I don't know where else to talk about the Clean Screams project and my views on horror in games in full so I'll just do it here: I used to wiki-binge franchises like Resident Evil and Clocktower when I was a little kid for fun. When I was really little, I thought I could see ghosts. I awoke one night the week after my grandfather died to a humanoid shadow figure standing in the doorway of my open closet. So I did what any kid would do and hopped up to go touch it, where it dissipated. Because of this, I thought I might have the ability to see ghosts, and I immediately dove into consuming all supernatural media (and by extension horror media) that I could. This was a great way to realize at an early age that: A) I have sleep paralysis visions. B) Ghosts and such are not real (bummer) C) 99% of all fake ghost stories and many many horror stories followed the exact same patterns. I was SO interested in these patterns of storytelling that I became obsessed with them for a bit. I watched every terrible ghost show on the Travel Channel and read every horror book in the school library they would let me check out. People construct stories with tools, and the way they use those tools are often the same if their end goal is simlar, i.e. the same genre. For instance, any time I watch a horror movie and the camera starts to conspicuously shift to the left in a way that de-centers the characters, I'm like "Oh. There's about to be a jump scare on the right side of the screen. No competent cinematographer would drift the camera that way and create this awkward composition if they weren't going to resolve it. When they move back to the right, there will be a monster." And then that literally always happens. I'm very pattern-brained and very creator-brained, so when I engage with horror I always see it through the lens of a magician watching another practitioner's magic show. It's fun for me to try and figure out what tricks are being used, especially if they're really well done. With horror, they are often *terribly* done, but you never know when you might stumble upon a "Crow Country" or a "Silent Hill 2". I cannot turn this brainwave off and I cannot *not* watch media through this lens. I'm literally always thinking about the how and why of the choices that made the thing I'm watching. This is really bad for pure horror media, because you usually have to be IN IT to actually get scared. The other reason that Pure Horror tends to fall flat for me is actual a tone issue. Horror is a lovely little treat when it comes as a surprise. There are actually quite a few games I've played on this channel that I have been genuinely SCARED of, moreso than anything I engaged with for Clean Screams. "Night in the Woods" has two moments (in Greg and Angus's investigations) that still scare me. "Bug Fables" has an endgame that freaked me out the first time I played it. The moment in In "Stars and Time" where the daydreaming one forgets her sister in real-time is actually *chilling*. I still thin, about it. These moments stand out to me because those games are not static in their emotion. The horror is surprising, but it's effective and in-line with the rest of the games' tones, so it works incredibly well as a sucker punch. The trick is, it's not ALWAYS horror. This is why ISAT's incredibly bleak core story works. Because it knows how to relax you with comedy. Night in The Woods is dreary and depressing, but it still has moments of random small beauty and love for life, a sense of underlying hope that makes the story worth seeing. In my opinion, this is the main failure with most horror. A creator says "I want to make a horror thing", and they make it that and nothing else. It is ALL horror. The lighting is always bleak. The colors are always grey or deep blue or black or red. The tone is always dramatic. The danger is always there. And when something is always something, then your brain begins to filter it out, like a buzzing tone you eventually stop hearing. This is why comedy movies and comedy games that are always trying to be "funny" eventually feel a little exhausting, but comedy interlaced with real emotional scenes or high stakes action sequences feels energized. In my opinion, even Signalis, one of the best games we played for this project, suffers from this. The moment I begin the game, I think "Ah, this is horror. I am now preparing myself for horror." My mental state adjusts. I am ready for monsters and ghouls. I am ready for dangerous situations. And because the game has no major tone shifts, I am now prepared for everything it has to throw at me. I will have the same expression for most of my playthrough. To me, the most interesting parts of Signalis are the tragic flashes of romance you see popping out of the dark once every hour or so, because these are the only time the game is not HORROR in big, bloody, capital letters. It's still horror, but the font is different. It's in cursive now. The romance stands out. It's a new feeling. It's interesting. It's unusual. And after eating all this horror dark chocolate, I'm delighted to find a cherry to go with it, even if that cherry is kind of sour. And now that I know the horror is being fueled by twisted romance, the horror has a new flavor. It's deeper and makes me sad in addition to scared, like the daydreaming one's amnesia in ISAT. The cherry and the chocolate work together and they create something better than the chocolate could alone. It's not surprising to me that "Crow Country" and "My Friendly Neighborhood" were effective horror experiences for me. The fact that they are willing to be silly, strange, funny, and sometimes even outright cute means that I am engaging with them as the full breadth of a human being. I get to play with my entire emotional spectrum, and that means that it's much easier for the game to give me a killer punchline and then while I'm laughing swing a baseball bat at my kneecaps. This isn't to say that Good Horror (tm) cannot be effective if it's always dark. Silent Hill 2 is resoundingly bleak and miserable and it still might legitimately be my pick for "Literally the Best Video Game Every Made, artistically speaking". Amy and I could (and have) talked about it on and off stream for dozens of hours. But SH2 is expertly executed. It is an unfairly high water mark to hold yourself to as a designer. If you're going to make your tone exclusively and constantly *one thing*, then you need to knock it out of the park and almost never miss. Anyways, that's my take on horror. Tl;dr I find a lot of stuff doesn't work for me because I can see the string and the lights holding it all together, and then the rest of the stuff doesn't work for me because it's unafraid to try something spicy and maybe flirt outside its genre conventions a bit. The best game of this marathon IMO was easily Crow Country and I'd highly recommend it. The worst game is NightCry because it's literally unplayable, but it's closely followed by No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, which I think straight up sucks. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this random essay!
To summarize, Psychological horror will always be the best kind of Horror. I totally agree with you Jello, i find it very interesting to read your thought process, aswell.
Big agree to pretty much all of this. An underutilized element of writing is ~contrast~ just like a painter uses color and tone contrasts a writer should use contrasts of narrative devices (maybe bc I write and illustrate comics my own I think about the similarities and relationships between visual and narrative arts). If it's oops all horror, unless it's masterful, the viewer is going to adjust. Alternatively you contrast the horror with other elements or establish a solid baseline of something else that the horror elements are disrupting. Another thing is creepy/uncanny faces do NOTHING for me. Edited/altered/extremely exaggerated or morphed human faces are SO common now (popular with analog horror like mandela catalog as well as fucking everywhere it feels like). Maybe it's my autism/prosopagnosia. Or maybe it's because I'm a special education student who has seen countless individuals with craniofacial differences, so now 'human face thats been warped somehow so now it's sCaRy' just fucking pisses me off.
I like horror media the most, and I can safely say that out of all my favourite horror games, anime, etc. none have ever truly "scared me." The reason why I might like a piece of media that's within the horror genre is because I can in some way either relate to the story being told or get a new perspective on life from it that other media often shys away from showing. It shows you more darker aspects of life your average upbeat media will never dare to show. That's why I have 0 interest in horror media that puts scares as their main priority ironically enough because I'm so desensitised to it that it just does not matter to me at all. And I think you're missing out on some great stories if the only thing you expect from horror is for it to scare you.
I'm the same way with horror games. My favorite has become RE6 simply because that game Feels good to play. I've never played a shooter that feels so satisfying. It's terrible as an RE game but it's fun as a random dumb action game.
Thanks for going into this. I think some of Clean Screams could be misconstrued as "Jello refuses to engage with the material" if people ignored the obvious analysis working in your brain when you see these kind of setups in horror games. It's interesting to hear where that comes from for sure, and given the massive disadvantage these games had going in, it speaks very highly that one or two managed to still have some bits you liked.
Jello when people are gruesomely slaughtered in front of him: I sleep Jello when a scripted batch of reinforcements arrive in a strategy RPG he's played over a dozen times: TERRIFIED YODELING
for anyone randomly viewing the comments: willowthywisp's response is not spam. I know i usually assume a youtube link in the comments is just spam and is in fact a link to Jello yodelling in Psychonauts, so i thought this warning (anti-warning?) would help
This reminds me of when I was like twelve and my brothers playing amnesia, and he’s just sitting there happily dunking physics objects in a barrel of acid and I say to him “the moment you leave that room the grunts gonna pop out and scare the pudding out of you” and he’s all like “I haven’t seen that guy in twenty minutes, he’s not gonna show up until I unlock the next door in another twenty” so I go around the corner to play Mario kart and immediately I hear a yelp of “ MY PUDDING” and then cackling at himself for not believing me.
@@ChthonicDepths well it was because I had specifically said “scare the pudding out of you”, he said he resolved to say that every time he saw the grunt from then on. He wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.
Spontaneous explosions are a real and serious issue. How DARE you laugh, when another person's whole body goes *splotsh* like a big, overly ripe watermelon!
I feel like the thing that makes horror most effective for me is the expectation to act as if you're okay afterwards. In horror games you're always supposed to be tense, but if you're given breaks of relief, you can actually process the horror you experienced
The man in Crow Country peeping out of the box made me turn off the game the first time I saw it and Jello and co laugh it off. I feel like a coward now.
In Nobody Lives Under the Lighthouse's defense- It has two versions, and you picked the version that is infinitely worse. I don't think you'd like the better version either, as someone who doesn't get scared by horror games- But that is an important distinction. If the concept is interesting, don't get the remaster, it's a trap
I did actually look into this because I was pretty baffled by its high scores and it seems most versions of the game you can get now ARE the bad remastered version and everybody hates it. Oops.
@@cardsnapper2098 So, I haven't played the remaster, only heard of it, so don't take my word as gospel- But from what I hear, it just....Removes a lot of the mystery and ambiguity. Horror thrives on the unknown, and the remaster answers a LOT of questions that were scarier to not know
Dunno if I'd called Killer Frequency a "horror game", in the same vein as the rest. I know Jello & Co. didn't like it much but it definitely wasn't trying to be a genuinely scary experience, just riffing off slasher flicks.
Killer Frequency plays itself 1000% straight as a "Scary game". When you're outside getting the record they try to scare you by having the Whistling Man visible as you come around the corner. The endgame sections in the basement are absolutely supposed to make you feel like he's in the building so you're scared and unsafe. And then it has like a 20 minute "HERE'S WHY AND HOW I DID THE KILLINGS" breakdown. It's trying to be scary and have stakes, it just sucks at it. World of Horror is less of a true horror game than Killer Frequency is.
@@JelloPlaysVideoGames I disagree, just because the game has a few "now is when you should be scared" moments doesn't make it a horror game. Just like how a horror game that has funny elements doesn't mean it drops the genre off its description. I can't really name any examples that I think people would know for either side, tbh. and of course my point's kind of moot when the game's own steam summary calls it a "horror puzzle game", so... hm. Gonna bow out of this one now
Horror-Comedy is both genres, it doesn't pick one or the other. Things like Cabin in the Woods and The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals are still horror even if they venture into parody and camp. They use the tropes and they actually do create scares. Killer Frequency does the same thing (or it tries to, anyways), it just spends more time on the Comedy end of the spectrum.
@@JelloPlaysVideoGames i know you like the hatchetfield trilogy (or whatever it is, depending on nightmare time stuff), but every time i see a mention of tgwdlm i get childishly giddy lol
Not a horror game (technically), but Subnautica on perma death had me consistently and constantly more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life. And I fell out of a roller coaster. The “horror” of it just come from how fucking vulnerable you are, not just to the sea monsters, but the very darkness and crushing weight of the ocean. Just looking out into the Ecological Dead-zone is horrifying, even before you know there is nothing but out there.
I love your reaction to Signalis because I have heard from others that the game is a masterpiece yet you make it seem WAY sillier than it's supposed to be
There was a lot of ups and downs with clean screams, but Killer Frequency was my biggest dissapointment. Being a radio DJ playing tunes while solving murders sounds so cool, but the moment the game started and I heard the main character was trying to play it straight I was gone. That game should never have even tried to be scary, the half assed attempt at horror completely removes any chance to be an over the top radio man which is the only reason to care about the game.
Killer Frequency feels likes its trying to be a thriller game more-so than a horror one. It's got some scary-ish moments sure, but the most the game can tries to do is put you on edge.
@@DParkerNunya It shouldnt have been that either. Should've been full on goofy silly like a scooby doo. Should've been all cartoony colors and bright lights.
Frankly, in my opinion, horror is generally most unnerving to me whenever I'm dealing with the implications of something. Like I'm peeking into something far far worse. But that is how I react to horror. Hell I didn't like horror when I was younger but at the same time, I had a weird morbid curiosity. Which eventually morphed into me appreciating horror from another angle. Which is also morbid. Like when you're able to unnerve me with something. That's great, that's amazing. In fact you don't always need to do it with the horror genre specifically. Legitimately just imply something horrifying to me in any setting and I'll be like 'I'm sorry what the fuuuucckkk?' and I'm just gonna be sitting there wondering so many things. In the end; horror is really hard to get right... but when it's right. Goddamn, is it right.
I struggle more with games not inherently designed to be scary stuff like subnautica and grounded. Big bugs and deep oceans get too me so much more than a bloody man abmling around a poorly lit hallway.
Part of it is just because I was young at the time, but little has ever surpassed the fear I felt playing Minecraft as a kid, which is absolutely not intended to be even remotely scary lol. Any time I turned off peaceful mode my heart was pounding
I love how very much having seen an explanation video about Darkseid 2, I still have NO IDEA what exploding mommy actually explains. It’s a gaming moment that solely serves to explain why spontaneous combustion is funny, not scary.
1:07 He doesn't look scary, he looks goofy 😂 It's honestly pretty adorable, especially since he's doing that thing that dogs do where they look like they're smiling, and it always looks funny when they look to the side and you can see the whites of their eyes, just a silly little goofball.
@@JelloPlaysVideoGamesi can’t imagine that that wasn’t the intention. maybe uncanny was their main goal but they MUST have known everyone would laugh when they first encountered it
I think with Omori it could at least have been intended as dark comedy. In that section Basil kept dying randomly, so you're left with a feeling of, "well, how's he going to die next?"
I'm a little sad to see Clean Screams go, but I'm pretty sure nothing would top Crow Country in terms of genuine quality and enjoyment anyway. Good horror is kind of rare, and good horror that stays good the entire time is even rarer. Also, nice essay. Very Clean.
Things just came full circle. I found Jello years ago through Retsupurae, and they were now referenced in this video. The cycle is complete. I can finally return to the past. TELEPORT!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks people randomly exploding into guts and gore is hilarious. All my friends thought I was terrible for laughing when Basil exploded but it was the one unintentional relief I got in an area of a game that deeply unsettles me.
Man, the gore explosions remind me of The Quarry (made by the Until Dawn team) and how every time a werewolf transformed it was just a big, bloody "pop".
god thank you for reminding me how bad the chase sequence in lighthouse is. the awkward controls make it real easy to fail and so it loses all tension after you die like 3 times in a row
God that one sound effect from Killer Frequency fucking annihilates me in the same way that when Light gets his memories back in Death Note (English dub only, that scene is fucking hilarious in English)
it is always wild what hits as 'scary' for people. i went throught almost all the silent hills without being scared as a kid, but was scared of the drowning sounds in sonic 3 and shut the game off at Hydrocity
so, this is a great video. great goofs were had, silly spooks all around. i dont want to say what im about to say without first saying that, because id like to stress that i have no judgement towards jello for feeling this way about horror games. clearly he and i are different, and that's okay! but i am someone who deeply loves the horror game genre, and thus i have a tremendous respect for the ones i have played, some of which i would describe as truly scary. that being said... if you'll allow me your time, i have a hypothesis on how me and jello might be different in this respect. okay, first things first, this is a very internet armchair psychologist thing im about to do, so yknow, grains of salt are in the kitchen, i barely know this man. but i _think i know_ at least two things. id like to break down an example of something jello expressly said he _was_ and _wasnt_ scared at: the final iron lung jumpscare, and the clip at the beginning jello used as an example of his scared yodeling. (unfortunately im unfamiliar with the game but i assume its a fire emblem game or something like it, ill just call it the yodeling clip from now on.) first, the iron lung clip. its a very by the books scare. in fact i would argue the whole game is a giant by the books scare, the entire thing setting up the punchline at the end. the whole game is a very linear, almost on rails experience. only the variation of how much time it takes to get to each point changes different peoples playthroughs through the game. i myself was very affected when i played this. (iron lung is the only of these games i have played btw... i dont feel like i can speak on the others, although from a glance admittedly a lot of the others looked quite silly.) despite the tropes, its sound design and pacing really place myself in the submarine and its unique setting help it stand out from a lot of stock scares. and yet, jello remains unmoved, but i can see why he would be. i did just say how many tropes there are in it after all, and jello takes me as someone who sees the hand of the creator in practically anything he consumes throughout the whole experience. so, what does he get scared at? the yodeling clip is a really interesting example to highlight, especially as one he wanted to stress was scary to him specifically. that bit, where a fight hes in turns south very suddenly and dangerously, one with possible consequences such as permadeath of characters or at the very least having to redo the whole thing, is a very different kind of scary than most horror games give. its more an adrenaline fueled panic than a traditional scare. i dont want to say that this kind of situation has _never_ been in a traditional horror game, but its definitely uncommon at least, and i havent thought of a good example. it certainly wasn't in any of the games he included here, thats for sure. that's my best interpretation, that jello is more scared by gameplay and narrative stakes rather than atmosphere or the more stereotypical tension and release of most horror games. if i had to propose a game i think could scare him, my best pick would be who's lila. it has a really good mix of mechanics that are unique, and impact the story dramatically depending on how well you pull them off, even if it looks a little silly doing it sometimes. and if its any consolation to anyone reading this, i feel somewhat embarrassed to have written all this on the subject... but its something im clearly passionate about, so i hope you took something out of it if you made it this far. edit: so i just read the pinned comment seconds after posting that! man i wish i read that first! the reasons hes desensitized to horror make a lot of sense though, so some of my points are just discovering things he's already said, and he wasnt as black and white with all horror as i thought he was. i agree that the mixing of genre and tone is absolutely much more effective than a pure horror experience. i guess when i think of "horror games" i often include games that mix them like that, so i should do better to separate the two when talking about it.
So glad i rewatched all these streams but i SWEAR Iron Lung didnt have that fish at the end. It was just supposed to be a loud thud and the sound of crashing metal with a cut to black to imply whatever it was caught you. I dont know if thats from a new version or what but it really kills any of the tension by showing you the actual monster. Meanwhile Under The Lighthouse was a cheesy horror b-movie that desperate wanted to be taken seriously
@yannismorris4772 really? I could have sworn the original versions didn't have the fish visible at the end. Keeping you guessing about what exactly caught you.
I will say, sudden gorey explosions are either incredibly hilarious or absolutely horrifying for different people, and there's no in-between. In some contexts i would've been completely horrified, but that's certainly not the case here.
If only we had a third Ace Attorney Investigations game. Logic Chess 2: Electric Boogaloo! Now with extra Fatalium and Normalium! That would’ve definitely got Jello scared.
I’ve never seen a more oddly specific default reaction to being scared then jumping out of your seat, grabbing a top hat and cane, and doing a *frantic* impression of Michigan J. Frog
As a furry, I do judge you for not liking a good snout, but also do the "nodding at the computer screen then thumbs-up to the camera" thing at describing a nice, floofy tail.
Welp now I'm thinking about Pocket Mirror. It's a great game, and I honestly don't think it's trying to be scary most of the time, so the _one_ time it got me basically had me pausing and unpacking what just happened for a solid couple minutes. (This was the camera panning down on Harpae's bad end and realizing very suddenly why they were using the "ominous eyes hidden" sprite. Also our bad end in her level, which was just genuinely unsettling)
Jello, please tell me that this was recorded before you had Covid. Because it really sounds like you have Covid in the audio but I want to trust that you wouldn’t record something if you were extremely sick Edit: oh it’s literally the first sentence I’m an idiot
with covid and bird flu on the rise due premature, rush to get back to ''normal'' to funnel a mass disabling event for the capitalist death machine out of abandonment from our government I know jello's literally moving but I seriously implore everyone at minimum, to continue masking and taking steps to protect and take care of her self and others since no one else higher up will in these trying times Hope your move treats you well and you get better soon Jello, anyone reading or watching and every member of the jello please games crew But especially the ones that already get sick easily like me The past three years have honestly been the worst in my life, this channel was an honest to god beacon and while bummed a hiatus is likely approaching I look forward to everything that comes next, I just hope you all take care of yourselves and try to enjoy the time we have left❤️
Covid is on the rise definitely but as somebody who has been paying attention to bird flu outbreaks it’s not really anything out of the usual. Bird flu is getting news coverage right now because of a new transmission vector but actual cases of bird flu among humans has not significantly jumped beyond other blips we are used to seeing regarding it. Covid is certainly coming back though so stay careful on that
1:26 ok does anyone know what this song is? I’ve heard it before and wanna give it a full listen, but the soundtrack is long as hell and I can’t pick it out
One game that got me to jump was Ghostwire Tokyo. There this part of the game where you're in a school house and there's this fucking anatomy statue that acts like a Weeping Angel. If you look away from it too long, it wraps its limbs around you and lunges towards you. It doesn't even change its expression, it just does it with the same neutral expression. But it got me, because I hate Weeping Angels with a passion.
Tfw jello does a charity stream and donates like 12 bucks because he’s too cracked at the challenges But for real, good on ya, and I hope to one day react like you to horror
I know you don't get scared by most games, I can assume its has something to do with how artificial it all is that you can just remove yourself from them, but I hope you at least enjoyed some of them for their atmosphere or story, especially Signalis.
Have you done a play through of alien isolation or dead space? If so, are there VODs and if not would you consider it for the next spookathon? Would primarily recommend Alien Isolation since dead space is more actiony with all the killable enemies and stuff
I don't know where else to talk about the Clean Screams project and my views on horror in games in full so I'll just do it here:
I used to wiki-binge franchises like Resident Evil and Clocktower when I was a little kid for fun. When I was really little, I thought I could see ghosts. I awoke one night the week after my grandfather died to a humanoid shadow figure standing in the doorway of my open closet. So I did what any kid would do and hopped up to go touch it, where it dissipated. Because of this, I thought I might have the ability to see ghosts, and I immediately dove into consuming all supernatural media (and by extension horror media) that I could. This was a great way to realize at an early age that:
A) I have sleep paralysis visions.
B) Ghosts and such are not real (bummer)
C) 99% of all fake ghost stories and many many horror stories followed the exact same patterns.
I was SO interested in these patterns of storytelling that I became obsessed with them for a bit. I watched every terrible ghost show on the Travel Channel and read every horror book in the school library they would let me check out. People construct stories with tools, and the way they use those tools are often the same if their end goal is simlar, i.e. the same genre. For instance, any time I watch a horror movie and the camera starts to conspicuously shift to the left in a way that de-centers the characters, I'm like "Oh. There's about to be a jump scare on the right side of the screen. No competent cinematographer would drift the camera that way and create this awkward composition if they weren't going to resolve it. When they move back to the right, there will be a monster." And then that literally always happens.
I'm very pattern-brained and very creator-brained, so when I engage with horror I always see it through the lens of a magician watching another practitioner's magic show. It's fun for me to try and figure out what tricks are being used, especially if they're really well done. With horror, they are often *terribly* done, but you never know when you might stumble upon a "Crow Country" or a "Silent Hill 2".
I cannot turn this brainwave off and I cannot *not* watch media through this lens. I'm literally always thinking about the how and why of the choices that made the thing I'm watching. This is really bad for pure horror media, because you usually have to be IN IT to actually get scared.
The other reason that Pure Horror tends to fall flat for me is actual a tone issue.
Horror is a lovely little treat when it comes as a surprise. There are actually quite a few games I've played on this channel that I have been genuinely SCARED of, moreso than anything I engaged with for Clean Screams.
"Night in the Woods" has two moments (in Greg and Angus's investigations) that still scare me. "Bug Fables" has an endgame that freaked me out the first time I played it. The moment in In "Stars and Time" where the daydreaming one forgets her sister in real-time is actually *chilling*. I still thin, about it.
These moments stand out to me because those games are not static in their emotion. The horror is surprising, but it's effective and in-line with the rest of the games' tones, so it works incredibly well as a sucker punch. The trick is, it's not ALWAYS horror. This is why ISAT's incredibly bleak core story works. Because it knows how to relax you with comedy. Night in The Woods is dreary and depressing, but it still has moments of random small beauty and love for life, a sense of underlying hope that makes the story worth seeing.
In my opinion, this is the main failure with most horror.
A creator says "I want to make a horror thing", and they make it that and nothing else. It is ALL horror. The lighting is always bleak. The colors are always grey or deep blue or black or red. The tone is always dramatic. The danger is always there. And when something is always something, then your brain begins to filter it out, like a buzzing tone you eventually stop hearing. This is why comedy movies and comedy games that are always trying to be "funny" eventually feel a little exhausting, but comedy interlaced with real emotional scenes or high stakes action sequences feels energized.
In my opinion, even Signalis, one of the best games we played for this project, suffers from this.
The moment I begin the game, I think "Ah, this is horror. I am now preparing myself for horror." My mental state adjusts. I am ready for monsters and ghouls. I am ready for dangerous situations. And because the game has no major tone shifts, I am now prepared for everything it has to throw at me. I will have the same expression for most of my playthrough.
To me, the most interesting parts of Signalis are the tragic flashes of romance you see popping out of the dark once every hour or so, because these are the only time the game is not HORROR in big, bloody, capital letters. It's still horror, but the font is different. It's in cursive now. The romance stands out. It's a new feeling. It's interesting. It's unusual. And after eating all this horror dark chocolate, I'm delighted to find a cherry to go with it, even if that cherry is kind of sour. And now that I know the horror is being fueled by twisted romance, the horror has a new flavor. It's deeper and makes me sad in addition to scared, like the daydreaming one's amnesia in ISAT. The cherry and the chocolate work together and they create something better than the chocolate could alone.
It's not surprising to me that "Crow Country" and "My Friendly Neighborhood" were effective horror experiences for me. The fact that they are willing to be silly, strange, funny, and sometimes even outright cute means that I am engaging with them as the full breadth of a human being. I get to play with my entire emotional spectrum, and that means that it's much easier for the game to give me a killer punchline and then while I'm laughing swing a baseball bat at my kneecaps.
This isn't to say that Good Horror (tm) cannot be effective if it's always dark. Silent Hill 2 is resoundingly bleak and miserable and it still might legitimately be my pick for "Literally the Best Video Game Every Made, artistically speaking". Amy and I could (and have) talked about it on and off stream for dozens of hours. But SH2 is expertly executed. It is an unfairly high water mark to hold yourself to as a designer. If you're going to make your tone exclusively and constantly *one thing*, then you need to knock it out of the park and almost never miss.
Anyways, that's my take on horror. Tl;dr I find a lot of stuff doesn't work for me because I can see the string and the lights holding it all together, and then the rest of the stuff doesn't work for me because it's unafraid to try something spicy and maybe flirt outside its genre conventions a bit.
The best game of this marathon IMO was easily Crow Country and I'd highly recommend it. The worst game is NightCry because it's literally unplayable, but it's closely followed by No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, which I think straight up sucks.
Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this random essay!
To summarize, Psychological horror will always be the best kind of Horror. I totally agree with you Jello, i find it very interesting to read your thought process, aswell.
Big agree to pretty much all of this. An underutilized element of writing is ~contrast~ just like a painter uses color and tone contrasts a writer should use contrasts of narrative devices (maybe bc I write and illustrate comics my own I think about the similarities and relationships between visual and narrative arts). If it's oops all horror, unless it's masterful, the viewer is going to adjust. Alternatively you contrast the horror with other elements or establish a solid baseline of something else that the horror elements are disrupting.
Another thing is creepy/uncanny faces do NOTHING for me. Edited/altered/extremely exaggerated or morphed human faces are SO common now (popular with analog horror like mandela catalog as well as fucking everywhere it feels like). Maybe it's my autism/prosopagnosia. Or maybe it's because I'm a special education student who has seen countless individuals with craniofacial differences, so now 'human face thats been warped somehow so now it's sCaRy' just fucking pisses me off.
I like horror media the most, and I can safely say that out of all my favourite horror games, anime, etc. none have ever truly "scared me."
The reason why I might like a piece of media that's within the horror genre is because I can in some way either relate to the story being told or get a new perspective on life from it that other media often shys away from showing. It shows you more darker aspects of life your average upbeat media will never dare to show.
That's why I have 0 interest in horror media that puts scares as their main priority ironically enough because I'm so desensitised to it that it just does not matter to me at all.
And I think you're missing out on some great stories if the only thing you expect from horror is for it to scare you.
I'm the same way with horror games. My favorite has become RE6 simply because that game Feels good to play. I've never played a shooter that feels so satisfying. It's terrible as an RE game but it's fun as a random dumb action game.
Thanks for going into this. I think some of Clean Screams could be misconstrued as "Jello refuses to engage with the material" if people ignored the obvious analysis working in your brain when you see these kind of setups in horror games. It's interesting to hear where that comes from for sure, and given the massive disadvantage these games had going in, it speaks very highly that one or two managed to still have some bits you liked.
Jello when people are gruesomely slaughtered in front of him: I sleep
Jello when a scripted batch of reinforcements arrive in a strategy RPG he's played over a dozen times: TERRIFIED YODELING
In my defense, the prospect of resetting my progress on any of those archer-only maps was scarier than ANYTHING I had to do on Clean Screams.
Such is the power of _utter dread._
True terror has consequences
To be fair, I also wheezed when the characters popped like a balloon lol-
You forgot your scream during Psychonauts with the confusion rats. That would have been a GREAT example of opera scream
Fuck you're RIGHT.
@@JelloPlaysVideoGamesLiquidate the video to fix this mistake, JELLO!
Welp, time for me to look up that Bit in the Stream Archive.
@@Xsor. th-cam.com/video/p0T1Sz0uyXA/w-d-xo.html
for anyone randomly viewing the comments: willowthywisp's response is not spam. I know i usually assume a youtube link in the comments is just spam and is in fact a link to Jello yodelling in Psychonauts, so i thought this warning (anti-warning?) would help
This reminds me of when I was like twelve and my brothers playing amnesia, and he’s just sitting there happily dunking physics objects in a barrel of acid and I say to him “the moment you leave that room the grunts gonna pop out and scare the pudding out of you” and he’s all like “I haven’t seen that guy in twenty minutes, he’s not gonna show up until I unlock the next door in another twenty” so I go around the corner to play Mario kart and immediately I hear a yelp of “ MY PUDDING” and then cackling at himself for not believing me.
the fact that he said "MY PUDDING" is taking me the fuck OUT
@@ChthonicDepths well it was because I had specifically said “scare the pudding out of you”, he said he resolved to say that every time he saw the grunt from then on. He wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.
I can't believe Jello got possessed by Shroomish from the hit series Dogs in Love
**SLAMS FIST ON DESK** HIS NAME IS TANNENBAUM
considering your real fear reaponse no wonder there were barely any clean screams, shoulda been lookin for clean sings
actually crying over jello being more concerned over the tail poofs on an anthro girl rather than the big scary blood monster in iron lung 😭
not the fucking lego yoda death sound at 4:43 😭
Spontaneous explosions are a real and serious issue. How DARE you laugh, when another person's whole body goes *splotsh* like a big, overly ripe watermelon!
THE SNOOT IS GLAD YOU WERE NOT SCARED
THE SNOOT IS A LOVER, NOT A SCARER
I feel like the thing that makes horror most effective for me is the expectation to act as if you're okay afterwards. In horror games you're always supposed to be tense, but if you're given breaks of relief, you can actually process the horror you experienced
The man in Crow Country peeping out of the box made me turn off the game the first time I saw it and Jello and co laugh it off. I feel like a coward now.
He's cute!!!
Nah it's just creepy.
In Nobody Lives Under the Lighthouse's defense- It has two versions, and you picked the version that is infinitely worse. I don't think you'd like the better version either, as someone who doesn't get scared by horror games- But that is an important distinction. If the concept is interesting, don't get the remaster, it's a trap
I did actually look into this because I was pretty baffled by its high scores and it seems most versions of the game you can get now ARE the bad remastered version and everybody hates it. Oops.
What makes the remaster worse?
@@cardsnapper2098 So, I haven't played the remaster, only heard of it, so don't take my word as gospel- But from what I hear, it just....Removes a lot of the mystery and ambiguity. Horror thrives on the unknown, and the remaster answers a LOT of questions that were scarier to not know
@@cardsnapper2098 It adds a lot of weird, stupid, irrelevant Christian symbolism and tons of boring padding.
I am so happy to see the snoot again.
The Stonch is life.
Dunno if I'd called Killer Frequency a "horror game", in the same vein as the rest. I know Jello & Co. didn't like it much but it definitely wasn't trying to be a genuinely scary experience, just riffing off slasher flicks.
Killer Frequency plays itself 1000% straight as a "Scary game".
When you're outside getting the record they try to scare you by having the Whistling Man visible as you come around the corner. The endgame sections in the basement are absolutely supposed to make you feel like he's in the building so you're scared and unsafe. And then it has like a 20 minute "HERE'S WHY AND HOW I DID THE KILLINGS" breakdown. It's trying to be scary and have stakes, it just sucks at it.
World of Horror is less of a true horror game than Killer Frequency is.
@@JelloPlaysVideoGames I disagree, just because the game has a few "now is when you should be scared" moments doesn't make it a horror game. Just like how a horror game that has funny elements doesn't mean it drops the genre off its description.
I can't really name any examples that I think people would know for either side, tbh. and of course my point's kind of moot when the game's own steam summary calls it a "horror puzzle game", so... hm. Gonna bow out of this one now
Horror-Comedy is both genres, it doesn't pick one or the other.
Things like Cabin in the Woods and The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals are still horror even if they venture into parody and camp. They use the tropes and they actually do create scares. Killer Frequency does the same thing (or it tries to, anyways), it just spends more time on the Comedy end of the spectrum.
@@JelloPlaysVideoGames i know you like the hatchetfield trilogy (or whatever it is, depending on nightmare time stuff), but every time i see a mention of tgwdlm i get childishly giddy lol
I definitely saw KF as more campy, like it’s intentionally going for a cheap b horror movie feel
I’m so glad some of the Omori moments made it in bc him reacting with laughter to the moments that freaked me out is just so cathartic
Honestly Signalis gave us The Snoot and even if it has flaws, that makes up for it. The Snoot stole my heart (and my liver, but that's unrelated)
FINALLY A MEMORIAL TO THE ALOHA BRITISH ROYAL SQUEAL
Not a horror game (technically), but Subnautica on perma death had me consistently and constantly more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life. And I fell out of a roller coaster. The “horror” of it just come from how fucking vulnerable you are, not just to the sea monsters, but the very darkness and crushing weight of the ocean. Just looking out into the Ecological Dead-zone is horrifying, even before you know there is nothing but out there.
I love how no two telltale yodels are exactly the same. You can learn so much about a person just from their yodel
I love your reaction to Signalis because I have heard from others that the game is a masterpiece yet you make it seem WAY sillier than it's supposed to be
3:02 This is how Mr. Arimnaes kills people in PizzaGame
Thank you for the bonus clip at the end, it meant a lot to me
There was a lot of ups and downs with clean screams, but Killer Frequency was my biggest dissapointment. Being a radio DJ playing tunes while solving murders sounds so cool, but the moment the game started and I heard the main character was trying to play it straight I was gone. That game should never have even tried to be scary, the half assed attempt at horror completely removes any chance to be an over the top radio man which is the only reason to care about the game.
Lighthouse and NightCry are obviously worse games but god Killer Frequency just pisses me off so much
Killer Frequency feels likes its trying to be a thriller game more-so than a horror one. It's got some scary-ish moments sure, but the most the game can tries to do is put you on edge.
@@DParkerNunya It shouldnt have been that either. Should've been full on goofy silly like a scooby doo. Should've been all cartoony colors and bright lights.
Jello playing horror games like the protagonists are the real villains. xD
To be fair, in many horror games that is the final twist.
God, your editing style is so good. It adds so much to the bits in the smallest of ways
Frankly, in my opinion, horror is generally most unnerving to me whenever I'm dealing with the implications of something. Like I'm peeking into something far far worse. But that is how I react to horror.
Hell I didn't like horror when I was younger but at the same time, I had a weird morbid curiosity. Which eventually morphed into me appreciating horror from another angle. Which is also morbid. Like when you're able to unnerve me with something. That's great, that's amazing.
In fact you don't always need to do it with the horror genre specifically. Legitimately just imply something horrifying to me in any setting and I'll be like 'I'm sorry what the fuuuucckkk?' and I'm just gonna be sitting there wondering so many things.
In the end; horror is really hard to get right... but when it's right. Goddamn, is it right.
At 12:00 a.m.? an upload? and a cut down version of the clean screams? oh boy!
Its a horror themed upload, when else would you upload it
I struggle more with games not inherently designed to be scary stuff like subnautica and grounded. Big bugs and deep oceans get too me so much more than a bloody man abmling around a poorly lit hallway.
Part of it is just because I was young at the time, but little has ever surpassed the fear I felt playing Minecraft as a kid, which is absolutely not intended to be even remotely scary lol. Any time I turned off peaceful mode my heart was pounding
I love how very much having seen an explanation video about Darkseid 2, I still have NO IDEA what exploding mommy actually explains.
It’s a gaming moment that solely serves to explain why spontaneous combustion is funny, not scary.
1:07 He doesn't look scary, he looks goofy 😂 It's honestly pretty adorable, especially since he's doing that thing that dogs do where they look like they're smiling, and it always looks funny when they look to the side and you can see the whites of their eyes, just a silly little goofball.
I legit think this monster is meant to be funny
@@JelloPlaysVideoGamesi can’t imagine that that wasn’t the intention. maybe uncanny was their main goal but they MUST have known everyone would laugh when they first encountered it
2:33 - 3:11 I dont get how horror devs think this is scary and not some of the funniest shit ever
I think with Omori it could at least have been intended as dark comedy. In that section Basil kept dying randomly, so you're left with a feeling of, "well, how's he going to die next?"
The game Dev even made fun of it in an art thing at one point
I'm a little sad to see Clean Screams go, but I'm pretty sure nothing would top Crow Country in terms of genuine quality and enjoyment anyway. Good horror is kind of rare, and good horror that stays good the entire time is even rarer.
Also, nice essay. Very Clean.
Ah yes the wise old strategy of “Horror can not be scary as long as you don’t take it seriously”
I'm honestly not entirely convinced that the Basil watermelon scene in Omori *wasn't* meant to be at least a little funny.
Idk why but something about the 2 seconds of jello singing "I will follow you into the dark" is just so heartwarming to me
Oh…get some rest Jello and recover
It's three in the morning JELLO
2:37 to be fair, no even the game's fans take that scene seriously
1:02 That dog's face is like he told a joke and is waiting for someone to laugh.
YGOTAS Pegasus's Wife-ass balloon people are my favourite kind of joke.
Just started the vid, Jello played OMORI?! Hunting down that VOD immediately after this
Things just came full circle. I found Jello years ago through Retsupurae, and they were now referenced in this video. The cycle is complete. I can finally return to the past. TELEPORT!
Wait how did you find me THROUGH retsupurae???
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks people randomly exploding into guts and gore is hilarious. All my friends thought I was terrible for laughing when Basil exploded but it was the one unintentional relief I got in an area of a game that deeply unsettles me.
Well, a mignight upload was unexpected, but not unappreciated.
mignight
Regardless of its failure to scare you, I hope you enjoyed playing Omori
Crow Country W.
Jello's reactions to the horrors of a game make me feel like this is a tutorial on how to make the game not scary. I will keep that in mind for later.
Man, the gore explosions remind me of The Quarry (made by the Until Dawn team) and how every time a werewolf transformed it was just a big, bloody "pop".
god thank you for reminding me how bad the chase sequence in lighthouse is. the awkward controls make it real easy to fail and so it loses all tension after you die like 3 times in a row
God that one sound effect from Killer Frequency fucking annihilates me in the same way that when Light gets his memories back in Death Note (English dub only, that scene is fucking hilarious in English)
Even if you didn’t get scared at least they were good streams
it is always wild what hits as 'scary' for people. i went throught almost all the silent hills without being scared as a kid, but was scared of the drowning sounds in sonic 3 and shut the game off at Hydrocity
so, this is a great video. great goofs were had, silly spooks all around. i dont want to say what im about to say without first saying that, because id like to stress that i have no judgement towards jello for feeling this way about horror games. clearly he and i are different, and that's okay! but i am someone who deeply loves the horror game genre, and thus i have a tremendous respect for the ones i have played, some of which i would describe as truly scary. that being said... if you'll allow me your time, i have a hypothesis on how me and jello might be different in this respect.
okay, first things first, this is a very internet armchair psychologist thing im about to do, so yknow, grains of salt are in the kitchen, i barely know this man. but i _think i know_ at least two things. id like to break down an example of something jello expressly said he _was_ and _wasnt_ scared at: the final iron lung jumpscare, and the clip at the beginning jello used as an example of his scared yodeling. (unfortunately im unfamiliar with the game but i assume its a fire emblem game or something like it, ill just call it the yodeling clip from now on.)
first, the iron lung clip. its a very by the books scare. in fact i would argue the whole game is a giant by the books scare, the entire thing setting up the punchline at the end. the whole game is a very linear, almost on rails experience. only the variation of how much time it takes to get to each point changes different peoples playthroughs through the game. i myself was very affected when i played this. (iron lung is the only of these games i have played btw... i dont feel like i can speak on the others, although from a glance admittedly a lot of the others looked quite silly.) despite the tropes, its sound design and pacing really place myself in the submarine and its unique setting help it stand out from a lot of stock scares. and yet, jello remains unmoved, but i can see why he would be. i did just say how many tropes there are in it after all, and jello takes me as someone who sees the hand of the creator in practically anything he consumes throughout the whole experience. so, what does he get scared at?
the yodeling clip is a really interesting example to highlight, especially as one he wanted to stress was scary to him specifically. that bit, where a fight hes in turns south very suddenly and dangerously, one with possible consequences such as permadeath of characters or at the very least having to redo the whole thing, is a very different kind of scary than most horror games give. its more an adrenaline fueled panic than a traditional scare. i dont want to say that this kind of situation has _never_ been in a traditional horror game, but its definitely uncommon at least, and i havent thought of a good example. it certainly wasn't in any of the games he included here, thats for sure.
that's my best interpretation, that jello is more scared by gameplay and narrative stakes rather than atmosphere or the more stereotypical tension and release of most horror games. if i had to propose a game i think could scare him, my best pick would be who's lila. it has a really good mix of mechanics that are unique, and impact the story dramatically depending on how well you pull them off, even if it looks a little silly doing it sometimes. and if its any consolation to anyone reading this, i feel somewhat embarrassed to have written all this on the subject... but its something im clearly passionate about, so i hope you took something out of it if you made it this far.
edit: so i just read the pinned comment seconds after posting that! man i wish i read that first! the reasons hes desensitized to horror make a lot of sense though, so some of my points are just discovering things he's already said, and he wasnt as black and white with all horror as i thought he was. i agree that the mixing of genre and tone is absolutely much more effective than a pure horror experience. i guess when i think of "horror games" i often include games that mix them like that, so i should do better to separate the two when talking about it.
So glad i rewatched all these streams but i SWEAR Iron Lung didnt have that fish at the end. It was just supposed to be a loud thud and the sound of crashing metal with a cut to black to imply whatever it was caught you. I dont know if thats from a new version or what but it really kills any of the tension by showing you the actual monster.
Meanwhile Under The Lighthouse was a cheesy horror b-movie that desperate wanted to be taken seriously
Ehh. Every version I’ve seen has had the fish
@yannismorris4772 really? I could have sworn the original versions didn't have the fish visible at the end. Keeping you guessing about what exactly caught you.
Nah Lighthouse was good, he just played the bad remastered version, which apparently exists.
@@lucasfraczek4320 The original wasn't great, but the remaster just made it worse lol
I will say, sudden gorey explosions are either incredibly hilarious or absolutely horrifying for different people, and there's no in-between. In some contexts i would've been completely horrified, but that's certainly not the case here.
If only we had a third Ace Attorney Investigations game. Logic Chess 2: Electric Boogaloo! Now with extra Fatalium and Normalium! That would’ve definitely got Jello scared.
That would just make Jello annoyed, not scared
I’ve never seen a more oddly specific default reaction to being scared then jumping out of your seat, grabbing a top hat and cane, and doing a *frantic* impression of Michigan J. Frog
an edited video? on the livestream channel? hell yeah
I can't stop laughing at iron lung jumpscare and jello going "waaa!!!"
As a furry, I do judge you for not liking a good snout, but also do the "nodding at the computer screen then thumbs-up to the camera" thing at describing a nice, floofy tail.
Fully was not expecting the Kuueater shoutout
No matter what the god damn jumpscare at the end of Iron Lung will get me.
Here's an idea, whenever someone else gets legitimately scared, you donate a 50-100 bucks.
Welp now I'm thinking about Pocket Mirror. It's a great game, and I honestly don't think it's trying to be scary most of the time, so the _one_ time it got me basically had me pausing and unpacking what just happened for a solid couple minutes.
(This was the camera panning down on Harpae's bad end and realizing very suddenly why they were using the "ominous eyes hidden" sprite. Also our bad end in her level, which was just genuinely unsettling)
Jello?! What is this upload time?!
Yeah, the sudden deaths of best boy Basil are definitely the highest points of comity in Omori
3:13
Jello being executed and talks about furrys
Jello adds a new corner to the Fight/Flight/Freeze triangle: “Sing”
Honestly yodeling is so much better than screaming
you're right about that!
Jello, please tell me that this was recorded before you had Covid. Because it really sounds like you have Covid in the audio but I want to trust that you wouldn’t record something if you were extremely sick
Edit: oh it’s literally the first sentence I’m an idiot
I don't give a fuck about anything else, I instantly like any video that references Retsupurae, especially their best LP of all time
Jelloapocalypse, if ghosts were hypothetically real what type of ghost would you like to see in the real world?
with covid and bird flu on the rise due premature, rush to get back to ''normal'' to funnel a mass disabling event for the capitalist death machine out of abandonment from our government
I know jello's literally moving but I seriously implore everyone at minimum, to continue masking and taking steps to protect and take care of her self and others since no one else higher up will in these trying times
Hope your move treats you well and you get better soon Jello, anyone reading or watching and every member of the jello please games crew
But especially the ones that already get sick easily like me
The past three years have honestly been the worst in my life, this channel was an honest to god beacon and while bummed a hiatus is likely approaching I look forward to everything that comes next, I just hope you all take care of yourselves and try to enjoy the time we have left❤️
Covid is on the rise definitely but as somebody who has been paying attention to bird flu outbreaks it’s not really anything out of the usual. Bird flu is getting news coverage right now because of a new transmission vector but actual cases of bird flu among humans has not significantly jumped beyond other blips we are used to seeing regarding it.
Covid is certainly coming back though so stay careful on that
This was such a fun time
I like this is completely the opposite of JoCat's scared video 😂
A game that has great ambience for a horror game is the voidness. I get scared easily but I think you would find it actually funny lol
For every person that was absolutely terrified of Iron Lung, there's one who talks about furries while playing it
You missed an opportunity in the lighthouse video to say “drake & Josh” goodbye
1:26 ok does anyone know what this song is? I’ve heard it before and wanna give it a full listen, but the soundtrack is long as hell and I can’t pick it out
This is from Silent Hill 2, it's called Failing Maria Again
KUU MENTION!! hell yeah, love that weird skeleton
Get some rest from the Covid, I hope you feel better soon.
Wait is this your second time or third time with Covid and also hope you feel better.
Feel better soon!!
Man anytime there was a loud noise i did a small jump i guess im just a bitch
At the rate these supposed horror games were going, you may as well have had it be 10 bucks for every laugh you got from it.
Maybe 100.
Idk if you’re still doing the clean screams, but I remember greener grass awaits being kinda thrilling, dunno if it’d be entirely scary to you though.
3:54 banger btw, looped a wiggles movie dvd as a kid. i was infatuated. i prolly still know all the words
I mean... why would a monster like Jello be afraid of lesser monsters?
1:04 can i pet that dawg?
an edited video?? on MY jello vods channel??! it's more likely than you think!!
Great streams
crow country my goat
It was a great run!
Oh hey you played The Excavation of Hob's Barrow! Did you actually like it? Cuz the ending really pissed me off
One game that got me to jump was Ghostwire Tokyo. There this part of the game where you're in a school house and there's this fucking anatomy statue that acts like a Weeping Angel. If you look away from it too long, it wraps its limbs around you and lunges towards you. It doesn't even change its expression, it just does it with the same neutral expression. But it got me, because I hate Weeping Angels with a passion.
Bro I would get scared at a roblox horror game... (but I guess it make it more fun... still wish I had your ability to not be scared)
Tfw jello does a charity stream and donates like 12 bucks because he’s too cracked at the challenges
But for real, good on ya, and I hope to one day react like you to horror
I know you don't get scared by most games, I can assume its has something to do with how artificial it all is that you can just remove yourself from them, but I hope you at least enjoyed some of them for their atmosphere or story, especially Signalis.
Have you done a play through of alien isolation or dead space? If so, are there VODs and if not would you consider it for the next spookathon?
Would primarily recommend Alien Isolation since dead space is more actiony with all the killable enemies and stuff