I wish more survival horror games could be made.

I really would like to see more horror games. I'm a fan of the survival horror genre, and its always kinda sad to see no horror games to come out over the years. I know its not the most popular genre. But if developers actually takes there time to make a good original horror game. It might bring people's attention to want to play more survival horror games. Kinda like how the original dead space did a few years ago. If a new survival horror game doe's get made. I want to see something about it stand out gameplay wise, and I don't want the enemies to be typical zombies. I think zombies has worn out nowadays. I want to see new types of enemies that nobody has seen before.

I want someone to delve into horror movies for inspiration. Give me a Nightmare on Elm Street game, developers can get really creative with the nightmares. Or a Friday the 13th game in which you have to evade and eventually overcome Jason.

Surivial-Horror is a very difficult and time consuming genre to make. If there is combat, every single encounter must be balanced against every other encounter to make sure there are the desired amount of resources available. And then you have to balance the enemies against the atmosphere and pace them accordingly. It's not a genre that lends itself to annualization, which is what this industry relies on these days.

i'd tend to agree. its kind of annoying that survival horror games always end up becoming bad action games instead. resident evil is the most guilty of this. the later installments aren't scary at all and are just badly controlled 3rd person shooters.

personally, i don't think zombies are worn out at all. i think the way the games industry uses them in games is worn out. apparently game developers think zombies are made of paper mache and need to be killed in mass by the player. i dont think any game has ever effectively used zombies before. a survival horror game where you dont really get guns, and melee weapons arent super effect so you have to avoid the zombies could be really great. instead every game with zombies makes them made out of tissue paper where you can slice them in half with a machete. doesn't have to be zombies obviously, but i think people being "sick of zombies" doesn't have to do with zombies themselves, but rather the way game developers are using them.

i mean zombies have always supposed to be really hard to kill, since they're dead an all. but just about every game with zombies makes them super easy to kill.

aside from my rant on zombies, i have one important thing to say about survival horror games and i don't think anyone will argue this. the more combat and fighting you do, regardless of the enemy the less scary the game gets. the more the game shows you that you can just kill the things you're supposed to be scared of, the less tension there is. it stops being "oh crap i hope those monsters don't kill me, crap crap crap" to " oh crap i gotta do another lame fight, ugh" real fast.

@SoldierG654342 said:

Surivial-Horror is a very difficult and time consuming genre to make. If there is combat, every single encounter must be balanced against every other encounter to make sure there are the desired amount of resources available. And then you have to balance the enemies against the atmosphere and pace them accordingly. It's not a genre that lends itself to annualization, which is what this industry relies on these days.

True, but trying to make good game in general will be hard. It depends how much effort the developers put in towards the game.

@Clonedzero said:

aside from my rant on zombies, i have one important thing to say about survival horror games and i don't think anyone will argue this. the more combat and fighting you do, regardless of the enemy the less scary the game gets. the more the game shows you that you can just kill the things you're supposed to be scared of, the less tension there is. it stops being "oh crap i hope those monsters don't kill me, crap crap crap" to " oh crap i gotta do another lame fight, ugh" real fast.

Only if the game is poorly made. Think of the original Resident Evil. Every encounter was tense because you never have much ammo. Having fought twenty zombies before didn't change the fact that you only had three bullets for the twenty first while you were low on health and out of green herbs. Or in System Shock 2, where you're facing down a a Security Bot with you're guns near jamming. The fighting only becomes mundane (like in Dead Space) when the enemies and supplies are placed without any thought.

And that is why I'm looking forward to the new Amnesia game. 
Sure the first one went from scary to "And then I go in here and, oh hey monster. what a surprised. just run past him and voila"-mood bur I'm sure the second one will be scary too for the first hour or so like the first one was.

@Clonedzero said:

aside from my rant on zombies, i have one important thing to say about survival horror games and i don't think anyone will argue this. the more combat and fighting you do, regardless of the enemy the less scary the game gets. the more the game shows you that you can just kill the things you're supposed to be scared of, the less tension there is. it stops being "oh crap i hope those monsters don't kill me, crap crap crap" to " oh crap i gotta do another lame fight, ugh" real fast.

Yeah survival horror games is all about tension, and thinking about how to use your resources to the best of your advantage. If the game doe's bring lots of fighting it doe's ruin the tension. It just messes up the creepy atmosphere.

As for resident evil which use to be my favorite survival-horror series. Some people will argue saying the series has to evolve. Which I understand but now the series decided to stay on the action route, and the only reason is because that style of gameplay makes more money for capcom. It is sad that they decided to get rid of the survival horror aspects completely.

@falserelic: yeah. resident evil is a weird series. RE4 was a cool middleground between survival and action. though the whole super long castle bit in the middle wasn't scary, or creepy at all. the stuff at the beginning and end were pretty good though.

RE5 however, ugh. i dont think i liked a single thing about that game. the combat felt bad. the AI partner was annoying and pretty much ruined any chance of being scared by anything. (i didn't play it co-op, i didn't know anyone who had the game). the story was all over the place and super over the top. it was just horrible.

RE6 might be the first major numbered resident evil that i skip. which is a shame cus i hear you play as leon (who i like more than chris) and its real zombies again instead of that stupid bug parasite nonsense. the stuff i saw on it from E3 makes it look even MORE actiony than before.

but more on point, i think stealth should be a major part of survival horror games. stealth games are already full of tension and anxiety, top that with a scary atmosphere and story and you got something great. having to slowly sneak past a pack of zombies could be really awesome, where if you get spotted you have no hopes of beating them. most survival horror games you just stumble around then a monster jumps out at you. blah boring.

i really think stealth and avoiding enemies rather than fighting them (obviously also having very limited resources) would make a fantastic game. even with the most cliche standard zombies, it could be brilliant. having a huge focus on stealth makes an already tense situation worse, why any major survival horror games havent figured this out yet is beyond me! (unless one did and i dont know about it yet, if so tell me cus i'd love to play something like that)

Wait, what type of horror games are we talking about? Action horror games or psychological horror games?

@Video_Game_King said:

Wait, what type of horror games are we talking about? Action horror games or psychological horror games?

Both as long as its survival horror. But thinking about it the last psychological horror game I played was siren: Blood curse. I hated that game and the story made no sense. The story really was just out there. There's no way someone could say that story made sense.

I'm probably the only one here, but I'd love a return to the old style Resident Evils...circa 1,2, and 3.  Don't get me wrong, 4 and 5 are good and 6 looks to be pretty awesome too.  However, the fixed camera angles, cheesy B acting, and intermittent jump scares were pretty memorable.

@MightyDuck said:

I'm probably the only one here, but I'd love a return to the old style Resident Evils...circa 1,2, and 3. Don't get me wrong, 4 and 5 are good and 6 looks to be pretty awesome too. However, the fixed camera angles, cheesy B acting, and intermittent jump scares were pretty memorable.

Nowadays that old style of resident evil wouldn't be appealing to alot of people. Capcom would end up losing alot of money. But I did love playing the old-school resident evil games back in the day. Brings back alot of good memories.

It's up to indie devs (or 'small' wholly owned devs) to make small-scale stuff for niche genres. Don't expect a 50 million dollar survival horror game. Frankly I can't wait.

I was saying this a few years back about turn-based or real-time isometric RPGs... Stop expecting a 50 million dollar version of one of these games. Wait until small devs get their hands on the genre. Now we have new Wasteland and Shadowrun games, there's rumors of a new Baldur's Gate, small scale devs are how you 'save' genres that are no longer mainstream. Look how indie games 'saved' 2D platformers and point-and-click adventure.

I think you guys should check out Ryan Payton's Republique. He's stated it as mixing stealth and survival horror, with fixed camera angles and a focus on presentation. One of the main influences is the original Resident Evil. If you don't want ios games, it's also coming out for PC.

@Brodehouse said:

It's up to indie devs (or 'small' wholly owned devs) to make small-scale stuff for niche genres. Don't expect a 50 million dollar survival horror game. Frankly I can't wait. I was saying this a few years back about turn-based or real-time isometric RPGs... Stop expecting a 50 million dollar version of one of these games. Wait until small devs get their hands on the genre. Now we have new Wasteland and Shadowrun games, there's rumors of a new Baldur's Gate, small scale devs are how you 'save' genres that are no longer mainstream. Look how indie games 'saved' 2D platformers and point-and-click adventure. I think you guys should check out Ryan Payton's Republique. He's stated it as mixing stealth and survival horror, with fixed camera angles and a focus on presentation. One of the main influences is the original Resident Evil. If you don't want ios games, it's also coming out for PC.

I don't know about indie devs with survival horror games. The last time we had a indie dev make a survival horror game we got Amy. We all know how that game turned out. But indie devs will have to make a good first impression with there games. If they want to get people's attention.

Aren't movies that are actually scary generally out of the mainstream as well?

I'm fine with indie devs taking up the mantles of genres that don't have mass market appeal. Indie devs have some great tools available these days so the games usually look fairly good and they have pretty good ways of marketing their material so that people know about it.

@Video_Game_King said:

Wait, what type of horror games are we talking about? Action horror games or psychological horror games?

Both are good, but I'm a much bigger fan of psychological horror games. While I don't think Dead Space 1 or 2 were especially scary, I still appreciate the atmosphere. Games like Silent Hill 2 or Fatal Frame games and such are really good though.

RE5 was good for what it was, a 3rd person shooter with horror elements. I enjoy it infinitely more than any of the usual suspects of military FPS. It also has the most fun co-op of any game this gen, assuming you have someone to play with irl.

Yeah, horror's out of public favor right now, but this happens every few years. It'll be back once somebody hits the right chords.

I'm currently obsessed with the idea of "hidden horror", which I got from Cracked of all places: A movie or game that's not at all marketed as such, and completely works as a non-horror narrative, but with an entire second storyline going on for the eagle-eyed viewer to catch and everyone else to only notice in their periphery, ideally leaving them unsettled and not knowing why. It would be incredibly hard to pull off, but I'm in love with the concept.

I want a psychological horror game set in the world of the video for "The Perfect Drug." Color pallet and everything. Something Victorian, possibly dealing with Post-mortem photography since that was big at the time, with a slow burn tension and release. That would be amazing, if done right.

@ShaggE said:

Yeah, horror's out of public favor right now, but this happens every few years. It'll be back once somebody hits the right chords.

I'm currently obsessed with the idea of "hidden horror", which I got from Cracked of all places: A movie or game that's not at all marketed as such, and completely works as a non-horror narrative, but with an entire second storyline going on for the eagle-eyed viewer to catch and everyone else to only notice in their periphery, ideally leaving them unsettled and not knowing why. It would be incredibly hard to pull off, but I'm in love with the concept.

Totally. I'm a fan of the implication of something being "not right" from small and fleeting visual and audio cues. It allows the imagination to run wild, which is usually worse than anything they can show you.

/jacobsladder

@mitsuko_souma said:

RE5 was good for what it was, a 3rd person shooter with horror elements. I enjoy it infinitely more than any of the usual suspects of military FPS. It also has the most fun co-op of any game this gen, assuming you have someone to play with irl.

yup. Left 4 Dead 2 was the game that i had some of the most fun in with co-op this gen, and Resident Evil 5 is up there, too. it's surprisingly competent when it comes to messing around in that game.

@Grimhild: I'd definitely be into that. I can imagine Frictional Games' stalking mechanic mixed with Fatal Frame's gameplay working perfectly.

I'd love to see the soundtrack for such a game, too. NIN (of course), Emilie Autumn, any number of Victorian era classical pieces, Rasputina... original pieces for the game when possible, but I wouldn't object to smartly chosen songs.

...

Sorry, you got my imagination going, and now I'm writing mental design docs for a game that will never exist, haha.

When I was a kid I use to be afraid to play horror games. But the one game that broke my fear was resident evil survivor. That game scared the shit out of me. I wanted to quit so many times but I didn't. Because the game didn't have a save system and I didn't want to lose my progress. But after I beat the game I felt badass this thrill came over me. Then I wanted more of that thrill so I started to play other horror games. Such as most of all the resident evil games,silent hill, extermination and other games.

Extermination I really would love to see a remake of this game. The monsters was just like the monsters in the movie the Thing. This game was scary and disgusting when I first played it. The final boss was hard as shit and I never beat him. But I had alot of fun playing this game. Its a shame that horror games aren't so scary nowadays.

I would be intrigued by a survival horror game based on the first alien movie. Playing a person with no real weapons, and limited defensive abilities-while being stalked by a xenomorph sounds awesome.

Mechanically, though, I have no idea how that game would work. Amnesia people might have an idea.

Another great idea- although not necessarily survival horror, would be a real gumshoe/detective game on the Call of Cthulhu property. I would LOVE that.

Especially if that would entail playing in the 30's/40s.

A Phillip Marlowe/Call of Cthulhu game would be amazing.

Personally I think the future for horror is in the roguelike genre. The problem with all scares and great moments in survival horror is that they only work once. Killing one monster is horrifying because you don't know their capabilities. Killing two less so, and three is just pure gameplay. Building knowledge and using it empowers the player. I say prevent that, rely on a lot of random monster generation, random floor generation. Build some scripted stuff, small moments here and there, but sprinkle them randomly throughout the level. Death is a setback but not permanent; you respawn without your gear and inventory, on a newly randomized floor, without having to replay sections you've already seen. You aren't an armory, you can only carry whatever you can fit in your hands and pocket, so losing your equipment is a setback but not the end of the world. But when you think you're getting near the end of the floor, to have a bunch of crazy monsters you have no experience dealing with coming at you could really push the horror angle.

I should really talk to some programmer about this idea, it's got such good legs.

I wish there were more too, I want another condemned game or something like that, there still are a few here and there but not a lot. Dead island was kind of survival horror, I liked that one.

@Pop said:

I wish there were more too, I want another condemned game or something like that, there still are a few here and there but not a lot. Dead island was kind of survival horror, I liked that one.

It would be kinda cool to see another condemned. I always liked the creepy isolated vibe to the game.

@ShaggE said:

Yeah, horror's out of public favor right now, but this happens every few years. It'll be back once somebody hits the right chords.

I'm currently obsessed with the idea of "hidden horror", which I got from Cracked of all places: A movie or game that's not at all marketed as such, and completely works as a non-horror narrative, but with an entire second storyline going on for the eagle-eyed viewer to catch and everyone else to only notice in their periphery, ideally leaving them unsettled and not knowing why. It would be incredibly hard to pull off, but I'm in love with the concept.

You mean like how a non-horror game like Golden Sun series is always in a state of constant war and Earthquake apocalypses on a yearly basis?

I really would like to see more horror games. I'm a fan of the survival horror genre, and its always kinda sad to see no horror games to come out over the years. I know its not the most popular genre. But if developers actually takes there time to make a good original horror game. It might bring people's attention to want to play more survival horror games. Kinda like how the original dead space did a few years ago. If a new survival horror game doe's get made. I want to see something about it stand out gameplay wise, and I don't want the enemies to be typical zombies. I think zombies has worn out nowadays. I want to see new types of enemies that nobody has seen before.

 

The next horror game I'm going to get will be Silent Hill: Downpowr. It looks better then shattered memories. I played shattered memories and it wasn't the type of remake I wanted for silent hill. I even made a video review of the game expressing my opinion on youtube. Some people agreed and some people disagreed and started saying racial slurs. I pissed a few people off when I said the game wasn't scary because it wasn't.

BTW.... I'll check out that game lone survivor. I've been hearing that its pretty good.

Hmm, I actually found Dead Space 1 and 2 to be scary as shit. The atmosphere is perfectly unnerving. Plus, I'm still a sucker for jump scares.

@Brodehouse said:

@falserelic Scary, no. But moody, absolutely. That game isn't about creating a sense of terror, that game is about creating a blanket of melancholy. Also, that game trades on Adult Fears rather than Primal Fears. It's about the fear of your child growing up emotionally damaged, not about the fear of a chainsaw cutting through your flesh.

I understand, but having an actually remake of the original silent hill would have been cool. The first Silent hill game was one of my favorite horror games it was a classic. I know alot of people like shattered memories and I'm glad they enjoyed it. The game didn't really click for me.

@wmaustin55 said:

Hmm, I actually found Dead Space 1 and 2 to be scary as shit. The atmosphere is perfectly unnerving. Plus, I'm still a sucker for jump scares.

I actually platinum dead space 2. I didn't find it as long or scary then the first one but I enjoyed it. Then again its kinda hard to scare me in horror games because I played so many. Looking at dead space 3 it seems there going more on the action route.

@Brodehouse said:

@falserelic I don't need a remake of the first Silent Hill, I still have it around. If it wasn't a big departure from the original, I would wonder why it exists. I already know he's looking for a little girl, short black hair, just turned 7 last week. I already know it was foretold by GYROMANCY! Then again, I only saw the REmake as pure fan service.

I know we don't need a remake but I want a remake. After playing the resident evil remake on the gamecube. I became curious about a silent hill remake. The resident evil remake was fucking aswome the graphics, new levels, new enemies I loved everything. I want to see silent hill have that same treatment. I know we both ain't going to agree and that's fine. We all got are own opinions of how we feel about things.

We are an independent games developer, and after growing up being inspired by the old school style of survival horror, had set about the task of producing one of our own in this genre on the Windows platform. Focusing perhaps more so on a good and gripping storyline with twists and turns, and an all original music score.

40th Of November™ draws attention very much on being alone and vulnerable. Ammo and health placement have been designed to make the player think strategically when engaging in battle. You'll be investigating scenario's, solving puzzles & decrypting riddles as you battle your way through to the truth behind the 40th Of November.

PROLOGUE

GAME INFORMATION

The decision has also been made to release this game as a free download in order to allow more people access to the game and will be available on XP / Vista / Windows 7.

Coming Soon!

The above game contains mature content and has been self classified as an 18 certificate in order to abide by viewing regulations.

Warmest Regards

Evonosis Interactive.

@EvonosisInteractive: Glad to see that there's people who has a passion of survival-horror games like me. Good Luck! on the project hope it goes well.

Thank you for your kind words Falserelic. We will keep users posted and let you know as soon as it is available.

There is also a video that showcases some of the original music that will feature in the game.

It was the early Resident Evil titles back in the day that got me personally hooked on the genre.

It was a golden time for video gaming in general.

Kind Regards.

Surival horror games need to focus on tension. They can't go making combat fun and exciting like the new Resident Evil games or Dead Space 2, a survival horror game should put you off combat. I remember in the first Resident Evil trying to avoid the hallways with dogs and bracing myself whenever I heard a hunter's metallic nails clacking on the wooden floors because they were tough, you did not even have a machine gun so you could not just run forward spraying a hail of bullets at everything and needed to time your shots well. However, with Modern Warfare 3 being the biggest entertainment launch, it's clear people want action and sadly that means it is safer for developers to just focus on providing action.

@conantheking: Very true, and couldn't of said it better myself. The games that are most popular these day's for me just don't have that wow factor that they used to have. I still make a point of playing the first RE games in the series even today with 1, 2, 3 & CV being my personal favourites.

There are and were a lot of complaints with regard to the voice acting and controls and so forth, but I think that's all helped toward making it what it was, a brilliantly masterminded game expertly put together with everything happening at the right time, and as you say, the hunters definitely kept one on ones toes didn't they.

Great story, great playability and a healthy chunk of strategic thinking involved. I hope that in the AAA market the survival horror genre will see it's day again.

@EvonosisInteractive: I hope survival-horror games gets there time to shine aswell. As long as there developers taking there time to make a unique horror game. Survival-horror games will be back in the spotlight.

I'd like to see a multiple-person survival horror game. Not multiplayer, but multiple characters. I think Siren kind of did it well, but it had a lot of issues in other ways.

I'd like a survival horror game where you're playing like 3-5 different players, each from their own perspective, and all in real time. I don't mean survival horror where you have to adventure around, either. I mean time-management and somewhat resource-management intensive survival horror. If you could fight, you'd have limited weapons, but it'd essentially be about juggling these different people in different places from different horrible things. Maybe a little family of 5 gets stuck in a freaky ass forest and you've got to get each of them out. Maybe they interact with each other along the way, older ones giving boosts to younger ones, younger ones able to fit in smaller hiding spaces but more prone to freaking out, etc.

Just a very rough general idea... but I think it could be fun.

Dead Space and Amnesia are good.

Console horror is dead. When you've got big publishers and in this risk-averse generation, who's going to invest a AAA budget into a survival horror game that's all about depowerment/helplessness and not a power fantasy, and is about intimate spaces instead of big sprawling locations? It's the perfect anti-mainstream genre!

It's all gone into the indie space now. Amnesia brought it back again. Can't wait for the sequel! Then you have Lone Survivor (quick look). Now there are several First Person Horror games coming out.

Get a PC, that's where it all will be.

No great survival horror games coming out?? What do you mean? AMY was released not so long ago!

dont know if any one has seen this and i think its gona be indie (cheap) www.tlcindie.co.uk/

but it looks quite cool it dont tell you much about the game on the site but a demo is coming out.

@killer911999555 said:

dont know if any one has seen this and i think its gona be indie (cheap) www.tlcindie.co.uk/

but it looks quite cool it dont tell you much about the game on the site but a demo is coming out.

I'm not for sure what horror game there making. But I'll checkout the demo if its released.