You know how there are movies that go for shock horror, and others go for psychological horror?  Like the difference between gore and fear.  I’m not particularly inclined to watch shock/gore movies, much like I’m not inclined to play correlating games.  I have a pretty bad aversion to physical trauma and those types of entertainment just make me feel sick.

Once in a while, though, I’ll take a gander at a good fear-based flick or game.

Ye Olde Champion

I think the Blair Witch Project was probably the best fear-inducing movie in my experience. If you got past the shaky-cam filming style, and got sucked into it’s world (instead of observing it as a passive movie-watcher), you’d be terrified at the slow descent to desperation and madness, and the overwhelming feeling of helplessness – without ever seeing a drop of blood.

And those fucking children giggling outside the tent in the middle of the night?? I think I went white with terror at that point, and didn’t regain my color for several hours. Children are scary.

Then I watched it again!

Never before, you see, have I gone to a theater only to be so utterly emotionally transported to a new world. The feelings I felt, the experience I just went through (if via proxy) is something I would never be able to experience in my own life. It wasn’t necessarily pleasant, but it was a very educational experience. Before seeing Blair Witch, I’d imagine in my head that I was a pretty strong emotional tough-guy that wouldn’t be affected by the situations presented in most movies.  But this movie changed that; it made me realize that no human can escape certain levels of pure terror. And it gave me a sampler.

If I picture myself – in real life – in a Blair Witch situation, I wouldn’t get out of my tent and head-butt the closest child I could find; I would, in fact, curl up into a tiny ball and hope I died to the mechanical demon-monster quickly.  Having these thoughts for the first time – as an invincible 18 year old – may have been life-changing.

In Games

Finding a game that duplicates this level of terror is fairly impossible. I think the closest I’ve come to psychological terror in video games has been F.E.A.R., but even that title pales in comparison to Blair Witch. If you ignore the children in the game, it’s just a fun take on Hard Boiled-style action sequences (much like Max-Payne). Plus the acronym’d title just made me chuckle at how contrived it was.

I hear some games like Doom 3, Dead Space, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill do the shock-horror thing pretty well (Doom was pretty good at having things jump out of shadows, and Dead Space is full of gore), but I think they couldn’t stand on their own two feet if you – say – turned it into a text-adventure. I played through several of the Resident Evil games, but the slow pacing, bad voice acting, and predictable “shock moments” (oh look – I’m walking slowly down a dark hallway! I hope nothing bursts out of the door) just made me chuckle.

Is this really all that surprising, though? I mean, it’s really really difficult to manipulate somebody’s emotions with a work of art.  It’s easier to make someone scared during a movie because you can accurately control the timing, the music, the scenes… It’s pretty easy to just sit and take a breather break in most video games, which harms the artists ability to keep someone on edge. Our art form of interactive design hasn’t reached a level of technical progress yet to take us over that hurdle. I don’t doubt it’ll happen, I just don’t think it’ll happen very soon.

A step in the right direction might be Left 4 Dead. It’s not particularly horror – the “gore” is comical, there’s no real shock moments, but they managed to get the pacing down with their AI Director. But really, it’s just an action game that keeps the pressure on – the fact that there happens to be zombies and it happens to be dark seems to be more of a side-note than a main premise. The game is downright not-scary, especially when playing with a group of jovial friends – which is the only way you can play it (there’s pretty much no single player mode).

It’s not all about Terror though…

I started thinking about what other games invoke negative emotions, not necessarily pure terror.  I think Jason Rohrer’s Passage is an excellent example of this (It’s free and only takes a few minutes – go play it now! before I spoil it forever for you!).

I remember playing Passage for the first time, thinking “oh man! this is a neat take on a game! I’m just going to do this, then this.. and…. now……. wait, is this… oh fuck,” then I closed the window without completing it.

I hate Passage – but not because it’s a bad game, not because it’s gory or filled with horrible surprises – it just reflects the futility of the human condition a bit too well. I was terrified of the ending, and the ending was not a scary monster. Scary, yes; monster, no. Nonetheless, there was no way to escape your fate – unless you close the window. :)

Now this was terror, but terror of a different kind – terror about how I’m just a fragile human, about how I might die someday, even if it’s old age. Terrible. Hate it. I want to live forever!  Despite my distaste, I’m still happy I played it.

A whole new angle

The other day I stumbled across a new game, called Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer.  I think it might be my new favorite, beating out Blair Witch, F.E.A.R., and Passage.  It’s a game with victims trying to escape a sadistic serial killer – mixed with a love story. I have the assumption that most people reading this will not want to play it.  I hope more people do play it, even though it will offend sensibilities. It’s a great work of art, but it is a disturbing game. More disturbing than any other media I’ve consumed. Minor spoilers follow.

First up, I’ll note that this game has hardly any gore in it. It was made in RPG Maker 2003 in two weeks for a community contest; when people get injured they get little red pixels on their 30×30 px bodies. But where the game lacks in visuals definitely makes up for it in your imagination. This game is made completely around the psychological.

The twist is: you are playing the role of the killer. And it’s easy. It’s disturbingly easy.

BE:D Gameplay

The game itself is a mix of two mechanics: a dating-simulator-style conversation-tree, which leads to a tower-defense style game upon success. At it’s core, it’s a very linear, not-very-fun game. But the story layer on top of it all makes it worth while, in it’s own twisted way.

The conversation trees have you stalking people, lying to them, making up stories, and manipulating people’s weaknesses. Which is creepy as hell. Then you’re off to a store to buy razor blades, blowtorches, chainsaws, and other traps you can place into your dungeon. You drug your target, drag them into the dungeon, and watch them try to escape through your traps.

If they succeed in their escape, they call the police and the game is over – you are sent to jail. If they die, or if they succumb to madness, it is acceptable – but it knocks a lot of points off. No, the real goal is to bring people to the brink of death and on the edge of sanity, then let them experience a “beautiful escape” (where they – assumedly – commit suicide on their own or are otherwise too shaken to call the police on you, and will be tormented by what you’ve done for the rest of their lives).

The whole escape sequence is filmed and uploaded to an in-game youtube-like website, where in-game characters rate your performance. If the person you were torturing was afraid of water, and you put them in a dunk tank, then you get bonus points (rewarding you for exploring all the conversation trees before drugging the poor sap).

Meta Angles

What makes this game super interesting is there is pretty much nothing driving you to do things the way your community says is “correct.” You don’t need to strive for a beautiful escape. You can just kill people in their first escape move, putting people out of their misery. You don’t need to take up various challenges. You have complete choice in who you pick to torture and why. Everything you do in this game – you do because you choose to. Much like my reaction to Passage, you can always close the game if you don’t like any of the choices available to you.

But I didn’t close the game. Sure, I didn’t select the innocent hard-on-her-luck mom; I went easy on the stalwart Fireman. No, I interviewed every character in the game and chose - by my own hand – to murder the asshole womanizer.

And I made him suffer.

Not only did this game make me feel bad, it made me act bad too, of my own free will – and uncovered that dark disturbing core that is buried within each of us (some more buried than others).

I was really happy with how the game ended. It gave me enough leeway to behave the way I wanted; my final victim got away with a bit of light bondage and some false hope, and no bodily harm – and the story arc finished itself, undoing just about everything and revealing the meta-purpose of the game.

Color me impressed. This game brought forth Horror like no other media has. Here’s the direct download link, if you want to play it now, despite my spoilers.

The backlash for the game is interesting and varied – opinions range from some that enjoy the game for what it is (like me), those that think anyone who would consider playing the game as deeply disturbed themselves, some think the whole premise is vile, and some – even more strangely – like the game through and through and see nothing wrong with it.

If you’re wondering what kind of mind would make a game such as this; turns out the game’s creator has a PHd and practices clinical psychotherapy, and dabbles in game creating occasionally. Perhaps he has some unique insights as to the dark underpinnings of humanity?

If you want to read more about this game from people a bit better at this review thing, check these out:

• Rock Paper Shotgun review of Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer (with heavy spoilers)
• Pop Matters has a decent article on the game.
• Here’s an interview with the game creator.

I hear he’s making a sequel, too.

When I was younger I read and loved the Myst series of books (and, of course, loved the games). It’s been a long time and the memory is hazy now – but I believe there was a character; A young boy who went out into the world and just observed things. He looked upon the natural world, spotted something novel, and made observations. When he came home, he had to write down what he had learned that day.

And that was his “School.”

I find something about the pursuit of pure knowledge really sexy. In Myst, I love how the obtaining of the knowledge was never constrained to a single subject, or even to a physical location – he just wandered the Earth in search for something new to absorb.

When it comes to game design, I often find I learn one big thing with each game I make. It can be something rather nebulous (like how I learned all about platformers from Protonaut) or it can be something highly precise (like how I learned the ins-and-outs of the Box2D physics API with Space Squid).

The really curious side of this coin is that the length of development doesn’t seem to affect if I learn something or not. From my 5 minute game, to my 1 hour games, to my 3 month games – each carries with it a single, central lesson-learned.

So it stands to reason that if I were to do a bunch of games – rapidly – I’d learn as fast as I could!

It’s with this idea in mind that I’m embarking on a new project; a little something I’ve been calling “12G” in my GMail labels. I’m going to make a dozen games, all of them with no more than 1 day of total effort. That’s 24 hours each, per game, devoted to programming, art, sound, music, marketing, and sales (where applicable, of course).

Because I will be attempting to make money – somehow – with each of these games, the quality of idea and presentation is very important in each. I’ll have to have a good level of polish and will have to team up with Audio and Visual arts specialists.

And, with a little luck, I’ll have 12 more nuggets of knowledge in the near future. I’ll blog about each of them as they come to fruition (I already have 5 half-done!).

(I’ll update game statuses here)

Gamasutra put up a nice article this morning, about doing what it takes to make games in the industry. I’m featured on page 3 of the article.

I think it’s really interesting, reading about just what people have done to make games; all the effort they go through, the sacrifices they make.. A nice read that puts a bit of humanity back into game development.

Check it out!