Horror game lovers, whether they are indies or AAA, know that finding innovation in this área is a difficult thing. For developers, finding the perfect balance between tension and consistent gameplay that doesn’t take the player out of immersion is a daunting task. In the eagerness to create a game and put it on the market, many developers do not pay attention to the particularities of what is being created, and the result of this are empty games and shallow experiences that nobody remembers after 5 minutes of closing the game.
Along with poorly polished games, broken action sequences and clichéd stories are multiple copies of Five Nights At Freddy’s, Slenderman and P.T. that emerged after their respective successes, permeating the horror games market with flawed creations. But not everything is as bad as it appears: there are still those who manage, in the middle of all the chaos, to stand out and give us great and rewarding experiences.
In 2013, Chris Pruett (Dead Secret game creator and horror enthusiast) joined no one else, none other than Thomas Grip, Creative Director at Frictional Games (the studio that brought the Amnesia franchise and the wonderful SOMA into the world) to confabulate (initially as a joke, but later becoming something more concrete) about overused and dated elements in games. The vast list has been compiled on Chris’ website, which I gladly share his translation here. For those interested in reading the original, you can access it here.
When reading, you will surely remember games from the past that used to use one or another of the aforementioned devices, and this will bring a smile to your face. Good memories after all.
Let’s see which horror game clichés might fall out of your game:
Puzzles
No puzzles about how to equalize pressure (or any other type of dial) by adjusting switches or knobs. Don’t include puzzles that involve reconnecting energy, especially an elevator. No sliding shelves with scratch marks on the floor. Avoid puzzles that involve pressing keys on a piano in a specific order. Do not require the player to collect paintings to reveal a secret image or examine paintings to decode a correct sequence of buttons. No locked doors with an engraved symbol that also appears on the key. No important documents encrypted with stupid and simple replacement ciphers.
When creating the design, repeat this mantra to yourself: “I won’t have keycard gates (the famous keycards) in my game.” No fertilizer or poison for giant plants. Check before adding puzzles about how to insert crystals, gemstones or figurines into some ornate locking mechanism. Reconsider any puzzle involving a four-digit numerical sequence, found elsewhere, that unlocks a lock.
Don’t use sliding block puzzles. Never. This includes sliding statues! Don’t!
Deny the desire to remove items from the player’s inventory without a legitimate reason. When building puzzles that require combining more than two items, you must allow arbitrary pairs of items to be combined even before the entire set is collected.
Don’t turn terrible monsters into puzzles unless your goal is to eliminate all tension.
It’s important to make the objectives and mechanics clear, but if you just tell the player what to do and where to go, you’ve removed the puzzle completely. Let them think for themselves occasionally. Be especially vigilant when designing any complicated door opening device. Remember, your players will only believe if it’s too much!
Story
Not all stories need to be about the protagonist’s personal demons. Don’t blame everything on evil megacorporations. You don’t need a crazy Special Forces unit with a weird acronym name. Do not include a sequence where a child must crawl through a small opening to unlock the door for an adult. No more helicopters escaping mushroom cloud explosions. Avoid underdeveloped drug subplots.
Avoid zombies. But if you must use zombies, for the love of all that is sacred, don’t rely on a virus to explain them. Zombie dogs: no.
Not all vengeful ghosts need to be women. And not all curses need to spread like a virus. And the virus doesn’t have to kill its victims after exactly seven days. Also, ghosts don’t always have to be innocent people who have had horrible deaths.
It’s not very believable that a high-security military research complex would have passwords written on pieces of paper. If your plot twist involves the surprise revelation of a secret and sinister cult, you should probably stop.
Try to think of ways to put your characters in vulnerable situations that don’t just make all your characters little schoolgirls. Men can also be vulnerable. Plus, I know some schoolgirls who could wipe the floor with their pitiful designer butt.
Levels e Characters
There are other ways to block a passage besides making the roof collapse. Make a distinction between locked doors that will eventually open and doors that can never be opened; if you have any of the former, the latter must be locked or broken, or otherwise obviously inaccessible forever. Be warned, however, that “it’s jammed” (the old “it’s jammed”) ages very quickly.
No arbitrarily non-interactive objects: either you can interact with all doors or none of them. Make sure you have more doors that can be opened than you can’t. Don’t block the player with short fences or other obstacles that should be easy to get around.
If a location is supposed to carry emotional weight, don’t fill it with ammo crates and collectibles. Do you want the player to contemplate the horrible living conditions of a child or rummage through your stuff for loot?
Just say “no!” for items that are of great use to the player’s problems but cannot be caught. Don’t use any obstacles that could easily be eliminated using the protagonist’s arsenal, but require some puzzle sequences to overcome. Don’t provide a limited supply stock, unless you make clear the remaining amount. Don’t put hidden collectibles in horror games with high levels, or in games that don’t allow you to go back. Maybe just skip the whole collectibles scheme altogether at once.
We don’t need more tentacle monsters in horror games. Especially tentacle monsters with bulbous and glowing weak spots. Avoid close combat with ghosts that can pass through walls. Never play the player against an infinite damage source unless you also provide an infinite health and ammo source (e.g. infinite enemy spawner).
Read all our Art Direction Posts
Fun fact: Not all monsters have an irresistible urge to show their teeth and yell at the player. Not everyone bows with long, bent arms. Crazy, huh!?
With the exception of certain types of zombies, it is almost never exciting to see a monster attack the protagonist. Maybe you can modify your AI to chase the player and approach him slowly to look more menacing? Warning: circling the player and occasionally revealing a weak spot is not a good alternative.
Ask yourself, “how many times have I been to the gym this year?” You’re a game designer, so the answer is probably “none”. Do you think your game’s cultists are better? They are too busy summoning an obscure deity to think about their diet. So why did you make them look like they’re all bodybuilders and/or silicone implant models?
And since we’re talking about appearances, does your monster really need these weird underwear? I mean, you just had him rip a guy’s head off in the last scene; I don’t think your audience will be affected by a monstrous little nudity. Or, hell, just think about something else. Small scraps of fabric torn around the belly of an otherwise naked beast are an excuse.
Technical Stuff
When you have a body lying on the ground that is significantly more detailed than all the other bodies on the ground, we all know it’s going to come alive and attack us sooner or later. Also, a surprise attack isn’t very surprising if the game suddenly starts loading like crazy moments before.
Don’t put scary encounters into cutscenes. I know, I know, you want to control the camera, time and sound so that everything is “right”. But listen, games don’t work like that. Place a bet. Let the player discover the monster through the game.
Navigating save slots, confirming file overwrites and waiting for flashy menu animations is basically the worst thing a player can be subjected to. Your sense of presence should extend to the game as a whole, even your UI.
If you have item descriptions, why not make them interesting or useful? Everyone already knew it was a trash can before they looked at it.
It may seem unintuitive, but horror games work surprisingly well without rocket launchers. And you’d be surprised how fun mystery games can be when they don’t have RPG mechanics built in.
If necessary, fail all other categories, but don’t fail this: the map and menu screens should not require a pause in loading to be displayed. It’s bad enough that you have to mention them first. Oh, and checking the map every two steps is no fun.
Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to making a new and original horror game! After that, you can make infinite sequences!
