welcome to my spooky guide, in favor of the spookiest month of them all - june. wait, it’s not june? nevermind, read my guide. it makes a scary game.
the ultimate spooky horror game contains:
-----[the basics]-----
- what is a horror game?
- how to create a goal
- settings
- what makes it scary?
- tutorial
-----[advanced]-----
- mechanics
- drawing from terror - ideas!
- to pvp or not to pvp
- the art of foolproofing
-----[mastery]-----
10. parting with the players
11. credits
-----[wrap up]-----
12. wrapup
what is a spooky horror game?
a horror game, if you’ve never heard of one, is a game in which people run from a:
-monster
-what they think is a monster
-another human
-an alien
-plum pudding
-werewolf
-vampire
-frankenstein (the scientist, not the monster)
-a nice bologna sandwich
and they have to survive it for a amount of time or defeat it in some way. this can be with weapons, traps, or 
the power of friendship
i personally guide horror games towards three main ideas:
-real spooky monster
-fake spooky monster
-psychological horror scary brain tricks
how to create a goal
your goal is simple, save yourself from the ancient evil, modern evil, postmodern evil, postmodern socialist spiritualist proletariat evil, and so on and so forth unto infinity.
this can be done when you defeat the boss, receive on an ending cutscene, or lose, receiving an ending cutscene, or escape, in which you - well, escape.
this isn’t hard to fathom. if "plot = character + conflict, " then “ending = monster + destruction.”
settings
most of the time, your player has these:
item slots: zero to one
music track: horror
ally/enemy indicators: on
show health and shield: off
allow game host to spectate: nononononononno
pvp enabled: up to you [1]
gadget/usable/resource drop: off
leaderboard: off [2]
diable knockouts from activity feed: yes
this both disconnects the player from a normal game, and gives an unsettling feeling, no health, no connection, hardly any items, and NO GAME HOST SPECTATING.
what makes it scary?
what makes a game scary…
let’s cover the eleven tenants of fear, coined by some person i read in a mystery book a year or two ago…
-pain[3] - duh
-the unknown - makes it mysterious, and mystery can be scary.
-darkness - what’s in the darkness? who knows? you, preferably.
-repetition - i don’t mean spamming “im in your walls” but a recurring unsettling thing.
-clowns - they’re in your walls [4]. just saying.
-people → monsters - the fly, frankenstein, vampires. what’s spookier than that?
-jumpscares - boo! they scare you! they’re kinda easy to create! do it!
-unsettling dialogue - old women, children, mailmen, make them say scary things!
-ninth thing here!
-abduction - being stalked is scary. this is fairly obvious.
-industrial grade acid - you don’t want this on you
-the hydraulic pump - patent infringements are evil! piracy is a crime!!
tutorial
the tutorial of a horror game starts out normal, like a security guard telling what’
s what, before things go into a downward spiral. this can be showing what the overlays do, or just how your neat new car works. the tutorial ends when the person teaching you how to do the thing leaves, or the power shuts down and they disappear.
there could also be a sort of “learn as you go” approach in which the actual experience is gained, like you wake up in a room and solve puzzles to escape. this needs no guide, just half a brain.
mechanics
aside from the old, trusty fnaf mechanic spams!!1! we need to cover three three other types of mechanics, so moving on from the fnaf mechanic spams!!1!, we should not use the fnaf mechanic spams!!1! so clearly the fnaf mechanic spams!!1! shouldn’t be used. [5]
also, maybe add such mechanics as
-escape room
-electricity
-bread
-flashing lights (dark barriers over the screen at random intervals)
drawing from terror - ideas!
have you watched a movie that made you scared?
man, who hasn’t? there are some movies that were really terrifying as kids, like the lion king, or beauty and the beast, or something terrifying recently, such as five nights at william afton’s freddy’s and the terrifying cult classic, dumbo.
so what made them scary?
let’s cover three levels of terror, disney level, spooky level, and wayyy too much.
disney level scary - this involves monsters, and randomly assorted scary things. this will just be the level for the youngest age group you’ll see around here at worst. travel through an abandoned swamp, something like that. this involves just a few tenants of fear, and the scare at the end should either involve you defeating the monster, befriending the monster or escaping. hey, they’re too young to use a chainsaw on it.
spooky level scary - this is basically frankenstein-ing basic plots from classic horror, such as dracula, frankenstein, or freddy krueger. a monster that resembles a human is chasing you or something like that. just escape, survive the five nights and make sure it’s appropriate.
wayy to much level scary - if you think it’s way too much, it’s wayyy too much. this involves such terrifying things as the following:
-[redacted]
-[redacted]
-[redacted]
-[redacted]
-[redacted]
see?
to pvp or not to pvp
unless the game revolves around fighting, then no. never. ever. in a million bajllion years.
the games in which it would be possibly applicable are ones in which a random player is the villain [6], but players fighting each other isnt scary. seriously, imagine the fear of a freaking portable muffin launcher jumpscare.
the art of foolproofing
people are very, very, dumb misguided. if you set a waypoint pointing towards a door, they run everywhere. if you let a friend playtest your game [7] then you know the flawless accuracy they use to find the one point in your game that youre fixing and run into it. twice.
now this makes the game bad for people playing in discovery, and *gasp might make people quit.
playtest the game yourself, blindfolded if you have no faith in humanity, but just run everywhere. acting like a doofus and sprinting around, eyes full of wonder, repeatedly pressing that one button that summons the monster like you have no idea what it does.
leave said game, and find everything that doesnt work. explain plot details, add more things, and make sure that it could be on community picks. if its not gonna have a chance, then keep testing.
parting with the players
now how to end your game… this provided the basic outline, is it appropriate, some ideas, and mainly what not to do. if you fed this guide to AI, then it could output a pretty good kid-appropriate game, i would hope. [8]
now this game is either ending one of three ways…
the good
win the game by escaping the monster, surviving the night, or taking off the mask, finding the real monster is human, and driving away in your van with a talking dog [9]
the bad
you’re attacked, fall into the swamp of horrors, and otherwise lose.
this is usually what happens if you dont run fast enough of finish the tasks. the end game ends and begins anew, as a phoenix from the ashes, or a undercooked microwave burrito being reheated, a redemption. [10]
the ugly
this is a mix of good and bad, hard to pull off and annoying for your shallow minded philistines of players.
this is when you beat the monster but still lose, like it drags you down with it.
an example would be being bitten by the vampire as you open the blinds. i hate it when that happens.
credits
i would make this a wiki, but i lost regular. credits to me and only me, and nothing but me.
man, what’d i do wrong?
wrapup
in this guide, you learned about what’s appropriate for a horror game, what works, what doesn’t, what players want, how to get ideas, mechanics such as fnaf mechanic spams!!1! and such. anyways, to fill up space for the rest of thsi guide, i would use some fnaf mechanic spams!!1!
- or possibly fnaf mechanic spams!!1!
- or if youre feeling adventurous fnaf mechanic spams!!1!
- but maybe fnaf mechanic spams!!1!
- alternatively fnaf mechanic spams!!1!
- im running out of transition words fnaf mechanic spams!!1!
- help me fnaf mechanic spams!!1!
bye
in my opinion, nononononononono ↩︎
there are rarely horror games with leaderboards. ↩︎
bread in french ↩︎
of your game ↩︎
this is a subtle hint to use fnaf mechanic spams!!1! ↩︎
i dont recommend it, it could ruin the game ↩︎
if you have any ↩︎
BLACKHOLE MAKE A MAP-CREATING AI PLEASE ↩︎
scooby doo’s plot is straight out of a fever dream ↩︎
Σ comparison ↩︎
