how would (you) fix the horror genre?
How would (you) fix the horror genre?
what was that image from anyways? I remember seeing that shit years ago around the time jumpscare shit was starting to be a thing on the internet.
Maybe the real horror is knowing that the genre is dead
Throw everyone who enjoys the genre off a cliff because they're tasteless niggers who think acting like scared pussies for x amount of gametime is a personality. Play a real game
Mating Press.
More cute kids being menacing
Resident Evil is probably the most lucrative it's ever been in years.
ooo lil jimmy plays with his toys cooler than the other kids
Yea because making it first person and removing tank controls allowed troons into the circle
Romanceable antagonists.
Resident Evil isn't an horror game.
Make the ghosts sexy and jump on your dick
Go back to focusing on gameplay. Something older horror titles did very well was relying on a sense of tension to unsettle the player, and this often required a touch of subtlety that modern games are simply incapable of delivering on.
What do you consider horror?
Tank controls are still in the game, you just control a lot of elements from a different perspective. Third person is also in the game now, as of Village. I think the classic "stop and shoot," gameplay is kind of nice, but also a little vain and redundant. People miss what they don't have, but that doesn't make the longing valid. Traditional tank controls felt gimmicky after RE3, especially when RE3 revolutionized the experience with a dodge button. RE4 was just clunky and stupid for no good reason, the same with RE5.
....
Does point man have a type? Is it because of his mommy issues?
Really ancient shit from early 2000's web.
Create a subgenre called erotic horror.
well yeah, i know that which is what i generally already pointed out.
i was wondering if someone actually knew if it was from something specific.
You play as an 8/10 woman in skimpy clothing and it's psychological horror.
EROTIC HORROR WILL NEVER BE A GENRE ANON
NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU POST ABOUT IT
I can take her in a fight easily no sweat
OP
Uh, just make it scary again. Dump all the wannabe sh2 stuff from the scene. It's very lame.
Rootkit the computer, gather personal information, use LLM to insert transient personalized scary messages that hint at being related to the game into random places on their computer like added to the page they're opening in their browser or into the names of icons or their desktop. Occasionally send out hitmen to kill the people who get the most attention when they bring this shit up online, making the deaths look as mysterious as possible.
That was a really weird comic. I'm guessing she didn't even sex him before killing him. I would never usually care about the story of a doujin but this one kept me up for a little bit.
the last big development, sh2 remake, showed that constant mandatory combat encounters are a bad direction for most horror properties, you aren't capcom and you aren't making re4. games should focus more on open ended scenarios where common enemies are obstacles that you may or may not need to confront directly depending on the situation and your resources(note I'm not advocating for "decide the way you play" pandering, just varied situations)
one related hottake: while almost certainly done with neutral-bad intentions the sluggishness we saw in re4make would actually be an important component to the above style of gameplay if leveraged propely. you need to impose some kind of limitation on movement in order for evasion/avoidance to be an effective mechanic, if you can effortlessly juke enemy aggro the only option is having enemies so aggressive and on your ass that combat would be unavoidable. short of a miraculous return of tank controls your options to impose that limitation on camera dependent movement is going to be some kind of momentum change of direction lag ideally this would not be excessively applied to basic walking like re4make and instead be reserved for running movement.
a game where the game devs hunt and torture their players in real life
Absolutely agree on most of your points. The SH2 remake really did miss the mark by trying to graft modern action pacing onto something that was always about oppressive atmosphere and psychological stress, not combat loops. Games like Amnesia and early Fatal Frame relied heavily on evasion and environmental interaction to build mood and tension, and I feel like that's a direction more horror games should return to.
Also interesting take on movement—momentum-based locomotion could be a great way to reintroduce that sense of dread without going full tank controls again. It’d be about making you feel the weight of your actions, so that even a simple decision like turning a corner carries consequence. Horror thrives when the player feels *vulnerable*, not when they’re a sidestepping death machine with a shotgun.
I remember finding a forum post telling a story with that pic attached, scared me like nothing else
Been a good while since I've seen that pic.
Theres a curse in this image and 27 faggots just got hexed
Have fun idiots.
test
christ I haven't seen this image in like 20 years
What was the story about?
the twist was YOU WERE MENTALLY ILL
OOOOOOOOOooOOOOOooOOOOoo
bloodborne did it right. classical horror elements done with great effect. speaking of which, what about a game where you play as an intelligent frankenstein monster? you could collect body parts from slain victims and have your loving maker suture them on as upgrades. the main character even gets brain pieces swapped out until eventually all pieces are new, and begins having a crisis about being a living ship of theseus, questioning what it is to exist
le monke
But she loved him
Just give them a gothic horror setting exploring some ancient castle or mansion.
Also don't give the player a way to fight back because that just destroys the horror aspect and turns it into an action game.
Basically: just copy Amnesia the dark descent. Your master formula has already been demonstrated.
Blood by the bucketfuls
Stop making them focused on streamers
KEKYPOW
go the Amnesia Bunker approach where you have means to defend yourself but still can't kill the main threat
amnesia sucks
Horror is better off in the indie realm. Major publishers just want to make mass-market crap.
there's nothing to be fixed there's just way too many walking sims that rely on jump scares and you not being able to defend yourself
what is Haunting Ground
damn now that's a vintage image. thanks op for the trip down memory lane.
Prepare to be spooped
I finished dark descent and I didnt find it that scary desu, the needle room jumpscare got me good though. Its too easy to hide from the monsters and escape if they chase you imo.
twist?
less action packed fast paced cheap scares and more prolonged periods of helpless discomfort.
Mayhaps aliens are scary?
That's just fatal frame and fuck them for not letting me take close ups of the doll girls
you now remember the Doritos horror game
Make a scary ghost or monster that someone doesnt want to fuck
erotic horror.
All horror games are erotic
Something that isn’t spooky ghost girl haunted house nonsense would be a start. Condemned stands out to me when I think back on horror games. I don’t think Outlast is a close enough successor.
Maybe there’s more good ideas in that crime-drama adjacent area though. Something like a detective sim set in somewhere based on a building like the Cecil Hotel. You get called out to investigate a petty crime which takes you further up the floors of the building as you pull on the thread, suddenly you’re piecing together suicides, drug rings, murders and so on as you climb the building. Maybe add a cult or paranormal angle as you go further up, but keep the questions going on how much is real and how much is your character hallucinating. Add in some RPG mechanics to determine your abilities (speech vs combat etc), branching paths and grading based on how you investigate/convict or kill. Third or first person, stealth mechanics, morality system, melee combat and limited firearms. The horror comes from grit and how weird the hotel residents are, the building degrading, shit smeared walls, bloodstains, screams in the distance and such. Could be fun
Amnesia is crap because the danger wasn't real also
anime avatar fag
zoomer
Also don't give the player a way to fight back because that just destroys the horror aspect and turns it into an action game.
Alien Isolation was pretty good thoughbeit
ow the edge
Make the ghost a kid. Make the ghost kid think flashing their panties is the scariest thing a ghost can do.
We honestly need more games where like some kind of fucked up kids cartoon chases you and you have to keep looking back at it to get scared and then it kills you and cuts to a text epilogue.
Have ps2 sound effects
I know this is the lewd horror thread but can someone post that one video of the apparition outside of some guy's window that's like floating towards him with sick hair and cloth physics
once upon a time there was a girl that BOO!
Maybe the real horror was the friends we made along the way!
Why didn't he use his parkour skills to scale that wall
IT'S COOL GUY
have a team of great artists and visionaries do whatever the fuck they want, but it has to be creepy and have replayability, not just something that's basically a short playable story
Well small girls don't seem to do the trick with the porn addict generation. So we should change small creepy girls for Big Ugly Bastards like in "older" games like haunting grounds, or just rapists like the Outlast one. That should do the trick.
Problem with a Haunting Grounds expy is that people will fetishize the protagonist girl. So we need to cull females from the horror genre entirely.
Monsters become ugly bastards again
Protags become little girls.
I see this as a win win.
Amnesia had its moments, but yeah, once you realize you're just playing walking simulator hide-and-seek it loses its teeth. Alien Isolation nailed the balance—it gave you tools, but using them came with risk, and Big Chap never felt like a scripted boogeyman. Danger needs real consequences or it’s just a haunted house ride.
Games for this feel?
Minecraft.
Also don't give the player a way to fight back because that just destroys the horror aspect and turns it into an action game
And removing it turns it into hide and seek which is less fun.
horror games aren't meant to be fun. they're meant to make you uncomfortable. if they don't make you uncomfortable, then it's a shitty horror game.
lole
games aren't meant to be fun
I was thinking about this image recently. Last time I saw it was like 2 decades ago in a site about ghosts.
are there any other games like myhouse.wad
It's a hard spot
can't have little girl monsters
can't have little girls as PCs
can't have little boys as neither because homos
Horror from now on should be Ugly men Monsters hunting normal Joes. So every game will be some sort of Outlast clone.
The Rapist can't be attractive either, because fujos. As seen with the Outlast rapist (there are ~1000 fan fics featuring this fucker for some reason)
your narrow minded dopamine fried brain wouldn't know a good game if it busted a load all over your face.
It would have to be a normal game on top of the rabbit hole fuckery. kanye quest comes to mind with the secret arg shit.
Go on..
You are never really safe, you have to keep it moving.
apparently some korean horror book for kids
the chromatic aberration was for a 3d effect with those red-blue glasses
Slenderman: the eight pages
I'm guessing the actual story was less interesting than the image, like with Jeff or any of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books.
Do you think people would riot if they made a American version of Ringu that was closer to the original Sadako? As in, she's a boy. Or is it too hot of a subject currently?
More monster girls.
the problem isn't necessarily the lack of combat, as much as it's the clear binary of good and bad outcomes
this is a stealth segment, I need to not get seen
there's no ambiguity there. you don't second guess yourself. steath doesn't have to be that but that's what most of those games tend towards.
americans are too emotionally immature to handle this subject.
more human male on female ghost with impregnation.
SH4 has combat and the whole thing is uncomfortable. SH4 is probably the best horror game, in theory at least.
female MC who pees herself when monsters appear
No more talking animals. It doesn't work, it was never going to work.
it helps that the 'combat' is clunky as hell and you're better off just running in most cases.
Talking animals can work if it is based on skinwalkers.
combat in clunky
item durability
enemies are OP or extremely annoying
escort quest
small inventory
backtracking
your safe room gets fucked
he thinks I play horror games beyond the main menu
It doesn't work
It was never going to work
It was never even intended to work
i miss that browser horror game
The house, shit's scary
make it scary
how would (you) fix the horror genre?
Pay me money and i will tell you.
Tfw I used to watch Horror gameplays with only 20% of the screen displaying the video and 80% of it down on the comments
Remember those pics with hidden ghosts in them that could give one the heebie jeebies?
Ludo 2005 horror
I remember this game making me shit my pants when I was a kid.
girls will do this and get 1000s of men fall in trance
I'm jealous of this power. I wish I was loved.
Look how stretchy her face is. She could definitely take a beating.
Shota protag and big booba ghost chasing after the shota.
Did that S.Korean Manwha THAT EVERYONE KNOWS survive the Flash purge? Or rather just the HTML and site back-end changes through the years?
ever since niggas posted the ghost marlene video here my life has been going downhill
rape
stop speaking in riddles anon
fuck you anon I got spook'd
any good horror games based on the golem story? come to think of it kabbalist based horror would be interesting.
It's a bit late and I have work tomorrow. See you later guys.
Also don't give the player a way to fight back because that just destroys the horror aspect and turns it into an action game.
Incorrect. This turns the game into a walking simulator or you spend more time hiding and wrestling with enemy ai. It still needs to be a video game. Case in point, I played Amnesia a single time and I've played Resident Evil and Silent Hill countless times
There was this horror comic that trapped your scroll wheel, so you couldn't scroll away from the jumpscare.
I'm scared stiff!
Is that Cool Guy's sister?
that game that he never finished and only has a bad ending
i still feel bad for his sister, what game is this anyway
THIS SHITE I THINK LMAO
Man this and those old YT jumpscare videos are what turned me into a Neurotic man.
Fuck that Car in the hills commercial,
Fuck the fake games/Easter Eggs videos,
Fuck those videos with girls in bathrooms,
And fuck those "where is Waldo" videos too
Why not add in a stamina meter that requires you to use items to recharge it
I remember going on jumpscare sites was the thing to do at family parties back then. Shit like winterrowd.com to play all the shitty maze variants.
This reminds me of that skittles game that exists
The only horror game that consistently managed to spook me was Voices Of The Void, until I played a lot of it, then the unknown became familiar, and the supernatural became mundane. A horror game can't keep the spooks for that long because you eventually will know what happens when "the monster/entity/madness" gets to you. If you want the spooks to last either keep it mundane and sprinkle the spooks every so often or make it a very short experience so there isn’t enough time for the player to familiarize with the horror.
imagine
Shorter, cheaper games so the player doesn't have time to grow numb to the horror or completely figure out the game's rules well before they're done playing.
Focus on keeping the player offbalance in their expectations for as long as possible.
Make sure fail state feels like a real penalty to be dreaded
God-tier sound and environment design as a baseline.
Nuance and cadence, horror games can't just be oppressive atmosphere and loud noises all the time - counterbalance things with levity and even whimsy so the player's nerves have a chance to resettle before the scares begin again.
Tits. Sex appeal is a great way to jumpstart human survival instincts.
my issue with most modern horror games is how the actual game-part is just a paper thin excuse to have the player navigate scary environments and occasionally get jumped by monsters
if you take away the horror there's not much left
also, having co-op in horror is pure cancer
The idea would be that the game is still enjoyable/challenging even if you're not scared. Similar to how a movie can still be good even if you know all the scares and they don't work on you anymore.
Competent writers and self inflicted hell motifs.
what we really need is the keep talking and nobody explodes of horror games
one player is trapped in a maze with a monster and the others have access to fixed cameras to call out the monster's location, and probably some kind of other assistance like opening/closing doors and such
I remember this shit scaring the shit out of me. Is the site/source still up?
isnt it broken since flash is dead?
More cute girls!
Amnesia is great in the first few hours until you realize most enemy spawns are tied to the player interacting with key items or puzzles. That part near the very start where you enter a hallway and have just enough time to glimpse something leaving through a door out the corner of your eye is 11/10 horror design.
I think Bunker is an overall better game because of the way the risk of losing unsaved progress makes you feel more vulnerable the further you stray from the safe room. The only problem is the way you're encouraged to just die and reset if you wasted resources, limited lives fixes this of course but nobody is going to go with that option on their first playthrough.
Exmortis was better, I feel.
any horror/depressing games where you have to stop the protagonist from killing himself
Cry of Fear?
I was developing a horror game myself but i ditched the idea after i realized how unholy it is.
Didn't really get far with the concept anyway.
Just do it Anon.
What could possibly go wrong?
oh thats a classic
Elsagate 4.0.
That'd be baller Anon, do it.
anyone remember Exmortis
Now this is a good trick. The browser suddenly scrolling on it's own is like two thirds of the scare here. You establish a rule or gameplay loop then break it in a really jarring way. Imagine a horror game where initially opening the inventory pauses the game only for this to be traumaticly taken away later on.
10 years old
go downstairs to the kitchen for a snack
hear intermittent screaming coming from the computer room down the hallway
paralyzed with fear and stood in place in the direction of the screaming for a good 10 minutes
finally work up the courage to go over there and figure out what happened
my sister opened a screamer link and ran out the room to hide in the bathroom
didn't want to go in alone so i had to convince her to come out
we ran into the room with our hands in front of our eyes and rushed to the speakers and monitor to turn them off
still in shock so we went up to our rooms to get away from the computer
parents come home later
dad turns on the monitor and is greeted by harlequin baby and gore shit
we get banned for the computer for a month
One word; Scarousal
maybe I'm out of touch but it feels like the sexual nature of horror has just disappeared
Horror thrives when the player feels *vulnerable*, not when they’re a sidestepping death machine with a shotgun.
It thrives just fine when a player who spent a million bullets thinks they annihilated a section with a few bullets to spare but a spiderdemon suddenly shows up.
That's amazing.
The last shot made it look like it kneed him in the face at 80km/h
You're late
youtube.com
the fuck is a harlequin baby
Google it bitch
Oh yeah... Lets just say i do not want to risk anything i create being corrupted by such filth.
What's a good horror themed game I can play co--op with friends? It doesn't have to be like the scariest shit in the world, i just wanna play something with a spooky atmosphere. We've gone through the "good" half life mods. Cry of Fear was fun.
You gotta create it first Anon
Do it
You miss 100% of the shots you don't try
My similar experiance isnt as cool. I heard my mom do that ghost lady one from the other room.when i was prolly around 8 or 10 and just the sound acared the shit out of me and Indidnt want to go off kids sites for months.
Unironically the worst birth complication out there. I cant imagine what those poor things short lives are. They werent even able to save them until about 30 uears ago and they basically grow up into severe burn victims. Its not hard to imagine someone thinking they were cursed if that happened to their kid.
Watch it coward.
youtube.com
Real men pick hET
I just want something like a first person version of Darkwood. The gameplay loop of exploring/scavenging an increasingly disturbing environment before returning to your hideout at dusk to gas up the generator as you braced for the night ahead worked for me in a way few other titles have.
You think that's scary?
watch this
This one is getting a lot of attention in Japan right now
OK. I suppose i can do my best to try to make it so niche that content farms will not even notice it.
But where to start? This project of mine is really too ambitious for one guy. I suppose i should be searching for small time devs willing to do volunteer work, if any exists.
right now
Its not hard to imagine someone thinking they were cursed if that happened to their kid.
It is a reminder to test your sperm before deciding to start a family and ask your spouse if they have any genetic illnesses running in their family. For me it is a pre disposition to DIABETUS, so I have to watch for that.
Sadly that condition happens a lot in countries were birth defects happen in like 1 in 20 and worse yet in nations with low resources.
But some people have managed to live with the condition so in some instances are not worse than cognitive disabilities
youtube.com
For context, the ones used in screamers are from babies that often died from infections, so you know edgy shit that just sad.
Like we keep saying, erotic horror will never be a big thing.
You can find insufferable egotistical retards in Anon Babble willing to help you, and cool guys here too I guess.
This, there is nothing more terrifying than losing control of the situation specially in moments like that
Isn't anomaly horror the hot new thing right now?
So gentlemen.
Jumpscares, yay or nay?
How many are too many? How few should a game have?
Dead Space and DR2 had them, I thought they were cool.
I think games where you can actually lose something are pretty scary. If you're going to lose hours and hours of progress in something, or lose a hardcore character which deletes upon death, etc. That's probably more scary than just a poorly lit room with a spooky.wav trigger in it.
This is probably why people had such high hopes for vr horror given how you're literally strapped in. Too bad devs thing vr is all about throwing shit at the camera.
The bitch that put her fat ass on the bars and tempted you to fuck her.
This has to be a tag somewhere.
You can find insufferable egotistical retards in Anon Babble willing to help you
You mean amateur game dev general? I know them, they're just all working on their own projects at the moment, i respect that.
and cool guys here too I guess.
Are you a cool guy?
Anomaly or analog?
Anyways I just wanted to share this:
youtube.com
I don't really get scared by horror games, only startled from jumpscares sometimes, I do enjoy and play any game with creepy little girls following me around though.
SH4 does that In the game you usually go back to your apartment, which acts as your safe room, it's in 1st person unlike the rest of the game, and you have a chest to keep your items in. After X time in the game, the game invades your apartment and you need to cleanse it
I liked the werewolf popping up in the window in RE7. It was cheeky but at least it felt organic.
This is what i vision my horror game to be like, a fun little parody. But more South Park style humor and satire.
They have to be spaced out and built up to properly. If it's just the punishment for getting caught or a game over screen, you get desensitized to it and it gets grating. They shouldn't be tied to frequent events and should be deliberately placed at least 30 minutes to an hour apart to build tension.
(me)
Meant to reply to
yay, jumpscares are near mandatory for effective horror, very few directors are good enough to make good horror with zero jumpscares, most attempts end up being boring as fuck
yes, jumpscares are awful when hack directors throw a hundred of them in and make them loud as fuck, but there's nothing wrong with jumpscares in concept
the youtube channel is dedicated to the game itself.
Sovl, absolute sovl.
Oh no a little girl...
never jumpscares ever, the scary part is the build up before a reveal. tension and suspense are scary, a jumpscare kills that dead.
Just ask yourself what made P.T. work so well.
Do away with anything close to analog horror and muh liminal space
A great horror game will have exactly one jump scare.
It sets up that it's a slow burning ambient horror game. You come to expect only creepy things.
And then in one part something pops up and scares the shit out of you.
Restraint is definitely key. Take Dead Space 2 for example where everytime you climb out of a vent the camera pans around setting up a jumpscare. But they hold back long enough for you to become comfortable with the maneuver before finally having a crazy fuck jump you with a screwdriver just as you turn around.
Dead Space has two jumpscares before you even take control of Isaac, it's not exactly a good example of restraint.
The part in lost in vivo where you whistle for your dog and instead of hearing a bark something whistles back at you. More shit like that please.
Have darker themes to filter normies like Fear and Hunger.
bloody ghost woman asks you if you seen her baby
you answer yes and point her to a random direction
when you are about to leave she suddenly starts running towards you for no reason
you faint
you wake up the next day in your house and your neighbor informs you that a single mother has committed suicide near the place where you fell unconscious
Korean horror is so weird yet unique. if this was written by an American, the girls would've been not only murdered but also torn to pieces for nothing more than shock value and edginess
Yes I absolutely agree, a lot of "hardcore" games seem to more play off tediousness than actual challenge. There's zero buildup a lot of the time for example in modded stalker. You have time to go "oh, there's a guy with an exoskeleton there" before you die because it's some mod where he takes 2 full magazines to go down. That's not a punishment for bad decision or a risk you accepted, that's a game just fucking with you
game starts with you being indian
make the ghost ladies romanceable
With SEX
Lynchian
Its cursed
I remember when this ugly photoshopped image was first circulating around the internet when I was a kid and someone said it literally made them cry lol
Honestly, if a game is supposed to be scary, it shouldn't also be trying to be hard. Those are opposing concepts, because if a game is hard and you die/fail a lot, the fear very quickly becomes frustration and you're not likely to get it back.
because if a game is hard and you die/fail a lot
Well a game could be hard and have setbacks instead of outright fail conditions, like part of your sand castle collapsing vs the whole thing.
SH4 makes me scared stiff
are you the eileen shaving guy
Silent Breath did multiple jumpscares well enough to still be scary.
no but I am a passionate Eileen enjoyer
I don't remember the context of the alleged curse at all because it blurs together with that cursed painting one about the girl whose expressional supposedly changes when you look at it, but I distinctly remember being scared of all this gay retarded nonsense which is why I will never make fun of zoomers and alphoomers with their FNAF and banbanslop.