What makes a good horror game scary without jumpscares?

>>379280646
I find that if I feel genuinely helpless against the monsters I'll be on edge. Dying Light was really good about this up until the end-game.

>>379280646
Weak protagonist, losing a lot of progress or game resources on death and having every enemy show unexpectedly

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>>379280849
I've never played Dying Light. The only other person who recommended it to me was an Ancap fella.

What makes the monsters so terrifying in Dying light?

>>379280864
I heard Amensia did that well.

>>379280646
Something that always spooked me and made me wanna find out more or see more of it is where they have a character in the distance obscured by something like fog or a window.

When you see like a figure of a man in the fog and as you run after them they're still visible but you can only make out the dark shape, or a camera angle showing something or something behind a fence or gate or walking past a winow. Resident evil and silent hill were good at that. Stuff like GTA ghosts work well too

>>379281063
Amnesia got boring after you realized that 95% of the enemy encounters involve you sitting behind a large crate until the scary music goes away.

One of the scariest moments for me in a game was near the end of Silent Hill 2 when you need to take the elevator to the basement but it won't let you, has sirens go off and says that their is a weight limit, which leads to you having to put away every single item you have to take the elevator to the pitch black basement

>>379280646
man that looks like one of those outbreak poster

i need outbreak hd very badly

atmosphere and pure eeriness, I guess. I still remember one of the best moments I had in RE4.

>get to island prison
>dead quiet
>see long, dark cell corridor and instantly know they're setting up for something to attack me there
>fire a shot down to hall to lure any possible hiding enemies
>wait 10 seconds until regenerator slowly waddles out of cell and into view
>just stare as it walks down the hallway toward me with those glowing eyes and fucking teethy grin

I knew it was coming and had the situation under control, but for some reason the image of that scene gives me chills. It just felt very well done, atmosphere-wise.

Skeletons

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>>379281223
That was a Machine for Pigs as I remember. Never played Descent. The pigs weren't scary and just acted like piggy from SAW, aka a fat sack of shit that lumbered around, squealing.

>>379281141
A new game called Bendy and the Ink Machine tried to do this but the character was too close and you could make him out perfectly. I think they put the trigger in the wrong place because the corridor in which the trigger was set was long. So, it would have made more sense to have the figure triggered when I was at the beginning.

Although i do agree with you, that shit can be terrifying.

>>379281524
I can imagine the son of a bitch that programmed that. He must have been laughing his way to the bank when he thought of that idea.

To be honest, that is pretty genius and I think more people should steal that idea.

>>379281612
The top-down survival horror game?

>>379281884
I think they played on your expectations if you were a seasoned veteran of horror movies or games.

They knew you would think "hey, something is going to attack me here" and decided to throw in a behemoth to throw you off and scare the living hell out of you.

>>379281946
That would make H1Z1 scary.

>>379282228
re outbreak

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>>379282413
It actually is from it. I was just trying to find a horror theme really.

>>379281063
For Dying Light it's the fact that you CAN fight them but it's a really bad idea because they're way stronger than you and even then they can generally keep up with you pretty well until you get the grappling hook and go full spiderman. Your character switching to panicked breathing while he runs when you get spotted was a nice touch too. The even stronger ones in the DLC can keep up with your god damn car and seeing them sprinting alongside you as you're driving full tilt is nope tier.

There is literally, metaphorically and philosophically nothing wrong with jumpscares if done right.

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>>379282868
How are they done right, amigo?

>>379282841
Jesus Christ, that sounds like a scene from a movie.

Over the shoulder shot of the main character, focusing on a dark road, look down and focus on speedometer. Maybe 80 mph.

Character turns and looks out the window, zombie is keeping up with the car.

music, locations design, pacing

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>>379284104
may I have an example of location design, my friend?

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>>379280646
I believe that a good horror game should be experimenting with various types of scares in the game to keep the whole fear factor fresh. It can't be just atmosphere all the time, it can't be just jump scares all the time, it can't be just body horror all the time, etc. No I believe the game will have to incorporate all of it together.

Though on a side note, the one thing that I always find effective for scaring, at least for me, is when something betrays expectations. Here's an example:

>among all the human sized ghosts, which is like 99% of the game, she was the only one with a bizarre appearance
>no other explanation aside from "shit son, bitch is just tall"
>first encounter
>ok that's a huge bitch. Huge things means slo-
>her long strides can keep up with me at a running pace

And another example
>at some point in the game you have to play FNAF shit in your house from the spirits trying to get at your waifus by monitoring the whole place with security cameras
>at some point see the tall woman walking down the hall way slowly
>oh fuck shit
>thinking how I can fight her safely since it's going to be in an enclosed space
>hall way is like two rooms away gotta walk fast before she gets to the girls
>open door of the security room
>bitch is looking at me through the door frame by bending over at an unnatural angle
>B R O W N B R I C K S.mov

It's a shame she was THE only scary thing in the game, but yeah, I always feel that switching expectations for a scare is always effective on me. The one thing that sets this apart from your usual jump scares is that with jump scares you ARE expecting a scare, just doesn't know when.

Whatever they did in this