Hello, DevForum Members! Recently, I have been placing my time and attention towards making a horror-based game, and I am interested in any ideas or suggestions that would add to that horror feel. Not for my game in particular, but the horror genre as a whole. When you think about it, what really makes a horror game? The spooky jump scares, the ambiance? But none of that is really modernized in my opinion, when I play a horror game nowadays on Roblox, it always starts with a 2D undetailed GUI that pops up, and it does this quite a feel times throughout the gameplay.
So here I am, asking; what makes a horror game, and how can a horror game be more creative, realistic, spooky and engaging? Please let me know, I am really interested.
What makes a horror game.
Now that’s a good question. Some examples I can point to would be Silent Limbo and ROT9P.
Let’s start off with analysing what makes Silent limbo good. You start out like any other roblox game, standing in a random spot. One of the first things you’ll notice is the nice music playing. This music builds great ambience while it’s there. After some time you’ll do something that triggers an event. Dueing this event the scarecrow that you’ve seen before and are familiar with now trys to attack you whenever you get to far out of bounds. Now you are trapped in your house with an impending sense of doom.
Realm of the 9 portals. You start out on an island, relaxing music playing along with angelic lighting when outside. The whole area looks calm. Once you enter your first portal you the whole scenery changes, no music any more only cold ambience. Now with limited FOV you have to use a torch to make your way through without knowing what is ahead. Their is no real threat in the first realm but it has you constantly on edge as it taunts you.
A good horror game needs good atmosphere, this is built with lighting and music (and ambient sounds). Another large part is change of scenery, letting the player get a feel for what is around them then throwing them in a totally different environment will put them on edge. Along with that both of them brought new idea’s to the table unlike the piggy or camping clones.
Thank you for commenting on my post, I have been in deep need of some ideas and concepts to furthermore establish a create horror feel. This sure has helped to that establishent.
Of course, I’ll provide a photo however, I am primarily thinking of ideas on the large scale image of the horror community! Unfortunately, this image only shows a small minority of the game, so if you would like a greater feel. You can play through the game here: Gloomy - Roblox
I think it really depends on each person, what it makes a horror game.
It also depends on the type of horror, but mainly on camera positioning and sounds effects.
It’s really known, that sound effects are much worse than visual effects.
For sure 90% jumpscares are visual, but If you will think about it when you’re sitting on the chair and you’re really relaxed, and then someone will just yell and you get scared.
I really recommend to use high quality sound effects for this.
Also, camera positioning and If you’re going to make some monster, be sure to give him the best animations, It will make it much scarier.
But It really depends on the theme, but be sure of these sound effects!
That is quite interesting. This current atmosphere is inside the tunnel so there is not much fog however maybe I can implement some on the outside area and even from the pipe exposures. And the vines, and spiders I had no idea to think of, even though it is one of the most realistic things in that scenario, so thanks!
Fog is very fitting for the area it’s in, a somewhat wet tunnel, and with roblox’s update which is coming soon it does seem like a very good option to add.
In my opinion a horror game needs a good story. Having a good story will make the players more interested in it. I’ve seen many horror games in roblox before but most of them have bad or no story to them making me lose interest. Other than the story you need to have good ui that matches the theme of the game, i recommend going for a dark ui and not something bright. Another important thing is the sounds, having some creepy sounds in it will definitely make it better.
