for the same reason there's so many bad horror movies, it's a genre that welcomes a smaller scope, lower budget, dark lighting so it's harder to see said low budget, and game-wise bad controls are welcomed as a way to increase the tension
i don't mean this in a hater way, horror is one of my favorite film genres and i like horror games, they're just very accessible to make and you get all of the downsides of that fact with the upsides
I literally came to make this post. It's easy to make horror content with low budget. This is true for basically all horror media and it's why I can't stand it
I think horror games are some of the hardest games to get right - either you knock it out of the park, you do some PoMo parody of the horror game genre, or it simply falls flat.
Horror needs to be immersive and it needs to create the right atmosphere to really work. Horror, when done correctly, has a sort of transcendent quality that makes it greater than the sum of its parts imo. But all of those parts need to hang together to achieve that.
The problem then is that if you break the immersion or the atmosphere isn't quite right, that fragile transcendental quality usually crumbles into rubble and could-have-beens.
There needs to be the right amount of tension-building, pressure, uncertainty, and stuff like that but these are really difficult in game design - bad tension-building either comes off as edging the player or it just draws out too long and becomes tedious, bad pressure makes a person rush the game or just feel like they're at work being micromanaged by their boss, uncertainty when done badly is either hammy or it's just downright confusing or (seemingly) irrelevant.
Every game is going to have its weak points however for most games this doesn't wreck the whole experience - a clunky menu on a farming sim game is going to be annoying but it's not going to ruin the game for most people. Some less-than stellar music or sound design in a driving game just gets overlooked. A poorly written backstory for some shooting game isn't going to make a difference to anyone.
Meanwhile, in the horror game genre, if there's too many unpolished parts it loses all of its lustre and it gets very hard to overlook the issues because they become obtrusive in the experience of the game.
I think also horror requires a good grasp of human psychology and tbh having a good grasp of horror theory, while not being mandatory, can be really instructive on how to pull off a horror game. Otherwise you're likely to make a game that is just a "look at these creepy npcs" tour or something which is just "Jumpscare Simulator". So imo the horror gaming genre requires a whole lot more vision, creativity, and finesse in execution than you see for most games - even lots of very popular games.
Edit: You've been playing retro games recently, right?
Idk if this game ever got much attention but I think it does a really good job of illustrating the transcendental quality of horror games that I'm driving at here - it's called Fatal Frame.
If you explain the premise of the game it sounds goofy, because honestly it is, but it draws you in, it creates good tension and pressure, and for a game of its era it really captures a good horror atmosphere imo. I never got far with it when I played it because I don't like shooters and my ADHD arse never focused long enough to git gud at it but from memory it really is a neat little game.
I think the biggest weakest of even the best horror games is often length. Alien Isolation is amazing and nails the tone, but is far too long. Horror games have a tendency to wear out their welcome and become tedious.
Oh boy! I can’t wait to play
- PT clone
- FNAF clone
- PS1 graphics jumpscare
- 2D RPG/VN that’s a metaphor for trauma and depression
You forgot the "This game is from the nineties but it is self aware and trying to kill you" or "This game is trying to disguise itself as a different genre" game
Stuff like Kinitopet and Doki Doki
IMHO it's because it's very difficult to control the player's pace and focus without being annoying to control. Think of a horror movie scene where the monster is hiding in the corner of the shot like say hereditary. If the protagonist is jumping around opening every drawer looking for a medkit spinning 360° every 5 seconds it takes away from the suspense and atmosphere.
Also, as soon as I see a glitch or notice a pattern in the bad entity it pulls me right out of it. Like amnesia was so scary until I realized i could predict with very good accuracy exactly when and where the monster was going to turn up.
Amnesia reminds me: another problem with horror games is that "game" elements are at odds with "horror" elements. I played the demo for Amnesia and the atmosphere broke as soon as I picked up a chair, because the next thing I thought was "If I can pick up chairs, can I stack them?" and there was nothing to stop me from lugging it to the next chair, which looked very silly and distracted from the feeling the game was trying to impart... and the answer turned out to be yes, you can stack chairs.
You know you start that level having apparently fallen through a hole from an upper floor? I wanted to know what was up there, so I went around and gathered all the chairs in the level to make a big rickety chair stack I could sort of awkwardly jump up. I guess they knew someone would do that, because there was a cheeky message scrawled on the wall up there. But it's completely impossible to be scared by a game after you've spent twenty minutes faffing around with physics objects.
"game" elements are at odds with "horror" elements
Fully concur. It's like if the main character of the horror movie knew it was a movie and started trying to bother the camera person
Amnesia bored me because the monsters were all the same and lame
Extremely easy to make: Dark Environment + 1 Enemy = Basic Mascot Horror. This means anyone with even basic modeling ability can make a horror game.
Horror is also extremely popular amongst younger folk. I'd say a good portion of horror games are started as a fan game in high school.
If you're the creator of IMSCARED you don't even need to model!
I think the interactivity of games makes it hard to keep the right mood, pacing, atmosphere, etc. that horror stories rely on. Horror games are still developing their own language and tricks to manage the feeling of horror in an interactive setting (like the use of puzzles to draw attention and focus, then interrupting with a scare or threat of some sort once the person is mentally in "puzzle mode" and not thinking about the horror aspects of the game).
Also the genre is heavily influenced by trend-chasing, specifically mascot horror (like FNAF), PS1 throwback horror (like PuppetCombo's games and their influence), and the general trend of games that seem like they were made to be "streamer-bait" first and foremost.
Scaring kids is so fun that game developers can't wait to become competent until they make one
because it's streaming friendly therefore more clout. more clout means more smaller streamers play it. repeat
Going against the grain here, what are some of y'alls favorite horror games?
Bonus points for any tips on actually playing horror games instead of getting too scared to play them, lol
Anthology of the Killer series is great.
Note, though, that it isn't really trying to scare you.I don't know if it counts as horror, but Voices of the Void has its moments.
I will always love classic survival horror the most: fixed camera angles, tank controls, gameplay mostly revolving around finding keys and puzzle solving, etc. Games like the pre-RE4 Resident Evils, Dino Crisis, Silent Hill 1-4, the Project Zero/Fatal Frame series.
But to mention a different kind of horror game that doesn't get talked about enough, Condemned: Criminal Origins
Dead Space, either one or two. The story is really neat to me, so I can put up with the horror to get to the story. Also sometimes I just watch it on youtube which puts a layer between me and the game.
