Making Survival-Horror Games Scary: Part One

Many recent survival-horror games like Dead Space succeed in creating some frightening moments, but they don't maintain that environment throughout the entire experience. Part of this is because many survival-horror games are now basically action games that replace enemy soldiers with enemy monsters. A monster becomes much less scary when you can focus your mind on how you're going to be killing it with a pistol or shotgun as opposed to how you're going to survive the next few minutes. However, it's still possible to create a frightening experience with a well-armed player. Even Resident Evil 4, one of the best recent titles I can think of, could be greatly improved with a few changes.

Areas for improvement

1. Don't turn off the scary music after all the enemies are dead.
Whenever an enemy appears, some tension building background music turns on. Unfortunately, as soon as you kill the last enemy in the area it immediately turns off. This lets you know you are safe. This is a problem when you're trying to make a player feel frightened through your game. It would have been better to keep that music going so that the player still has to keep looking around, not knowing if there are more enemies in the area. For a really clever move, perhaps one or two enemies have one of their legs injured so they show up after the player thinks all the enemies are dead. Then they stab him in the back while they're distracted picking up all the items off the ground from the dead foes.

2. The scariest enemy is the one you don't see
Resident Evil 4 does do a better job with this than some games. There are a couple of boss fights where you have to run through an area completing a puzzle while dodging an enemy who attacks from the shadows. However, in later parts of the game many enemies stand right out in an open, well-lit area like the game changed into Call of Duty.


Such as this fellow who shoots at you with a humongous Gatling gun.

Ideally, you want the player to be dreading moving forward in the game. If they don't know where an enemy is attacking them from, that will certainly limit their desire to keep advancing. In comparison, if you know there's an enemy right behind that barrel up ahead, you can form a strategy of how to deal with him. When you don't know if he's behind the barrel, in the dumpster, behind the creates, or right behind you, uncertainty is added, creating tension.

One of the most frightening parts of Resident Evil 4 was when nightfall came in the village. During the day, it wasn't that hard to see the villagers. Once night falls, you're defending yourself from more indistinct shapes.

Although the ones holding torches give their position away.

Additionally, if the enemies are concealed and come out of nowhere you get the additional benefit of startling the player. Even things that aren't frightening at all become scary when they come out of nowhere. When I saw Avatar in 3D the first few ashes from the big tree burning down certainly startled me when they came out of the corner of my vision.


AAAAHHHH! Oh that's part of the movie.

3. Cut out the exposition on the origin of the monsters
One reason many people hated the prequels to the Star Wars series was that it offered an unnecessary explanation for how the Force worked that seemed ridiculous.


You're not really special Anakin, it's just the midichlorians in your blood.

A large part of the appeal for the first three films to be released was that the Force was mysterious and you felt like Luke Skywalker was figuring it out himself as the series progressed. When the mystery was ruined in the prequels, many people were upset.

Similarly, Resident Evil 4 offers an unnecessary and somewhat ridiculous explanation for why all the villagers and mutated monsters have been created. Oh, some weird fossils they found in the village ended up infecting everyone and making them into mindless slaves of Lord Sadler, their leader.


The source of all evil.

Just as concealing the physical form of monsters from the player's view increases the tension and atmosphere of a game significantly, avoiding an explanation of the source of the monsters helps a lot as well. It's similar to how the Black Death worked in Europe. Everyone was scared out of their minds because they had no idea why half their village was dying every day. If they had known that it was caused by bacteria, they probably would not have been as frightened. Even if nothing can be done about a problem, knowing the cause of it reduces the fear of it dramatically. Especially when you have to contort the nature of reality to a ludicrous extent for your explanation.

With these three additions to gameplay and story, most horror games should easily succeed in increasing their effect on the player's psyche. In the next section of this bit I will mention what Resident Evil 4 does well, items that should also be featured in every horror game.

Click here to view Part Two