Creating an H’OHR’or Game

Creating an H’OHR’or Game
A Feature by Only One in All

As of the writing of this article, the OHRRPGCE is lacking a decent volume of horror titles. Only a small handful of games come to mind. Purgatory and Missing by Orchard-L first comes to mind. Shadowiii’s Pitch Black series is another. Project ‘C’ by Sew and SDHawk anyone? More recently, Revelations by Valigarmander and Cult by the former Dr Clock were demos released to the community. I vaguely remember some sort of demon game by the creator of Santa’s Quest, Demonheat, many years back. It was quite a scare for me back in the days, but nothing now.

Sadly, there are very few titles you can turn to that have the horror genre in mind. The majority of released games are the action-adventure sort, games that don’t offer unsettling atmospheres and twisted graphics to send chills down your spine.

So you want to add to the tiny library of screams? Are you looking to scare your player, rather than entertain them with a Halloween theme? Do you want to give your game a touch of darkness so unsettling, people won’t want to go any further... yet, still feel compelled to move onward?

Hopefully, this article can start to point you in the right direction.

(OHR game screenshots taken from Missing, Purgatory, Cult and my own game, Bloodlust)

What is H’OHR’or?

The first question one must ask themselves is just that. What is horror? What is it that I can do to make my game scary?

If you look to Hollywood for your answer, you will probably say, “Blood! Blood and gore will make my game scary!” True, blood and gore can definitely make your game more unsettling, but taking from the words of Surlaw, gore horror is usually not very fear evoking. Disgusting yes, but not frightening.

So what then? If blood isn’t the answer, perhaps surprises are. Well, it depends on the surprise. Using simple sudden scares can be great, but how are they employed? Is it where you turn around and the killer is suddenly right there? Or a loud sudden noise to make you jump? Surprises are a big element of horror, and you need to use the right kind for your H’OHR’or game to be effective.

What your game needs is the right atmosphere. Generally, the horror genre takes place in darkness and at night. This is where all the scary things happen. Fear is, after all, generated by the unknown. Yet even if this is the case, what is known can just be as fear inspiring as what isn’t known. You might know that the big evil is going to face you inevitably, but when? And where? How?

To make your OHR game a H’OHR’or game, you must understand what horror is and how to make good use of it.

Unraveling the Mystery

What? I’m talking about the storyline before the graphics?

From what has been observed, there is one aspect that is probably most important when it comes to horror. The story.

After all, you can have a text based horror game with no graphics. Tell a superior tale and the player can have nightmares for days.

What could be more important than the story? Unlike arcade, fighting and platform genres, horror almost always needs a story to succeed. The player must be given a reason to dive into worlds of darkness and chaos, facing unimaginable terrors that normally, one would run away from. The player must be given a reason. A missing loved one. An ancient mystery. An unanswered question. The player must be given strong motive and incentive to willingly face something terrible and fear inducing.

Usually it is best to keep the reason basic and emotionally based. A young adolescent in search for their missing sweetheart is something a player can relate more to, as opposed to searching for the lost city of Atlantis.

If the reason is something more complex, usually it involves a job. While I have not played any of the Resident Evil series (except a tiny part of Code: Veronica), it seems that the characters are police forces or special agents who have to dispatch terrifying creatures. A normal person would not want to go after such dangerous creatures because it’s not their job. It seems in horror; you throw yourself into fearsome situations either because of your attachments, curiosity and/or your job.

do you create a good story? It depends on what you want your game to be about. It could be about a normal human being in a terrifying situation. A human being thrust into a world of terror not by choice. A human being trained with special skills or abilities taking on a more massive horror. What is important is horror involves at least one human being. It wouldn’t be as scary if your game was about a dog in a tight spot. The player must relate to the human characters enough to the point they are scared for them. This is how fear is evoked. If the player doesn’t care about what is happening in your game world and its characters, they wouldn’t have any reason to be scared for anyone or anything.

What makes it so scary? Have you ever picked up a Spider-man comic book, read it through and wished, “Man if only I were Spider-man! What a thrill that would be!” The same idea applies to your h’OHR’or game, except in a more terrifying sense. “What if that happened to me...? What if I were to find myself in that situation?!” Since fear is greatly amplified by your own wild imagination, creating a story that can stimulate a person’s mind in fearful ways is a great start.

Assuming you’re a relatively normal human being, think about something that scares you. Perhaps you are scared by the idea of your best friend going missing. Now imagine if that were to happen, and you had to track them down. The closer you get to finding your friend, the more clues that are dropped that something terrible may have very well happened to them. The right buildup, tension, and revealing of clues will add that sense of fear as the player wonders what exactly has happened to poor Jim.

What happens at the end? Usually this is where everything is revealed, the clues are pieced together, and the final conclusion draws everything to a close. Jim was found dead. His uncle, who had been let out of the ward months earlier, had been tracking him. He kidnapped him and intended to use him for a ransom, but everything went wrong. Your intervention caused Jim’s uncle to have a relapse of schizophrenia, and ended up killing Jim. You find Jim’s dead body and in disbelief, outrage and guilt, you kill Jim’s uncle. At the end, you wonder why this ever had to happen.

In this example, all the details and mysteries have been revealed more or less. However, depending on your story, you may or may not want to reveal everything. Leaving the player hanging at the end about several things will let you keep them feeling uneasy for weeks to come. What was it that caused Aunt Brenda to commit suicide? Why is it that touching the idol causes one to become possessed? On the other hand, not revealing enough may end up with a confused and frustrated player. Who was the killer? Why was he the killer? Heck, who did he kill?! This can just be as bad as giving away too much. If your final big evil is a creature so unspeakable not even God is as unspeakable as it, revealing what it looks like may not be a good idea.

Unless your game is something like Doom, you will most likely have quite a bit of a story to tell for your h’OHR’or game. By not revealing everything, keeping things vague, questionable and not making sense until you progress further, you add to the mystery. There was a bloody arm found in the locked down quarantine room which no one has had access to in years. Yet the arm is fresh. How did it get there? It doesn’t have to make sense until later on when perhaps you discover it’s a being that can teleport body parts. Think of your game story as a mystery.

Also, when revealing something, you don’t always have to be direct about it. It could be indirect or something you have to observe carefully. Perhaps details lead back to other unsolved questions even though it wasn’t its intention. This deepens your story considerably.

On that same note, sometimes it’s best not to reveal everything. What was causing the town’s recurring bloody rain? Why did Jaime go into a rampage to kill Lindsey? How did the monkey find its way into the world of darkness? Depending on what it is that isn’t revealed, you may want to withhold that information from the player. That way even after the game is over, the player can continue to question that unknown and come up with their own theories about it. Even after they’ve stopped playing the actual game, they will still be playing it in their mind.

Take for example, Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget. For the longest time, no one knew what he looked like. His vicious looking arm and shadowed figure gives room to imagine how horrible the rest of him is. After all, with the imagination comes exaggeration. We’re more likely to exaggerate how terrifying he would be. However, then came when they revealed what Dr. Claw actually looked like. My imagination most certainly had a more terrifying figure in mind! He’s just an old looking guy with a metal claw glove? This caused all my expectations to go down the drain. My imagination had conjured up a more vicious figure, and yet, it seems he is just a grumpy old fart with a voice equal in menace of the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin.

This is why some things are better not revealed. That hideous fearsome entity may stay more fearsome in the minds of the player if they only have a vague idea of how potentially horrible it looks, as opposed to revealing it and for it to turn out less of a demon than the player expects. Or, you could reveal a little bit of it but not all. Perhaps all you ever see of it is a menacing eye glaring back at the player. In any case, it is best to leave more up to the imagination of the player. They will help make your game much scarier.

In conclusion, the story is an integral part of your h’OHR’or game. Planning and giving much thought to your story is especially important in the horror genre. However you go about it, you must make sure that your story flows well!

The Whites of Your Eyes

What h’OHR’or game would be complete without the right graphics? If you want to make your game scary, you have to make it look scary!

Generally, things are a lot scarier when it takes place in darkness or at night. This means you will want to use darker colors and palettes when you make the graphics for your game. Granted, you can have parts of your game take place in the daytime or somewhere bright, but you should be spending most of the time somewhere lacking in sufficient light.

Now that you got your colors down, you probably want to decide on your setting. One thing to keep in mind is restriction of movement. By that, I mean making your player feel confined to a specific location, or having where they can go restricted. If you want to make a h’OHR’or game, you don’t want to make the freedom like Grand Theft Auto. You want it more linear. Claustrophobia in a sense is what you want to give the player. Whether it is on a spacecraft stranded light years away from civilization or an old run down mansion, you’ll want to make sure the player doesn’t feel like they can leave the horror as they please.

You may also want to decide whether your game will take place in a completely normal environment, or something more like Silent Hill. Will your world gradually progress into something more like a nightmare, or will it simply be the situation that escalates while the physical world stays as is?

A game simply cannot be scary if it’s too cutesy. To achieve an atmosphere that is creepy and fear inducing, you may need to work with a style that is not yours. Using an anime style, for example, is not particularly the best style for horror. Big cute eyes with simplified faces and proportions? The anime Higurashi Naka no Roni comes to mind. While it presents an atmosphere that is creepy, the cute characters just don’t cut it. Sure, their big white eyes with tiny pupils make you go ‘yipe’, but not to the extent you’re gonna freak.

All I’m trying to say is some styles just don’t have the punch to be horror material. The key here is looking realistic. The more realistic or serious you can get your game to look, the better chance you have of pulling of a horror environment.

Make good use of shadows and shading. The right lighting is important to create a more ominous tone, or to amplify the appearance of grotesque creatures and unkindly souls. Players should be reluctant to venture onward due to fear. Perhaps the lights slowly dim to the point of darkness at the end of the creaking hallway, but it is the only way through to escape a sinister presence slowly creeping up on you. Or is it?

Sometimes you may want to use contrast to what is scary and what is not. Your game could start off in a bright and cheerful neighborhood. Completely normal. Then slowly, things start to become altered little by little to the point where you don’t even trust the sidewalk to your own house.

Things are more unsettling if they’re not perfect. Damage and age tend to work pretty well. An old run down house can be a lot scarier than a newly renovated one. Granted, both can still be scary, but a new house doesn’t offer creaking floorboards and holes in the walls where anything could appear. Old abandoned buildings tend to have that special effect on people that buildings that are still occupied and (well) maintained don’t.

What about drawing monsters and ghosts? Other human beings looking to do horrible things to you? Consider how the antagonists of your game will be.

Classic horror creatures, such as vampires, werewolves, and mummies?

Something more like Resident Evil, giant snake monsters, overgrown spiders, and flesh eating zombies?

Or perhaps symbolic vaguely recognizable creatures like in Silent Hill, deformed hospital patients, staggering nurses, and four legged door men, all almost borderline indescribable?

Human characters are important in horror games in that you should minimize how many there are. It’s just more lonely and scary when you see so few of them. And it’s even worse when they look to be not quite your friends or allies. Unless they are zombies or not quite alive (ghosts?), you should not have too many encounters with people. And the few you do meet, should only be enough comfort so that once they’re gone, things are scary again. Don’t forget that you should try to draw them as realistic as possible.

As far as graphics go, study the artwork of other great horror games. See what other people do to make you scared. If you find yourself creeped out or fearful by the environments you are exploring, analyze what it is that makes you feel that way, and try to give your game that same effect.

Whispers of Anguish

CLANG! The sound resonates through the musky suffocating air. It sharply cuts the silence, and you have no idea what direction it came from. Footsteps. Something is getting closer. You’re in the middle of a hallway intersection, and you can hear the whispers of something inhuman…

Eyes appear from the darkness! A shrill sound of the surprise resonates and you leap back from shock. You barely recover as you confront whatever is staring at you. It nearly gave you a heart attack!

Sound is an important aspect to making horror work. As is the tendency for the human mind to exaggerate unseen horrors, it also has the tendency to let sounds, no matter how seemingly innocent, to become something more menacing.

By manipulating sound to your advantage, you can really give your player chills. Imagine in your game, you step out of a storeroom of a supermarket and everything is dark and quiet. As you get further along, a faint sound can be heard… a bird chirping? The more you move in a certain direction, the louder it gets. The chirping sound is loud and shrill, and happens in timed intervals. The player has no idea what it is, but it certainly is unsettling! What’s causing the noise and why?

When the source is finally found, it turns out to be the emergency door. For some reason, the alarm attached to it keeps making that noise.

Okay, the source has been found, just a damned door, your player will probably let out a sigh of relief.

Or a gasp of anticipation if you play your cards right. Suppose that when the player reaches the source, the chirping source is made evident... but the otherwise quiet background is interrupted by a chilling score. Low, quiet, and telling that something here is wrong. Very wrong.

Now with the addition of a creepy song at this specific location, you have the player’s heart rate go up. They know being here means something terrible is going to happen. Now imagine if they leave the area, and the bird sound suddenly stops but the music continues. It’s become slightly louder. Not good at all. Now your player is freaked. Did that alarm somehow tip someone or something out to your presence? It was quiet before, but now chilling music is playing!

Manipulation of sound and music is vital. Since it can relay information not seen by the eye, it opens up another dimension of scares. A sound of glass breaking far away and then slow but sure footsteps? If it is happening off screen, no way your eyes will know, but your ears will.

Silence can also be a great assistant. If your game has no music playing throughout, but then suddenly entering a rather suspicious looking area causes a song to start playing, the player will be cued to know that something is amiss, and get your player pumped up. The other way around can be done as well. Perhaps music is constantly playing, but then enter one area and it suddenly stops. Or a very low volume bass-like song begins to play. This too will cue the player to anticipate something.

If you want to rip music, rip wisely! You don’t want your player to be caught up in scares and suddenly a familiar song begins to play. What a way to ruin the tension! If it is very fitting, the player’s subconscious might forgive it and still be absorbed enough that it wasn’t a total mood breaker. Otherwise, when your player is supposed to be scared most by the unknown thing, they might say, “Hey! This song is from Brainlord when you are in the Platinum Tower! I remember how much trouble I had getting through the fourth floor!”

This being said, choose your music carefully. Popular sources may not be the best idea. You certainly don’t want to use music from other genres, unless you find one that is actually appropriate. For example, you wouldn’t want to use a Final Fantasy battle theme for your game! Not only has it been used way too many times by other people who ripped music for their games, it’ll easily kill the mood! If possible, find a good composer who can make some good music for you. If you have a good project going, they may compose some songs for you. Otherwise, look for some good ambient music and think of some chilling pieces you can use.

You must allow yourself to get a good understanding of sound and music. Find something, a game or movie and pay attention to how their use of sound and music scares you. It doesn’t work for you? Why? Consider typical slasher horror flicks. The same clichéd usage of sound and music. Since we know more or less what to expect and when, most of the surprise is gone. The less the player can predict correctly, the better.

A tip is to not use the sound and music scare methods of Hollywood franchises, such as Friday the 13^th or Nightmare on Elm Street. If you use sound in a similar method to these, people will already know what cheesy effects and sounds to expect. This also applies to how you attempt to scare people. The monster suddenly disappearing and then appearing right behind you without any explanation isn’t going to scare anyone if people know already that is what is going to happen.

Another thing to note however is that movies and games are different. In both mediums, you must use different methods of expression and immersion in order to draw in your audience/player. Thus, the same method of scary sounds used in a movie may not be as effective in a video game, and vice versa. Movies have to get their work done without giving the audience any control over what happens. They have to sit back and watch an event unfold. Your h’OHR’or game on the other hand, gives the player a certain degree of control. This brings us into the next thing to understand when creating your h’OHR’or game.

I can’t stop the nightmare!

How much control you give the player will dictate how you will have to work in making your game successful. Too much control will make things way too open ended and your player might get lost from going the wrong direction. Too little control and your player won’t feel like they’re playing a game, but watching a movie that teases you into thinking you can do something.

The right amount of control given to a player is important. Allowing your player to explore the horrific environment to an extent must be done well to scare them up. If they feel like they are trapped and isolated in a nightmare world, claustrophobia will set in and they will feel tension from being unable to escape. If your world takes place in a larger environment, you still want it to have an isolated feel or that they’re still locked into a horrific world. You may be able to walk the streets, but giant rockslides, deep crevasses and collapsed buildings prevent you from roaming freely.

Regardless of how it is done, the player must be trapped in the nightmare. There should not be a chance to easily retreat into a sunny happy place. It can be used to contrast the darker world, but the player still needs to be trapped in a nightmare enough the sunny place seems like a dream.

Not only must you trap them physically, but there must be motivation to keep them in the scary world. Missing kept you in the inn full of haunts and horrors because the main character was looking for his family. Silent Hill 2 kept you in the town because James was looking for his wife. Both of these games kept you going into horror after horror, each progressively scarier but confronted because of an emotional reason and motivation the character had to keep going.

However, that is not the only way to go. You can also throw them into the world and have them attempt to escape it. It is your choice whether they get further deeper into the horror, or try to escape it. Either way, the horrors need to escalate to keep things intense. However by giving a good reason to throw yourself into increasingly terrifying situations, your game may be more effective. Since you’re forcing the player to push themselves into something dangerous and frightening, it may work better than just having them run at first sight of something unworldly.

Once you have that down, consider how you will flesh out your game and how it will play. Will it be a bloodfest, where you run around killing as many monsters as possible? Or will it be a marathon, where you simply run away from the monsters? How will the battles be fought? Will using the OHR battle system take away from the tension? Or will you simply not be using it at all, causing deaths to be instantaneous by gruesome means? On the other hand you can use plotscripting to create a custom battle feature that may work better for your game.

How about difficulty? Horror usually dictates survival, thus survival-horror games. Most games have to have reasonable difficulty. Playtesting is very important, to decide how the balance is. Having others who don’t know how the game works playing it out and how much difficulty they have overall lets you know if you’re doing it right. Whether you trick the players into believing that they are barely making it through with dwindling supplies, or give them a ton of firepower but hoards of monsters, don’t let it become too easy or too difficult, unless you have intention to do so. Scatter items far and few. Don’t allow for infinite healing sources. Make monsters strong enough so they can take you out quickly, but you can beat them to the punch – just barely. These all add to feeling like you’re stretching the limits of their life and that you’re barely getting by.

You can also offer difficulty levels, and tweak the game accordingly. If a player doesn’t like things to be difficult because they don’t like challenges or their life has been that way - easy street, offering that choice may draw in more players. Making the game more challenging so that you can’t mess around may be more appealing to people who want the extra challenge or have beaten the game before at an easier setting and want to take it a step up.

Keep in mind that your game needs to have incentive for replayability if you want difficulty settings and such. Different branches and paths in the game, other playable characters, and multiple endings are usually good reasons. If your game has a lot of emphasis on storyline, a player might be motivated to play the game again because of the story. If there are many details and tidbits that are missed or meant to be missed the first time around, and your story is interesting enough, a person may play again to learn all the hidden meanings, contexts, etc.

Determine the length of your game. An epic? A short playthrough? Moderate length? Most of the OHR games that are considered to be good are of moderate length. An epic length horror game may be a bit much; it would mean you have to maintain the atmosphere and scares for much longer. Short lengths are great if you have an idea that would be like a short horror story. Most likely your game will either be of short or moderate length.

Any last words?

That’s about all I can say for now on how to make your h’OHR’or game. These are more guidelines to give you a general idea how to work flesh out your game, in hopes you will understand how to make your game scary and not feel like an amateur production that clearly doesn’t have enough understanding on how to make it h’OHR’or. The following are a couple of extra thoughts and tidbits that might be of use to you. I hope that you will find them useful.

PLAYTEST YOUR GAME. HAVE OTHERS PLAYTEST IT AS WELL. If you play your own game and find yourself reasonably scared or nervous, that’s good! Your own creation, even if you know what to expect, is scaring you. Of course, you could just be easily scared. Or maybe, you don’t find it scary at all. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. You don’t have to make yourself have a bad memory so you forget a demon pops out at a certain spot, and then you get surprised. This is what other people are for! Have other people play and find out how they reacted. If people do find the game atmosphere creepy or find themselves surprised now and then, that’s good! If not, see what can be done to make it better, and consider making use of their suggestions.
Remember what is scary to some may not be scary to others. Some people love Resident Evil but get bored to death by Silent Hill. Others may adore Silent Hill but don’t bother with Resident Evil. There are many important factors to what will scare people. Culture is an important factor. Ghost stories may have greater impact on Asians who grew up on them more than for someone who grew up on psycho killers from hell in America. A phobia for eyes may make your game full of bloodshot eyeballs a nightmare for one, but to another it may be an eye licking fetish dream come true.
Keeping this in mind, don’t try to satisfy everyone. Satisfy yourself, but keep others in mind, if you want to release your game to the public audience. Don’t worry if some people don’t think your game is scary, but if the majority thinks your h’OHR’or game lacks finesse, you better start taking some suggestions.
There are things most people in general are afraid of. The dark is always good. When you can’t see anything, your imagination takes hold and creates things to be hiding in there. Age. Not only do people not want to grow old and saggy, but when buildings are run down, deteriorating, and/or abandoned, it doesn’t feel as vibrant with life, it hints at old age which, soon follows with death. Claustrophobia is something you can take advantage of. Narrow confined spaces can be extra horrific in the right conditions. Especially when Americans need a lot more personal space than some of the other cultures, finding that such is restricted by gloomy walls closed in on you can be quite invasive!
Last but not least, let’s not forget the unknown! What is scarier than something you don’t know? Can’t see? Cannot comprehend? Why do people fear God? Sure you can say he’s there but... have you ever seen God? Are you supposed to be able to comprehend him? No. That’s pretty scary to me. An all powerful being that is so great and encompassing that it even is supposed to know how many times you thrust your hips during sex on average. Yet it can’t be seen, and we don’t truly know its purpose. Kind of gives you that tinge of fear, doesn’t it? Use the unknown to your advantage!
Generally you want your hero to be alone. If your hero is with a whole party of other fellers, it’s not as scary to face a zombie when you got three other helping hands with you. Even if your hero meets others, try to give reasons for them not to be assisting you, and if they are going to accompany you, compensate. Perhaps your companion is a helpless girl that couldn’t help you if you had to fight. Maybe you do have a couple of friends, but there are just HOARDS of monsters to deal with. Your companion could be out of sight, or end up meeting a gruesome end along the way, letting you know it could have been you.
Don’t forget the beginning is important. Establish a good atmosphere from the start, or gradually build up into it. Maybe it doesn’t start scary, but do some foreshadowing into what will be an ominous journey. Perhaps at first your player doesn’t see anything to be scared of, but soon start seeing reasons to be. However you do it, start it off right!
The ending should have a lot of thought put into it. Will this be where all the final answers are found, or where the last confrontation takes place? What finally happens? Does your hero reach a happy ending? The chaos ends, everyone is happy and birds sing and flowers dance? A partially happy ending, where not everything is bright sunshine? The world is at peace again, but the evil is still latent, and the hero is still plagued with recurring nightmares? Or maybe you just want it to be a total letdown where the world stays in chaos with little hope. Make sure the ending is in scale with the whole game. Unless you plan on hinting at the terrors being on a much grander scale than first thought, keep it in proportion.
This may be personal preference, but working on your game at night in darkness may help you. I work on my game between 11 PM and about 6 AM where it’s easiest to get into the h’OHR’or mood. Establishing a dark atmosphere may not be as easy in the sunny daylight, so if working on it at 12 PM isn’t working out for you, try drawing the curtains and huddling up in a shady corner. It might help.
Have fun making your game and getting scared! I hope this article will be of use to you and I get to see some creepy h’OHR’or works in the future!

Special thanks

This article contains some information derived from conversations with Orchard L/Friend who has given me tips on making games for the horror genre. A tidbit or two also regurgitates some information/opinions from Surlaw’s review of my Bloodlust game. Two articles, one using H.P. Lovecraft’s works while the other used popular horror games, as examples for horror that works have had influence on what I have written. A special thanks to the sources and the people mentioned in this little section!