Semester 2 - Week 6 - Progress Presentation

For my project I'm looking in to creating atmosphere in 2D horror games.  

2D horror games aren't very common and I was curious as to why that is and this gap in the genre is something I'm really interested in exploring.

My aim is to create a 2D horror game using Gamemaker that successfully conveys a sense of suspense and apprehension through an unsettling atmosphere.

The questions I want to answer are:

"How important is art style in establishing atmosphere?"  For example would a cute, vector art style work if all the other elements of the game were horror esque?

And "What are the benefits of a 2D art style over 3D?" which I think is going to involve a lot of researching 2D and 3D horror games to answer.

I'm also really interested in how perspective can be used in horror games.
"Is 1st or 3rd person perspective preferable in a 2D horror game?"
and "How can 1st person perspective be achieved in 2D in spite of the limited degrees of movement it allows for"

And the more I've been reading the more I've realised the importance of the influence that old media such as horror film has had on horror games so that's something I want to look in to too.

Exploring 2D horror game art styles is going to involve lots of media tests.  The Dundee games company Denki do this thing called the tree test when they're trying to establish an art style for a game.  The idea is that establishing the art style for one simple asset is a jumping off point for designing the rest of the game world.

So this was my first attempt but after getting feedback I discovered all the art styles were way too similiar and it was too hard to judge them with all the different tree designs fighting for attention too.

I've done some tree silhouettes to help inform attempt number two.  Most people seemed to prefer tree number 9 so I'm going to recreate that tree in 5 very distinct styles across the kind of stylised art spectrum - so on one end of the spectrum I'd have a very blocky, Thomas Was Alone Style geometric shapes sort of tree, in the middle a very illustrative maybe like watercolour style tree and on the other end a more realistic tree.

Then I'm going to create a forest scene in each of these styles and test them out in gamemaker and test a bunch of different animated atmospheric overlays on top of them and decide which style I think would work best to convey an unsettling atmosphere.

And of course I'm going to be researching 2D horror games too but I'll talk a little bit about that later in the presentation.

When it comes to 1st person vs 3rd person perspective in horror games I've found quite a few arguments for and against each of them.

For instance Tanya Kyzywinska argues that first person "heightens the illusion that it is the player sitting before the game screen who is being attacked, rather than an abstracted virtual self." and of course this level of immersion is something designers really want to achieve in horror games particularly, because it's more scary for the player if they psychologically feel as though they are the character with the horrific events of the game happening to them.

However Bernard Perron argues "... the player is more affected when they see the character being acted upon" and Petri Lankoski eleborates that "this can be likened to the cognitive/emotive coupling or mirroring that enables the player to share the experience of their avatar" so third person can be just as immersive or arguably more so than first person because of this psychological connection between player and character.

And once again I've also been playing lots of horror games to explore the use of different perspectives which, again, I'll touch on later in the presentation.

 The relationship between horror film and games is really interesting because horror games borrow a lot of techniques from film.  I've been watching a lot of horror movies for research and doing lighting studies of certain scenes.  I really liked the dramatic lighting of this scene from Cabin in the Woods on the right, and the atmospheric shot of Alien on the left.

Survival horror in particular borrows a lot from cinema for example cutscenes, cinematic camera angles such as those seen in Resident Evil, and old film overlays.

I'll briefly talk about a couple of the 2D horror games I've been playing.  Lone Survivor is a survival horror game by Jasper Byrne which uses overlays to obstruct the players view

It also works really well in conjunction with the pixel art as the obscure environment assets can look really gruesome such as in this screenshot where the pipes look like intestines in the red light.

The use of third person perspective in this game also worked really well because of the mechanic where you would have to hide in certain sections of the wall to get past enemies and I found it really intense psychically seeing exactly how close monsters were from catching me especially with the first boss monster.

Year Walk is a horror, exploration game and is the only 2D horror game I've come across that uses 1st person perspective and it works really well with the gameplay and flat, textured cut out art style. Some 3D elements have been integrated where perspective would have been an issue such as a creepy wooden doll you can spin around, and these objects stay very true to the art style and work surprisingly well.

The game also uses a subtle camera shake and old film style overlay throughout which adds to the creepy atmosphere.

I also feel it's important to work on my art fundamentals throughout the year so this is some of the work I've been doing that's not directly related to my project but I still feel is important for me to work on as an artist.

Feedback:

-Overall good presentation.
- Good balance of reading and practical work
- Scope could be an issue.  Need to start considering game design.
- Play Alien: Isolation.
- When playing games take note of what works in certain games but wouldn't in others [e.g. Chase scenes work really well in Lone Survivor but wouldn't in Year Walk due to their perspectives].
- Look in to "the uncanny"
- The use of obscure environment assets is interesting, look in to how art style can be used in that respect more.

I was also asked what I'm learning from all the the games I've been playing but because I'm so awful when put on the spot I didn't really know what to say despite all the notes I've been taking while playing.  However I've updated my last post on 2D horror games with a section at the end dedicated to what exactly I've learned and it was actually really helpful to list all the things I think work the most effectively in 2D horror.  I think it's really going to help inform my game's design, which is what I'm going to focus on next.