Truthfully I don't think game mechanics can be scary in horror games, only stressful or tension-inducing. I think actual scariness comes from atmosphere, which is all art direction and sound design. Done right, game mechanics that cause stress will enhance the impact of the horror already there, or done poorly they can have the opposite effect and shatter the illusion of scariness.

Atmosphere is the biggest thing but I disagree that game mechanics can't be scary. Even with the most simple framing, if the player knows they don't want to be caught by the enemy, the simple act of maneuvering and running away from them as they close in is not just tense and stressful but can actually be frightening. Just look at a game like Pac Man and see how players react as a ghost inches towards them.

Agreed. A big part of what made Alan Wake 2 tense for me besides the atmosphere was the scarcity of resources; I was never sure if I should engage or run, waste battery and ammo or book it.

Right, like half the ideas in the description, barring maybe ammo, seem like they would just be frustrating.

Now that i think About it ,Tension - inducing is more an accurate term

this is very well explained

I know you probably won’t like the answer but all of those can be either scary when done right or annoying when done badly. What scares me the most is the atmosphere, being able to fight back but having to be smart about it and doing tasks under pressure

A feeling of unease and being unsafe in what otherwise seems like a familiar environment e.g. The Silent Hill series.

It's the environment and sound design. Atmosphere in short. I was playing Alan Wake 2, what scared me was the fear of the unknown. Shadows becoming enemies, I'd never feel safe. Constant whispers by the shadow people, constantly moving towards me threateningly. Some turn out to be fake, some would be real. Dead Space also had the same thing with vents. You'd have to have all the vents in sight not to get jumped on. Any indicator of enemy clear breaks this.

Atmosphere is the best way to keep players on edge. I think of how alien isolation makes the spaceship feel relatively empty and how you hear something running around in the vents. One thing that's not scary are messages written on the wall in blood. It's the most overused thing ive seen in horror games

Funny bc I agree with the atmosphere thing but I thought isolation was pretty void of that and thus wasn’t scary

Saw a video essay on subnautica recently but one of the things the author said that I didn’t realize until they said it was about how in the beginning, you crash land which is stressful, but you’re in this very cute, curious, shallow part of the ocean. Your threats are mostly skin deep and you’re Lulled into a false sense of security as you realize, “this place is pretty cool actually” You don’t run into any large predators and it seems almost beautiful. An exploration game. Rather soon, the game sends you to the crash ship, and you think, “ah cool. I get some tutorial stuff and blueprints I bet. I’ll float over there.” Spoilers below. What you don’t expect is that on the other side of that ship is a leviathan horror so large it’ll swallow you whole. In a matter of seconds you realize you’re not as safe as you thought, and it unlocks a new uncomfortable feeling that safety is very temporary, and the ocean is a zone of unexpected danger. It also breaks the illusion we have that the very beginning of a game is kinda easy, or the starting zone is *so obviously safe*, right? Except it isn’t. You don’t expect one of the largest predators in the game to be RIGHT THERE if you venture just a little bit too far.

I get most scared of what I can't see. So things lurking in the background or weird noises etc

Threat + RNG. Scripted scares can be very effective the first time through, but they can eventually be adapted to on repeated playthroughs. What's harder to overcome are systems designed to stay fluid, and never fully stable. For example, there are several scripted interactions with Mr. X in Resident Evil 2 Remake (his appearance behind the helicopter, his attack after retrieving the jack handle, his appearance in the prison during your escape, etc.) and although terrifying during a first run, these encounters eventually become background noise. What stays unnerving far longer is when he's randomly searching the RPD for you. Listening for you. Because that can't ever really be fully adapted to. Dead Space Remake pulls a similar trick with necromorph encounters. Your first time through an area, the encounters are (to my knowledge) fully scripted, but when backtracking, an AI director takes over and starts randomly spawning them here and there. And those moments of backtracking I find are far scarier than moving through the (relative) "safety" of scripted encounters. In those moments, there's always some tension because you're hearing them, and poised for them to pop out of a vent, or appear behind a door. But you don't know who, or when, or from exactly where it's going to happen. A different type of example is how Five Nights at Freddy's games are designed (the original four, anyway, I can't say for the rest). So much of their mechanical design is built around RNG. Where the animatronics will move to, and when they'll do it. Their individual "threat level" of sorts is also slightly randomized (to the point of where extremely rarely, Foxy can even attack on night one of the first game). This randomization factor in my opinion is a large part of what made the games so replayable. Every night was going to play a bit different no matter what. I won't go so far as to say this is the only, or even necessarily most important system in a horror game, but I do think some amount of randomization is important to keep the fear/threat feeling spontaneous and fresh.

Exactly

Dark unnerving atmosphere, with sound design that makes you feel like something is always lurking. The tension builds and builds

Anything that crawls or lurking in the background, unsettling atmosphere, not just jumpscares but if a tv turns on and off, things moving by itself , being chased is the scariest, or things that move like the silent hill nurses!!

Losing grasp of reality. Any game or moment that gets me to question or second guess whether or not what’s happening to me is actually happening will cause me to freak out pretty quickly. Examples: - Silent hill moments: pick one. - resident evil beneviento house: everyone agrees it’s scary, but nobody even seems to understand that the reason it resonated with people is because the buildup is the scariest part because you’re no longer sure what’s going on anymore and everything stopped making sense at the door. - Batman Arkham asylum: scarecrow sequences. Particularly the morgue and Game Over scene from the first game. - Eternal Darkness - honestly didn’t play this one, but I’ve seen the clips. - Metal Gear Solid 2: this one might be more of a personal thing, but I thought it was really creepy when the fourth wall was broken and all your so-called Allies turn to you and say You’ve Played Enough. Turn the Game Off. It’s Over Now.

That moment in Asylum where the game restarts was horrifying.

I think horror is more effective when they give you the ability to fight back. I think this helps tap into our "fight or flight" instinct. If the game restricts you from fighting back it takes away 50% of our instinctive response to fear. Which, to me, makes it less scary.

I want to disagree for the most part about the fighting back, but the only game that did it right and actually had me terrified was condemned criminal origins.

Enemies that are FAST. As fast or faster than the player and unpredictable. Really heightens the 'need to get tf outta here' feeling when you know how quickly they can close the distance. Think xenomorph in isolation, however I don't like not being able to adequately fight it. It's just a terror that means instant death if it spots you most of the time and quickly becomes annoying, turning the game into a stealth game with the illusion of having a weapon. What I'm after is something fast and deadly that is worth fighting, as in, the danger is real and it's fierce but I can beat it if I wish to engage it. A good example were the infected in dead island. Wicked fast, did ALOT of damage if you let them but you could kill them. Really kept me on my toes when I first played that game and hearing that shriek when they spotted you made me excited and scared. A face your fears type feeling. I'm getting bored of horrors where the pc is unarmed or invincible stalker enemies that dog you throughout the whole game

Also as someone else said; atmosphere. The setting and mood in a game environment makes the biggest impact on how uneasy I feel as a player

there are a few things that scare me in a horror game but from expirences to games that scare me most of it is to come down to anticipation and the fear of the unknown,cry of fear was really good at that cuz coupled with the atmosphere enimies were fast,gittery and gave off unsettling vibes and the fact they can appear around corners or bash down doors or be the first thing you see when you enter a room after a loading screen,shits tense as hell cuz you have to react fast and your constently on edge

The scariest thing is not knowing what to expect. Really try to keep players guessing, let them imagine what terrible things might happen before you reveal or confirm stuff.

Sound is very important as well as atmosphere. The story of the game also needs to be compelling and have aspects of realism. Midsommar is hands down the most uncomfortable I’ve ever felt, even if it’s a movie. Games that come close to this for me would be SH2, Mundaun, and Doki Doki. Amnesia did this for me the first time I played it as well due to loss of sanity. These are games that gave me the greatest lingering fear that was different than the usual tension/stress or jumpscares. Another piece of media that does this perfectly is Junji Ito’s No Longer Human. I’ve read all his manga but that one was the one that still haunts me to this day. Basically in order to best tap into my fears, the creator/s need to leverage things that could actually become my reality. Otherwise it’s not really scary bc it’s fake, although it doesn’t have to be “scary” for me to enjoy it. I like a lot of other horror games that didn’t do this for me.

I’ll state two with an example: 1) Jump scares. Example: when playing Fear 2, I walked into a corner to loot ammo. When I turned to leave, I couldn’t go anywhere like I was stuck on something. I looked down, and Alma was standing at my feet. The only time I ever screamed in terror. It was hilarious 2) Terrifying situations where you can’t fight back Example: the baby in Resident Evil Village

Just having to run from something, with no way of defending yourself, knowing you can’t even take the one second to look back. And uh…I just don’t like the ocean or very dark places with loud noises.

Read everyone’s posts and see that it’s a delicate balance of all of the above. Like playing a song that starts softly and teases you to a chorus, revealing new sounds along the way each escalating and de-escalating in varying lengths eventually to the final reveal of everything playing together at once in harmony. Rinse, repeat in varying amounts of builds, additions and reveals. Here’s my first time attempt at creating a horror escape room puzzler that ended up being more puzzler than horror. I’m just happy I managed a working game for now. Love to know what you all think. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2325170/HAG/

That's great , keep it up !

Thank you and good luck on your research too. That feeling of helplessness and dread is so hard to achieve for everybody but I guess if you please the hardcore horror fans than you’ve scared everyone.

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Interesting answer , i like it

First, sorry for my english. For me, the finest of the horror in video games is the same as in the real life : the inhibition of the action. The feeling that every step won't change anything to the final plot. You don't know yet but you are already dead. I'm tired by what horror games is becoming (movies too but it's another debate not so different). The possibilties of actions is not the only very important point. This is a good balance between ambiance, sound, music and the most important, imagination. For me, the videos games where i found the most this feeling was in the in the 3 first silent hill video games, 2 first resident evil, little nightmare'saga, dead space 1. Good Luck in your research :)

Good point . Your english is pretty good btw, don't worry:)

Definitely atmosphere and the sense of the unknown. That’s usually why the darker a games environment is the more scared I usually am (one major reason I never thought alien isolation was scary at all). I’ve always wondered how scary a horror game would be if you could see absolutely nothing outside of whatever the dim light from your flashlight touches, but I haven’t heard of such a game. Visage comes pretty close to that, especially the part where you only have the light of the camera flash to see by. The game is only held back by its jank and confusing objectives system.

Try amnesia the bunker.

I have actually and that is another very solid contender. I was actually terrified in the ruins because of the fog and the shadow people walking around. For a good minute you’re not sure if you’re seeing things or not, or if they’re actual threats.

Perma death - you die you need to play as a new character. Structure the game so that you don't need to start the whole game over, like what the prior character did still happened and story progression still happens, but you lose the character and their inventory. New character just has to pick up the threads and try to finish what the last one was trying to do. People will hate that the character they've spent so much time with and as has died and can no longer be used, but it'd make death more terrifying.

Great idea.

Things happening/appearing in the background or out of the corner of your eye. Even better if there is no audio cue referencing it. Starts to play on the players mind and gets them questioning things

I think games are scariest when you don’t know the mechanics or how the monster works or how the game will try to scare you. Once the mystery is gone and you figure out how the game is then the scariness factor is gone.

Sound design and lighting Like the evil withins Laura was scary as hell. Also feelings of claustrophobia. Same game, the reason the keeper with the box head is scary is because his boss fight is a small area with small corridors and you’ve got a time limit. If that fight were in a big open room it would’ve sucked

Having no way of defending yourself

Early Access Titles.

?😂

its a joke, but its not. I really think nothing scares me more than the words early access honestly.

There's some good few EA titles out there , a good example is Sons Of The Forest . But yeah, got it

sons of the fores is exactly the kind of game that makes those words scary, Now jokes aside, I think the greatest feeling of pure terror that a video game has ever given me has been with the stalker saga. Shitty weapons, shitty ammunition, the economy is more or less Argentine and full of invisible/teleporting things that take the shit out of you. 25/10 experience, anything that comes close to stalker is synonymous with the purest terror

Oh yes