Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

the re2make is actualy really good about having a relatable Leon. Every time he misses he curses just like the player probably would.

I mean, probably the best Lovecraftian Horror game so far is Eternal Darkness, and even that (eventually) had a pretty happy ending.

Good has to triumph over evil eventually,it's part and parcel of making satisfying ending really,the player has fought all this way to earn it

It could very much be argued that Lovecraftian Horror is simply incompatible with a Video Game narrative.

@Very Vile Villain: And yet plenty of Po C authors were influenced by his stories (a prize named in his honor was renamed not long ago thanks to this very fact), and there was even a book who used Lovecraft narrative beats to explore what is like to live in a racist society.

So while Lovecraft's ideas indeed came from a very ugly place they still ressonate with people from all walks of life, and they are flexible enough to be used in a lot of different stories.

In a Lovecraftian story, the protagonist "succeeds" by emerging relatively sane from the experience. While minor victories may be possible, there is no real chance of winning anything significant against the dark forces of the cosmos.

It is indeed hard to make a compelling narrative if you can't offer the catharsis of victory in some form or another, but plenty of works have attempted this. Heck, the horror genre is based on the idea that, while you may stop the supernatural killer for the moment, they'll be back again soon enough.

Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy only really comes into play if we can't sympathize with any of the characters, including the protagonist(s). Personally, I think that game developers are just afraid to try.

His horror also relies a ton at telling that something is maddeningly horrifying. A video game has to show and that is a tall fucking order.

Making a proper horror game with elements from hpl is totally doable, but trying to entirely encapsulate his stuff isn't going to work out. Concessions and changes will be needed in heavy enough doses that it'll be just different kind of horror in the end.

A big problem comes from the fact that a human has to interact with the game, which creates some fundamental dichotomies. The player must be challenged by some core mechanics, and managing those mechanics, whatever they are, inherently takes the player out of the psychological experience of the game itself.

"How do I manage my Sanity Meter? Well, it goes down when I look at the gibbering horror, so I have to hide to recover it." You've turned the encounter with the monster, which is supposed to be frightening, into a mechanical act of gameplay. You're distracting the player from being afraid.

Relatedly, these stories need to build the tension over the course of the game. If you empty the closet of your horror tricks in the first act, or dump the player into a cauldron of gibbering monstrosities and tell them to settle in for the long haul, any emotional impact will be long gone by the time you have to deliver a climax that supposedly counts on the player being afraid.

For a horror game to be effective, the player must be motivated to fear the monsters organically. Like in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, where you can't effectively fight, you know the monster is around and hunting for you, and you don't know where it is OH MY GOD IT'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU. You aren't carrying the monster's laundry back from the cleaners or escorting its babies to the nursery. It doesn't jump out of a cupboard, scream at you for a second, then take a coffee break.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 25th 2019 at 4:40:45 AM

Yeah, Sanity Meter is death to horror tension. So, Kill it first.

In, say, Cultist Simulator, the sanity management of Dread and Fascination fits, because in that game you are playing a scholar of the occult, who is delving purposefully and knows they need to compose themself. And it is a game of resource management rather than of horror.

But in a horror game proper, no meter. Just subtly insert hallucinations and such if the player is careless. Hell, there is a lot of narrative options there. Have it open up visions in some places, sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Don't even need a game over, just leave the player in total dementia realm. And the 100% completionists can have themselves a riiich field of exploring gradations of insanity.

Doom 3 fails as a survival horror, it has an identity crisis of a sort.

It abused monster closets which were far better in Descent.

Or take Resident Evil 2 as an example, since we were just talking about it. Tension in the game comes from several factors, and the gore isn't one of them. First, you have limited resources, and killing every single monster dead means you'll run out and be dry later. So you have to choose when to use your resources, balancing short-term survival with long-term.

Thus, when a monster attacks you, the tension isn't just about whether your character will survive; it's also about whether you'll waste too much time or ammo fighting it. The gameplay tension and the story tension balance perfectly. When a monster bites you, it's frightening not just because of what it is but because of what it represents: a consumed healing item that you may not have if another monster gets a hit in.

Much of the tension is set up through fear of the unknown: zombies are banging at the windows, and you know they'll get in if you don't board them up, but you don't know when, and you don't have enough boards to stop them all. Will one of those zombies that you didn't block grab you later when you're evading a licker? If you evade it instead of killing it, will you have to fight it again?

Put another way, while the player is trying to survive the game, the characters are trying to survive the story, creating Gameplay and Story Integration that causes the fear to synergize.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 25th 2019 at 2:38:38 PM

Jim Sterling did a video once where he argues that Bloodborne had far more in common, mechanics wise, with the Survival Horror genre than many other horror games of the time:

Speaking of, I wonder why they never did any collabs anymore.

> Doom 3 fails as a survival horror, it has an identity crisis of a sort.

Bullshit,it's wonderfully atmospheric horror game,it's just..an incredibly dark interpretation of Doom,I get the complaints,Doom was full of colour,Doom 3 is dark and gloomy,it's different.

At least Descent could justify monster closets, given that they're robots and don't need to stretch, sleep, or eat. Monster spawners, not so much.

Matcens? They literally materialize robots

Using what, Star Trek replicators? It's jarringly incongruous with the other technology evident in the games. Sure, it's a game, I get it. Just sayin'.

At least the flaming zombie in RE 4 is justified by it being RE4

Another issue is that madness is inhernetly a Tell Dont Show thing because even if successful, works that drive the audience mad are a big no-no unless you're going for an SCP entry.

I feel like Shinji Mikami summed up the main thing with survival horror a while back in that the human eventually adapts to situations. While playing a game initially you're panicking, but after a while you observe behaviors and try to come up with a plan in a cool-headed manner. Remake 2 itself after going 50% through becomes a game of improvising escape routes and baiting enemies to save on supplies. In a way, the zombies become puzzle piece. It's ultimately about adapting and overcoming your weakness. As flawed as Sinking City is in some cosmic horror aspects (though I believe the game is still a great detective thriller, which is practically is mechanically) there is a reason games like it keep that stuff in the ending. Basically, trying to imitate Lovecraft literally in video games isn't always the best idea. Take some inspiration and figure things out from there.

Dark Corners of the Earth is the most offensive one frankly because the main character arm wrestles lesser eldritch beings then just goes mad way after the fact over a less horrific thing. That ending was goddamn laughable.

Edited by UltraWanker on Jul 26th 2019 at 12:46:18 PM

The amusing thing about Lovecraft's work is that he too wrote what is today perceived as Lovecraft Lite, as did his contemporaries (chiefly Howard's Conan the Barbarian, who slaughters an unnamed creature of non-euclidean shape once a week). It's nothing egregious like bench-pressing a shoggoth or anything, but both The Call of Cthulhu and The Dunwich Horror, to name a few examples, end with a decisive victory for the humans, as far as it's possible to "win" against Cthulhu in the former.

To go back to games, Sanity Meter, by virtue of being a statistic, really has no place in a game that wouldn't normally rely on statistics beyond maybe the most basic ones like health points. Horror games IMO should rely on simple binary systems (assuming you cannot just fight off the threat); you either hide or run or otherwise dissuade the monster or you die.

Alternatively, have a sanity meter, but make it slowly go up over the course of the game regardless of the player's actions.

So a time limit, then.

Nevermind.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jul 28th 2019 at 6:12:55 PM

So a time limit, then.

No I meant one tied to your progression through the game. It's not meant to be a loss condition at all, just a way to raise the tension.

So remember how we spent so long discussing the ways Lovecraftian Story Beats could fit a video game narrative and mechanics?

Well, turns out Tetris, of all things, had beaten us to the punch decades ago:

Ernest Hemingway once said something to the effect of "perfection lies in simplicity".

Well, maybe not him, exactly, but the man would certainly agree with the sentiment.

Either way, turns out that applies to much more than just literature.

that's just a fake mechanic designed to give the illusion of player interactivity without actually having to make the effort of making it interactive. "things get worse as the game goes on" is just a difficulty curve. it doesn't need an on-screen representation.