One of the best ways to scare someone is to catch them off guard. If you let someone know something scary will happen, you give them the chance to mentally prepare for it. Most people will strengthen their mental defences whether intentionally or not; it’s an unconscious response they have no control over.
It’s the aim of all horror games to scare the people who play them. Unfortunately, while there are definitely some great horror games out there, all horror games fail to take their players entirely by surprise, and thus they fail to maximise their potential for evoking terror. They fail because every horror game advertises itself as a horror game. By letting players know the game will scare them, they will be able to prepare themselves mentally for the scares to come. And so, when scary things start happening, it won’t be a surprise. The player will miss out on what could be have been genuine shock and confusion if they had not been told to expect anything scary before they started playing the game.
It follows that the scariest horror game would not advertise itself as a horror game. It would promote itself as something else, something relaxing, wholesome, or mundane: an innocent-looking walking simulator, an environmental exploration game, a routine delivery game, or some kind of quiet puzzle game. Players would go into such games not expecting them to try to scare them. The scares and spooks, when they finally come, would be unexpected. If introduced gradually and cleverly, players would not even realise the game was priming them for a horror experience before it was too late.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the game that made me want to write this post (spoilers ahead for those who haven’t played it – I highly recommend it). I went into it thinking it was a walking simulator. I’d seen a tiny bit of gameplay on YouTube beforehand. Based on this and the screenshots advertising the game, I expected a peaceful scenic experience with realistic graphics and limited crime scene mechanics.
For the first few hours, this is what I got. The game sets you in a picturesque valley on your own. There are crime scenes here and there and your goal is to find pieces of evidence and fit together a timeline at each crime scene. I only spent a small fraction of my time doing this, though. Most of my time I spent wandering around and looking at the beautiful scenery.
The valley where the game is set is modelled off a real-life valley using 3D imaging. The graphics are as close to photorealistic as I’ve ever seen. Zooming in on the ground, walls, or the surfaces of objects large and small reveals not flat, blurry textures, as you’d find in most games, but vivid, topographical surfaces, almost as real-looking as the real thing. Everything looked just as good zoomed out; the lighting, the particle effects, the sound of the gentle wind and the swaying foliage and the trickle of the water against the pebbled shore, and the music that occasionally played over it all was perfect, and I was happy to lose myself in this atmosphere for hours on end.
From time to time, I came across an abandoned building. This was not a surprise – the game had not taught me to expect any NPCs except the ghosts you see in the crime scene reconstructions. Even still, abandoned places are creepy by their nature. There’s something about empty, deteriorating places, the sense of history they hold, the nostalgia they make you feel, the mysteries they may hide, that makes them somewhat unsettling places to explore. Entering these buildings changed the game’s mood, taking me from happy relaxation and admiration of nature to claustrophobic unease and curious nostalgia for the inhabitants I never knew.
Leaving these buildings was always a relief. Exploring them was enjoyable, but the strength of their emotive effect relied on contrast with the openness of the green outdoors beneath the shining sun.
You couldn’t yet describe The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as a horror game, though. It’s had a few moments of slight unease, and the whole game is distinctly eery because of how isolated and lonely it makes you feel. But nothing in the game had been outright scary. There had only been the element of loneliness, which could be exploited to great effect if the game chose to do so. And it did.
After four hours of wandering around, exploring buildings, piecing together evidence of crimes, and getting lost, I realised the next place to go was a cave. I was getting tired, but I wanted to keep going. I’d loved the game so far and wanted to finish it in one sitting, no matter how long it took.
So I entered the cave. Dark and claustrophobic tunnels delved deep into the Earth. Subterranean wind moaned through vacant passageways. I found a minecart rail system and structures for storing and transporting coal. I think I had to open a door, or I had to get around a collapsed section of tunnel. I can’t remember. All I remember is I had to go deeper into the Earth, following a staircase down to a new set of tunnels.
These tunnels were different. There was a note on the wall of the entrance. A warning. Inside the tunnels proper, there were lit candles all over the place, casting pale yellow light on the walls and bringing into relief the shadowed crevices of the stone. Even with the candlelight, it was very dark. I went inside, not knowing what to expect, and feeling more creeped out than ever.
And then I heard a noise. I looked where the noise came from and saw a shape. There was a creature in the tunnels. It was coming towards me, hunting me. I was so startled and afraid that I didn’t know what to do for a moment. And then I ran.
I had to do a puzzle to progress through the mines. To finish it, I had to explore a maze of tunnels, some of which led to dead-ends. All the while I had to avoid this monster I had barely glimpsed and knew nothing about.
It’s hard to put into words how scared I was. It was only a video game, but this monster had caught me so utterly by surprise that I struggled to rationalise it. The whole section was basically a rip-off of similar sections in Amnesia – a monster chasing you through dark, winding corridors and jumping into clear view on the screen when it catches you (it caught me once or twice). But I can’t remember being as scared in Amnesia – a horror game – as I was in the mines of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a game I’d thought was only a walking simulator.
I struggled with the puzzle for a while, maybe too long. I was terrified the entire time, even after I got caught and had to start again. When I finally made it out, I was shaken, and soon after I decided I was too tired to keep playing. I turned off the game and resolved to finish it the next day.
The effect of that mine section was so powerful that I still remember it all these years later. This is the power of genuinely unexpected horror.
In a self-described horror game, you expect to be scared. You may not be able to predict each scare, but you know scares are coming and you’re somewhat prepared. But you can’t prepare yourself if a game does not advertise its intent to scare you. The horror, if it’s good horror, catches you off guard completely and induces the most fantastic sense of vulnerability and fear.
Now imagine if more games took advantage of this technique.
Gone Home is a game where you walk around a house, look at objects, and piece together the story of the people who lived there. It’s not a horror game, but it could have been. The game occurs entirely in a big house with a storm raging in the night outside. You wander the gloomily lit corridors, alone, exploring the rooms, picking up objects, and learning the stories of the people who lived there. All the while the wind is howling, the rain rattling on the glass, and the house creaking with age.
The game never hits you with anything outright scary. But the fact that you’re isolated in a large, empty house, with a storm going on outside, for hours on end, naturally put me on edge, as it did with many others.
After several hours, the mood was ripe for a good scare. I can imagine walking into the kitchen, feeling calm and immersed in the big, comfy house, and then coming to a sudden stop at the sight of a dark figure standing at the far end of the room, dripping wet, his face hidden in shadow, an axe in his hand, the sound of his ragged breath barely audible over the muffled wind and rain.
I hoped something like this would happen as I played. Even now, thinking of the image of it makes me shiver. But why should it? It’s a totally cliché image, after all. I mean, really? An axe-wielding murderer?
But that’s the point: if you saw such a figure in your home, you’d be plunged into a primal terror. How cliché the figure was would not matter. In a horror game, you expect to see scary things, so cliched enemies are less likely to affect you. You’ve seen them before. But in a scenario where you don’t expect to be scared, even the most overused threats can catch you off your guard. Gone Home – with its lighting, sound design, and drawn-out sense of isolation – primes the player, unintentionally or not, for a terrifically good scare.
But in the end, Gone Home doesn’t go for it. It isn’t a horror game, nor did it want to be. It had other goals in mind. As much as it aches me to dwell on this missed opportunity, it would be unfair to criticise Gone Home for not capitalising on its potential for terror when that’s not what the developers wanted it to be.
They could have, though, and that’s the point. Why don’t we have more games that advertise themselves as one thing, and indeed play like you’d expect for hours on end, while subtly priming you for an intense horror experience, before plunging you into a nightmare you aren’t prepared for? The obligation for advertisments to be truthful? Okay, that is a pretty good reason. How ironic that too much honesty in advertising is the issue here.
‘Priming’ the player to be scared is essential. Any game could suddenly throw a jump scare at the player, or something gory, or threaten the player with death. That doesn’t mean it’ll be scary. To be scared, you must be on edge, even if you don’t realise it. The difference between a non-horror game like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and a horror game like Amnesia is that in Amnesia you know you have good reason to be scared, whereas in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter you’re constantly telling yourself that there’s no reason to be afraid, and you genuinely believe it … until the game proves you wrong.
If a game has a colourful cartoonish with a silly tone, a sudden shift towards horror probably won’t work as well as a game with a more realistic graphical style and moodier atmosphere. Isolation is a crucial part of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Gone Home, and most other walking simulators; that’s what makes walking simulators such good vehicles for unexpected horror.
Unfortunately, not everyone will appreciate horror being hidden in their games. Judging by reviews, many people were frustrated by The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’s horror section. It’s easy to imagine many people would’ve been upset if Gone Home had also included a horror section. The type of person to play what they think will be a relaxing game may be the easiest to scare, but they’re also likely to be the most unappreciative of unexpected scares.
Most horror games advertise themselves as such because people like to know what they’re getting. It makes sense of course, but it is unfortunate that the genre that benefits the most from surprising the player, the horror genre, is also the genre that people would most like to be warned about beforehand.
What games do you think would be a perfect fit for unexpected horror? A game that already exists? Or one you came up with yourself?
Here’s one idea off the top of my head:
A delivery game set in a remote mountain region. You drive trucks up and down winding mountainside roads. The weather is often misty and drizzly. You go alone, but you feel safe inside your vehicle. Other than the gloomy atmosphere, it’s like any other trucking game. You stop off at hotels, petrol stations, and delivery locations and get out of your truck to perform the routine tasks of getting into bed, refuelling your truck, handing off and picking up deliveries – simple on-foot sequences more trucking games should have.
After several hours you get sent to the most remote region, up a long and steep road. The delivery is to be made at night, and as you make your wearisome way up the road the rain falls hard, and you can barely see anything beyond the headlights. You’re tense because you don’t want to miss the next turn and tumble over the edge. You don’t realise you’re being primed.
Once you get to the plateau at the top of the road you stop outside the shadowed building and get on foot to search for the recipient of the delivery. The towering trees push in on all sides of the plateau. The building is large and ramshackle with vines crawling up the walls and a single murky window on the top storey illuminated through thin curtains by a dim white light. It all looks quite creepy, but the game has shown no intention of being anything other than a truck delivery game in your several hours of play. Yes, the place is creepy, but that doesn’t mean anything. Gone Home was creepy too, but its creepiness was incidental. It wasn’t a horror game, and neither is this.
The way to deliver parcels is to knock on the front doors of the buildings. Someone always answers and greets you with a bit of dialogue. So, falling into the familiar routine, you knock on the door. You wait.
No one answers.
You knock again.
Again, no one answers.
You knock again … and the door creaks open. You stand and wait for someone to appear, but no one does. You can’t see anything through the crack.
You push on the door and step inside…
I better stop there. If I keep going I’ll end up writing a novella. You can make up the rest yourself, or you can brainstorm an unexpectedly scary game idea of your own.
I’d love to hear what you come up with.