Horror

I am a user of the RPG Maker software interested in making a interactive story style of game. This discussion is on the topic of making a horror game, What do you think are features that a horror game should include? What about the RPG Maker software could lend itself to the telling of a horror story?

I would like any ideas that people have, as this is a way of understanding what other people like to see/play in the horror genre.

I understand that the horror genre can be quite oppinionated, so the purpose of this is to bring all fans of horror together to dsicuss what we all like/ dont like in the genre.

Thank you for any posts!

From my view, the chase scene is essential to the horror game. This logic would be simply implied if you have been seen a lot of horror game. Hard to find the games without chase scene rather than the games with one. lol

This is quite interesting topic, indeed, I'm going to observe the discussion.

A perfect example of a horror game created with RPG maker would be this one: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/28134-ashworth/

The graphics, color scheme, music, sound effects, etc all tie into a nice recipe for what an rpg maker horror game can be.

Most RPG Maker Horror games I run into usually are pretty lackluster and look like they've been tossed and thrown together into a blender: ideas, story, blood and gore, the whole shabang. It doesn't really help that most people that have developed an RPG Maker Horror game probably haven't played an actual good 3D horror game, like Outlast (and even then, Outlast had a terrible ending). It's hard to distinguish a line between horror and just plain stupid when every room in the game looks like an absolute gorefest. But then at the same time, you can't really capture the same "environment" as a 3D horror game, and with certain limitations of the engine that make it nearly impossible to make a decent horror game (aside from Witch's House, Ib, and I think Corpse Party). Kind of ironic, since I just got done talking about this sort of thing in the video that I just uploaded.

I feel like the limitations the come with using RPG Maker make it so that making a "scary" game is virtually impossible. But horror does not have to actually make you jump in your seat. Games like Outlast and Dead Space rely heavily on the jump scare, which I personally do not like, as anyone can create/ be scared by a jump scare.

I feel like this is the problem with other Horror RPG Maker games, they still use the ideas from 3D games on the 2D game and it never seems to work.

To kind of go further on my OP, I am wondering what ideas you guys might have for mechanics/plot elements or whatever, that would work well in a 2D enviroment. This may or may not include something that would be "scary", but still relates to the horror genre.

Thank you guys for participating, and I will check out the games you reccomended!

Point-and-click horror games rely heavily on story and sound to create an atmosphere. Due to gameplay limitations, it's impossible to have traditional enemies or elaborate action sequences, so developers are forced to engage the player in other ways. Maybe you could look at a few of those for inspiration?

There's one I'm thinking of, called Scratches, which involved exploring a Victorian house while piecing together the backstory of its previous inhabitants. There were a total of two jump scares in the entire game; the rest of it was simply the fear of the unknown (As per its title, the protagonist hears scratches coming from the basement every night.) and the feeling of isolation. (The only contact the protagonist has with the outside world is an old rotary dial phone.)

I don't think you could replicate the exact same experience in RPG Maker, but if I were to make an attempt at a horror game, that's probably the way I'd do it. Subtle horror, with a strong emphasis on unraveling the plot.

I loved Scratches Napdevil, and that kind of horror is what I was talking about. I personally feel like the audio is what made that game so scary.

I think setting the proper atmosphere, with careful control over tint, music, sound effects is a definite requirement.  Granted, RPG Maker isn't a 3-D game, but still restricting what the player can see and hear can help give that nice horror feel.

Personally, I think a good horror should also include some type of sanity meter, or some other type of "If you get hit with XYZ too often, you have these permanent debuffs."  

For a demonic possession style horror, maybe the demons have attacks which reduce your Will.  As that goes down, maybe you randomly can't do anything during battle, or your ATK goes way down.  Or your evasion does.

After all, in horror movies, it's not a horror at all if the hero(es) are in the same fighting form they were at the start of the film.

So I think a good horror should immerse the player in an environment, then make sure any significant effects have permanent downsides, to give a survival feel to the game.

The hard part is balancing it so it becomes challenging but not TOO challenging.

Some additional thoughts:

Silent Hill was a superb example of a horror game.  The omnipresent "fog" was a very clever workaround because the Playstation couldn't render too far and/or to conceal load times from the player.

The funny thing?  Because of that fog, which obscures what the player can see, it is a masterful survival horror game.  The player is constantly under a feeling of tension, because face eating zombies just might pop out of that fog at any moment, with just about no warning.

For great horror, less is more.  If you only see hints of the slasher, a glint of knife here, a winking eye there, a metallic knife dragging in the background, it gives a FAR better "cat and mouse" feel than directly showing a full frontal image.

And, you know what can be the MOST unsettling thing?  Nothing.  If there is creepy background music, and you can sort of see, then the music slowly fades away and the screen slowly fades to near total darkness, it taps a deep and primal fear we have.

And if you want a jump reaction, having occasional (too often and it's predictable) abrupt encounters then will provide a sudden scare from that quiet, blank nothingness.