AGI Studio 1 - Week 3 - Related Works

To create some scary moments, I decide to look into some critically acclaimed horror Films and Games. The goal is to find some brilliant moments from these media and see if I could integrate the ideas into the game.

The Birds: In one scene, the director cuts between the lead actor Melanie and the birds behind her. As time goes on, more birds gathers but the girl never notices the threat. In the end of the scene when she finds out what’s actually behind, the audience and her are terrified. This can also work as a method to enhance the experience by limiting player’s angle of view during some gameplay moments and let the danger stay behind the player.

Rare Window: Rare window is about a man who’s stuck in his house due to foot injury. All he can do while recovering is to look outside the window. One day, he suspects a murder happens in his community and tries to find out who’s the murderer. In the movie, the camera flows through the neighborhood at the beginning so the audience can have a good understanding of what was going on in these people’s daily life. As the movie goes on, everyone starts to become suspicious since the camera never focuses on one person. For me, The best part of the movie is that when the murderer revealed himself, the protagonist is also discovered by him. In this case, the danger who’s always in the distance suddenly becomes a nearby threat.

It Follows: Another great example of building horror in films is the camera move from It Follows. In the movie, horror elements are mostly keep outside of the camera. The audience is encouraged to use their own imagination, which can be more terrifying than showing the creature. Also, by rotating the camera, the audience was placed in a space/sphere of horror.

Amnesia The Dark Descent: Sanity is an element based on light and darkness in Amnesia , player passes out when losing too much sanity. This won’t effect the gameplay since the player quickly wakes up after that. Instead, this is a mechanic to trick player’s mind. During the process, the player would tell themselves that low sanity can attract the monster or cause them easier to “die” which isn’t true at all.