Halloween is quickly approaching, and with it comes the haunt, thrill, and excitement of the holiday. Something about the orange and red leaves, chill in the air, and the bright moon makes us crave an adrenaline rush; however, we’re not able to get that from a simple walk in the park. As exciting as autumn is, we sometimes need to escape everyday life to spice it up a bit.
Video games are a unique form of media to utilize as escapism because they allow users to immerse themselves in lives that are completely different from their own. Horror media can cause seemingly negative emotions like shaking, jumping, covering our eyes, and making us feel anxious or disgusted, but these all support that thrill of adrenaline. While you could experience this while watching a scary movie on your TV, it’s easy to block out by walking away or playing on your phone. A video game, on the other hand, forces you to stare at the screen while making the choices of the character you’re controlling, thus requiring much more focus.
The most popular horror video games on the market this October include Resident Evil, Alan Wake, Dead Space, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Until Dawn, Silent Hill 2, and Dead by Daylight. All of these games started as an idea for a story that could then be transitioned into a functioning video game. While the goal of horror games is to encourage that adrenaline rush through various physiological responses, excessive fear-inducing elements can reduce actual gameplay. According to an academic journal published for ScienceDirect, game designers and developers must balance fear elements with adaptive difficulty, strategic pacing, and perceived control to enhance immersion while being physiologically, and psychologically safe.
These horror games will typically feature a setting, characters, and an overarching problem that needs to be solved. The original Five Nights at Freddy’s game (often referred to as “FNAF”), for example, takes place in an abandoned pizzeria. The player controls an overnight security guard whose overarching problem is to survive the animatronics that come to life at night while also trying to solve the mystery of why they are evil.
While the release of FNAF was over a decade ago, this game has become a major form of horror media today, with books, movies, and merchandise promoting the franchise. This proves that the initial video game had an impressive grasp on the community that originally played it. The game design and development of a video game can make or break its replayability and recommendations of it to new audiences. According to Cooper Marshall, a writer for the Game Developers Association for the University of Oklahoma, FNAF quickly rose to fame in 2014 for its uniqueness that other horror games weren’t offering. It has a different formula than its competitorsrather than the danger chasing you and your objective being run away, the danger is coming towards you and your objective is *survive*. You have doors, lights, and a camera to defend yourself, there’s no running away from anything.
The game design of FNAF’s predecessors was consistently similar, while this game revolutionized a new standard for horror games -- survival. The typical timeframe for developing an indie game is usually 1-3 years, but FNAF was created in just six months! Its creator, Scott Cawthon, primarily focused on past work for the base of the game, but thoroughly adjusted its horror characteristics to make the game more unique and enticing. This proves that the most successful horror video games can be equally terrifying and captivating.
Sources:
https://platinumparagon.info/psychology-of-horror-games/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1875952125000813?via%3Dihub
https://sites.create.ou.edu/gamedev/2023/10/25/why-five-nights-at-freddys-was-industry-changing/
https://www.juegostudio.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-develop-video-game
https://tcrf.net/Prerelease:Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Windows)/Development_History