Why horror games are so scary

You creep through an abandoned building—alone, except for the thing that you hunt, and that hunts you. You stay quiet, keeping to the shadows between flickering electric lights. The silence is oppressive, until…crash. A monster bursts through the wall, unnatural, tormented, enraged.

You run like hell.

Jump scares are common to great horror video games, from Alien: Isolation to Outlast to The Evil Within. But no matter how often you encounter them, the moment rarely fails to scare the crap out of you.

Alan Wake 2, which releases on the Epic Games Store on October 27, features just such moments. But like many horror games, it doesn't just rely on jump scares to scratch your horror itch. The art of fear is all about finding the right balance—populating games with scary stuff, while avoiding the tropes, cliches, and schlock that tip horror into mirthful derision, or that are just so damned terrifying that you really don't want to continue playing.

"The more people who are jumping out of their seats, the more that means we've done a good job," says Alan Wake 2 Game Director Kyle Rowley. "But we don't want it to be like, 'Oh my god, I can't go on because I'm just petrified of the thing that's coming at me.’ We want them to enjoy the dread and the feeling of unease. We want them to get through that barrier."

Alan Wake 2 is the story of FBI agent Saga Anderson, who is sent to a small town to investigate grisly ritual murders—and also the continuing story of a horror fiction author, the eponymous Alan Wake, who is trying to write his way out of captivity in a nightmarish "dark place.” It's a psychological drama designed to unsettle you in a bunch of ways, making use of techniques ranging from careful story pacing to weird lighting to strange sound effects to horrid creature design to creepy artifact placement.

Players take on the role of both Anderson and Wake as they try to survive frightening monsters—both real and psychological—and resolve their individual missions. The tale of a man who is both writing a horror story and inside a terrifying world allowed the developers at Remedy Entertainment to make free with their favorite scary game design tricks.

Their best ally is relying on your own fears. "When it comes to the narrative, it's about putting the player off kilter," says Alan Wake 2's Principal Narrative Designer Molly Maloney. "Oftentimes, great horror is about telling the player just enough so they have to use their imagination to fill in the gaps. Their own explanation of what is going on is often creepier and scarier than anything we've written."

Chad Holcomb is the designer of Blood Hunting, which releases October 27 as well. Blood Hunting is about a boy who tries to find out how his parents were murdered—and who encounters strange answers when he begins his investigations. "People are uneasy when they come across something that is unknown, unexplainable, unfamiliar," says Holcomb.

"Horror games, at their best, are good at concealment—whether through visual elements like fog, or when you're in a dark room with nothing but a flashlight. It all adds to the suspense and the sense of fear, especially when there's an escalation that causes anxiety and moves you from one layer of unease to a much higher level of terror."

A big challenge for Holcomb and other horror game developers is "trying to make the experience unique and different from what you've seen before."

"Players who have a lot of experience with horror games are disappointed when they know what's coming next,” says Holcomb. “They aren't interested in games that just do jump scares or that have over-the-top jump scares every time you unlock a door or turn on a light. What I try to do is mix things up and create an altogether new experience."

Like most horror game designers, Holcomb makes use of elements that are commonly frightening to people. "My wife, for example, is scared of spiders," he says. "But what's even scarier to her is an unfamiliar insect of some kind. When you go exploring in Blood Hunting, you might come across surprising things that aren't necessarily monsters, but that make you feel uncomfortable and cause fear because they're like something that many of us find frightening—but additionally, they're unfamiliar."

Sound effects are essential for creating the right kind of atmosphere. Fredrik Olsson, Creative Lead on Amnesia: The Bunker and Amnesia: Rebirth at Frictional Games, recently revealed one reason why those games instill such a sense of disquiet among players.

In Amnesia: The Bunker, players make use of a generator that creates light and keeps the monster from attacking. "As long as the generator is running in Amnesia: The Bunker, there's something called a Shepard tone running at very low volume in the background," Olsson tweeted. "A Shepard tone basically creates an illusion of a sound that continuously ascends or descends.”

"The purpose of the Shepard tone is to add an extra sense of tension and suspense.” Olsson continued. “We went with a descending version of the Shepard tone, adding to the feeling of the generator fuel running out. The volume is intentionally set extremely low, almost making it subconscious, and you need to listen really carefully in order to hear it…We believe the contrast of no longer hearing the Shepard tone helps add punch to the moments when the lights suddenly go out.”

Low-level modulating background hums are disturbing, but an ominous quiet can also be creepy as hell. Barış Tarımcıoğlu is Creative Director of a new console game, Venatrix, which is coming to PC in a few months time.

"If you use it in the right moments, total silence can be much more frightening than an unnecessary sound effect, or when you hear nothing but the tac-tac-tac of the monster's footsteps nearby. " says Tarımcıoğlu. "Sometimes, you can get a great effect from totally unrelated sound effects that come from ordinary things, but aren't often heard in quite that way, or in quite that combination.”

"I've found that when people play great horror games with the sound turned off, it isn't as scary, which shows just how much sound and music—when done correctly—can add to a frightening game," Tarımcıoğlu adds.

The Bunker is a full-motion video game written by Allan Plenderleith and published by Wales Interactive. It's the story of a man who, in the aftermath of a devastating war, was born in a nuclear bunker. As he grows up, the other survivors—including his mother—die off, leaving him alone in a warren of abandoned rooms.

Plenderleith has worked in various fields, including on children's television shows like Shaun the Sheep. He says he's drawn to horror games because of their ability to create such a sharp emotional response among players.

"I love the participation in horror," he says. "You're being manipulated by the director and the composer and the actors, but you're going along with it, almost like it's a joke."

“You're a part of it, whether it's a movie or a game—but in a game, it's more frightening because you feel like the threat is real,” Plenderleith continues. “You're the main character. You feel like the character's hands and feet are your hands and feet. You're not observing someone else making choices—you're making the choices, and those choices might just mean that you're about to die horribly, and it's all your fault."

As a writer, he says that players' fears are amplified when they come to care about the main character. "When you're invested in the character, that's when you start to really care about what's happening on screen,” says Plenderleith. “You're showing that person's vulnerabilities, which are also now your vulnerabilities. That's why we cast Adam Brown as the main character in The Bunker. John has been worn down over the years. He's got this slight frame, so you know that if he comes up against anything physically strong, he's got no chance."

Lukas Deuschel is Project Manager of Ad Infinitum, which released in September. It's a psychological story about a former soldier trapped between his memories of World War I trenches and his struggles with his mental health, as he tries to recover in his family home. The game is split between supernatural horrors on the battlefield and terrible visions in the home.

"We put a lot of effort into slowly building up a dreadful atmosphere by using the soundscape, the lighting, and the environment of the house itself, which gradually changes from feeling relatively safe at the start of the game, becoming more and more sinister," says Deuschel.

One of the challenges for horror game developers is the problem of repetition and familiarity. When a player is trying to beat a monster over and over again, the fear factor drops significantly. The next monster encounter might not have the same terrifying effect.

"It's a huge problem," says Deuschel. "You don't want the player being stuck in a loop in any kind of game, but especially when you are carefully pacing the story and introducing monsters so they will have the most effect.”

"It's also a problem—with horror movies and some games—when they introduce the monster much too early and expose them with super bright lighting,” Deuschel continues. “Instead of the player thinking a lot about the creature and being scared as it comes closer to the reveal, they already know everything."

At Remedy, Alan Wake 2 was designed to avoid the kind of repetitive combat and stealth scenes that are common in regular action-adventures. "I'd really like the player to be always on the edge of death, but not necessarily dying," says Kyle Rowley. "As soon as you die and you're replaying a sequence, especially in a horror game, the unexpected becomes the expected and that removes the fear."

Remedy’s Molly Maloney says she loves working on horror games because there are so many opportunities to frighten players. "Games are fundamentally interactive, so we can scare people in ways that film and television and books can't. Players learn the mechanics of the game and how something is going to feel, and you can have fun subverting that.”

Horror games work because they rely on the player's participation. "If I'm watching a horror movie, I can cover my eyes," Maloney adds. "I can skip a really scary chapter in a book and just look up a synopsis. But a game does not move forward without you. I have to face the fear, and I think that in itself can be terrifying."

If you sometimes feel a bit ashamed about just how scared horror games make you, there's some consolation in the fact that the people who make them can get just as frightened. "I'm actually quite the wuss when it comes to horror games. Sometimes, when testing our games, I scream a little bit in the narrative room, freaking out my colleagues," Maloney jokes.

The Epic Games Store has a wide selection of horror games available now, and Alan Wake 2 will release on the Epic Games Store on October 27.