#don't fade in stock video of white babies into your game

[cheddar-baby]

so many of those horror games that try to trick you into thinking its not a horror game play their cards way too fast and obviously. The key is subtlety really. I know the desire is to go five nights at freddys, things screaming in your face AAAA. Which i guess if your goal is to have youtubers make videos about it sure do that but if you want a really good game drip feeding the horror bits is way more effective. You can create so much pure dread and unease by just very slowly and barely noticably changing things. The genre is directly working in your favour to do it too because a lot of those games build off of our familiarity with those things, the UI of kids games, indie house packing games, etc. If you start messing with that and just letting your player notice it themselves without being told its happening its a lot scarier.

It is always a bit dissapointing when i find one of those games and its going good until they lay it on too thick and just instantly lose all of their plausible deniability. The genre is practically begging for it to be a psychological horror experience not an in your face bombastic one. And i need more devs to understand that.