alien isolation has kinda nailed this one, you arent scared of the alien but what it implies (technological improvements actually make it better as it feels more real and intelligent) and there is the desire to progress vs hide
+Le Name very true of alien. I think alien gets its tension from the mechanics, like you just said, plus a little bit of uncanny because of the working joes. not to keep talking about PT, but I think that demo got a lot of its tension from allot of uncanny things. even once you've gotten use to the things that were normal and are now different and odd, they change slightly again.
The only downside, though they sort of had to do it, is that the alien always knew, generally, where you were. One good thing they did was they usually only had it leave the vents when it heard you. In SOMA, there's also one enemy that always knows where you are.
MC Cookies- Yeah, FNAF! A game which suffered from the exact problem described in the video, the problem of pointless sequels until it was hated instead of loved.
Funny thing is, I had one of my greatest moments of horror playing... waitforit... Mirrors Edge. Yeah, that sunny, friendly-colored 3D-Jump'n'Run. Those elite cops aren't really all that scary-looking. No big teeth, no nasty wobbly bits or ichor-dripping bare flesh. The feeling of dread came from a simple factor: Knowing that two of them are on my heels, but not knowing how close they actually are. Did i lose them? Are they cathing up? Did they split? Do they know a shortcut i don't? I hope I got the ideal route here... Damn, if I stop just for a split second to look back, they will definitely catch up and lock me in combat. Just run, man, run and hope those fuckers can't keep up... That's what horror is, uncertainty and expectation. Detailed depictions of monstrosities are triggering disgust, not horror. Disgust is easily transported by audiovisual means, but Horror is all in the head.
roymcgeeters Outlast, Amnesia and even Five Nights at Freddy's were real good kickers into the right direction. We need to feel the dread again that we used to have while playing the first Clock Tower game. The helplessness that forces us to hide and wait instead of shooting everything that can move >_> I'm looking at you "The Evil Within" ...cursed be thy name for slandering the meaning of true survival horror!! ...
LordBloodySoul I feel like the video detailed a slightly different horror experience, one where the player was afraid of the unknown rather than of dying. As much as I enjoyed Amnesia, after I encountered the monsters enough - despite the screen blur and sanity penalties - I realised that the game really only had one or two of them to throw at me. Thankfully they're spaced well enough that the thought didn't occur to me until beyond the half-way mark, but after that, the game did lose some of its fearsomeness. I've heard similar complaints from other people too. I think as soon as you can encapsulate what your potential enemies may be in a horror game, it loses that "fear of the unknown" discussed. I believe Outlast and especially FNAF have that even more-so than Amnesia.
One of my favorite horror games ever is Amnesia: The Dark Descent. They really nailed atmosphere for me...the foggy rays of light in an old castle room that feel like there is real dust blowing and settling, the tinder-box system tying well to the way the lighting felt, making everything feel real and actually aged, the unnerving sounds of the building settling and creaking as you contemplate your own sanity...I could keep going, but I'll stop.
+Zach Ruhl Smooth graphics are nice, though. I totally agree with the notion that graphics are one of the least important things about a game, but Rocket League's beautiful graphics are a large part of why I'm planning to buy it.
+Zach Ruhl The best reason that I can think of is, people want to see how real games can get, so they are constantly pushing it's boundaries simply for the sake of making that technological progress. A game called The Order comes to mind, with its unrivaled and AMAZING graphics, yet absolutely garbage gameplay.
Suspec M Same can be said about Assassins' Creed, CoD and FIFA. Maybe they are not nescessary bad games, atleast conceptually wise, but I think that the word Mediocre should fit them rather well given how rotten the franchises have become. From Hero to Zero basically.Also, big thanks to TH-camrs like Pewdiepie who basically sold/promoted the game just by screaming like a 5-year old kid in front of his screen.
Goatmon FNaF is not a Horror game... people been Drowning so much on "Jumpscare Simulators" that they forgot what makes a Horror game BE a horror game. AKA Silent Hill for PSX.
Wow, this turned out to be oddly prophetic. In the two years since this video came out, the indie horror scene has produced some *amazing* titles. I just finished *Among the Sleep,* and Dan's description of the basis of horror games felt like a note for note description of that game. Now I'm going to have to rewatch more old Extra Credits videos and see if anything else like this shows up.
That is a badass concept. I'd love to see something like that made. There's something inherently spooky about indirect vision. I was using a nightvision camera a little while ago, and although I could see everything in the darkness with perfect clarity, it was extremely tense, because I was constantly worried that I'd see something horrible through the camera. I think Fatal Frame's done a little bit of work in this area, but it should be fleshed out.
To this day, despite the graphics becoming more and more sub par, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is the best example of "horror" I can think of. Walking through Chernobyl and hearing a growl, or a dog barking is one of the scariest things but even worse is hearing nothing. Its one of those games where you start seeing movement out of the corner of your eye and either unload your gun, stand stock still and listen, or just leg it. And with a bit of modding (thank you PC gaming) the graphics can be brought up a bit closer to modern standards.
I've started watching Extra Credits from the beginning, and it's interesting to see how things have evolved in the meantime. It's great to see how survival horror games have had a renaissance in recent years. :)
I think one of the main aspects of a horror game is the music. The music that always drives you on end, makes you feel like your constantly at the edge of your seat, the music to where if you mute it you un mute it because you are in that constant state of "what happens next"
Gergely Farkas theirs a mod that lets you play every country online in the campaign for medivel: total war 2 and there was a game that someone did... tgere was a LOT of countrys.
Good description. Too me survival horror stands out because while in most games you are scared of something else killing you, in a good SH you are scared of your actions getting yourself killed. Wasting your ammo, exploring a drowned/radioactive area, not checking for traps, not sure what weapons/gear/ consumables to carry etc. This adds suspense and immersion beyond pure combat.
I'm always impressed by the drawings and pics you guys put up, but with this episode, you just nailed it. So charming, and they illustrate your points so well. Good job, and thanks.
It isn't necessarily that improved specs are ruining these games, but instead that the standards set by these improved specs makes developers think we want the best looking game possible, when really, an impressive number of polygons on-screen is only about 10% of a game. That's the reason why so many films that have mind-blowing CGI effects can be recieved poorly, like the Transformers series. The reception of these films shows that the story, not the action or visuals, is the most important aspect of a film, and we've seen it happen in the gaming industry, where a game that pushes the limits of visuals defeats the point - those limits were what made those games scary.
+DiscoClam Its not even that expensive to give games great graphics these days thanks to deals on high powered engine's like Unreal and the Cry Engine. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was very much an indie game made by a small studio but had photorealistic graphics. The problem probably comes from all the other expensive shit that comes from triple AAA games like cutscenes and set pieces.
The Evil Within. This game is a perfect example of just about everything you said. I usually hate the horror genre but this game is so interesting that I often catch myself looking up to picking up my controller and popping in the disk. It has the happy median between action adventure and downright horror. I recommend this game to anyone who still hasn't played it yet.
To look for survival horror games, abandon your console and look to the indy developers on the PC. There's LOTS of great choices out there that are fantastically done. "SCP:Containment Breach" is terrifying and different every time you play it so it has a lot of replay-ability and always keeps me on the edge of my seat. I also recently discovered a hidden jem called "The Train". I kid you not. Look this one up. You do yourself a disservice if you let yourself miss this one if you're a fan of horror games. The developer put an amazing amount of work into that one and NAILED the atmosphere. The graphics are great, the sound is great. The story is great, and it contains one of the scariest sequences I've ever experienced in a horror game.
Technology limitations are the reason why Morrowind in TES III felt larger than Cyrodiil in TES IV. Since distant land was not rendered, you couldn't see far, and so distance traveled felt greater. Also since you could not see distant objects, they would not pop up until you got close. It was incidentally a very immersive experience because the fog shroud preserved the mystery of the land.
It's also why the Sixth House bases are so much more terrifying than anything that came later. And I say this as someone who loved both Oblivion and Skyrim.
This video reminds me of an interesting game I found a while ago. It wasn't survival horror or really traditional horror at all yet it made great use of some of the tricks talked about here. The game was called The Swapper, ostensibly a puzzle game but with a fascinating story underneath. It throws you in without any context and slowly reveals a story that seems to come at horror from another angle. It uses a lot of existential horror, asking questions with very unsettling implications while also having you deal with beings that are utterly alien to us. It takes elements from some of the best old school sci fi horror and approaches them with some great subtlety. Anyone who has some interest in an unusual take on horror, and a penchant for clever puzzle solving, would probably enjoy this game.
El Bandito You want why? Because giving you an objective isn't hand holding. Because you just described an out dated game. Silent hill 1 is not a great game, by today's standards it is pretty bad. Sometimes hints are necessary, look at metroid and darksouls. Do they ever say how to do something? Yes they do.
I very much agree, it's just a good video on the subject and I felt compelled to share in case you hadn't seen it (and for other that may not have seen it).
A question: Should a horror game be judged by how scary it is? You may find that to be a stupid question, I know I did until a smart man told me "everyone has their own tolerance level". Think about it for a second. If you happen to somehow manage to create the scariest horror game of the millennium you're probably gonna get commended for it, but it's still gonna limit your audience since no one dares to play it, right?
I'm against calling questions stupid, but I do think this question is a fairly ineffective and moot one. At the very least, you must first define what, exactly, you mean by "scary." Fear isn't just something that can be measured on a scale. There is no one "tolerance level" because there's so many different types of fear. Should a horror game be judged by the effectiveness of its jumpscares? Should a horror game be judged by the amount of adrenalin it inspires in the player? Should a horror game be judged by how much mystery it has? Should a horror game be judged by the low, lingering dread it inspires? All of these fit into the question of whether a not a game is scary, and everyone finds these different types of fear arbitrary in their scariness. Let's say though that someone somewhere did make a game that was the perfect blend of slow-creeping mystery, paranoiac dread, high level tension, and sudden jumpscares. Let's say it's the "scariest game of the millennium," Should we judge it by it's scariness? Yes, I think we should, partly because the people who have a low tolerance level for one or two particular types of fear, will play the game to experience the other parts, but mostly because the ones who want to play horror games are the ones who want to be scared. They don't mind being terrified shitless. They don't care if they spend the rest of the week looking over their shoulder and locking the windows. In fact, that's what horror seekers are after. That's the whole point of the horror genre. And after all, catering to everyone to make a bigger audience is what made "horror" basically just an offshoot of the action genre.
I think this is a great question, actually, you guys screw off. And he has a great point, I don't play any intense horror games because they're too scary. I game can be very scary without being over the top to the point where I don't want to play it. The Witch's House is an amazing example.
i love to see gopher play horror games, he plays them silently and tries to figure them out. no creaming of anything like that, just a lot of "ok" and "i am alright". and the best part: i don't have to play them myself, i love the story, i am too much of a wimp to play them.
Survival horror has really bounced back since this video was published. Games like Outlast, FNAF, and the Evil Within have taken advantage of the high-res graphics of the PS4 and PC's to make horror more gruesome.
+The Adjective Nounist I think someone could make a case for it. Adhering to the themes addressed in the video, I would say it's certainly influenced. A type of horror is the frailty of humanity, of who we are.
P.T. was what the 20 million+ fan base wanted, very badly, so Konami said fuck them, fuck Kojima, fuck Reedus and del Toro, fuck making insane money on a mind blowing game everyone want... Let's make more Pachinko machine based on our greatest hits and then we don't actually have to do anything but sell licensing rights.
I'm from the future. Now, consoles are able to load massive worlds in seconds and we have ray tracing and a bunch more stuff. Horror is a lot better now.
Yes! Yes, that is exactly what I've been thinking about! Silent Hill 2 was one of the greatest experiences of true, genuine horror I've ever felt, and when I looked at newer "horror" games, my reaction was "I suppose that the horrible monsters are there, but I'm not scared. We've lost something."
Spec Ops might as well be survival horror. You far away from anywhere safe, trying to SURVIVE, and you're constantly being betrayed by the HORRORS the game is making you do, and confronting you with them
All of which Slender does using emergent mechanics and by constantly randomizing so that you experience is different each time. The Story is implied through the papers you collect, the ambience, the visuals, and even the mechanics reinforce this feeling of being chased down for your inevitable death. The only place he can't spawn in front of you in the light. Your beam gets narrower and dimmer, giving him more room to spawn and when it dies, your time is up and he can be anywhere.
That's where the survival aspect comes in, an introduction of finite resources and no safety nets to make death feel really scary. No matter how horribly scary you make something, fairly soon the player will realise it can't really hurt them so it stops scaring them. I have an example of a game called Teleglitch, from level 1 you're blowing through countless zombies, but it's the permadeath and finite resources that makes each encounter scary, running out of ammo is truely scary.
JeMeSouvienPu Sweet. I'll try and pick it up for Xbox 360. I asked the company for a review copy before it came out but I didn't get one. At the time, it was the price and the fact that I had plenty of other games that needed reviewing that kept me from playing it. Maybe I can pick it up cheap this December, after I finish the games I'm playing now.
I know I'm not the first one to mention this, but Five Nights at Freddy's demonstrated both the fear and "need-to-know" mystery on a low-budget graphics that actually added to the animatronics' creepiness. It's a fantastic game with an addicting and fascinating lore.
Where Did Survival Horror Go? 2012! So Its 2016. How did we do? I think Steam has some interesting horror games but they arent AAA quality. Are we more accepting of less graphically powerful games now?
I was wondering this, too. I feel like we've seen a boom in Indie horror titles that go for the psychological elements mentioned in this video, in part due to the success of the Slender Man games, which highlighted the use of limited draw distance (fog) and general helplessness to create a high-tension atmosphere. We've seen tons of cheap knockoffs, of course, but it at least inspired a lot of thought about how to use the game's mechanics to inspire fear without big-budget graphical fidelity. I wonder what the Extra Credits guys think of this shift, at least as far as the Indie titles go.
No one seems to talk about it anymore, but the Amnesia series basically had everything Dan's talking about and more. It's like it was made in direct response to this video.
Horror on the console may be limited; however, not on the PC. A round of applause for the recent hits: The Forest, Five Nights at Freddy's, Among the Sleep, Outlast, Alien: Isolation, The Evil Within, and Metro. 2011 was a particularly dry year, but the Survival Horror genre never disappeared. The genre continues to grow stronger than ever.
Ok, Whenever I see Five Nights at Freddy's get bashed as a boring jumpscare fest which is a blemish in survival horror. But whenever I see something about P.T. It's always praised and I haven't seen anyone hate on it because it's "cool" to hate on it. I sat down and watched a play though of both. They're both really similar, Doing the same thing all over again while finding out the disturbing reason why you're doing what you're doing. Being overly cryptic and complicated when they shouldn't be *Cough* P.T's last puzzle and FNAF 3 in general *cough* and they both have the same thing. They kill you off with the same jumpscare every time you play
Five nights at freddies gives you the feeling of impending doom. The jumpscares are intentonally bad. The anamatronics could litterally say hi and they'd have you jumping because of the build up.
If it's any consolation, I wasn't very excited for PT. It didn't look fun, and it certainly looked heavily scripted. Plus, they're cancelled now. FNAF is still pretty bad, though.
The Stitch as bad as five nights is as a game when it comes to instilling fear it hits the nail on the head. Nothing like a room full of us all yelling FUCK FUCK FUCK at the top of our lungs while toy freddy stands in front of us.
I feel like PT was a bit more blatant about it's story, at least more than the first FNAF. Like, one kind of shoved things in front of your face and you had to make sense of it, which is fine, but if you're not catching clues that could be easily missed like in the FNAF 1, its harder to understand why other people love it. Then add some internet rage and you've got full on hate. By the time FNAF was starting to be more obvious about the fact that something else was going on, the hate was there to stay.
Though you have to admit it didn't completely rely on jumpscares. Things like the booming in the background, that bathroom segment where you are constantly thinking "please don't be around the corner please..." and the general mystery behind it helped. I won't deny it was rough around the edges though.
Maybe what developers of AAA games need to do is to use a smaller budget and make it a side job to create the horror game so that they would have less loss for what they are selling as well as not worry about larger distribution. Anyone has anything to add to this?
Crappy graphics might help. It might simulate the fact that a scared person couldn't concentrate or think straight. And also, "the mind fills in the gaps."
Christian McCoy It depends what you mean by "crappy graphics". If you mean graphics that obscures the sight or makes the monsters creepier, that could make it scarier. If you mean "crappy graphics" by bad character models, areas, inventory menus, etc, then no, it will make the game worser than better. :/ It would be better to observe the older games, not for the bad graphics, but how did those graphics make the game scary and how to simulate it (Like the fog and and dark areas in Silent Hill, as it helped make the atmosphere scary as you couldn't see as well)..
I feel that the indie game Lone Survivor recalled the psychological part of survival horror looking deep not only into the main characters psche but the players as well. Leaving the player themselves to think about what is real in the game and what is not. Its a look at how if you think something is something its going to stay that way for you. The multiple endings to the game help this as well giving just enough information to not spell something out but to also allow the player to put there own thoughts in.
Hey Extra Credits, do you guys think you can make an episode about survival games, and what needs to be in one for it to be successful? Not survival "horror", just survival in general. Thanks for all the info you make, and keep being awesome!
Amnesia is an immediate recommendation. The same studio's Penumbra series is really good too, though less polished. There is a host of small, independently made games on gamejolt.com that are pretty good and scary too.
I've already played Amnesia, unfortunately. I also recently purchased the entire Penumbra series, though I haven't gotten around to playing them yet. I'll take a look on gamejolt though, I've found some good ones on there in the past. Thanks!
Back when I played Dear Esther, I always felt like the mild impression of fear or - as you guys put it - horror derived more from a genre expectation (I, as a gamer, expect certain outcomes of certain situations, because I compare them to other games I played) as from the actual game design.
***** That's fecking harsh, come on. It's a great game. Just not a great horror game. It starts out as a good horror game and continues as a great game that loses a bit of the horror. It fairly shamelessly takes from several games in the action horror genre but the result is fantastic. There's a reason most people love the game and it has great reviews, and this seems to have caused a fairly large minority of people to be rather extreme in their opposing response to the game's generally good reception. You can be moderate in your opinions and still have valid opinions. The game does boss fight tension like no other game I've played. Ammo is a bit more scarce than RE4 and RE5, and it does cause you to think about what you're doing a bit more. Its level design is excellent and the game consistently reïnvents itself and builds upon mechanics established earlier within the game. It's definitely not perfect and some failings of the controls had me fairly angry a few times, but overall, it's great. And I played it on the PC. The port was patched excellently, as at the start I could barely play it without extreme lag on my PC that runs MGS5 on max, and then following a patch I had no more problems. I say if its premise interests you try to buy it when it's on offer at a low price. I was not remotely unhappy with my overall experience, though I did know it wouldn't be survival horror.
Also, I just wanna say that the Tower of Latria was creepy as hell. The soulless husks that would prostrate themselves to you when weaponless, the ominous Cthulu monsters with that one drawn-out near death attack, the flying demons that give you soldiers' souls when they die, implying their collective tragedy...it makes me shiver everytime I go there. 0M0
It seems that the horror genra as a whole has become an indie target for the mentioned reasons (True horror game don't rely on graphics and such). Amnesia, Ao oni and similar others are the most memorable to me.
The well in Ocarina of Time really makes Kakariko an unsettling place. Sure, the mystery is lost once you visit, but you now know something lurks below.
a good horror game could be set in the deep sea. Imagine being inside a submarien sett to explore the deep sea with 4 people inside, seing creatures so large and disgusting trying to eat the submarine. and of course it must be very dark. even more the setting itself is terrible because many people have a fear of the deep sea, so the setting itself, and to be trapped down there is a very good horror setting.
+musicloverfromA45 I've actually had a similar concept to that before, except that you're not in a submarine, you're out in open water with only an advanced deep-sea diving suit to protect you from the pressures of the deep ocean...
TwilightClaw That could lead to a well done game if done right, but if anyone other than an indie dev that doesn't give a shit makes it, they would get massive lash back for it and would probably stop development for it. We have seen it happen before. Just look at Six Days in Fallujah. The game was truly ment to be a realistic portrail of war and how true war is never good or pretty, but then konami jumped ship at the first wave of the knee jerk, "but muh feels!" from the public.
and wow, this video even applies to FNAF... the sequel reveals a lot more information to the player and tells you a lot more about what is going on, therefore it's less scary and more panicky than anything.
Jacob Hanser Well that's the thing about scary... once you know... the fear is lessened. but the sequel at least didn degenerate into action. Rather they kept the tension and mainteained the feeling of powerlessness. In the original the core fear was not from the puppets but in just how powerless you were. The sequel maintains that and while the puppets are not as scary the tension is still trhere. Fear more than any other reactionary emotion is quickle aclimated by the human psyche. Talk to anyone who's seen combat action. The fear never goes away but after a while the mind just sort of adapts and works around it To put it in eastern philosophy. Death is the root of all fear...once you accept your death as a given and certainty then you can act without fear. When you act without fear you see things as they are and will make the best choices. Which will subvert your inevitable demise.
Jacob Hanser While I will admit that the second FnaF game explained a lot I must say that when anything was explained even more questions were brought up. Who's the puppet, who's that purple guy, what was Fred Bears Dinner, what's up with Balloon Boy, and many more that I'm forgetting.
Jacob Hanser I find the horror in FNaF was in the mechanics and not the story, the story while interesting, isn't what drives the horror. The mechanics are brilliant, and effectively make the player feel trapped and scared.
There was some guy who wrote a story where characters are introduced through comedy and light-heartedness in order for something tragic or sad to happen to them and make that feeling of sadness resonate stronger due to their relation to the character. Someone else picked this up and instead of doing something sad, they wanted to scare the reader. There's very little that's more terrifying than having a friend or companion suddenly become shrouded in mystery and hostile... I'd love to see more.
Have you seen all those games PewDiePIe plays? (And seriously guys, if you don't like him, it's fine with me. I know just mentioning his name is controversial... but you cannot deny his influence on game sales.) Tons of survival horror. Oh... yeah... upload date Jan 27, 2012. :P I mean, yeah, they're mostly indie PC games, but there are tons and tons of indie PC survival horror games. Just sayin. Are they still rare with consoles and with AAA games? I wouldn't know. I'm a broke PC gamer.
***** Haha Well, by a "broke PC gamer", I mean I'm using a (slightly upgraded) hand-me-down computer from 2002 and can't afford anything better. Still, broke is broke, I guess. :P
***** That's akin to saying it costs $600 every 3 months to have a nice cell phone. Staying on the bleeding edge in any tech arena is an exercise in futility. The idea is to buy last years high end, this year, after the prices drop substantially. If you do that today, you will have a monster computer that will outperform any console on the market for its entire lifespan, and be able to play the real next gen games.... next gen. All while saving you loads of money on games and multiplayer(Live and PSN). PC is about choices: hardware, control(KB+M, XBONE controller, PS4 controller, etc), sound system(headset, speakers, sound system, etc), display(TV, monitor, projector), customization, etc. The options are endless. www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace
+Sdd Dobson Oh ok, Halo is definitely a fun enough game to pay $520 to play /s You don't have to lie about your PC gaming prowess, I know some BS when I read it. Noone in their right mind decides to but an xboner just to play Halo when they already have a superior gaming device. Most exclusives live on the PC anyways. tl;dr quit lying
This conversation is way out of my league... ;_; But regardless, SPanky O'Donnel How do you know he's lying? People can spend their money the way they like. PCs can range from my crap to an inexpensive gaming computer to the most expensive thing money can buy and everything in between. I agree that you don't have to break the bank to get a good gaming computer, and I wouldn't prefer a console if I had an expensive gaming PC, but you can't make a person change their personal preferences. Maybe he just likes the game, maybe for him, the game is more important than the device. Newer Halo games aren't out for the PC yet. And really, I think it's unfortunate that many games are specific only to consoles. I still think PCs are overall better than consoles due to their customization and versatility, but it's not cool to force that idea on others. But if this is a competition between who has the better device, I lost. I lost badly.
Honestly Resident Evil relied a lot on jump scares too. The dogs jumping through windows, having the camera angle change and there be a zombie right in front of you, a hunter suddenly jumping at you and instant killing you, etc.
+Mushe Eh, its mostly the Indy scene that does it. Indy always wears the hell out a genre due to learning how to make a game(how many millions of tetris and bejeweled clones?). AAA companies wear out a genre(and series) due to money/greed.
I really like games that give you a means to defend yourself but make it highly ineffective against the bigger monsters so you have a true feeling of. "This guy is too strong for me" When they establish that I feel the next time I run into him I have to watch my back and there is the added factor of that entity hopping out at any time to cause me more grief and trouble. But just seeing it freaks me out because of how lethal it would be.
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This brings to mind my two favorite areas of my game: The Nest and Underdark. (I tried coming up with a better name for the area, but couldn't come up with anything better than the name of what it was based on, it just fits too perfectly.)
So glad survival horror is mostly back! Developers still seem to struggle sometimes with them, but there are quite a few out there now! and some of them are even really good!
The first 4 minutes of this video, that whole segment on "I am afraid but I must know even if it ruins me" is a wonderful summation of Lovecraftian horror and Bloodborne as a game specifically comes to mind. I was shit scared playing Bloodborne, but I just needed to know why I must "Fear The Old Blood".
It makes me so happy to revisit this old episode and think about all the excellent horror indie games that have come out since then. Heck, even a bigger game like Resident Evil Revelation made a fair effort into making itself a bit more survival horror in the beginning of the game.
It's suprising when one of my nephews was playing Big game Hunter, the howling wolves actually makes your hair stand on end. It's a noise you cannot ignore. Actual animals that can kill & eat you.
I think that horror is a niche genre, but that's the best way for it to be. Because these "indie" games can be made rapidly and cheaply, allowing new ideas that would never make it as AAA games to be explored. For instance, look at "Baby Blues": a game where you play as a 5-year old looking for teddy bears that manages the be pretty darn scary, and it was made with FPS creator.
"Unknown yet intriguing." The Brutes from Amnesia are this for me; not really seeing them well, then I look at a character model and realizing yes, the head is split open like I thought, but there are also several teeth and a single eye. They are now slightly more terrifying.
Well there's also the theory that Alexander hired them as they were sort of mercs and Alexander poisoned them which mutated them into what they are and it would explain why he can communicate with them and control them. Pretty good explanation to me. It would also explain the Brutes, Alexander grafted metal to their bodies.
There's this endless ocean game for the wii it's meant to be an exploration or something but because being underwater is so not bright it makes me afraid, so now I see why.
Looking back at this after Resident Evil 7 is just... Wow. I mean, how far we've come in just five years. P.T. is what started getting horror back on track, but there may have been a few other games. Outlast was pretty scary
The fear of Slender wasn't in the jump-scares. The fear was the lack of understanding why he is there; what he is; WHERE he is. The fear that he could be right behind you, or right behind that tree over there. One of the best parts about it was that you were penalized for looking at it, which made it much harder to observe.
I'm still holding out hope for an Eternal Darkness remake, if not a sequel. One of the best horror games I've ever played. Of course, the voice work of one actor who I think is now deceased will be missed. Hearing him describe the monsters he encountered was absolutely chilling.
Since I got the Necronomicon (the anthology of HP Lovecraft), I keep looking for good Lovecraftian horror in movies or games, but recently I've realized that it's not easy. Lovecraftian horror depends so much on painting JUST ENOUGH detail to be terrified by something otherworldly. In other words, he gives just enough detail to evoke images and you fill them in yourself. Seeing an artist's representation of the entity would probably be less frightening than whatever you imagine it to be. That being said I think The Last Door does a good job (maybe because it's pixel graphics let you fill the picture in with your imagination). I think it's captured Lovecraftian horror because your fear isn't violent death coming upon the character, but madness. As Charles Lamb wrote: "Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! ... That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual-that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy-are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence." If anyone else has good horror suggestions I'd love to hear them :D
What we are missing nowadays is subtlety . Back when graphics were blurry you dont really know what you saw in the foggy distance. Now that graphics are all HD and we are playing on big monitors the devs need to scale back a lot on what they are showing. I think combat is a lot of it too. Silent Hill 1 had such wonky combat which made it hard to kill anything. Which made it all the more threatening when a monster comes. But a lot of horror games these days as long as you manage resources you can kinda just go about it like an action game and kill everything. Although I will say despite having really fluid controls Dead Space 1 did a great job of creating an atmosphere of nervous dread. So im not sure where to draw the line in combat vs running away.
That's what has always scared me in horror games. The poor graphics made things a lot scarier because my own imagination was filling in the blanks and it was horrifying!
The SCP Foundation and the spin-off game based off of it, SCP: Containment Breach, seem to fill this role quite nicely. The game itself is similar to Amnesia in the sense that you really can't fight back, you can only run and (probably fail to) hide. The SCP Foundation itself is full of SCPs that you can do almost nothing against, but run and pray that you won't get... can't say murdered because many of them don't outright kill you. But you get the point.
Kind of wanna point out that Thief, for all it's reboot flaws, had me almost soil myself during the Asylum level, until it revealed the freaks. Going through that building with no enemies or other lifeforms whatsoever was scary as hell.
alien isolation has kinda nailed this one, you arent scared of the alien but what it implies (technological improvements actually make it better as it feels more real and intelligent) and there is the desire to progress vs hide
PT was also really good at horror. Too bad the game is never coming out
+Le Name very true of alien. I think alien gets its tension from the mechanics, like you just said, plus a little bit of uncanny because of the working joes. not to keep talking about PT, but I think that demo got a lot of its tension from allot of uncanny things. even once you've gotten use to the things that were normal and are now different and odd, they change slightly again.
+Ionlymadethistoleavecoments personally I love that it learns. the alien is really a fantastic mechanics boss
The only downside, though they sort of had to do it, is that the alien always knew, generally, where you were. One good thing they did was they usually only had it leave the vents when it heard you. In SOMA, there's also one enemy that always knows where you are.
Indeed
It sounds like horror games would be a good genre for indie developers...
+rainick FNAF FNAF FNAF FNAF
Gesundheit! .....Here, have a tissue.
Zetetik - XD
MC Cookies- Yeah, FNAF! A game which suffered from the exact problem described in the video, the problem of pointless sequels until it was hated instead of loved.
Working on it! ;)
Funny thing is, I had one of my greatest moments of horror playing... waitforit... Mirrors Edge. Yeah, that sunny, friendly-colored 3D-Jump'n'Run. Those elite cops aren't really all that scary-looking. No big teeth, no nasty wobbly bits or ichor-dripping bare flesh.
The feeling of dread came from a simple factor: Knowing that two of them are on my heels, but not knowing how close they actually are. Did i lose them? Are they cathing up? Did they split? Do they know a shortcut i don't? I hope I got the ideal route here... Damn, if I stop just for a split second to look back, they will definitely catch up and lock me in combat. Just run, man, run and hope those fuckers can't keep up...
That's what horror is, uncertainty and expectation. Detailed depictions of monstrosities are triggering disgust, not horror. Disgust is easily transported by audiovisual means, but Horror is all in the head.
Somewhere... Somehow... A duck is watching you.
+Liarra Sniffles “Heart” Oh no... my anatidaephobia... it is coming back :'(
+CoLomBiaSauriO I see what you did there
+Liarra “Heart” Sniffles HELP! I cannot handle a duck watching me
Thanks, Gary Larson.
+Liarra “Heart” Sniffles ALWAYS WATCHING!!
Well, what do you know. 3 years later, survival horror is... well... kinda back.
roymcgeeters Then Silent Hills goes down the drain, and PT is taken off the market >
roymcgeeters One year after this video was uploaded, Outlast was born. *It was horrifying.*
roymcgeeters
Outlast, Amnesia and even Five Nights at Freddy's were real good kickers into the right direction.
We need to feel the dread again that we used to have while playing the first Clock Tower game. The helplessness that forces us to hide and wait instead of shooting everything that can move >_>
I'm looking at you "The Evil Within" ...cursed be thy name for slandering the meaning of true survival horror!! ...
LordBloodySoul I feel like the video detailed a slightly different horror experience, one where the player was afraid of the unknown rather than of dying. As much as I enjoyed Amnesia, after I encountered the monsters enough - despite the screen blur and sanity penalties - I realised that the game really only had one or two of them to throw at me. Thankfully they're spaced well enough that the thought didn't occur to me until beyond the half-way mark, but after that, the game did lose some of its fearsomeness. I've heard similar complaints from other people too.
I think as soon as you can encapsulate what your potential enemies may be in a horror game, it loses that "fear of the unknown" discussed. I believe Outlast and especially FNAF have that even more-so than Amnesia.
Jake J. Rogers
Yeah, I guess. But due to the Modding Community of Amnesia, the title still holds strong when it comes to atmospheric horrors. :3
One of my favorite horror games ever is Amnesia: The Dark Descent. They really nailed atmosphere for me...the foggy rays of light in an old castle room that feel like there is real dust blowing and settling, the tinder-box system tying well to the way the lighting felt, making everything feel real and actually aged, the unnerving sounds of the building settling and creaking as you contemplate your own sanity...I could keep going, but I'll stop.
I dont get why game makers think most of us want the smoothest graphics when most people just want the game itself to run smooth
+Zach Ruhl smooth running gameplay is what we want, many game ( indie) show that :) minecraft, portal ( nice graphique buty simple one)
kao chat Thats what I said.
+Zach Ruhl Smooth graphics are nice, though. I totally agree with the notion that graphics are one of the least important things about a game, but Rocket League's beautiful graphics are a large part of why I'm planning to buy it.
Conspiracy_risk I see your point. I guess it changes with the type of game.
+Zach Ruhl The best reason that I can think of is, people want to see how real games can get, so they are constantly pushing it's boundaries simply for the sake of making that technological progress. A game called The Order comes to mind, with its unrivaled and AMAZING graphics, yet absolutely garbage gameplay.
4:46 Five Nights at Freddie's pretty much demonstrated that people will buy a low budget horror game in droves if it's good.
Except Five Nights at Freddy' s is not good.
TheClosetWriter100 it was meh at best and shit at worst
TheClosetWriter100 I guess it wouldn't have been a huge success if it would be bad
Suspec M Same can be said about Assassins' Creed, CoD and FIFA. Maybe they are not nescessary bad games, atleast conceptually wise, but I think that the word Mediocre should fit them rather well given how rotten the franchises have become. From Hero to Zero basically.Also, big thanks to TH-camrs like Pewdiepie who basically sold/promoted the game just by screaming like a 5-year old kid in front of his screen.
Goatmon
FNaF is not a Horror game... people been Drowning so much on "Jumpscare Simulators" that they forgot what makes a Horror game BE a horror game.
AKA Silent Hill for PSX.
Wow, this turned out to be oddly prophetic. In the two years since this video came out, the indie horror scene has produced some *amazing* titles. I just finished *Among the Sleep,* and Dan's description of the basis of horror games felt like a note for note description of that game. Now I'm going to have to rewatch more old Extra Credits videos and see if anything else like this shows up.
That is a badass concept. I'd love to see something like that made.
There's something inherently spooky about indirect vision. I was using a nightvision camera a little while ago, and although I could see everything in the darkness with perfect clarity, it was extremely tense, because I was constantly worried that I'd see something horrible through the camera. I think Fatal Frame's done a little bit of work in this area, but it should be fleshed out.
To this day, despite the graphics becoming more and more sub par, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is the best example of "horror" I can think of. Walking through Chernobyl and hearing a growl, or a dog barking is one of the scariest things but even worse is hearing nothing. Its one of those games where you start seeing movement out of the corner of your eye and either unload your gun, stand stock still and listen, or just leg it. And with a bit of modding (thank you PC gaming) the graphics can be brought up a bit closer to modern standards.
I've started watching Extra Credits from the beginning, and it's interesting to see how things have evolved in the meantime. It's great to see how survival horror games have had a renaissance in recent years. :)
140 All three of the original Ratchet and Clanks! And Beyond Good and Evil!
Oh my god, Jake Eyes! I'm a huge fan!
I think one of the main aspects of a horror game is the music. The music that always drives you on end, makes you feel like your constantly at the edge of your seat, the music to where if you mute it you un mute it because you are in that constant state of "what happens next"
4:27 "Massively multiplayer cover-based farming simulator (turn based)"
+pop1040 [outer space] [gone sexual]
A turn-based MMO sounds like a GODAWFUL idea...
Gergely Farkas theirs a mod that lets you play every country online in the campaign for medivel: total war 2 and there was a game that someone did... tgere was a LOT of countrys.
Good description. Too me survival horror stands out because while in most games you are scared of something else killing you, in a good SH you are scared of your actions getting yourself killed. Wasting your ammo, exploring a drowned/radioactive area, not checking for traps, not sure what weapons/gear/ consumables to carry etc. This adds suspense and immersion beyond pure combat.
I find it interesting how perfectly this episode predicted the dawn of the indie horror explosion we've had the past few years.
I'm always impressed by the drawings and pics you guys put up, but with this episode, you just nailed it. So charming, and they illustrate your points so well. Good job, and thanks.
It isn't necessarily that improved specs are ruining these games, but instead that the standards set by these improved specs makes developers think we want the best looking game possible, when really, an impressive number of polygons on-screen is only about 10% of a game. That's the reason why so many films that have mind-blowing CGI effects can be recieved poorly, like the Transformers series. The reception of these films shows that the story, not the action or visuals, is the most important aspect of a film, and we've seen it happen in the gaming industry, where a game that pushes the limits of visuals defeats the point - those limits were what made those games scary.
+DiscoClam Its not even that expensive to give games great graphics these days thanks to deals on high powered engine's like Unreal and the Cry Engine. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was very much an indie game made by a small studio but had photorealistic graphics. The problem probably comes from all the other expensive shit that comes from triple AAA games like cutscenes and set pieces.
The Evil Within. This game is a perfect example of just about everything you said. I usually hate the horror genre but this game is so interesting that I often catch myself looking up to picking up my controller and popping in the disk. It has the happy median between action adventure and downright horror. I recommend this game to anyone who still hasn't played it yet.
To look for survival horror games, abandon your console and look to the indy developers on the PC. There's LOTS of great choices out there that are fantastically done. "SCP:Containment Breach" is terrifying and different every time you play it so it has a lot of replay-ability and always keeps me on the edge of my seat. I also recently discovered a hidden jem called "The Train". I kid you not. Look this one up. You do yourself a disservice if you let yourself miss this one if you're a fan of horror games. The developer put an amazing amount of work into that one and NAILED the atmosphere. The graphics are great, the sound is great. The story is great, and it contains one of the scariest sequences I've ever experienced in a horror game.
These videos are so interesting to look back on a few years down the line.
Technology limitations are the reason why Morrowind in TES III felt larger than Cyrodiil in TES IV. Since distant land was not rendered, you couldn't see far, and so distance traveled felt greater. Also since you could not see distant objects, they would not pop up until you got close. It was incidentally a very immersive experience because the fog shroud preserved the mystery of the land.
It's also why the Sixth House bases are so much more terrifying than anything that came later. And I say this as someone who loved both Oblivion and Skyrim.
This video reminds me of an interesting game I found a while ago. It wasn't survival horror or really traditional horror at all yet it made great use of some of the tricks talked about here. The game was called The Swapper, ostensibly a puzzle game but with a fascinating story underneath. It throws you in without any context and slowly reveals a story that seems to come at horror from another angle. It uses a lot of existential horror, asking questions with very unsettling implications while also having you deal with beings that are utterly alien to us. It takes elements from some of the best old school sci fi horror and approaches them with some great subtlety. Anyone who has some interest in an unusual take on horror, and a penchant for clever puzzle solving, would probably enjoy this game.
True horror games DO NOT hold the player's hands. No hints, no location pointers, just your own wits, and curiosity.
not true.
vyor2
Wow, that rebuttal certainly offered enough information on why. *sarcasm*
El Bandito You want why? Because giving you an objective isn't hand holding. Because you just described an out dated game. Silent hill 1 is not a great game, by today's standards it is pretty bad. Sometimes hints are necessary, look at metroid and darksouls. Do they ever say how to do something? Yes they do.
I very much agree, it's just a good video on the subject and I felt compelled to share in case you hadn't seen it (and for other that may not have seen it).
A question: Should a horror game be judged by how scary it is?
You may find that to be a stupid question, I know I did until a smart man told me "everyone has their own tolerance level". Think about it for a second. If you happen to somehow manage to create the scariest horror game of the millennium you're probably gonna get commended for it, but it's still gonna limit your audience since no one dares to play it, right?
I'm against calling questions stupid, but I do think this question is a fairly ineffective and moot one. At the very least, you must first define what, exactly, you mean by "scary." Fear isn't just something that can be measured on a scale. There is no one "tolerance level" because there's so many different types of fear.
Should a horror game be judged by the effectiveness of its jumpscares? Should a horror game be judged by the amount of adrenalin it inspires in the player? Should a horror game be judged by how much mystery it has? Should a horror game be judged by the low, lingering dread it inspires? All of these fit into the question of whether a not a game is scary, and everyone finds these different types of fear arbitrary in their scariness.
Let's say though that someone somewhere did make a game that was the perfect blend of slow-creeping mystery, paranoiac dread, high level tension, and sudden jumpscares. Let's say it's the "scariest game of the millennium," Should we judge it by it's scariness? Yes, I think we should, partly because the people who have a low tolerance level for one or two particular types of fear, will play the game to experience the other parts, but mostly because the ones who want to play horror games are the ones who want to be scared. They don't mind being terrified shitless. They don't care if they spend the rest of the week looking over their shoulder and locking the windows. In fact, that's what horror seekers are after. That's the whole point of the horror genre.
And after all, catering to everyone to make a bigger audience is what made "horror" basically just an offshoot of the action genre.
Yes it should.... IT'S A FUCKING HORROR GAME! Not a psychological thriller... just saying.
That and if we go with fear just about anything can be a horror game for some people.
I think this is a great question, actually, you guys screw off. And he has a great point, I don't play any intense horror games because they're too scary. I game can be very scary without being over the top to the point where I don't want to play it. The Witch's House is an amazing example.
bobosmith101 That game doesn't really seem that scary though, but I wouldn't call it a bad game either.
i love to see gopher play horror games, he plays them silently and tries to figure them out. no creaming of anything like that, just a lot of "ok" and "i am alright". and the best part: i don't have to play them myself, i love the story, i am too much of a wimp to play them.
Even if the genre DID die off completely, you know there would be a fucking badass revival like a decade later that would totally be worth it.
lastlife0726 yeah, indie devs are much like tumblr when you think about it, mostly absolute autism, but there are those few diamonds in the rough
+Sam Nassirharand I'm not sure if you're insulting or complementing us...
Supersum Creations I'm just saying that most indie devs aren't too great, but a few are absolutely amazing
Survival horror has really bounced back since this video was published. Games like Outlast, FNAF, and the Evil Within have taken advantage of the high-res graphics of the PS4 and PC's to make horror more gruesome.
Then P.T. happened.
+Bryce Kusnierz PT?
And the last of us
+Bryce Kusnierz Then P.T. stopped happening.
+The Adjective Nounist I think someone could make a case for it. Adhering to the themes addressed in the video, I would say it's certainly influenced. A type of horror is the frailty of humanity, of who we are.
P.T. was what the 20 million+ fan base wanted, very badly, so Konami said fuck them, fuck Kojima, fuck Reedus and del Toro, fuck making insane money on a mind blowing game everyone want... Let's make more Pachinko machine based on our greatest hits and then we don't actually have to do anything but sell licensing rights.
I'm from the future. Now, consoles are able to load massive worlds in seconds and we have ray tracing and a bunch more stuff. Horror is a lot better now.
Amnesia: The dark descent!
Outlast... Outlast...
Andre Cruz
...was repetitive.....really really repetitive
@@Dreamerx47 not even that they both are just a big haunted walking simulator
Yes! Yes, that is exactly what I've been thinking about! Silent Hill 2 was one of the greatest experiences of true, genuine horror I've ever felt, and when I looked at newer "horror" games, my reaction was "I suppose that the horrible monsters are there, but I'm not scared. We've lost something."
Spec Ops might as well be survival horror. You far away from anywhere safe, trying to SURVIVE, and you're constantly being betrayed by the HORRORS the game is making you do, and confronting you with them
All of which Slender does using emergent mechanics and by constantly randomizing so that you experience is different each time. The Story is implied through the papers you collect, the ambience, the visuals, and even the mechanics reinforce this feeling of being chased down for your inevitable death. The only place he can't spawn in front of you in the light. Your beam gets narrower and dimmer, giving him more room to spawn and when it dies, your time is up and he can be anywhere.
As long as big developers dont mess with horror games we get planty of scary indie game. AND THEY'RE FREE!! :D
That's where the survival aspect comes in, an introduction of finite resources and no safety nets to make death feel really scary.
No matter how horribly scary you make something, fairly soon the player will realise it can't really hurt them so it stops scaring them.
I have an example of a game called Teleglitch, from level 1 you're blowing through countless zombies, but it's the permadeath and finite resources that makes each encounter scary, running out of ammo is truely scary.
this is before the evil within, i think that game saved the genre. Thank you Shinji Mikami, your an alright dude.
Gwen Hale It was that, and Alien Isolation.
Alex Shannon yup alien isolation and evil within were some awesome horror game .
JeMeSouvienPu I still need to play Evil Within
it feels line a good Resident Evil , good stuff bud.
JeMeSouvienPu Sweet. I'll try and pick it up for Xbox 360. I asked the company for a review copy before it came out but I didn't get one. At the time, it was the price and the fact that I had plenty of other games that needed reviewing that kept me from playing it. Maybe I can pick it up cheap this December, after I finish the games I'm playing now.
Does anyone else find it funny that 2 years after this video was released, horror games made a comeback with a vengeance?
Bethesda is planning to release a true survivor horror game, called Evil within.
its wierd watching this 8 years later
what about all the low budget horror games that take root when TH-camrs play them? the game simply known as Amnesia had every element you mentioned.
Two years later a Game called Five Nights at Freddy's Is released to critical Acclaim and would get Multiple Sequels Books and a Movie
So, we're overlooking indie horror games?
+Jerry Li Very few are actual survival horror IMO.
This was made in 2012.
I know I'm not the first one to mention this, but Five Nights at Freddy's demonstrated both the fear and "need-to-know" mystery on a low-budget graphics that actually added to the animatronics' creepiness. It's a fantastic game with an addicting and fascinating lore.
Where Did Survival Horror Go?
2012! So Its 2016. How did we do? I think Steam has some interesting horror games but they arent AAA quality. Are we more accepting of less graphically powerful games now?
I was wondering this, too. I feel like we've seen a boom in Indie horror titles that go for the psychological elements mentioned in this video, in part due to the success of the Slender Man games, which highlighted the use of limited draw distance (fog) and general helplessness to create a high-tension atmosphere. We've seen tons of cheap knockoffs, of course, but it at least inspired a lot of thought about how to use the game's mechanics to inspire fear without big-budget graphical fidelity. I wonder what the Extra Credits guys think of this shift, at least as far as the Indie titles go.
No one seems to talk about it anymore, but the Amnesia series basically had everything Dan's talking about and more. It's like it was made in direct response to this video.
Loving the illustrations in this episode!
2012 jeez I'm late
Nice boat we got here
Richard Santos I'm here five years late
I know the feeling haha
2019 wow I'm late
Wow 2020. I'm really late.
Horror on the console may be limited; however, not on the PC.
A round of applause for the recent hits: The Forest, Five Nights at Freddy's, Among the Sleep, Outlast, Alien: Isolation, The Evil Within, and Metro.
2011 was a particularly dry year, but the Survival Horror genre never disappeared. The genre continues to grow stronger than ever.
Ok, Whenever I see Five Nights at Freddy's get bashed as a boring jumpscare fest which is a blemish in survival horror. But whenever I see something about P.T. It's always praised and I haven't seen anyone hate on it because it's "cool" to hate on it. I sat down and watched a play though of both. They're both really similar, Doing the same thing all over again while finding out the disturbing reason why you're doing what you're doing. Being overly cryptic and complicated when they shouldn't be *Cough* P.T's last puzzle and FNAF 3 in general *cough* and they both have the same thing. They kill you off with the same jumpscare every time you play
Five nights at freddies gives you the feeling of impending doom. The jumpscares are intentonally bad. The anamatronics could litterally say hi and they'd have you jumping because of the build up.
If it's any consolation, I wasn't very excited for PT. It didn't look fun, and it certainly looked heavily scripted. Plus, they're cancelled now. FNAF is still pretty bad, though.
The Stitch as bad as five nights is as a game when it comes to instilling fear it hits the nail on the head. Nothing like a room full of us all yelling FUCK FUCK FUCK at the top of our lungs while toy freddy stands in front of us.
I feel like PT was a bit more blatant about it's story, at least more than the first FNAF. Like, one kind of shoved things in front of your face and you had to make sense of it, which is fine, but if you're not catching clues that could be easily missed like in the FNAF 1, its harder to understand why other people love it. Then add some internet rage and you've got full on hate. By the time FNAF was starting to be more obvious about the fact that something else was going on, the hate was there to stay.
Though you have to admit it didn't completely rely on jumpscares. Things like the booming in the background, that bathroom segment where you are constantly thinking "please don't be around the corner please..." and the general mystery behind it helped. I won't deny it was rough around the edges though.
Maybe what developers of AAA games need to do is to use a smaller budget and make it a side job to create the horror game so that they would have less loss for what they are selling as well as not worry about larger distribution. Anyone has anything to add to this?
Crappy graphics might help. It might simulate the fact that a scared person couldn't concentrate or think straight. And also, "the mind fills in the gaps."
Christian McCoy It depends what you mean by "crappy graphics". If you mean graphics that obscures the sight or makes the monsters creepier, that could make it scarier. If you mean "crappy graphics" by bad character models, areas, inventory menus, etc, then no, it will make the game worser than better. :/
It would be better to observe the older games, not for the bad graphics, but how did those graphics make the game scary and how to simulate it (Like the fog and and dark areas in Silent Hill, as it helped make the atmosphere scary as you couldn't see as well)..
I meant the former.
I feel that the indie game Lone Survivor recalled the psychological part of survival horror looking deep not only into the main characters psche but the players as well. Leaving the player themselves to think about what is real in the game and what is not. Its a look at how if you think something is something its going to stay that way for you. The multiple endings to the game help this as well giving just enough information to not spell something out but to also allow the player to put there own thoughts in.
survival horror is far from dead thanks to the ever grwing indie comunity
Amen to that
+TheMATEMAGICIAN Only problem is that for every great horror game like Soma there's about 10 cheap slender ripoffs flooding the market
those cheap ripoffs are devs practicing devving
Hey Extra Credits, do you guys think you can make an episode about survival games, and what needs to be in one for it to be successful? Not survival "horror", just survival in general. Thanks for all the info you make, and keep being awesome!
Can someone recommend some really good horror games? I need something that'll make me afraid to turn off the lights.
"Amnesia: The Dark Descent" is a good one.
Amnesia is an immediate recommendation. The same studio's Penumbra series is really good too, though less polished. There is a host of small, independently made games on gamejolt.com that are pretty good and scary too.
I've already played Amnesia, unfortunately. I also recently purchased the entire Penumbra series, though I haven't gotten around to playing them yet. I'll take a look on gamejolt though, I've found some good ones on there in the past. Thanks!
You should play Five Nights at Freddy's, THAT'LL make you want to keep your lights on
pokemonmanic3595 I probably should've provided a list of games I've already played.
Back when I played Dear Esther, I always felt like the mild impression of fear or - as you guys put it - horror derived more from a genre expectation (I, as a gamer, expect certain outcomes of certain situations, because I compare them to other games I played) as from the actual game design.
Is "the evil within" any good at this?
Yes, its a TRUE survival horror in every sense. Play it, you must.
*****
That's fecking harsh, come on. It's a great game. Just not a great horror game. It starts out as a good horror game and continues as a great game that loses a bit of the horror. It fairly shamelessly takes from several games in the action horror genre but the result is fantastic. There's a reason most people love the game and it has great reviews, and this seems to have caused a fairly large minority of people to be rather extreme in their opposing response to the game's generally good reception. You can be moderate in your opinions and still have valid opinions.
The game does boss fight tension like no other game I've played. Ammo is a bit more scarce than RE4 and RE5, and it does cause you to think about what you're doing a bit more. Its level design is excellent and the game consistently reïnvents itself and builds upon mechanics established earlier within the game.
It's definitely not perfect and some failings of the controls had me fairly angry a few times, but overall, it's great. And I played it on the PC. The port was patched excellently, as at the start I could barely play it without extreme lag on my PC that runs MGS5 on max, and then following a patch I had no more problems.
I say if its premise interests you try to buy it when it's on offer at a low price. I was not remotely unhappy with my overall experience, though I did know it wouldn't be survival horror.
Also, I just wanna say that the Tower of Latria was creepy as hell. The soulless husks that would prostrate themselves to you when weaponless, the ominous Cthulu monsters with that one drawn-out near death attack, the flying demons that give you soldiers' souls when they die, implying their collective tragedy...it makes me shiver everytime I go there. 0M0
It seems that the horror genra as a whole has become an indie target for the mentioned reasons (True horror game don't rely on graphics and such). Amnesia, Ao oni and similar others are the most memorable to me.
The well in Ocarina of Time really makes Kakariko an unsettling place. Sure, the mystery is lost once you visit, but you now know something lurks below.
a good horror game could be set in the deep sea.
Imagine being inside a submarien sett to explore the deep sea with 4 people inside, seing creatures so large and disgusting
trying to eat the submarine. and of course it must be very dark.
even more the setting itself is terrible because many people have a fear of the deep sea, so the setting itself, and to be trapped down there is a very good horror setting.
+musicloverfromA45 See Soma from makers of amnesia
subnautica, subnautica is terrifying
+musicloverfromA45 I've actually had a similar concept to that before, except that you're not in a submarine, you're out in open water with only an advanced deep-sea diving suit to protect you from the pressures of the deep ocean...
Bioshock. The game you're looking for is Bioshock.
So basically BioShock???
Woah... I'm rocketed back. I remember hearing about that years ago. I hope it's still coming, the concept is awesome.
How about a survival horror game set in Nazi Germany and you're a Jew trying to escape?
TwilightClaw That's actually brilliant...
TwilightClaw That could lead to a well done game if done right, but if anyone other than an indie dev that doesn't give a shit makes it, they would get massive lash back for it and would probably stop development for it. We have seen it happen before. Just look at Six Days in Fallujah. The game was truly ment to be a realistic portrail of war and how true war is never good or pretty, but then konami jumped ship at the first wave of the knee jerk, "but muh feels!" from the public.
TwilightClaw Yeah why leave the nazi games to Wolfenstein.
TwilightClaw Thats called comedy.
TwilightClaw Set in 1943 Poland.
The playstation shouting back was hilarious
I know everyone is gonna mention Amnessia and Slender so I wont. I will mention FIve Nights at Freddy's though... as a masterful example of horror.
and wow, this video even applies to FNAF... the sequel reveals a lot more information to the player and tells you a lot more about what is going on, therefore it's less scary and more panicky than anything.
Jacob Hanser
Well that's the thing about scary... once you know... the fear is lessened.
but the sequel at least didn degenerate into action. Rather they kept the tension and mainteained the feeling of powerlessness. In the original the core fear was not from the puppets but in just how powerless you were. The sequel maintains that and while the puppets are not as scary the tension is still trhere.
Fear more than any other reactionary emotion is quickle aclimated by the human psyche. Talk to anyone who's seen combat action. The fear never goes away but after a while the mind just sort of adapts and works around it
To put it in eastern philosophy. Death is the root of all fear...once you accept your death as a given and certainty then you can act without fear. When you act without fear you see things as they are and will make the best choices. Which will subvert your inevitable demise.
Jacob Hanser While I will admit that the second FnaF game explained a lot I must say that when anything was explained even more questions were brought up. Who's the puppet, who's that purple guy, what was Fred Bears Dinner, what's up with Balloon Boy, and many more that I'm forgetting.
Jacob Hanser I find the horror in FNaF was in the mechanics and not the story, the story while interesting, isn't what drives the horror. The mechanics are brilliant, and effectively make the player feel trapped and scared.
also very true.
There was some guy who wrote a story where characters are introduced through comedy and light-heartedness in order for something tragic or sad to happen to them and make that feeling of sadness resonate stronger due to their relation to the character.
Someone else picked this up and instead of doing something sad, they wanted to scare the reader. There's very little that's more terrifying than having a friend or companion suddenly become shrouded in mystery and hostile... I'd love to see more.
Have you seen all those games PewDiePIe plays? (And seriously guys, if you don't like him, it's fine with me. I know just mentioning his name is controversial... but you cannot deny his influence on game sales.) Tons of survival horror. Oh... yeah... upload date Jan 27, 2012. :P I mean, yeah, they're mostly indie PC games, but there are tons and tons of indie PC survival horror games. Just sayin. Are they still rare with consoles and with AAA games? I wouldn't know. I'm a broke PC gamer.
*****
Haha Well, by a "broke PC gamer", I mean I'm using a (slightly upgraded) hand-me-down computer from 2002 and can't afford anything better.
Still, broke is broke, I guess. :P
***** Playing on console is much more expensive when you factor in online multiplayer and expensive games
*****
That's akin to saying it costs $600 every 3 months to have a nice cell phone.
Staying on the bleeding edge in any tech arena is an exercise in futility. The idea is to buy last years high end, this year, after the prices drop substantially.
If you do that today, you will have a monster computer that will outperform any console on the market for its entire lifespan, and be able to play the real next gen games.... next gen.
All while saving you loads of money on games and multiplayer(Live and PSN).
PC is about choices: hardware, control(KB+M, XBONE controller, PS4 controller, etc), sound system(headset, speakers, sound system, etc), display(TV, monitor, projector), customization, etc. The options are endless.
www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace
+Sdd Dobson Oh ok, Halo is definitely a fun enough game to pay $520 to play
/s
You don't have to lie about your PC gaming prowess, I know some BS when I read it. Noone in their right mind decides to but an xboner just to play Halo when they already have a superior gaming device. Most exclusives live on the PC anyways.
tl;dr
quit lying
This conversation is way out of my league... ;_;
But regardless, SPanky O'Donnel How do you know he's lying? People can spend their money the way they like. PCs can range from my crap to an inexpensive gaming computer to the most expensive thing money can buy and everything in between. I agree that you don't have to break the bank to get a good gaming computer, and I wouldn't prefer a console if I had an expensive gaming PC, but you can't make a person change their personal preferences. Maybe he just likes the game, maybe for him, the game is more important than the device. Newer Halo games aren't out for the PC yet. And really, I think it's unfortunate that many games are specific only to consoles.
I still think PCs are overall better than consoles due to their customization and versatility, but it's not cool to force that idea on others. But if this is a competition between who has the better device, I lost. I lost badly.
Honestly Resident Evil relied a lot on jump scares too. The dogs jumping through windows, having the camera angle change and there be a zombie right in front of you, a hunter suddenly jumping at you and instant killing you, etc.
And now they are back and they are everywhere and we don't want them, the same with the early access suvivial nonsense.
+Mushe Eh, its mostly the Indy scene that does it. Indy always wears the hell out a genre due to learning how to make a game(how many millions of tetris and bejeweled clones?). AAA companies wear out a genre(and series) due to money/greed.
true that
A brilliant video! The information may not be used in games... but I've learned a lot from this to help write my horror book :) Thankyou so much! x
OMG THE SPIDER WHYYY i'm unsubscribing and burning all my clothes
It's too late. Burn the house down and leave the country. Otherwise they'll find a way to find you.
don't recommend leaving for australia, you're only just dooming yourself by going there
I really like games that give you a means to defend yourself but make it highly ineffective against the bigger monsters so you have a true feeling of.
"This guy is too strong for me"
When they establish that I feel the next time I run into him I have to watch my back and there is the added factor of that entity hopping out at any time to cause me more grief and trouble. But just seeing it freaks me out because of how lethal it would be.
Want more horror games? Look no further than japan.
5:55 That ending theme. That's more horrifying... My inner childhood self was reminded to me just by listening to that song. How the spine chills.
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I love it that this episode was made before PT and the gamers have shown how awesome horror can be and the hype it can generate
This brings to mind my two favorite areas of my game: The Nest and Underdark.
(I tried coming up with a better name for the area, but couldn't come up with anything better than the name of what it was based on, it just fits too perfectly.)
So glad survival horror is mostly back! Developers still seem to struggle sometimes with them, but there are quite a few out there now! and some of them are even really good!
Is Cawthon in that list? lol
This. This right here is a huge part of why I play games. Connecting music and experience.
The first 4 minutes of this video, that whole segment on "I am afraid but I must know even if it ruins me" is a wonderful summation of Lovecraftian horror and Bloodborne as a game specifically comes to mind.
I was shit scared playing Bloodborne, but I just needed to know why I must "Fear The Old Blood".
It makes me so happy to revisit this old episode and think about all the excellent horror indie games that have come out since then. Heck, even a bigger game like Resident Evil Revelation made a fair effort into making itself a bit more survival horror in the beginning of the game.
2021 update: Horror became a few years ago strong again.
It's suprising when one of my nephews was playing Big game Hunter, the howling wolves actually makes your hair stand on end. It's a noise you cannot ignore. Actual animals that can kill & eat you.
I think that horror is a niche genre, but that's the best way for it to be. Because these "indie" games can be made rapidly and cheaply, allowing new ideas that would never make it as AAA games to be explored. For instance, look at "Baby Blues": a game where you play as a 5-year old looking for teddy bears that manages the be pretty darn scary, and it was made with FPS creator.
"Unknown yet intriguing." The Brutes from Amnesia are this for me; not really seeing them well, then I look at a character model and realizing yes, the head is split open like I thought, but there are also several teeth and a single eye.
They are now slightly more terrifying.
Well there's also the theory that Alexander hired them as they were sort of mercs and Alexander poisoned them which mutated them into what they are and it would explain why he can communicate with them and control them. Pretty good explanation to me. It would also explain the Brutes, Alexander grafted metal to their bodies.
There's this endless ocean game for the wii it's meant to be an exploration or something but because being underwater is so not bright it makes me afraid, so now I see why.
STALKER series is probably one of my favorite survival horror games because... Well, it really feels like you are actually in the zone
Looking back at this after Resident Evil 7 is just... Wow. I mean, how far we've come in just five years. P.T. is what started getting horror back on track, but there may have been a few other games. Outlast was pretty scary
The fear of Slender wasn't in the jump-scares. The fear was the lack of understanding why he is there; what he is; WHERE he is. The fear that he could be right behind you, or right behind that tree over there. One of the best parts about it was that you were penalized for looking at it, which made it much harder to observe.
I was actually really disappointed they didnt highlight FEAR. Its been so good to play through them so far.
I'm still holding out hope for an Eternal Darkness remake, if not a sequel. One of the best horror games I've ever played. Of course, the voice work of one actor who I think is now deceased will be missed. Hearing him describe the monsters he encountered was absolutely chilling.
Since I got the Necronomicon (the anthology of HP Lovecraft), I keep looking for good Lovecraftian horror in movies or games, but recently I've realized that it's not easy. Lovecraftian horror depends so much on painting JUST ENOUGH detail to be terrified by something otherworldly. In other words, he gives just enough detail to evoke images and you fill them in yourself. Seeing an artist's representation of the entity would probably be less frightening than whatever you imagine it to be.
That being said I think The Last Door does a good job (maybe because it's pixel graphics let you fill the picture in with your imagination). I think it's captured Lovecraftian horror because your fear isn't violent death coming upon the character, but madness.
As Charles Lamb wrote: "Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! ... That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual-that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy-are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence."
If anyone else has good horror suggestions I'd love to hear them :D
What we are missing nowadays is subtlety . Back when graphics were blurry you dont really know what you saw in the foggy distance. Now that graphics are all HD and we are playing on big monitors the devs need to scale back a lot on what they are showing. I think combat is a lot of it too. Silent Hill 1 had such wonky combat which made it hard to kill anything. Which made it all the more threatening when a monster comes. But a lot of horror games these days as long as you manage resources you can kinda just go about it like an action game and kill everything. Although I will say despite having really fluid controls Dead Space 1 did a great job of creating an atmosphere of nervous dread. So im not sure where to draw the line in combat vs running away.
That's what has always scared me in horror games. The poor graphics made things a lot scarier because my own imagination was filling in the blanks and it was horrifying!
The SCP Foundation and the spin-off game based off of it, SCP: Containment Breach, seem to fill this role quite nicely. The game itself is similar to Amnesia in the sense that you really can't fight back, you can only run and (probably fail to) hide. The SCP Foundation itself is full of SCPs that you can do almost nothing against, but run and pray that you won't get... can't say murdered because many of them don't outright kill you. But you get the point.
ExtraCreditz needs their own television show.
Kind of wanna point out that Thief, for all it's reboot flaws, had me almost soil myself during the Asylum level, until it revealed the freaks. Going through that building with no enemies or other lifeforms whatsoever was scary as hell.