What separates good horror from bad?

We dare to say that horror is one of the basic genres not only of contemporary art. Horror films and games are almost constantly created, as well as action films, comedies, melodramas or even thrillers. Similarly, fear is one of the basic emotions; but it is usually accompanied by rather negative connotations, and fear is not something that one would like to put above, for example, joy or even laughter.

However, horror fans are more than enough and feelings of helplessness, constant fear, panic, paranoia, or anxiety that they directly seek. I myself am one of them. We will not talk about why in this video and article. On the one hand, this is a rather complicated topic, and on the other hand, frankly speaking, we are completely unable to afford to discuss such things from a psychological point of view.

Instead, we’ll focus on a slightly more practical part and look at what we think not only does a good horror film look like or should look like, but also what techniques the developers use and what they can attack in our psyche to achieve this memorable work. Because among horror fans, such famous games as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, PT, Outlast or Amnesia do not appear by chance and luck..

The basics of a good horror movie are, of course, the basics, as they say. What a given horror name is based on will affect every other component of it. One thing is clear to us in the editorial office – for us a good horror film is not something that can continuously scare us, but something that what scares us all the time. The popular jump ropes are a very simple and cheap thing, which, although it falls into the theme of horror, but apart from a quick fright does not really do anything.

Conversely, take a game in which you constantly feel some kind of tension in the air. When you sit on the edge of your chair, your heart is pounding and you don’t know if something is around the next corner or not. But ignorance, constant panic, a dense atmosphere, when you expect a never-coming “gas release”, THIS, in our opinion, is what makes a good horror.

But of course it doesn’t have to be something non-existent, it can be a real threat in the game. Take as an example Resident Evil 7, where you may be stalked by the local head of the family at the Baker home. You don’t know when it will appear, and when it appears, it haunts you. The ever-increasing unease gives way to a rush of panic and adrenaline as you need to run from Jack Baker in the house where you walked just a few minutes ago, waiting for him to appear. For example, a famous person works in a very similar way. Amnesia and a number of other – much better – horror films.

But this is just one example of a good horror game and what it can build on, so let’s take a step-by-step look at other mechanics, features, and issues that developers have to deal with when creating a real horror game.

One of the main questions is do you have the ability to protect yourself. Whether you depend most of the time on running away from danger, or you have the ability to protect yourself in some way, or kill the threat right away. At first you might think, which of course makes sense, that if you can’t defend yourself, things will be more intense – hence the best horror movie.

But if you think about it, you quickly come to the conclusion that it’s not really. There are, of course, many good horror films that are based precisely on the inability to defend oneself. Whether it’s the aforementioned Amnesia series or its spiritual predecessor Penumbra, Outlast or perhaps the popular Alien: Isolationin which most of the game you will not be able to defend against the main threat in the form of the Alien himself.

But you also have a lot of equally great horror movies that give you a chance to fight back from the start. The Resident Evil series is known for its great atmosphere, but neither the old nor the new part is impossible to imagine without firearms.. More of a thriller but also horror, Alan Wake by Remedy also allows you to defend yourself against enemies, in particular using a flashlight and, above all, a gun. The indie hit Phasmophobia lets you defend against ghosts with a few items, and once you get the hang of it, you can play entire matches safely without a single threat.

But what these games have in common is how they approach the defense option. Our next point is very visible in the contrast between, for example, Resident Evil 2 and, for example, Resident Evil 5. The much more action-packed fifth installment relies on adrenaline in the same vein as many of the first and third installments. person shooters; because at the end of Resident Evil 5 it’s a shooter. The slower second part will also give you weapons, but with more limited bullets and enemies. Every shot is vital, every mistake hurts. And while it may not scare you or give you nightmares, it will cause you stress, anxiety and at best panic. Moreover, you will experience these feelings throughout the game, because it is built around this.

As a result, similar games that offer a choice of difficulty tend to be equally difficult and scarier at higher difficulty levels.

A popular method for developers to induce the desired terrible anxiety in players, either short or long term, is also to use the players directly against themselves. At present, this method appears visibly mainly in two very different methods.

The first method uses phobias. Fear of spiders or other bugs and pests is very common among people and developers like to attack these fears in their games. Probably every horror game has at least one scene or section where a spider crawls around you or you fight some kind of arachnid boss. But, of course, developers attack other widespread phobias, such as fear of heights or fear of needles.

The second way to make sure that the player is their own enemy is not so common anymore, but its correct implementation can make the game stand out from the rest. Unfortunately, it often seems like a “trick” that developers try too hard to differentiate their game, but what exactly are we talking about, feels the voice. When the game responds to input from your microphone. An excellent example is Phasmophobia, already mentioned once today, which relies on this very thing in its mechanics. Some ghosts react differently to your speech, some items directly require voice communication, and while the game can be played without a microphone, it definitely improves the overall experience a lot. Then when you can directly piss off the ghost by ordering it to do something or appear – and it does – then it creates a horrible experience right in the game based on your real, physical, actual interaction.

Another important aspect of a good horror movie is sound. We don’t mean voice capture, as we mentioned a moment ago, but sound in general. That is, effects, music, as well as the voice acting of the characters themselves.. Worn out clichés with sparkling fluorescent light simply don’t scare anyone today, and the sounds of water drops hitting the ground certainly don’t scare anyone. We can find similar cases today in any other horror film, and even if they are scary on the one hand, we are subconsciously used to them. The music mentioned is the same example. Now, take a moment to think about how many horror movies you’ve played lately that had a situation where the sounds started to speed up and increase in volume, while suddenly an enemy ran around the corner or you fell through the floor, for example. When you wait for this situation, it just doesn’t scare you. And then there’s the dub.

The children’s laughter of Alma Wade from FEAR or the voices of the characters from the second Silent Hill is something that not only scares us to this day. The perfect selection of stunt doubles adds to the liveliness and authenticity of all horror games.. When you feel fear and uncertainty in the voice of the character you’re playing, you suddenly feel the same way. And when you’re chased through an abandoned house by a villain whose voice literally exudes aggression and desire to get you, the overall gaming experience immediately becomes much better. So we can’t imagine what the authors of the first Resident Evil and The House of Dead 2 were thinking.

But horror does not necessarily mean only what we know here in the West in its classic form. It doesn’t have to be just monsters and monsters chasing us headlong. This Asian culture often plays with the idea that there are several types of demons and spirits that you can directly see their character in their actions. Some are just playing with you and trying to scare you, others are psychologically tormenting you, and still others are just chasing you no matter what.

However, there may be a horror movie where the biggest horrors come from yourself. Of course we mean space horror, the so-called Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s works are pretty well-researched in the book world, but well-researched space horrors are rare in video games.

This is because they rely in part on your own imagination. Because of the fear of the unknown, and although in the case of books you have to imagine almost everything, in games you are shown more than most things directly. Proper cosmic horror, once created, can create atmosphere and emotion like few other horror genres. Typically, your main character starts to lose his mind and starts going crazy, and gradually you don’t know what’s true and what’s not. You are afraid of the unknown and do not know what awaits you, because it can be absolutely anything and you draw for yourself the worst possible scenarios. There is a mystical evil lurking over the world that you cannot fully understand or see.

Games like Call of Cthulhu have done a great job with this. and the humiliating sanity of the protagonist and the gradually confusing plot surrounded by a fishing town gradually gave the feeling that something was not quite right here, but it was difficult to point a finger and directly name it. Action-RPG Bloodborne from the creators of Dark Souls also does a good job. Roughly the first half of the game can be mistaken for a simple werewolf and monster hunter theme set in Victorian England. But the turning point comes in the second half, when you start to understand that it was a cosmic horror based on invisible evil and people’s attempts to kind of go to another plane of being.

But as we said before: making a real space horror is not easy. The key is to constantly create atmosphere and escalate. The adventure game Sinking City, for example, does a poorer job at this, which immediately throws you into a strange world and really only minimally aggravates.

In any case, this is also one of the developers’ approaches to creating horror films. They don’t have to be half-naked and ripped monsters trying to get you, but also ones that play with you or that you never see or even suspect exist.

Anyway, on this list, perhaps, the most important things that developers can use and consider in order to make a proper and most importantly interesting horror movie, exhausted. But of course, we haven’t covered every aspect that developers can expect and work with in our theme, so if you can think of something, don’t forget to share it with us in the comments.