How to create a horror RPG?

[pirateheart]

How do you make an RPG scary? I've always been intrigued with making a scary RPG but I'm having trouble coming up with game mechanics in my head. There are countless horror games made with RPG Maker but the ones I've come across tend to play like adventure games or visual novels (e.g., Mad Father, Corpse Party, Ao Oni, etc.) with very little RPG elements.

How do I go about creating a game with battles, leveling, weapons, dungeon crawling, i.e., a game with traditional RPG mechanics and keep a consistently scary atmosphere throughout?

I could set up a scary scene with great use of dialogue, art and music but then then player just shreds through the monsters because he happened to have grinded levels and bought the best weapons. This would create such a gameplay/atmosphere dissonance that the horror elements would have looked like a total joke.

 

[bgillisp]

Probably your best bet is to do it like System Shock 1/2 did. In System Shock 1, you had no levels, but your equipment got more powerful throughout the game. That way, you could make monsters scary/powerful early on, then eventually the player finds a weapon to handle them, then add more scary monsters, etc.

In System Shock 2 you had limited leveling, but via items you found. This way you still couldn't grind, as you had to find the items to power up your character.

 

[Amarok]

if i remember correctly, koudelka for the psx was a mix between turn based jrpg and survival horror.

 

[CleanWater]

I think the atmosphere of the game is more important than the battle system. You could make monsters absurdly strong and put them at key points chasing the character. This way the fear to meet that absurdly unbeatable monster will always be at hand.

Alternatively, you could place traps, enigmas, riddles, and weak monsters (like zombies, etc) and most important... Make resources and good weapons scarce.

 

[pirateheart]

@bgillisp
I'm actually playing System Shock 2 at the moment and trying to mine it for some ideas. I tried playing System Shock 1 but the interface was just too much hassle for me. I'm looking forward to the remake though. Also that game Prey, which is coming out in a few days, is supposed to be a System Shock so I'm getting it for sure as well.

@Amarok
Yeah, I have Koudelka but I haven't ever played it. I bought it years ago but I only remembered about it now.

@CleanWater
I've actually been considering that the last little while. I figured I could have "normal" RPG enemies that you can easily outlevel and beat. But then you'd occasionally come across enemies that would always be too strong for you no matter what. This system can also be a good way to give the player a break between scares so they don't always feel too underpowered.

 

[mlogan]

Honestly, I think it's hard to do in RM. At least, from the attempts I've seen. Most resort to trying to use jump scares and screen shaking and that. combined with RM's default graphics style, just doesn't work.

I think using RM to make a horror game, you would honestly first need to get away from most of the default resources. Even if you used the tiles and characters, custom facesets and scene graphics may help set a better atmosphere. Second, I would think you would need to focus more on the psychological aspects of horror and less just really scary monsters, if that makes sense. I dunno, I'm not expert in horror games, I actually try to stay away from them, because I have problems with an over-active imagination and nightmares. But like I said, I have played a few attempts I've seen posted here - and they usually end up being annoying with their attempts, rather than scary.

 

[The Stranger]

As @mlogan said, horror really can't be done with default resources. Now, you can create a dark atmosphere easily, but actual horror? Not so much.

In my opinion, horror works much better when you are immersed (which is something first person perspective does very well, and something I believe VR will build upon) but if there's a disconnect between the player and the horror then the actual horror factor is broken, and all you end up with is a creepy vibe or a dark setting. Limited resources aren't very scary, it's just frustrating. Jump scares are a tool to create horror, but once the scare has happened, and the player sees what scared them, then the horror fades very fast. Tension is another good tool for you to use to create a sense of dread; jump scares can create tension, so long as you don't use them too often. You really wont be using visuals to convey horror in a 2D horror game. Pixel blood and corpses really wont scare or unnerve anyone. You should be relying more on the psychological and setting than anything else; creepy themes, ideas, stories, and what not.

In my opinion, your best bet is to go for a dark\gothic story with horror elements, rather than a full blown horror game. This way you can focus on a creepy story filled with strange and unnerving characters, events, and locations; you can use the unknown (not explaining everything fully) to allow the player to fill in the blanks and create their own little horror, too.

This is all just my opinion, of course. Keep in mind that I've yet to play a horror game, which isn't a first person experience, which is actually scary beyond a few jump scares. Maybe I just don't scare as easy.

Scary for me isn't blood, gore, and monsters. It's certain situations, concepts, and themes. Feeling powerless (I mean completely powerless) when those I love, especially family, are in danger terrifies me. There's a scene in Hellraiser Inferno in which the copper is trapped behind a door, and can do nothing as he hears his mother and father being butchered by the monster he has been chasing. That scene still leaves me feeling unsettled and not quite right, simply because it touches upon a very personal fear of mine.

 

[gstv87]

How do I go about creating a game with battles, leveling, weapons, dungeon crawling, i.e., a game with traditional RPG mechanics and keep a consistently scary atmosphere throughout?

make leveling a way of mastering fear, not of gaining strength.

make your characters have minimal to none stat increases through their leveling, and create a system of states that affect the character's performance in battle (like, debuffing their accuracy, or ability to escape)
that way, there's no way that the player will simply outmatch low-level enemies.
there will always be a battle, and there will always be struggle, so the players would focus on avoiding that whenever possible.
with that, make the avoidance the difference between life and death, and, voila! there's your horror factor.
as the player levels up, you can add skills that would give them self-healing or improved combat effectiveness, but only through the use of that skill, in battle.
it would be highly situational, so the choice of using it will be tied to the danger level of the situation (you might want to add a cooldown system, to prevent spamming)

if the player is able to win whatever battle you throw at them, then they'll just rush through them.
if you give them the choice to avoid the battle, while making clear that avoiding the battle is better than using time or items to recover afterwards, they'll choose to play it safe and avoid it.
through that struggle for avoidance, you build the fear.

 

[HexMozart88]

I've seen good horror done in RM, but not with the default resources. Like, Party 2 is a very good one I've played. There are a couple of others I've seen, but I can't remember them right now. The thing that makes a good horror game is the psychological effect it has. Like games where you have the volume turn down on its own. I don't think it has to be first person to be immersive.
The problem I've seen in horror games is that the scare factor relies too heavily on jump scares and gore. A good horror game plays with the feeling of impending doom, rather than just the fact that you are wading in a pool of blood.

 

[Wavelength]

It's a good question - how to make RPG-style gameplay contribute to the horror aesthetic rather than merely existing alongside it. I'm not a horror aficionado at all, but I can offer a couple of ideas.

• I have found that RPG gameplay based on attrition tends to make me feel tense and anxious. You can give the player resources that they can't renew without completing an objective or possibly returning to a safe place - charges of an amulet, consumable items, or even MP as long as items to restore it are nonexistent or super-rare. These will make it harder to win by grinding; the player instead will often start to run out of their precious resources as they reach the climax of a mission.
• Similarly, time limits (based on real time, steps, etc.) increase the tension. I wouldn't generally recommend Game Overs for players who fail to complete something within the time limit, but you could have the environment become much more dangerous (falling rocks that cause heavy damage), make monsters much much more powerful, or make certain objectives impossible once a time limit has passed.
• Sanity is always an interesting resource to play with. Sanity could be a "resource" that depletes over time or it could be something that monsters can specifically target rather than your health. As your sanity drops, maybe everything around you looks different, and you start to hear voices (using actual voice clips, distorted and with high "Pan" values). Maybe things actually become different. Maybe a few objectives actually require you to see things through the eyes of an insane person.
• Don't underestimate the power of interface screws. You have to be careful that these don't become overly frustrating, but in a horror setting they can be very effective if used right. Perhaps you need torches to keep the area lit, and if your torches run out, all you can see is faint outlines of the terrain (so you don't wander around the dungeon forever, which is more annoying than spooky). You can't see monsters in the dark, and if you hit one, a slight jumpscare plays and the monsters get a free turn to attack you. Maybe the battle screen is semi-dark as well, and all you can see is an angry red set of eyes - your only indication about what the monster is will be the attacks it uses on you. Unknown enemies are the scariest!

I could be wrong because I've spent so little time in the genre, but I think that mechanics like these would go a long way toward making RPG gameplay serve a scary, unsettling, intense aesthetic.

 

[CleanWater]

You can also think about it this way:

1. What makes me scared on horror games?
2. How can I bring these things to a RPG?

For me, the answer would be Silent Hill from PSOne (never had better console and my current PC don't run anything better than it )
Those deformed monsters really disturbed me, but the most disturbing thing for me was to walk on those gloomy and dark corridors without any decent source of light.

Also, I have a personal trauma with hospitals. When I had to stay in one with my old mother, I saw a lot of unpleasant things there. Even the non-nightmare hospital from SH was unpleasant and disturbing for me.

If you stop to think about it... Schools, hospitals, etc. All these places might bring bad memories (even unconscious) for the majority of persons. What is the probability that someone never had a terrible experience in one of these places?

 

[GoodSelf]

Check out these videos by Extra Credits

Spoiler

 

[Basileus]

I'm not a huge horror fan, but I've played some games that really did it right and some games that really did it wrong. The games that got it wrong focused on jump scares and scary visuals and sound effects, or tried to make enemies scary by making them wildly imbalanced, or did things that were more annoying and inconvenient than scary. The games that got it right did so with heavy, dare I say oppressive, atmosphere. You need protagonists that the players will actually care about and an environment that wants to do horrible things to them. A jump scare lasts an instant, but a bunch of grisly clues can have players tense up every time they enter a room. I think there are 3 main elements to this:

Dread: You don't want "a scare", you want "Terror". The kind that lingers and persists even when things are supposedly normal. The absolute best way to do this is to make things ever so slightly abnormal. You want to make the player paranoid by showing them things that are just off but denying them the chance to confront it directly to make them feel powerless. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem did this in a diabolical way - the main character finds weapons and ammo in the mansion early on, and gets upgrades and techniques used by the characters in the chapters of the evil tome she is reading...but there isn't anything to fight in the mansion until the end. Most of the game the player will just expect the monsters from the chapter segments to finally show up and they just don't. The knowledge that something is definitely out there but not being able to see or confront it is extremely powerful.

Scarcity: To reinforce the feeling of helplessness you need to place severe limits on the player. @Wavelength mostly covered this but even the toughest JRPG hero will be in trouble with 0 MP and loaded down with status effects. It isn't so much that you need to prevent grinding, it's that you need to make it not matter. You need to throttle key resources to make the player afraid to spend them. A player that knows they can't just fight all the monsters will become cautious and try to pick their fights, especially if they don't know how much farther they have to go. The lower they get the more cautious they become until any combat at all is a terrifying prospect. This is what makes your monsters horrifying - they just keep coming and the player can't hold out forever, it what truly cements "defeat is inevitable" in their minds.

Expectations: You are trying to terrify the player - so you can rely on player behavior to do a lot of work for you. Have monsters that just self-destruct when they get low, or monsters that go down in one hit but are super fast and hit the player with deadly status effects so their friends can go to town, or monsters that summon other monsters. Don't be afraid to add some RNG. Players will remember your tricks and they will psyche themselves out anticipating them. Players know where your ambushes will likely be, subvert those expectations. Make the chests traps. Have monsters that disguise themselves as other monsters. Have a monster burst out of an NPC and ambush the player in a "safe" space - watch the player never trust an NPC in your game again. Have the player hit a dead-end and find things moved around when they double back, then just leave them hanging when they expect an ambush. Get inside the player's head...then use his expectations to drive him mental.

 

[Manofdusk]

Even though the level itself was more irritating than scary, Persona 2 did a spectacular job of introducing horror into one particular boss battle.

Spoiler

Essentially, you were fighting a stalker. He wasn't especially hard (and you had been fighting actual demons up until then). You smack him down without much of a thought then go on your merry way.... but he comes back, beaten and bruised but determined. So you break his neck. He's dead now so no more thoughts about it... till you get to the next boss room. He's back. He's got all of his injuries, including the broken neck, but he's back up and after you again. When I first played through that part, I went wide-eyed and slack jawed

The key to this particular brand of horror is persistence, far and above normal. If your persistent enemy isn't something the character can relate to immediately, you'll have to set the baseline of the normal enemy type in the game (which is why humans are easiest to use). You also need to have some sort of mark (preferably player inflicted) to let them know that it's that specific monster. Being attacked by a specific monster type no matter where you go is annoying. Being chased by a specific monster no matter where you go is terrifying because it plays on our fear of being hunted.

When the monster chases you, winning the battle yields nothing and it only pushes the monster back a few steps... and it chases you from room to room. You have to lose it in the dungeons you're in and sneak around it to progress. It follows you no matter where you go (though it might be good to have 1 or 2 dungeons where it hasn't caught up yet, to relieve the tension... and maybe a few safe rooms (though if the player stays too long in the safe rooms with the monster nearby, all bets are off).

This could even work with something as weak as a slime if you do it right... and "cute" monsters can add an extra layer of creepy (so "horror" monsters don't necessarily need to be terrible to look at (though it helps)).