm pretty sure that another game did that though...

 

[teknoarcanist]

@darquenat I agree. Lose all the jump-scares and musical cues. Give me ONE character who I like and can relate to, and make his overarching goal something more interesting and relatable than 'escaping' or 'finding a significant other'.

Then give me ONE antagonist. Through repeated encounter, MAKE me afraid of him (ie, don't just play music that tells me I'm supposed to be scared of him right now, or else I'm going to get a Game Over).

Even without any particularly genius horror mechanic, I think a good scary game can just come out of introducing the player to the 'rules' of the world, and then subverting them until the player has almost reconciled the changes...and then again, and again, always remaining one step ahead of the player's comfort-level/expectation.

Now a flawed but decent example of this is the 'bear' section in Condemned 2. What it does well is to introduce you to the rules ("This bear will f**k you up; flee it through the walls and crevices") and then flips that on its head ("surprise surprise; the bear just burst through a wall!").

What it DOESN'T do right (and the mistake most horror games share) is in not thinking up some alternative to killing the player and inducing gameover/tryagain when they 'do it wrong'. While the idea that there needs to be a discernible consequence in order to frighten the player might have some merit, it's completely overwhelmed by the immersion-breaking slap to the face that a game-over screen imposes, and the level of boredom and apathy which comes after (...light goes out...screen turns static...monster jumps out...yawn.)

I think the way horror games need to go is away from the linear path and more towards the organic player-determined procedurally-generated scenario, where anything can happen and the player is always on his or her toes.

 

[Madkipz]

I want to take the F.E.A.R to the next level, odd warning signs like suddenly your partners face suddenly has this creepy smile and raspy sound and the sounds growing larger, with a heartbeat music and the world growing increasingly odd like people vanishing in thin air or you crashing into invisible walls.

FEAR is broken as a horror game because it's incredibly predictable and about as scary as Nacho Libre.

You cannot have sudden scary music whenever something is about to happen because that is an auditory clue and lets the player mentally prepare themselves.

Penumbra: Overture. Google it.

while F.E.A.R might have been a poor example, the other extreme, adventure horror is fubar for most audience. Especially anything similar to penumbra series.

"The best horror games and movies don't have retarded clues that something is about to happen." Exactly, but they need it while shit is happening regardless of game. The biggest problem with fear was the enemies and the setting, just terrible.

 

[Ertol]

There are two types of scary games. There are the games where things jump out of closets and try to om nom nom your face, which makes you jump a little. And then there are the games with scary atmospheres where you hardly have to fight anything, but you always think something will be right around the next corner. Now a days scary games are all about a weird looking fleshy thing with a third arm growing out of its chest, which in my opinion isn't all that scary.

 

[YourAverageParasite]

They should make a hot looking girl appear... and... then... OMG IT TURNS OUT IT IS A TRANNY!!!
I swear, I would wet my pants!

 

[Pyotr Romanov]

first person, no shooter. you know those moments where you see an enemy in the corner of your vision and jump out of the way just in time? imagine that, but not being able to move quick enough to dodge.

Get yourself some Penumbra [http://www.penumbragame.com/ageGate.php] man. It's amazing.

OT: How about a split-personality that could take over at any given moment?

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

snip

My god man hit the enter key once and awhile.

Make the player vulnerable and not Rambo. This is the best thing you can do. If can easily kill enemies you won't fear them. To add to this make enemies sparse so that since you are weak they won't be coming too often. Also use some suspense god dammit that is basic stuff but it has been fucked out of the window onto spikes then shot out of a cannon into the sun which then implodes sucking it into a blackhole. Also the main character needs to be good, human and relatable and have a decent goal for the story. If the game lacks these people won't care about dying. I for example liked to watch Isaac die sometimes just to see how some enemies would dismember him. A little psychotic I know but I am curious and want to see how everything plays out unless I care about the character to not let him/her die meaninglessly.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

snip

My god man hit the enter key once and awhile.

I usually do. in-fact I usually do it too much. Like I said though. I got a bit too into that. I typed it all out faster than usual and it's probably got a lot of spelling mistakes and crap in it because I was doing it so damn fast. I was only planning on writing a little snippet of text. By the time I'd finished I really couldn't be bothered sifting through it and finding where paragraphs should have gone.

I suppose but even semi proper paragraphs would be fine like every 4-7 lines hit the enter key that is what I do when I am not bothered about proper paragraphs.

 

[Harkonnen64]

I would like to see a game that puts some emphasis on the survival aspect of survival/horror. For example, I think that it would be neat for a post-apocalyptic hero to have to scavenge for food to keep his energy up, scavenge for gasoline and other shit that he can barter with for more shit or use to his advantage. Idk... something like that. Biggest thing is the need to scavenge for food and water though.

I think Fallout: New Vegas is going to have a hardcore mode like that, where you have to periodically drink water, eat food, and bullets have weight, among other things that make the game generally harder. That said, I don't think New Vegas is going to be a horror-survival game.

 

[Borntolose]

*Snip*

Damn. That does sound scary. Especially at 2:30 am.

OT:I don't really have anything meaning to contribute to this thread. I'm not into horror much.

 

[Doclector]

Okay. Imagine a horror shooter in which you are a grunt sent in with a team of other normal grunts to investigate a perfectly normal power outage at your perfectly normal barracks. That's right, no super soldiers, no spec ops, you're just run of the mill soldiers, only just nearing the end of your training. Hell, the only reason they sent you is that seurity requires you to bring a team, "just in case" someone was trying to get in.

Anyway, you get your normal squad commands, attack, take cover, follow me, stop. All on the d-pad. The sweep goes fine, and you get the power back on, until, due to another power outage in one room, you become seperated. You can hear your squadmates, but you can't find them. You go around a corner, and are struck cold by a monstrous apparition. It's claws red with blood, it's teeth countless. It walks towards you slowly. You try to get back round the corner, but the door has shut, and it won't open. You call for your squad to regroup. Nothing happens. Your character says nothing. You hear your men on the radio still wondering where you are. You try again, still nothing. Again, nothing. The creature gets closer, and you open fire. The shots make no sound, and deal no damage. You realise, you simply can't call for help. You want to, you need to, but you can't.

And then you wake up, on a plane with your buddies. It was all just a dream, the classic nightmare of not being able to scream when you desperately need to. You are headed for a perfectly normal base in afghanistan, where a perfectly normal communications error has occured...

Just for future reference, your buddies would not last longer than the first level. I played jericho, I know having a squad in a horror game is an awful idea...