Hey, everyone. My name is Robert. I’m fairly new to Unity and a friend of mine and I are starting a project. As I said, I am new to Unity and I have learned some very basic things about it.
My first real project is a Survival Horror game set in an Arctic setting, and we have a solid idea of what we want, but my question is: Do any of you have any experience in making survival horror or any similar game type?
Why would our experience matter exactly? (Serious question).
All you have to do is watch some movies and play games like Alien Isolation and that will give you the exact things that trigger the awesomeness of such games.
But one thing I can say (not from experience making), but from what I’ve heard a ton, is that in Survival games. Don’t throw tons of weapons at the player. The least - the better. Making them have to use their environment to survive rather than kill.
I wouldn’t bother with survival horror as your first game, there are already a ton of not scary survival horror games being churned out of Unity by the hour.
I went ahead and corrected your quote.
Well this is a particular case of something that everyone wants to make, but no one knows how to make right
Ever since Slender, there are just dozens of crappy first person walking around in spooky place with occational loud noises until you die games that aren’t scary. People don’t know the difference between cheap jumpscares and actual fear.
The fact of the matter is any idiot can drop Unity’s default First person controller into a dark room, lit only by a point light attached to the controller, then make some loud noises to scare the player. It’s one of the things you can do in Unity with almost zero code experience.
But it takes a lot of clever, deliberate design decisions to make it scary and enjoyable, and at least a basic understanding of human psychology and how to mess with a player in the right ways to evoke actual terror. This is not something cheap jumpscares do, thats more equivilant to what a roller coaster does, not what Silient Hill 2 does.
No I wasn’t debating the logic behind that, I was just merely pointing out that every game genre imaginable is being churned out by the masses in unity - some more so than others.
Right. I understand that. I have a very specific vision of what I want, and it’s not going to be easy. Cheap jump scares are not what I’m after, and I realize that it would be extremely easy to accomplish that.
My plan is to try to emulate what made SH2 so great, in a psychological sense. My vision is not what is being churned out these days, but more of a take on insanity.
I don’t think you entirely understand it though… It’s not as simple as whipping up some art and scripts or even lighting.
You need to know mentally what triggers distress in the player(s), really - don’t just guess at it from your opinions.
I’d seriously (if you want to do it right). try to get in contact with your nearest Psychologist. Whether it been a professional doctor, or going to the nearest university and try to ask some questions about what kinds of things could potenially trigger the reactions you are looking for for some cases…
Don’t ask for every possible known trigger. Just ask for like 3 examples (whatever examples you want) on what could be the strongest trigger in incite panic into the player… Then once you get the 3 examples down, try to meet somewhere in the middle of them 3 for every type of of fear factor in your game.
That’s the way I’d do it at least. Unless you already are familiar with psychology.
This could also be a way to cause this kind of outcome… “Please tell me more about you wanting to trigger panic in the players of your game”. “Ok… I see… and have you always felt this way toward other people?” “I’d like you to come in to see me twice per week to discuss this more.”
What Silent Hill did right is figured out how to scare you without using cheap jump scare tactics.
Cheap jump scare tactics are a last resort used by movie makers when they figure out the movie isn’t scary enough during screening, so they have to go back to the editor and have the editors add jump scares to the finished product.
This is just done over and over again in these so-called “Horror” movies now days.
This is not what you want to have to resort to in a video game.
I still believe Alien Isolation is the greatest Survival Horror example that I can even think of.
Normally I wouldn’t like fancy graphics, but Alien Isolation really pulled it off and made everything blend
perfectly.
I’d play Alien Isolation, but honestly. I’m scared to play it. Because I know it’s going to run up behind me no matter what I do and kill me LOL. Imagine it in VR, even better haha. No I don’t mean literally scared, just you know the tension that builds up from it, etc.
Very well crafted.
I started working on a survival horror game and even though I did not get very far with it, but with research etc. I could find out, that what makes a horror game work is alot about atmosphere, ambience, settings etc. even if you are not using a story, it seems horror games can only work, if a player can somewhat relate or “feel” themselves into the subject you are presenting them with.
That is also the reason why so many games rely heavily on taking away senses, like limited sight, limited defense, if at all etc. because it is relatively easy for anyone to understand that those things combined with a threat of some sort (mentally or physically doesn’t matter) are scary. Since we all at some point in our lifes felt helpless or paranoid or afraid of the dark etc.
but that is also the exact reason why alot of horror games seem very “cookie-cutter”, because alot of devs just ride on those same same mental effects over and over again (btw. jumpscares are not really frightening in sense of fear inducing, what they do is, they kick in the fight or flight reflex and pushing huge amount of adrenaline through your veins and creating anxiety whenever similar situations occur, but they are not really horrorfying, specially after the tenth time)
other than that I would say, go and study SH2, if you take that as an inspiration, check what they did and how they did it, watch videos from other people playing, if you can’t play it yourself, maybe check other horror games aswell, see what effects you like and dislike. Then also go and try to define exactly how do you want to make the player feel? anxious?tense?alot of suspense? or do you want to make it more towards mysterious and horrorfying? creepy maybe? how much do you want the player to “know”? what is driving the player forward? curiosity?(some mystery) or threat?(being followed)needs?(survival, food etc.) why is the player/character going into that situation or why are they there? why do they stay?
Practically, this is how I approached my own project aswell 
additionally I also have to say that prototyping a horror game that relies heavily on atmosphere is quite difficult, because it’s heavily dependent on graphics and also difficult to test, since you yourself are already familiar with your game, so it will have less effect on yourself.
I’m not sure, if this is what you asked for but i hope it can help somehow
This is very true. It’s hard to create a game yourself and try to put yourself in the player’s shoes, because you know every aspect of the game. Constant dry-runs and development make you “immune” to the atmosphere. I’ve have run certain sections of the game hundreds of times, to the point where it almost becomes boring. I wish I could play what I have done and completely be in the mind-set of a player who has is playing the game for the very first time. But it is impossible to do that.
heck, I kind of gave up my first game project, because of exactly that! “the game became boring for me to play” even though I had to realize later, that others who looked at it or played it were thinking it’s alot of fun O.o
and this “subjectivity” is also making games the games too hard initially XD I just couldn’t see how difficult my game is.
I found out later that some of the stuff I had coded as mechanics, were not so “visible” or understandable for players o.o
(btw. I want to keep saying it, ludum dare is a good place to see how people react to a game and to learn alot in a very short time, specially since LD is so popular, if you get a half decent prototype of a game running you WILL get feedback)
I think I must have play tested my levels a few hundred times, to the point it has become tedious. I expect every game is like that in someway which is probably why you need feedback from others who have never played the game before.