The main things in stealth games

Hello to all.

Faced a problem, or rather a hitch, when introducing a stealth mechanic into the game that I am developing. In a nutshell - this is a third-person horror, where the character is locked in a dungeon with opponents of varying degrees of danger.

Having finished working with the main mechanics of the game, I decided to introduce and bring to mind the mechanics of stealth, but I just can’t determine which things to implement and what not.

There are many games marked with stealth, but each has design features, differences if you want, which radically change the gameplay. In Disonored - the use of abilities that use mana, in Hitman - the ability to impersonate his own and many other chips, like "a bag with you", etc.

A more classic version of the stealth games can be called the Thief series, which in many ways became the ancestor of the genre, but it is very difficult to isolate the core of stealth from the milestones of these games.

I do not want to overload this aspect of my game, but I don’t want to deprive it of parts that are important for the functioning.

What things do you think are mandatory when creating stealth mechanics in a third-person game? This may be the behavior of the AI, level design, objects for interaction in general, all that is somehow connected with the core of stealth mechanics.

P.S. The translation was made by Google translator, from Russian to English, due to the lack of education of the author of the post.

The most important thing about stealth in games, to me, is proper conveyance to the player that what they are doing or where they are hiding is working. Does crouching behind this box or is standing in this dark corner count as 'Hidden'. Now I see you are making a horror game so you don't want to give to much information to the player for a sense of tension, but it should not be a complete guessing game of frustration.

Another thing is striking the delicate balance of punishment for being caught. You should be punished for screwing up but a player should be able to fight there way back to safety in a way that just going 'Gung-Ho' is quicker/easier but not hampered in a way that it's quicker to just hit Quick-Load.

I was gonna say the same thing, the good stealth games have well communicated rules that are applied consistently. I'd wanna know exactly what would work before trying it. My favourite implementation of stealth mechanics is Mark of the Ninja, it does such a good job of making everything clear to the player although I don't know how well those specifics would translate to a horror game.

Multiple routes when you notice that you just cant get through "that one part" are quite important to me in stealth games. Small little gadgets or items like rocks you can throw to distract an enemy are always welcome but not really needed. Also unkillable enemies that you absolutely have to sneak by make sneaking more exciting (since i always knock them out when possible). So yeah thats it for me. Good luck on your game!

So, you mentioned developing the main mechanics and then the stealth mechanics, but you really have to develop these two areas of the design with a consciousness for what's going on in the other, even if this means now going back and augmenting the core mechanics after building the stealth systems. If, for example, the core mechanics give the player an easier way to get out of danger for the same degree of reward, the player is not going to care about stealthing their way out. Similarly, if the stealth mechanics are an all-around ideal tactic to use in any given enemy encounter, the players are going to neglect your core mechanics. Additionally, you have to think about how the player might use one side of that play to cheese the other. Are there abilities in the "main" play that might give the player an unfair advantage? Or, equally importantly, you might want to think about enabling the player to use parts of the stealth play in tandem with the other play. Can advantages gained in one area be applied to the other? Can the player easily switch between these modes of play without messing everything up? You probably don't want it so that the player stealthing their way around the game makes them skip over important items, for example, or for it to be very easy for the player to make a lot of noise that accidentally alerts enemies because you designed this as an action game.

As for the AI, you need their behaviour to be in some way predictable just based on encounter and observation. You can generally add more surprises and sudden deaths in a horror game than in other straight stealths, at least providing the player can get back to where they were in a matter of moments, but if the player can't get a solid idea of what paths the enemies are going to walk, they need to at least, relatively quickly, be able to get an idea of how an enemy is going to react when they encounter them, what methods the enemy is going to use to seek them out, and what strategies the AI is likely to be stumped by. In a horror game like Outlast, you can learn enemy paths, you can know that you're safe as long as you're not in their direct line of sight, and you know that hiding under tables or in cabinets (as long as the enemy didn't see you enter them) is a generally sound course of action against them. As for the items, they should give the player some degree of agency over how stealthing around enemies plays out, but they should also create tension. Horror games specifically usually don't give the player a lot of equipment that can make them highly powerful which is what you'd see in a more conventional action game, but there are always some vital tools the player gets because seeing if they can use them correctly or running low on them creates tension. Common examples of these items include better ways to see (e.g. Batteries for the night vision camera or a torch) and healing items. Lights that players can turn on or off in the environment also aren't that uncommon, but I'd really encourage you to experiment in this area. We've seen a flood of minimalist "run away from the monster" horror games in recent years, and it's unlikely you can just go by the book and get a really successful game.

Beyond this, all the posts above have good advice. Best of luck.

Tools to manipulate the behavior of enemies is very important. Being able to throw a stone to the left as distraction and then making a run on the right is what i want to do. Give your players more options than having to wait for that one safe spot in an enemies routine.