trivard676With games like the Penumbra series and Amnesia: The Dark Descent before it, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs has quite the horror gaming pedigree. So when Thomas Grip pens a little blog on how to horror games need to evolve to stay relevant and avoid being lost to shooters and bland RPGs, we should probably take note.
In his blog ‘In the Games of Madness,’ Grip talks about the fact that not much has changed for horror games in the last ten years. Games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Siren and Fatal Frame were in their prime – but now it’s almost as if the genre has stagnated, something that many fans could relate to.
Part of what Grip feels is essential to a good horror game is immersion. By connecting on a human, emotional level, developers can take immersion to whole new levels. To aide in that immersion, develop characters and situations that aren’t so far-fetched. A player is more likely to relate to a protagonist in a small town rather than a spaceship’s air lock. So when horror starts building up, it’s much more effective. Occurring not only in the game’s virtual world, but reaching into the real world as well.
Another interesting theory that Grip has involves enemy combat. As seen in Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Penumbra, Grip is more of a fan of combat-free games. While he doesn’t hate combat, he feels that it forces players to focus on the wrong things.
Still, combat is not a bad thing and one could use it in ways that evokes helplessness instead. For instance, by giving the player weapons that are ineffective, the desperation fo the situation is further heightened. This is a slippery slope though as once you show a weapon to the player, it instantly puts them in the actio-game mindset. That does not mean that weapons and combat should be abolished, but that one should tread very carefull and finding the right balance is a big challenge for future horror games.
You can read the entire article over on Grip’s blog. What do you think? Do you agree with some of his suggestions for evolving the horror genre? Sound off in the comments section
