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This blog explores some of the risks of horror game development and how to address them.
December 4, 2024
Game development is inherently risky; horror games are doubly so. Of course, horror is cool and every studio should make a horror game (they even do well on Steam!), but there are also drawbacks. Our game, End of Ember, is only a year into production but has already encountered a number of these risks: let’s dive in and explore what they are and how to address them.
Horror is like metal: if you’re not into it, it all sounds the same; but for fans there are so many sub-genres. Survival horror, psychological horror, mascot horror, slasher horror, comedy horror: without even going into gameplay categories or modes, the diversity is enormous. Without a clear sense of what kind of horror you are making, your game is likely to fall between the gaps or, worse, come across as sweaty.
Horror is a thing.
[Source: GameDiscoverCo Plus, accessed 29/11/24]
Your creative team needs to really understand horror – it’s not something you can do from the outside. Our Creative Director Dan McGuiness has been a huge fan of horror since he was a kid, and he now hosts the Terrorvision Horror Podcast, so he definitely knows his stuff. In this way he can craft a true comedy horror that amps up the gore like nothing else and gets lots of laughs from players.
Horror is a self-referential genre, and while this might produce marketing opportunities, one immediate concern might be about copyright and infringing on IP. Some developers worry that by including references to other franchises or IP you might be setting yourself up for a takedown notice or legal action.
Please don’t sue us, Linda Blair!
The key thing here is remembering that while actual intellectual property might be protected by law, parody and references are much more acceptable. (Note this is not legal advice.) Of course you should not use frames, models, or the actual product of anyone else’s work, but drawing your own hockey mask reminiscent of Friday the 13th or a puzzle box like the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser will probably keep you above the line as long as you produce the assets yourself and do not attempt to represent it as original IP.
The Risk
One of the main challenges (and opportunities) of horror game development is closely managing the player’s power in all situations, or what we might call ‘agency mechanics’. The risk here is that you will either lock down player autonomy so much that they can’t act meaningfully in the world and ragequit, or that they will be so free that the experience isn’t engaging enough.
As with most gameplay design, the solution here is to design, playtest, iterate. Design your mechanics with the idea of player agency in mind from the outset, then build a prototype early and playtest as much as possible for player autonomy in particular. Observe closely which particular mechanics constrain or enable agency, get player feedback of all kinds, and iterate until you get the balance right.
End of Ember prides itself on its gore engine, and producing gore effects that other games just won’t try. Of course, there is usually a reason that something hasn’t been done before, and in our prototype we discovered that detailed gore can produce framerate issues as the engine tries to calculate for all the pieces of carrion and viscera that adorn the floor and walls.
The gore in our boss level chugged our framerate… or maybe it was the rooms, or persistence … or the entire codebase?
Often, indie devs leave optimisation until late in production, but we have found it useful to plan optimisation throughout development. We have explored options such as persistence management, occlusion culling, draw call batching and object pooling - and we are implementing them earlier in development rather than waiting until later and debugging.
Horror is certainly not for everyone, but it’s not the same as saying, say, JRPGs aren’t for everyone. Horror games sometimes induce a kind of moral panic, perhaps especially amongst those who still think that video games are mostly for children. Muted scowls of disapproval are well known to horror gamedevs.
Is it the blood? It’s the blood, isn’t it?
The way to manage this risk is to be clear about the fact that horror games are not meant for children, and they are not intended to somehow infiltrate young minds and terrify or otherwise corrupt them. Managing appropriate boundaries and classification systems will also help to change the culture and thinking around this issue, but admittedly it’s a long game.
As with any kind of mature content, going through Steam page review and approval can be challenging: End of Ember was reviewed six times before being approved for public release. This is not Steam’s fault, and was mostly about our own workflows and lack of knowledge of the process: for example, capsule art is available to a broad audience and cannot be managed by warnings in a content survey.
This capsule art is substantially revised from the one we originally submitted, because it needed to be for broad public access.
As with all production, give about four times the duration you think you need for your Steam page to be reviewed, and then double that. Make sure your Content Survey is as accurate as can be and don’t expect the content warnings to cover your capsule art. Note that Steam reviews are done by different people on different occasions, so the feedback is not always consistent or progressive.
We getting a theme here? Many public events such as game conventions have only special circumstances for games with mature content. Since most indie projects in early production do not have authorised classifications, event organisers tend to be fairly conservative on games’ appropriateness for their audience. This is entirely understandable, given branding, PR and reputation and so on.
It’s realistic to expect that your game is just not going to be suitable for many public events. Look at all the amazing online traction that a good horror game will get on social media (especially during October), and save the public showings for more private events. Or at least negotiate early with event organisers around the suitability of your game, and expect to be disappointed.
Many of the above risks have a potential knock-on effect to visibility: obviously, not attending conventions is a block, and a particularly spicy content survey on Steam may flag your app as ‘potentially unlawful’ in some jurisdictions. Reduced visibility (especially to a mass market) is a general risk with horror game.
Nein!
Visibility risks are a challenge with any game, just more so with horror. With 35 games released on Steam per day it’s always already hard for indie gamedevs, so this just amplifies the challenge. Focus extra on marketing: identify your target, go to where they are, and encourage them to engage with your awesome content rather than dreaming of selling a game to everyone.
Steam tag reports indicate that there are over 10,000 games tagged ‘horror’: more than anyone could play in a single deathtime. So while there is definitely a market for horror games, this market is already well-served, and there is the risk of your game being submerged under a mass of other FPS survival horror games set in a misty rural town.
Through this fog I can’t even see the other 34 games published on Steam today.
All the usual design-meets-marketing advice applies here: know the competition, know your market, design something with a unique visual style and/or experience, be true to your artistic vision, and deliver a game that players won’t want to share with their Grandma. Something like this:
If you want to make a horror game you will no doubt face risks in production, development, and marketing. It’s worth it, but if you employ the usual lifelong learning, planning, and iteration processes you apply across your entire development, you’ll be best placed to avoid a horrific development experience of your own. If worst comes to worst, respawn.
End of Ember is available to Wishlist on Steam: share it around, just not with your Grandma.
Thanks to Logan Baker of Royal Reign Studios for technical advice to make me sound less like a numpty to programmers.
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