Horror games are meant to be scary. I know, I know – what a novel idea. But do hear me out. There are a multitude of ways to induce fear and unease in the player: a seemingly indestructible monster that hunts you, the sight of a poorly-lit corridor within an ill-fated research facility, or just a memorably written yet oddly disturbing journal entry about the tragic fates of those that came before you. Attempting to disturb, unsettle and occasionally terrorize the player is an art form of its own, and games do everything in their power to achieve the necessary results, whether that’s making you scream or forcing you to think twice before opening that one suspicious door.
To fear the unknown
But the thing is, this can be a bit of a cooperative affair, too: as in, the players themselves can actually contribute just as much to the overall tension of a game as the game itself. And sometimes, what you can’t see can be far more terrifying than what you *can* see. Imagination and the mind are indeed powerful tools, especially when it comes to horror – they force the player to keep agonizing over all the things that could potentially happen, making them mentally conjure up various what-if scenarios as they continue to dread the unknown.
Resident Evil, for instance, uses door opening animations as its loading screen: the player sees a door creaking open from a first-person perspective while the game loads the next area. Nothing really happens here, you’re literally just watching in silence as the door opens and lets you advance into an adjacent room. Or so you think. But then Resident Evil 2 – the original, that is – throws a curveball at you when you least expect it: one of its infamous door sequences is abruptly interrupted by a handful of zombies rushing in through the doorway, forcing you to immediately decide between having to fight or flee. Does this happen again with some other door at a later point in the game? Well, who knows? And that’s the beauty of it: this essentially plants the seed of doubt in the player’s mind, making them dread every single door loading sequence going forward, effectively transforming a simple and innocent gimmick into yet another source of fear. The game is basically toying with your expectations and turning your own mind against you, which is sort of brilliant, when you think about it.

A small slice of heaven
To keep going with the idea of self-induced terror, let’s take the obvious contrast between feelings of safety and fear. The idea of introducing specific safe rooms where players can take a short breather serves a practical purpose in the sense that it’s usually where you sort through your surplus items or save your progress. But more than that, they also offer a temporary respite from the horrors of the “outside world”. It’s a small slice of heaven surrounded by long stretches of hell, which is further reinforced by the soundtrack: if you listen to literally any save room theme from the Resident Evil series, you’ll notice a trend – soothing melodies that represent the calm before the storm, symbolizing the brief, fragile safe haven you’ve earned for yourself. Even indestructible monsters like RE2’s Mr. X and RE3’s Nemesis adhere to this silent rule in their respective titles – in a game where enemies could otherwise burst through doors to pursue you, these undead baddies would magically leave you alone the moment you retreated into a designated safe room. This could be downright comical at times, and it’s obviously a conscious design choice, one that forces you to suspend your disbelief a little bit. I mean, what’s stopping Nemesis from bursting through the wall of a safe room to get you? He could easily do it if he so desired, but he doesn’t. (Psst: the answer is... the developers. The developers are stopping him.)
It’s often said that we need to experience sadness in order to appreciate happier times; that we need to live through cold winter temperatures to truly enjoy the warmth of summer. The same applies here: the sheer amount of deadly threats and dangerous zones in a horror game makes the player appreciate the occasional few minutes when they’re not being actively hunted. Eventually, though, you’ll have to move on, and the very thought of having to go back out into the world – leaving behind the reassuring confines of the safe room – just produces even more dread and unease in the player. As it should. I’m sure many of us have toyed with the idea of just staying locked up inside a safe room, not wanting to return to the stress-inducing realm of the game world proper. You can certainly tell a horror game is doing its job right whenever it manages to induce that feeling in a player.
The Room (no, not that one)
And now for something slightly different. Since we’re on the topic of safe rooms in the context of horror games, I do want to mention one specific title that did something quite interesting with the formula. Okay, so listen to this: what if we made a safe room... that wasn’t actually all that safe? Following the original Silent Hill trilogy, Konami and Team Silent decided to shake things up a bit with the fourth entry in their storied psychological horror franchise. Launching in 2004, Silent Hill 4: The Room took the concept of the safe room and built its entire premise around it: main character Henry Townshend finds himself trapped inside his own apartment, with no apparent way out. He discovers a hole on his bathroom wall, which ends up leading to various otherworldly realms teeming with nightmarish landscapes and grotesque monsters.

And then there’s Alien: Isolation
Yes. And then there’s Alien: Isolation – possibly the most iconic example of a game that proceeds to break all the unspoken rules of the genre in order to create a masterclass in horror. I often tell people that, with a very few exceptions, pretty much nowhere is safe in this game. And that’s true. The Xenomorph is almost always out there, hunting you, looking for you, and my multiple playthroughs of the game have always managed to produce some truly unexpected surprises, where the alien would show up in a location that seemed genuinely safe at first glance. I’ll never forget that one time the game made me enter a tiny little area comprised of only a couple of unassuming rooms with a fairly simple puzzle to solve. Surely, I’ll be safe in here, right? WRONG. Take too long to solve the puzzle or make too much noise, and the Xeno *will* come lunging at your jugular faster than you can say “game over, man.”

Needless to say, Alien: Isolation becomes a nerve-wrecking nightmare show of a campaign, and some people hated it for that, but I personally reveled in every stress-inducing second of it. It’s also the only game that I had to legitimately take a break from because I was starting to feel physically exhausted from the relentless amount of stress and anxiety it bombarded me with. I still have recurring nightmares of that one section in the medical wing – you know, the part that turns the boys into men. Yes, that one.
And guess what, a sequel is on the way. Am I even ready? I’m not sure. Probably not!
That said, I don’t want Alien: Isolation to hog all the spotlight, so allow me to give a brief shoutout to the semi-forgotten PlayStation 2 gem/Clock Tower spiritual successor Haunting Ground, which uses a formula similar to Isolation – you’re being constantly stalked by an undefeatable baddie as you’re exploring a large mansion of interconnected rooms and trying to solve puzzles. And most important of all: almost nowhere is safe, not even areas with save points. Giving the player a canine companion was quite a stroke of genius, too, because he actually starts growling whenever your stalker is near, which sort of becomes an “oh boy, here we go again” type of warning signal, further elevating the already tense atmosphere of the game. All in all, Haunting Ground was quite brilliant, especially for its time, and I’m still waiting for Capcom to remaster it for modern platforms. (Do it, Capcom. You know you want to.)

Which way, horror fan?
So where does the above leave us? Should every game be like Alien: Isolation? Of course not. I think there are merits to both approaches – one that gives the player some leeway in the form of impregnable safe spots, and another that forces them to endure a constant barrage of fear and anxiety as a motivating force. It really depends on what type of player you are, and what you’re in the mood for at the time. But really, this is what fascinates me about well-made horror games: by tapping into fundamental concepts like fear and the need for survival, they’re able to elicit such raw, visceral emotions and reactions from the player that no other genre is capable of, at least in my personal experience. And unlike in movies, where you’re simply a passive spectator of the events unfolding on the screen, the medium of video games, due to its inherently interactive nature, places the reins in your hands as the player, essentially tasking you, and you alone, with the responsibility of survival. If you want to live through the adventure, you have to work for it yourself. You can’t just wait for the hero to get away and ride off into the sunset – because you *are* the hero.
Needless to say, fans of horror (myself included) love to be terrified without actually being in any real danger, and most people enjoy a good thrill – which is probably why horror remains such a popular genre to this day. If you ask me, there has always been – and always will be – a desire in players to experience a good scare, and I can only hope that games will continue to look for new and exciting ways to provide just that.