Survival Horror as a Genre

Survival Horrors have been capturing the hearts of gamers as early as the 1980s. Some of those pixelated boogiemen were just too much for audiences to take! As the years progressed, the technology used to perfect the thrills and chills only improved, adding to the audio and visuals that make players squirm. However, it isn’t only the technology that has improved. Much of what scares humans come down to our basic psychology and developers are getting better and better at plucking just the right strings.

Games like Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly knew exactly how to tease fear without resorting to excessive violence or jump scares. Other games, like Outlast, have almost no combat whatsoever, cementing one of the two biggest concepts of survival horrors: you don’t need combat to be a game. The second important element to good survival horror is the narrative; why and what you’re trying to overcome.

Gameplay

Many survival horrors have little to no combat. Rather than that, they tend to be coupled with puzzle or stealth games, as the intent is not to interact with the enemy at all. Part of what makes a horror game horrific is the feeling of helplessness that the player has. If they were able to blast away any of their fears with ease, the enemy would hardly be threatening. Instead, the player spends their time trying to duck and weave through whatever obstacles there are without being caught, usually piecing together the mystery of what is going on along the way. In traditional stealth games, the player feels like the intimidation factor. Being caught just feels like a game over mechanic, not a horrific mistake. This is also why there needs to be more depth than just an instant-death when caught in a horror game. The player needs to fear being caught more than they are annoyed with starting over.

That isn’t to say combat cannot be included, such as Fatal Frame's “Camera Obscura,” mechanic, but it needs to be done carefully. The focus, by definition of the genre, should be surviving, yet many games seem to understand that incorrectly. Sneaking around in Metal Gear Solid is much different than sneaking in Outlast. Both could have similar mechanics, but what is conveyed to the player is much different. Sneaking isn’t supposed to feel like part of your toolkit of abilities. It should feel chaotic and random, forcing the player to scramble as they would in real life. Sprinting away from a lunatic with an axe does not cement the feeling of fear, it merely reinforces the need to survive. But, isn’t that what all videogames are? Even The Sims has a death mechanic, yet you wouldn’t call that a survival horror. That’s why the narrative is incredibly important.

Storytelling

The setting the player finds themselves in is just as important as what they are doing. Often, the player’s character is a standard human being in order to help the player get a connection with them. That means the character is vulnerable, slow, and prone to being afraid by, well, scary things. If the character doesn’t feel fear, why should the player? The flood in Halo are horrible zombies, yet being the Master Chief means you fear nothing, making the flood less intimidating. Likewise, if the player is sneaking through a well-lit rose garden with peaceful music, nothing in the human brain is triggered to be intimidated. We naturally fear the dark, low rumbles, and unexpected clatter. Keeping the player’s fight-or-flight instincts on constant alert is a great way to keep them immersed without changing anything else.

The player should also have an overall goal. Be it to stop a horrific monster or discover the origins of a great evil, the player has to want something from their situation. Simply wanting to escape doesn’t give them a long-term goal. Much like a murder mystery, if the audience is given no new information throughout the entire story until the end, there was no point in the rest of the journey. Grim fascination is what keeps players wanting more. They are terrified, but if they could just go a little further in the darkness, they may solve the problem. This is especially helpful when the player’s character feels this way, as it helps the player desire the same goal. Some of the most frustrating moments in gaming are when the character could escape, but they choose not to because they need to see how the story plays out. That’s great writing.

Great Example

Fatal Frame II handles this genre beautifully. From the music to the lighting, everything just feels eerie. The gameplay has the player creeping through an abandoned village of cultists looking for their missing sister. This already has a great setting, as the player has plenty to assume when it comes to kidnapping cultists. Looking for their sister also sets the stage for their main objective. The player isn’t trapped, they simply must keep going. Throughout their trek, they encounter all the lost souls that have been trapped in the village, giving rise to hiding sequences, mystery-solving, and plenty of terrifying imagery.

They also did their gameplay brilliantly. The “combat” in the game is to look the enemy straight in the face. The longer the player stares at the ghosts with a zoomed-in camera, the better damage they can deal to them. This forces the player not to run in fear, but instead confront the hideous figures before them. However, many of the enemies cannot be defeated this way, and force the player into hiding. This mixture of almost being able to fight back yet not keeps the player constantly on their toes.

Not So Great Example

It’s debatable what is considered a “good” or a “bad” horror game, as the experience is purely subjective. Personally, the difference between a good horror game like Fatal Frame II and a bad one is how they handle the horror. Any time I think of bad qualities in horror, I think back on a phrase by stand-up comedian Jeremy Kaplowitz who says that jump scares are to horror as tickling is to comedy. Forced reactions are not what keeps you up at night, rather the phycological implications behind it. This is where I think some games got it wrong, like Outlast.

Outlast’s biggest mistake is that they set the world very well, but then fall short of the experience itself. The story is creepy, the setting is disturbing, and the mechanics reinforce all of this. However, much of the fear in the game is just jump scares. That’s where the short-term adrenaline might spook the player for a moment, but they won’t lose any sleep over it. The phycological side of the game is that the player has to watch gruesome torture scenes and imagery. Once again, while this does elicit a visceral response in the player, there is nothing subtle or clever about gore and violence. No matter what you do with the setting or the story, if you show the player inhuman cruelty it is going to cause a reaction. But, in this writer’s opinion, that isn’t the kind of fear that leaves the viewer begging for more. Doing it once or twice to set the stage for the rest of the experience is one thing, but if torture is the experience, it's not horror anymore. It’s just a well-rendered visual of violence for the sake of it.

Overall

Horror games take a lot of patience and fine-tuning. Just the slightest sound out of tune can completely break the immersion for the player, warping it from horrific to campy. However, with proper setting, both visually and audibly, you can leave the player feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable without a single enemy or actual threat. There is always a small, dark itching in the back of our minds that tells us to go into the lightless room or bottomless pit, so it’s up to the designer to draw upon that feeling with good mechanics and proper motivations. But, just writing this alone while listening to mood music has given me chills, so I think I’ll hide under my blankets for now. Thanks for reading!