RPGMAKER HORROR GAMES NOWADAYS

I don't mind them as long as they have some meat. I mean, pretty horror games like Dreaming Mary and Pocket whatever are kinda meh because they're playing off the whole 'little girl lost and helpless' theme and it irks me. Also, their really light on gameplay and seem half-assed because of it. They put all their time in to creating graphics and making it look pretty instead of making it engaging, which is what a horror game should aim to be.

When I made a horror game, my little girl is kick-ass and not a frail, scared little waif who needs others to protect her (bar the whole being sent to Hell thing, but hey, anyone sent to Hell needs some Divine Intervention). For the most part Emi is fine with blood and death because her background has her seeing it all her life so her backstory shows she doesn't fear such things - which leaves her able to keep her senses and help others. She ain't scared or helpless and she knows it.


Either way, I don't mind or care too much about horror games. There are some okay ones on the site though, but honestly, it's not like it's a huge surprise that a genre that people see as easy to make is growing. Not only do the games not have to be long, they also don't have to have much set-up when it comes to the character, their background, how they interact with the world and so forth.
Plus, jumpscares are easy meat for noobs to implement.

That's why these games exist - and that's fine. It gives people a chance to gain experience and confidence from having a complete game under their belt. Maybe after that they'll expand out and create longer, more involved games. Maybe they'll instead create better, non-jumpscare-based horror games.

author=CashmereCat
Scaring someone is difficult, and often people judge a horror solely on its ability to scare, which I don't believe is a good metric.

I actually think it is. After all, the point of the genre is to get people to experience a particular kind of emotion: unsettlement and fear. If it fails to do something as fundamental as that, then it fails at being horror.

I'm also aware that a good horror game takes work. Just about everything in development does. What I was stating was more of an inferred conclusion based on the way most horror games in rpg maker are made to this date, and I'm not saying that way is right in the slightest. I just personally want to see people here put more effort in designing their games, and actually making them games to begin with as oppose to relying on cheap trends.

Generally, I'm not a fan of adventure games due to the fact that I tend to dislike it when as a player, I'm forced to be a completely separate entity from what's going on in the game, as opposed to working in unison with it. If there is some monster chasing me, I want to be able to shoot it down to ashes with some awesome gunblade like a badass, rather than run away like a helpless wuss, but in these types of games my actions are almost solely dictated by the character given to me; if the character I get in this narrative isn't a badass, then I can't do badass things with him. But yeah, this is getting into personal preference.

PS: This is bringing back horrible memories of Konstadin.

I'm getting warm fuzzy feelings getting namedropped over and over.

@Red_Nova
Could perhaps this be what you were looking for?

author=SnowOwl
Tension and release: Alot of newbies at making horror pile up the scares everywhere they can. This is a mistake. The tension before a scare is as important as the scare itself. You NEED to build tension to make the player feel scared, or your scares will lose their edge. Look at any good horror movie, like for example the first Alien movie. There is a loooong buildup to the scares in the start, and when the little shit tears a hole in the stomach there is release. Then they start building tension again.

So to give my thoughts on the matter, I think there are some truth to the fact that alot of people played some of the famous RPG Maker "horror" games and thought that it looked easy to make. The genre is deceptively hard to make, though. You have to put a lot of focus on things that most other genres don't have to care about as much. Usually the expectations on horror games are also somewhat different from other genres. You can get away with somewhat lackluster gameplay (I do!) if you can create a good (bad?) atmosphere.
Creating atmosphere is probably the hardest thing about rpgmaker horror games, though. There are so many factors that affect the atmosphere, and missing the mark by just a tiny bit can create a comical effect instead of a scary atmosphere.

I think that sound design is something that most beginners put very little thought on. The problem is, I believe that sound design in horror games are really important, sometimes more important than the visuals.

Another beginner level problem is with the variety on the scares. Someone that never made a game before probably won't have the experience needed to vary the scares much, or when and where to put scares.
A novice probably just puts them wherever they think it would be cool, for example: "Hey I could put a jumpscares when the player looks under this bed, that would be totally cool!"
The problem is, like I say in the quote, there is no buildup to it. And if you're doing it too often (very likely if you're new to gamemaking and just putting them out randomly) they won't have any emotional impact.
Plus, doing the same thing over and over will make the scares lose in effect since, as someone already said, scares are a dish that needs to be varied.
This is actually something I see problems with even in some of the more famous rpgmaker horror games, they don't try to scare the player in new ways, and the game lose the players interest the farther into the game they get.

http://zarat.us/tra/eversion/ not an RPG, but...

author=Liberty
it's not like it's a huge surprise that a genre that people see as easy to make is growing. Not only do the games not have to be long, they also don't have to have much set-up when it comes to the character, their background, how they interact with the world and so forth.

IDK I feel like there's plenty of other genres where the same applies. Hell, that describes the majority of the NES oeuvre!

I expect the popularity has more to do with the rise of screamy LPers and the resulting trend of games catering to that, er, performance mode: things like Slender and FNaF got kind of catapulted to internet stardom by being featured in videos by easily-startled (and/or plain hammy) goobers, so it's easy to see how someone would look at them and think, "I, too, could become vaguely internet famous!"*

WRT the discussion of scares, I feel like there's generally three different "flavors" of scare, and people don't really do enough to distinguish them, so we get slasher stuff slotted into the same genre as spoopy ghosts. Granted, most good horror works use all three, but there's certainly a tendency to focus mostly on an individual flavor overall.

1) Adrenaline scares
This is your jumpscares, your "OHSHITIT'SJASONRUN!" scares, etc. Things that reach down into the midbrain and jam the "fight or flight" button.

2) Unsettling scares
This is the quieter stuff, usually called "atmosphere," though it's not limited to that. It's things being "off" from the player's experience of reality, indications that they can't rely on prior knowledge or impressions: things like the earliest uses of creepy children (at a time when it WASN'T a cliche), or interface screws like the sanity effects in Eternal Darkness.

3) Grotesque scares
This goes beyond the unsettling into the disgusting, provoking fear via instinctual revulsion. Super-detailed gore is this, as are hideous mutants. Torture porn is usually a combo of this and the adrenaline stuff.

IN CASE NOBODY HAS NOTICED YET I am kind of super into navel-gazing about horror stuff.

*A dubious life goal, to be sure, but a popular one!

Cash
Also, Pizza, I'm pretty sure you find most RM games dumb, not just horror games.

Sounds about right to me. Most RM games aren't that interesting.

author=Thespookyfox
Also, now that we've bashed the clichés; which "good" examples can you remember? Was there a moment when you were playing a game and felt genuinely scared, or just thought "Damn, this is good"?

I know it gets a lot of flak, but the first FNaF game is amazing for building tension to a jumpscare. The multitasking, the siege mechanic combined with resource hoarding, and the long periods of nothing happening are just fantastic. (The suggestion of a particularly unpleasant death upon losing helps a bit as well!) It's the instance that convinced me that jumpscares can be handled effectively.

A lot of people cite Silent Hill 2's opening gameplay as masterful, and I'm inclined to agree. You spend a long period just walking, alone, through foggy woods. Nothing jumps out, nothing happens. There are occasional strange noises- other footsteps, weird growls- but you spend the entire trip never seeing anything other than the protag, the landscape, and the thick fog. SO EFFECTIVE at communicating isolation and helplessness, especially since you can't see shit and you don't have a weapon yet, so you're basically a sitting duck!

The first Silent Hill has a lot of really nice moments; it's a shame it hasn't been as acknowledged as its sequel (granted, 2 is a lot more artful in a lot of places, 1 just happens to be my favey forever). A couple bits stand out well to my mind:

First is the very start, when you first encounter the nightmare world, and you're forced to follow a linear, increasingly strange and narrow path through back alleys, with only a lighter to light your way. There's a fantastically tense set of music in the background, and you keep wondering what the hell is about to happen because there's nothing yet but you can't do anything but keep going forward. Then the path opens up, you find a horrific corpse, and right after you get a good look at it MONSTER CHILDREN OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE AND THE WAY OUT IS GONE AND YOU DON'T HAVE A WEAPON congratulations, sucker, YOU DIE! (And then wake up in not-nightmare world just fine.)

Second is the freakin sewer levels, which have three things going for them: 1) your radio, which you've used so far to tell when a monster is nearby waiting to nibble your giblets, doesn't work. 2) One of the monster types that live down there is COMPLETELY FREAKING SILENT. 3) The other kind CAN CRAWL AROUND AND ATTACK FROM THE CEILING. So you're walking along, peering carefully ahead for the first sneaky douches, trying to pick out shades of shadow in the darkness, when suddenly BAM CLAWS ON YOUR HEAD OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE.

The second sewer level is the worst for me, partly because the backing track uses a sound effect that jabs me right in the amygdala, partly because it involves a lot of random banging noises that could possibly be a monster or could just be the place falling apart and YOU WON'T KNOW. Every other part of the game I can play at night, but not the fucking second sewer level. That one can go to hell.

I'm Sooz and this has been another edition of Sooz fukken adores the first two SH games. Good day!