We made a first test room for our submission for the Scream Jam! If you're interested, take a peek. A beta demo will launch later today.

Almost everything is already done. We chose to make a top-down zombie shooter, as this is the horror genre we are most comfortable with. We still gotta do quite some tuning to really bring out a horror feel, but the fundament is there.

What I want to talk about, is how to give a horror vibe. More precisely, how we did it or plan to do it. I'll write this down pointwise, and give some explanation for each choice. I hope this is able to help or entertain someone. I'm not a great writer and I'm in a bit of a hurry, but I link some sources which explain it far better than I do.

It's not the zombies that are the scare, it's the reason. We chose for the zombie as main antagonist for multiple reasons. It's easier for us, as we have little practical experience in the field of horror. We're familiar with zombies in games, and we enjoy playing such games. Heck, we even made some test zombie-games before. But the main reason was this: the current fear for a pandemic.
Zombies aren't scary because they are mindless brain-eating ghouls. Well, I mean, kinda, but that's not what makes them "horror". That's just something that makes them monsters. This is the fine line between a regular zombie game and a zombie horror game. Zombies can be used as enemy because they're simple to stomp without any moral afterthought, and make for fun gameplay, but what makes them give a lingering scare is the reason for their existence. There is a good Extra Credits video on this topic, and if you're interested I'd highly recommend watching it.
In The Rain, zombies come from a virus. Because of the current situation with the pandemic, we hoped that this could create or enhance catharsis, and help them deal with the current circumstances as well as offer them an insight in an idea they might not have thought of, like how "ghoul" zombie popularity surged when nuclear testing began in the 20th century.

The zombies are uncanny. Despite what I just said, it also helps if your zombies feel unpleasant. One way to do this is by adding a lot of gore or jumpscares, but we chose to have the zombies reflect the playable characters. They look very similar. This, also, is the power of the zombie: if zombies reflect certain human behaviour or looks, it reminds us that we, or at least our characters, aren't so different from them. But it also makes them uncanny. Their movement seems off and their sounds from this music pack by Joel Steudler sound like they could almost have been made by a human (especially if the sounds, like biting, turn out gross this works really well). If the zombies are presented in an unpleasant way, this also reinforces the next design choice we're gonna describe.

Zombies limit the player's movement. Through ambushes and intelligent placement, the zombies will try to kill the player characters, but in combat a slow, dumb zombie is unlikely to be a real threat (if you have enough ammo, that is). What they do is they limit player resources. Not only do they waste your (valuable) ammo, they also waste your space, forcing you to stay on the move. By spicing up some level design or adding some other dangers, this could very quickly result in some interesting player decision making. I took this idea from a Gamasutra article I read whilst designing.

The player is underpowered. This is key in (survival-)horror games, and this also is the reason why horror games have such a weird "power" fantasy and thusly are so difficult to create. If you want to create tense moments, make sure the player options are limited and that every wrong decision is harshly punished. That's not saying the game should be difficult, but hearing a zombie taking a bite out of your shoulder can feel as a punishment already. The player must also be very aware of their mortality, but this must be achieved without killing the player dozens of times. Finally, the player resources must be limited, and they must not be allowed to waste it unnecessarily. This is (easily) achieved by a simple trick: make drops more frequent if player resources are lower. That way, without having nothing, the player will always feel like they're on the brink of being out of resources constantly.

The player is flawed. This is the only part that still must be implemented: the story. This, thusly, I cannot reveal too much of yet. However, the key tips are:

 - Make your protagonist understandable

 - Make your protagonist fail

That reminds us of how we cannot be who we think we are. Also something scary from an Extra Credits video.


That's it for now folks! Stay safe and stay tuned!