Four developers of scary games explain how to make scary games very scary indeed

The inspiration for Alien: Isolation came from a simple thought experiment: what if somebody let a lion loose in developer Creative Assembly s office? I d get behind my desk and make sure it wouldn t see me, says the game s creative director Alistair Hope. Then, you d need to get to the fire escape. Maybe I d move desk to desk and distract it. If you are confronted by it, what do you do? What do you know about it? What do you know about what it knows about you? That felt pretty cool, and it wasn t relying on scripted events.

Most of us know the feelings of dread that accompany playing a horror game. But how do developers create those feelings from scratch? What are the tricks that developers use to scare us, and create a sense of atmosphere? How do they go from imagining a lion in a studio, or an empty bathroom, to moments that will scare the pants off us? I spoke to four of the top minds in the industry to find out. (more…)