作者：Leigh Alexander

近年来，恐怖游戏看似成了动作游戏与第一人称射击游戏崛起的大潮中，最为惨败的家庭主机游戏类型。在只关于直面危境和快速反应的游戏中，要唤起玩家的恐惧感颇有难度。当然，这不是不可能，要做到这一点，恐怖美学胜过其他大多数方法。

日本游戏行业的萎缩也影响了恐怖游戏的惊悚程度和基调，因为东方文化和欧美文化之间的显著区别，二者处理恐怖的态度也不同。

可以说，欧美媒体在表现恐怖的方式上，比较直接和浅显：往往有一个观众心知肚明的敌人，但故事中的角色却浑然不觉（这就是为什么我们喜欢徒劳地提醒健忘的电影主角——不要打开那扇门！）我们总是知道为什么拿斧头的凶手会变成疯子，或者什么是罪恶之源。观看大多数欧美作品时，我们的恐惧感通常来自强烈的视觉表象或者会对角色的身体造成伤害的威胁。

而日本和韩国的恐怖媒体往往根据未知的或未解的主题制造恐怖，如家族秘史、鬼怪奇谭和民间传说就比暴力和血腥的题材更流行。在现代主机游戏中，最恐怖的游戏如《生化危机》、《寂静岭》和《零系列》等等，都出自日本制作人之手。

而现在，在追求西化的过程中，当下流行的作品似乎缺失了某些东西。《生化危机》还是像以前一样热门，但曾经带给玩家探索鬼宅和寻找宝贵资源的恐怖体验，开始变成活泼的动作游戏。现在，玩家的主要活动是，操作身强力壮的角色屠杀成群结队的僵尸。

玩家对每一款新的《寂静岭》游戏的接受度都比上一款更差，即便科乐美那么认真地模仿使先前游戏富有新意的东西。

另一个使恐怖游戏衰弱的原因是，PC游戏文化改变了：点击式益智游戏和探索游戏曾是90年代末和2000年初的市场主流类型，过去我们熟知的冒险游戏现在也式微了。冒险游戏才刚开始探索更加黑暗、更加恐怖的主题（其是否成功尚有争议），如《7th Guest》和《Phantasmagoria》，市场又变了。

所幸的是，对于恐怖游戏粉丝，今天的PC游戏的商业模式的改变意味着冒险游戏和剧情游戏有望复兴。可下载的和独立游戏是游戏产业中的一股强大力量，其质量提升更加迅速，除了对新型体验的探索热情更加高涨，行业还从那些我们一度全盘否定掉的游戏形式中回炉某些设计。

结果是，兴盛的独立制作的恐怖游戏越来越高调；最近的《家》向我们曾经喜欢的剧情导向型恐怖游戏致敬，得到了不少用户的好评和关注。令人恐惧的《Slender》起源于“creepypasta”（游戏邦注：“creepypasta”是一个专门收集流传于网上的恐怖故事、图片等的网站），支持用户免费玩游戏（这个题材特别吸引人，因为它意味着玩家的恐惧来源不仅有历史或旧电影中的怪物，还有现代传说，比较新鲜）。

slendergame(from gamasutra)

还有一些在商业性更明显的成功的游戏案例，证明人们仍然希望吓倒自己的不只是外星人和枪支：人人都爱《失忆症：黑暗血统》，《Limbo》的惊悚冷酷的美学使它大受欢迎。这样的案例不胜枚举。

制造恐惧的四个方法

如何把游戏做得真正令人恐惧，这是个有趣的思考题，特别是因为产生恐怖的公式似乎不那么确定且容易出错，如果你看看玩家感到可怕的游戏类型的比率，你就知道了。因为恐怖游戏似乎有复兴的趋势，让我们看看让玩家产生恐惧感的技术。我们都知道环境音效很重要，也明白资源和武器的稀缺会使玩家感到更脆弱。但以下四点可能是你没有考虑过的:

模糊性。为了给玩家带来满意的体验，明确的目标和实现目标的方法是关键；而模糊性恰恰从未成为游戏的流行特征。但在恐怖游戏中，毫无疑问，它可以唤起玩家的想象；你可以借助视觉和声音线索或重要的信息点，引导玩家游戏。

但想想是什么让观众迷上恐怖电影：他们希望找出恐怖事件的始作俑者和原因，他们想看看主角能否生还。当玩家的视线长不过手电桶的光线，那就是恐怖；当玩家不能确定自己能否信任叙述者，那就是恐怖。当你能够做到以上效果，玩家就不能信任他们看到的东西，就会产生了精神上的不安。这就是开启恐惧的钥匙。

对玩家隐瞒某些信息，有助于玩家产生恐惧感。《寂静岭2》就是运用模糊性的绝佳案例。游戏一开始不会向玩家透露任何事，但玩家始终准确地预感到有什么不好的事正在发生，而主人公却不能察觉。

场所。恐怖游戏中经常出现的场所有很多。在某个地方，某人发现了某些非常可怕的事，这已经成了标准套路。所幸的是，这些隐喻确实可以运用得很好；即使“恐怖医院”已经被反复用到滥，它仍然管用，因为当玩家看到某个“恐怖医院”时，他们会立即明白自己身处险境。

旅馆、监狱、学校和大楼也时常在恐怖媒体中露面，因为这些地方的墙壁里往往隐藏着古老的遗迹。对恐怖游戏开发者来说，知道为什么这些场所管用，并且能够良好地运用具有文化普遍性的“恐怖场所”，这一点甚为重要。但最让我心惊肉跳的游戏常会使用场所颠覆玩家的期待。例如，如果游戏先引导玩家相信自己的家、卧室或其他经常去的地方是安全的，之后却在这些场所制造一些恐怖事件，这样玩家的恐惧感就会更强烈。

《寂静岭》经常使用某一类场景——荒废的公寓、残破的医院和大雾迷漫的街道。这些在游戏中常见的地方并没有让玩家产生视觉疲劳，反而增强了恐怖感。而《寂静岭4》给玩家一个可以离开也可以返回的场所。随着游戏进行，玩家的安全港湾变得越来越脆弱，越来越不能抵挡入侵。给玩家制造绝对的个人空间，然后颠覆玩家的期待，这是吓倒玩家的好办法。

与主人公的关系。在恐怖游戏中，让玩家对自己的角色产生某种情绪非常必要；玩家与角色的关系应该与同情有关。如果玩家同情主角，那么他们就会担忧角色的安危，当角色发生什么事时，玩家就会感到害怕。或者，他们会将自己带入那个场景，通过角色的经历更加深刻地体会到那种恐怖。

寂静岭(from gamasutra)

但有时候，其他关系可能会使玩家更加惊讶和不安。2005年的《Haunting Ground》将玩家设定为一个手无缚鸡之力，却要摆脱敌人的年轻女孩，如果她的处境变得太过严峻，她就会陷入难以抑制的恐慌之中。

女孩困在城堡中，和她一起的还有一些想要利用她身体的可怕炼金术士。她不是人人都想扮演的角色，游戏对待她的方式让人感到非常不舒服。然而在《Haunting Ground》中，这种设定让游戏的恐怖效果更强，因为在主人公所处的情境中，玩家常常要承受重大压力、不适和不安。这表现了设计师的深思熟虑和意图，是游戏对待弱女的惯用手法，但却往往被遗忘。

氛围的微妙变化。除了颠覆玩家对场所的期待和创造玩家与主人公之间的意外的关系，还有另一种方法可以捉弄玩家的感觉。传统的恐怖游戏粉丝热衷于探索，且似乎喜欢游戏奖励他们对细节的关注。当他们习以为常的事物改变了，或当他们周围的环境受到干扰，都能激起玩家的好奇心，增强他们的恐惧感。

《Phantasmagoria》这款游戏算是Sierra于90年代做的一个奇异实验，是用当时最好的技术创造一款成熟的、成人恐怖游戏。这是第一款使用真人演员作为玩家角色的游戏。这款游戏确实野心勃勃，娱乐了也吓倒了当时的许多玩家——它是冒险游戏转型时的遗产之作。

随着剧情的进展，该游戏世界的演变方式仍然是个有趣的例子，证明了氛围的改变可以唤起玩家的恐惧感。在《Phantasmagoria》中，玩家要探索一座曾属于一位阴险的魔法师的大宅，这位魔法师还留下了大量遗产。然而，随着章节进行，氛围变得越来越诡异；玩家在游戏中可以看到一个古怪的自动占卜机，它带来的信息越来越不祥，发出的音乐旋律也渐渐由愉快转向阴暗。

已故魔法师的香烟和酒好像莫名其妙地、一点儿一点儿地消失了。玩家的电脑显示的提示越来越混乱。甚至连音乐也改变了，令人不安的音调渐渐变得沉重——之后，甚至好像是演奏音乐的人出错了。

对于整个过程都发生同一间屋子里的游戏来说，非常有必要在重要的探索活动中注入了一种恐怖的气氛。因为这让玩家感觉不到自己对环境的掌控感，当然就更易心生恐惧了。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

our ways to make better horror games

by Leigh Alexander

Amid new opportunities for horror games, Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander looks at four frightening concepts that go beyond hacking, slashing and shooting.

In recent years, the horror genre seems among the largest casualties of the rise of action games and first-person shooters in the home console space. It’s challenging to create fear in games that are all about head-on confrontation and quick reflexes. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but the aesthetic of the gruesome prevails above most other approaches.

The contraction of Japan’s game industry has affected the breadth and tone of the horror genre too, thanks to some clear differences between the ways Eastern and Western cultures each generally approach fear.

It’s safe to say that Western approaches to horror in media usually involve the direct and the seen: There is often a clear enemy known to audiences if not to the story’s characters (it’s why we like to yell futile instructions to oblivious film protagonists — don’t open that door!). We always learn why the axe murderer became crazed, or what the source of the demonic evil is. Most of the time, scares come from strong visual imagery or the threat of physical harm to the characters.

On the other hand, the horror media to come out of Japan and Korea tends to create dread from the unknown and the unexplained, and themes of family, ghosts and folklore are more popular than violence and gore. In the previous console generation, the most frightening games, like Resident Evil, Silent Hill or Fatal Frame, among others, all hailed from Japanese creators.

The franchises that thrive today seem to have lost a certain something in their pursuit of Westernization — Resident Evil remains as popular as ever, but what began as an eerie experience exploring haunted mansions and clinging to precious resources is now a spry action title where we watch over characters’ brawny shoulders as they mow down hordes of zombies.

Each new Silent Hill game is received more poorly than the last, even when developers try earnestly to imitate whatever certain something made Konami’s early titles so seminal.

Another factor in the diminishment of the horror genre is the way PC gaming culture has changed: The point-and-click puzzle and exploration games of the late ’90s and early millennium used to be the primary kind of experience on offer, and now the adventure game as we once knew it is all but gone. The adventure game space had just begun trying to explore darker, scarier themes (to debatable degrees of success) in games like 7th Guest or Phantasmagoria, when things seemed to take a left turn.

Fortunately for horror game fans, today’s changing business models on PC mean adventure and storytelling games have an opportunity for resurgence. Downloadable and independent games are serious forces in the industry, quality ratchets up ever more quickly and creatives are hungry to explore new kinds of experiences — or to revisit and reappropriate bits and pieces of design from game forms that we might have once been overly-eager to throw out whole.

The result is a thriving indie horror game scene that’s going less and less under the radar; recently Home, a creepy little homage to what we used to love about story-based horror, got praise and attention from a broad array of consumer outlets. The terrifying Slender emerged from internet “creepypasta” lore and is free to play (that one in particular is fascinating, because it suggests new figures of fear can emerge not from history or old film monsters, but from modern digital folklore).

And there’ve been more obvious commercial examples of game successes that prove people still want to be terrified by things other than aliens and guns: Everybody loves Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and it was Limbo’s spooky, ruthless aesthetic that made it popular. Examples are everywhere.
Four ways to horrify

It’s interesting to think about what makes games like these truly scary, especially since the formula for horror seems precarious and easy to get wrong, if you look at the rate at which fans feel worried about the genre. Since it seems horror games have an opportunity to thrive again, let’s look at techniques for creating fear in players. We know that environmental audio is essential, and it’s also fairly well-understood how scarcity of resources or weaponry makes players feel more vulnerable. But take note of four ideas you may not have considered:

Ambiguity. Clear goals and methods for measuring performance toward goals are key to giving your player a satisfying experience, and vagueness has rightly never been a particularly popular quality for games. But in horror, it’s the things left unsaid that engage the player’s imagination; you can direct the player clearly through visual and sound cues, or key bits of information.

But think of what keeps folks hooked on scary movies: They’re hoping to find out who’s responsible for a terrible event and why. They’re watching to see whether the hero survives. When a player can’t see further than what their flashlight illuminates, it’s scary. If a player isn’t sure whether he or she can trust a narrator, it’s scary. When you’re able to make it so the player can’t trust that some things are what they seem, it creates that sense of psychic unsettlement that’s key to fear.

And withholding some information from the player can help set up thrilling revelations later. Silent Hill 2 is an excellent example of the ambiguity principle working well — won’t spoil anything for you here, but the game is engaging because of the player’s persistent, accurate hunch that there’s something darker afoot than what the protagonist can acknowledge.

Strong sense of place. There are a wide range of locales frequently used in horror; somewhere along the line someone found something scary about it, and it became sort of standard. The cool thing about horror is that tropes can actually be used well; even though the “creepy hospital” has been done countless times across media for as long as anyone can remember, it still works, because when players sees certain “creepy hospital” visual cues, they understand immediately they’re in a dangerous place.

Hotels, prisons, schools and mansions frequently appear in scary media too, because of the fact they carry long legacies inside their walls. Knowing why each of these environments work and being able to use culturally-universal “scary places” to strong effect is important, but the games that have unnerved me the most are ones that use place to subvert expectations. For example, if the player is led to believe early on in a game that her home, bedroom or other regularly-visited place is safe, it’s more terrifying later when something about it changes.

The Silent Hill games regularly use the same kinds of locations — dilapidated apartments, hospitals and foggy streets — and somehow that seems to empower those places rather than create fatigue. But Silent Hill 4 gave the player a home to depart from and return to. As the game progresses, the player’s safe place grows increasingly vulnerable to invasion and unpredictable. Creating strongly-individual spaces for players and then manipulating expectations is a great way to unsettle them.

Relationship with protagonist. It’s especially essential in horror games that the player has some emotion toward the character he or she plays, and it’s easy to assume that the relationship you want to forge with the player involves empathy. If players feel for the hero, then they’ll fear for the character’s safety, and therefore they’ll get scared when anything might happen to that character. Or they’ll be able to project themselves into the situation, thereby feeling closer to it through the hero.

But sometimes other kinds of relationships can create more opportunities to surprise and unsettle the player. 2005′s Haunting Ground cast the player as a powerless young girl who could really only run from her aggressors, and who was prone to entering an ungovernable, heart-pounding panic if her circumstances became too demanding.

Trapped in a castle with some creepy alchemical types that wanted to use her body, she wasn’t the kind of character anyone would want to be, and the way the game treated her was incredibly uncomfortable. Yet in Haunting Ground’s case it made the game more frightening and gross, as the player often experienced profound distress, discomfort and unsettlement at the protagonist’s circumstances. It felt considered and intentional on the part of the designers, too, versus the oblivious way games often treat vulnerable women.

Subtle changes in atmosphere. There are other ways to play with players’ expectations than subverting sense of place or creating unexpected dynamics between player and protagonist. Traditional horror game fans love exploration, and seem to enjoy games that reward their attention to detail. When something routine they expect to find changes locations, or when the environment around them appears tampered-with, it both excites their curiosity and amplifies the fear.

Sierra’s Phantasmagoria is a bizarre 1990s experiment in creating a mature, adult horror game with the best technology of the time. It’s known as the first game to use a live actor as an on-screen player character. Incredibly ambitious, it frightened and entertained many in its day — now it holds up so poorly it’s silly, very much a relic from a weird left-turn for adventure games.

Still, the way the game world evolves as the story progresses is an interesting example of how atmosphere changes can evoke fear. The player has to explore a massive house that once belonged to a sinister magician, and much of his property remains behind. Yet each chapter things change; a whimsical fortune-telling machine the player can check becomes more forbidding, its merry tune a little darker each chapter.

The late magician’s cigarettes and alcohol seem to be inexplicably disappearing bit by bit. The player’s computer shows increasingly garbled warnings. Even the music changes, its apprehensive tone gradually evolving into a heavier tune — later on, it even sounds like whoever is ‘playing’ it is making mistakes.

This infuses the key act of exploration with a sense of dread, especially important in a game that all takes place in the same house. It’s because the player is never allowed to feel like he or she has mastered the environment, which would certainly lessen the fear.(source:gamasutra)