Hello! I’m trying to make a horror game where you progress through randomly generated rooms and it just doesn’t feel scary at all. Here are some videos showing this:
and although it would be dark when you play the game, it still just doesn’t look scary. I don’t want it to look like gorey kinda scary as I’m not going for that style.
Maybe you can try making the player slower or have a stamina system where they can use to run for a moment to progress faster and run away from the monster. You could also try making the map a bit tighter or claustrophobic?
If not then you can make it generate certain place that’s big like stadium so that might make the player paranoid from any sudden jumpscares or monsters approaching
As for the monsters i guess you can just adjust that yourself and the rest is up to you. I recommend adding more type of monsters and make them unique in their own way.
Adding “pressure” to players is a great way of making a player feel “uncomfortable”.
Examples being random ambient sounds playing in fixed areas, making the player assume something might happen even though its just noise. Random events happening that don’t really do anything of the sort other than scaring/adding atmosphere. And preventing the player from standing in one location for too long.
DOORS is a great example of handling all of those things fairly well with ambient noises making players uncomfortable and scared, events that prevent players from camping, and random spooks/events that don’t really do anything other than catch the player off guard.
Adding pressure in the terms of the monster’s ability is also another way of amping the scariness, make the player be forced to crouch very close to the monster/stand still, breathing mechanics, running stamina mechanic, sight, speed, etc.
However, avoid constantly pressuring the player/attempting to make them scared at every inch. This will just tire the player out rather than making the game fun.
Tight spaces can also make the player uncomfortable as @Lefty_gamer07 pointed out.
