Urby

7 comments by Urby on Apr 25th, 2011

You know what ModDB needs less of? Horror mods.

Every other mod nowadays seems to be based on the idea of horror and so far I am yet to see a single one that is any good.

True horror gets under your skin and makes you feel genuinely uneasy. Fear is a very difficult thing to put onto a player and has to be applied carefully. Go to over the top with darkness, loud noises and ridiculously warped models then your attempt at fear suddenly becomes laughable and loses all impact.

Why not challenge yourself and make a horror mod in a brightly lit setting? Rather than go for overly loud noises, why not go for softer, less noticable sounds. Also, rather then getting up in a players face with things like "OH MY GOD LOOK AT THIS THIS IS SO SCARY HE HAS NO SKIN BLUARGH!!!" try and get passing glances instead. Something the player sees out of the corner of their eyes which makes them think: "Did I just see that? What the Hell was it?"

Fear of the unknown is a good one to play with. As soon as you see a monster, in full and up close, it loses it's mystery and quickly becomes another enemy to shoot or run away from.

Examples:

Doom 3 is not a scary game because each enemy has an introductory sequence which shows the demons in full, in a well lit room.

F.E.A.R was good to an extent, with passing glance events and occasional eery moments but lost it's scary factor pretty early in and resorted to the cheap "dark-room-and-loud-noises" tactic.

Half-Life Episode 2 is in no way a scary game, but the introduction of the Hunters is a masterpiece of design. First you hear them and Alyx reacts to the noise (note, this is outside in broad daylight, alongside an NPC character. Not your average scary setting right?). Then you have several chances to catch a glimpse of them. Finally, it attacks in a shock moment. This is perfect and exactly what playing with a players emotion are all about.

Oh, and stop, STOP! with the fucking zombie mods... ¬_¬