Skip to main content

What is Horror

I am working on a new game Project. I and my team are making a horror game.
So first I ask myself What is Horror.?

Wiki state it is a "Horror is a film genre seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's primal fears. ".
Wiki_Horror

I believe the Primal Fears is key, as the idea of horror is to bring out people's sense of [view below image]

To better understand horror, we must first look into history.
Below is a nice breakdown of the history of horror in Cinema.
Filmmaker IQ did a great job at this, Do check them out.

Then they added to that by looking what type of Horror exist which is also important to comprehend when one wants to make a horror game.

Since this is a game, I did a ton of research regarding this and below is my document presenting my research on the matter.
A simple breakdown of the doc can be found in this slides

I want of best and subtle use of horror is from the movie The Shinning. And will be using this movie as the reference for my game. 
A game that I admire, that design in a subtle manner at first is PT Demo where we don't no its haunted or horror or not; but we were expecting it, so when a sudden scare happen it will be tenfold. More on PT from the next post.

This research have been for preparation of this game.
Those interested to see the game design document and narrative breakdown and more behind the scene work on how the game is developed, 
You may contact me via

Additional Reference for Gameplay and design I use to develop the game.

GAMES

Oculus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBpFx-ixBiM
http://www.fallenplanetstudios.com/affected-2/
https://share.oculus.com/app/affected---the-oculus-rift-horror-experience
https://share.oculus.com/app/elevator-horror-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W5s89X61ko
https://share.oculus.com/app/insidious-chapter-3-into-the-further

Other Games
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=102308511
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92687143
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93096848
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=120920423
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=219802297
http://www.relyonhorror.com/articles/17-obscure-horror-games-we-recommend/
http://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-horror-games-585043/
http://indiegames.com/2013/01/top_10_indie_horror_games_of_2.html


Puzzles 
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AsherEinhorn/20150528/244577/Fourstep_puzzle_design.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219711/Designing_a_reallife_Escape_the_Room_experience.php
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=puzzle+room+game+design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKD5eOIXY08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GJcIlJJW4Q
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/01/art-escape-room-323150.html
http://www.argn.com/2015/02/the_puzzling_rise_of_the_escape_room_game/
http://www.realityisagame.com/archives/2919/designing-for-the-real-world/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle_video_game
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186359/Video_Designing_puzzles_that_make_players_feel_smart.php
http://gamedeveloper.com/view/feature/223931/game_design_deep_dive_amnesias_.php
http://www.silenthillmemories.net/creators/interviews/2005.08.23_sato_gamasutra_en.htm
http://the-witness.net/news/2013/02/if-you-like-first-person-puzzle-games/
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013781/Puzzle-Writing-Best
http://devmag.org.za/category/development/game-design/puzzle-game-design/
http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/767/looking-for-first-person-physics-based-puzzle-games
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/113350/Analysis_Puzzle_Design_in_the_Myst_Series.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/218372/postmortem_the_chinese_rooms_.php?print=1
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/223931/game_design_deep_dive_amnesias_.php
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61699696/Amnesia-The-Dark-Descent-%D0%90%D0%BC%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B7%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%88%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE-Chapter-01-Design

Horror
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KoenDeetman/20141111/229864/Horror_Game_Design_Can_Be_Scary.phpS
http://vsrecommendedgames.wikia.com/wiki/Scary_Horror_%26_Mindfuck


PT DEMO & Silent Hill
http://www.ign.com/wikis/silent-hills/P.T._Demo_Walkthrough
http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2014/08/guide_how_to_complete_the_spooky_pt_demo_on_ps4
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ViktorEisenmann/20140918/225982/PT_Silent_Hills_teaser_game_analysis.php
http://www.the-outline.com/portfolio/punity-pt-hallway-recreation/
http://tay.kinja.com/six-things-the-new-silent-hill-needs-to-have-to-succeed-1626630082
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/13781/20140822/pt-silent-hills-gratedebate-puzzle-solution.htm
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MattChristian/20120807/175207/Designing_Horror_in_Silent_Hill_2.php
http://gameplay-archive.org/documents/Boyce_SilentHill2(2011).pdf


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Horror Narrative

So since I am making a horror game, I need to know what kind of narrative I should right. One of my previous post, I wrote about "What is Horror" which covers many of this. Now I would to dive deeper into this. Certain design choices made before production due to time and resources constraint. First Person Point of View No Dialog One repeatable Level [Check My Previous post for the layout] Its an Horror Game One Ghost / Young Girl Lack of Props  This means, I have to design Narrative through Visual Means, I cannot take the easy way out of dialog and words. I have to show Emotion and Story through Color, Layout, Lighting, Atmosphere and Sound. So before I start, I would like to share the common Problems for the Horror Genre. 3 Reasons Why Today's Horror Films Are Just Not Scary Anymore Usually people who make horror focuses on JUMP SCARES. Well this is not good. As when the scare is done, it feel the viewers with immediate relief which may spoil the hor...

Adding the Disclaimer

The original idea for the disclaimer is to be a classic Disclaimer. Example can be seen below. At minute 7.17 can see the example Link for the video at 7.17 However, Andrew has prepared the video before seeing my comment and his approach works much better so we ticked with it. The sources for the disclaimer. First I found a template from this website.  Template THE DISCLAIMER Here is a standard motion picture disclaimer... "PERSON'S NAME OR PRODUCTION COMPANY" is the author of this motion picture for the purpose of copyrght and other laws. This motion picture is protected pursuant to the provisions of the laws of the United States of America and other countries. Any unauthorized duplication, distribution and/or exhibition of this motion picture may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. Characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are fictitious, and any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental...

What it takes to make a Title & Credit Screen

Finding the best way to present a title and credits screen. The solution should be simple and elegant as must not get in the way in the creative process of the telling the story. Title Screen Should be done in a way to sell the idea of story or more importantly establish the mood, feel and pace of the story. Eg. Credit Screen I Credit screen as 2 things. There is one version where it is to allow the audience to absorb the story and its conclusion. An epic story that is told beautifully takes a good amount time to comprehend and swallow. Eg. After watching this 2 video above we can see that we need a few amount of time to stretch and realign ourself as our epic journey with the story comes to end. Therefore, playing the screen credits will allow us to recover from experience. There a credit screen's where audiences wants to find out what will happen now. After the story is over, the character got what he wanted all is well, we still want to see what happen to rest a...