Forgot to answer this on my last post. I don’t think this is worth a thought at this point of your career. Making good games comes first, then getting people to play them and after that you can think about monetizing.
There are at least two. Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs is pretty boring from what I’ve read. The Dark Descent is seen by many as one of the scariest horror games out there and it makes the most of a tiny development budget. Imho there is a lot to be learned here for horror game indie devs.
Also it had an interesting twist on the hide-in-the-dark stealth mechanic. Darkness made you insane, causing nauseating image effects and ultimately unconsciousness. So you had conflicting needs that had to be balanced. You’ll want to light torches and stay in the light to stay sane. But when monsters come you have to hide in dark corners and deal with the problems that come with it. Also they had a mechanic where even looking at the monster drove up your insanity meter. I found that to be insanely clever because what you can’t see is often a lot more scary than what you can see. And I got through about half the game without ever really getting a good look at the enemies. It also hides low asset-quality to some degree.
There is a point to be made for “don’t tell the player how he should feel” however, since that often causes a weird disconnect for players when they feel a lot different than the game says they should feel. It worked for me because I was actually scared. If I had been bored I might have disliked that mechanic.
Outlast had a significantly higher budget than Amnesia I’d bet. I haven’t played through the whole game yet, but what I have seen I found pretty scary as well. I got the feeling that their choices in where to put jumpscares were very deliberate and carefully planned out. So I’d say this is a great title to learn from as well.
I often see jumpscares dismissed as a “cheap” tactic, but I don’t think that is a fair assessment. A run of the mill jumpscare doesn’t get me since I’m not easily scared and have a good feeling for when they might be coming in a horror game. The times I have truly “jumped” in my seat from being utterly scared by a jumpscare in a game are quite rare. Maybe between one and two dozen times in my life? And I played quite a few horror games. Outlast was really good in setting you up to be affected by jump scares. The imho “classic” approach is saving the jumpscare for high tension moments in the narrative that you often see coming, or plain random moments that often don’t get you because they are too random and out of context. In Outlast I’ve been caught of guard by quite a few because they avoid the cliché scares and teach you that something is “safe” first, before they use that situation to scare you. MINOR SPOILERS: E.g. you had to walk past a seemingly dead guy in a wheelchair. Of course you think that he will jumpscare you when you get close, so you brace yourself and approach real carefully. But the scare doesn’t happen, you learn that that part of the level is safe, keep on playing and after a while you need to backtravel past that guy again and then he jumps at you and the scare is so much more effective because you most likely didn’t see that coming. Or once a jumpscare was behind a door, really random and probably ineffective for many people (it got me though because the audio was so well designed), but then just a few meters later there is the next jumpscare and you don’t anticipate the next one coming so soon again, because that goes against the pacing that you know from other horror games.
Alan Wake has been mentioned by @Aiursrage2k . I found that game rather boring, because it was pretty easy, and I think I saw all but one jumpscare coming. The camera usually does something out of the ordinary, shortly before something happens, so it’s almost never unexpected. Overall I didn’t like that game even though the story was ok. Dead Space 1 and 2 were good though.
You should watch the “squirtyplay” videos by Jim Sterling. He covers a lot of shitty horror games (also a few good ones) and imho there is much to be learned from those games. Plus he’s giving you some insight in how certain things might be received by players.
And one last thing: I don’t think taking personal fears and nightmares as a reference is a good idea. For example you might be scared out of your mind by snakes, and just having a snake in a game might scare you a lot. Others find snakes cute and it would not scare them the least bit. But if you are not scared by snakes, and you manage to set one up in a way that would be scary to you and other people that don’t have a problem with snakes, (e.g. by making it really big, never showing it and implying its presence and malevolence through other means), then you might be up to something that affects a greater number of people. If people with a certain strong phobia still can play a corresponding part of your game, it might not be hardcore enough for people that lack that phobia.
I think that was kind of what I was looking for, some things I couldn’t really think of, like not showing the game to everyone at once, so that I get different feedback for different stages of the game thats always coming from the “first time” point of view. there should be enough feedback from everyone to work with that to improve the game. And then I can slowly increase the “audience”…