-make horror game -get too scared to playtest -release buggy mess

You never did a "How to fail at Stealth", which implies it is impossible to fail and therefore should always be a feature, regardless of which game you are making. Which is why every single AAA game nowadays has a Stealth sequence where you crouch as slowly as the engine allows through the predetermined path, stopping every 10-15s so the patrol guy can go to the convenient corner of no vision tm for no reason at all, with as little depth as possible Bonus tip if you also implement it on Horror Games in the least interesting way possible like hiding behind a closet, and Ctrl C + Ctrl V your way into a very successful Level Design career

Another tip: Remember that your monsters design can't be unique and creepy or can't mess with the players imagination. How would you then sell marketable plushies of it?

bonus tip - there's no such thing as "overused tropes" in horror games. if you don't know what location and overall theme you need for a game, just create a mascot horror in a toy factory/kindergarten/pizzeria, and write a secret lore about children souls possessing something

Also remember that "child friendly thing turned evil" is a unique concept that hasn't been overdone

i judge horror games strictly by how many times the jumpscares blow out speakers.

Some more tips to fail: 1.When it comes to stakes, even with jump scares, never put the players into actual danger where they have to act quickly to avoid reset. I'm sure people won't eventually see that through. 2. Think that every horror game needs to have death in it. Ignore other ways (subconsciously or some unusual means) and fears that can make people can get scared and especially avoid horror that becomes scary when you think about the game after you've played it. 3. Add a sequel hook, no matter how little sense it makes.

Be sure to add overly complicated lore bait for fans to rabidly theorise over the coming sequels. Keep throwing in mystery boxes because people will keep slogging threw rubbish samey unrefined gameplay, if they can validate their sucken cost fallacy. It will be okay if you have a subpar entry or two, so long as the lore junkies get their fix. Here are some tricks to help: >Everything was orchastrated by some evil genius five decades ago who lost his daughter and it's why everything is so overtly complicated and obtuse. Basically: an evil wizard did it. >Add prequels - not sequels. Prequels allow for less strain on continunity. The tangled mess you left things off in does not need to be addressed - ever. If things get too complicated then create an alternate timeline which only tangentally references the OG games. People love that. >Amnesia - I forgot what to write here but you don't mind. >It was all a dream/you were dead all along. Also you are in some nightmare realm where reality does not matter, which will be easy to make cheap shortcuts in level design. >Just use cop-outs or some super fantasical elements to explain monsters. Some ancient locked away mcguffin was excavated by evil megacorp and now there are monsters running around this destroyed hospital.

the video was too scary, please include jumpscare timecodes

Sometimes you scare me by how brutally honest you are

Okay not gonna lie though, *not* including a jumpscare at the end and just cutting yourself off was brilliant; I was expecting either a jumpscare or for the ending speech to just end normally, so my expectations were subverted and I was somehow given a mild startle when the audio just... Dropped. XD

Another tip is to add batteries that you can find around for your flashlight. This rewards the player by enhancing the exploration of the environment for them, which will also help them find new clues. And the best part is that if they run out of batteries at some point, it will make the game even scarier. It's a commonly overlooked but powerful mechanic that players will really appreciate.

Another pro tip: Designing gameplay that compliments the horror atmosphere and story is hard. A good way to deal with this is by making the game barely interactive besides walking and interacting with a few objects, then you get to stuff as many dialogue sections and cutscenes as you want, making all of the scary things happen when the player has no control over his character will guarantee your game is experienced as intended.

2:19 "so they could decide to turn left instead of right" me too...

A particular thing to keep in mind, showing less of the scary actually winds up being more scary for the individual, due to their imagination running wild, and making the thing 10x scarier in their own head. Such as the Alien movie, where you see the creature for very little time throughout the movie. Considered to be one of the scariest movies today. Some 50 years later. Keep in mind NOT to do this if your aim is to fail! Great video dude. The Vampire octopus got a good laugh out of me.

one horror game ”pet peeve” of mine is the characters being featured on the main menu. Instead, take an unique approach and make the background an image of an location in the game

I actually needed this I'm trying to help my friend figure out the gameplay and design of a horror game he is trying to make

There is also the failed action-horror aspect, where you miss-managed ammo scarcity and give the player too much ammunition, that every threat can be easily done with few bullets!

The image of throwing context at the viewer, but not quite all of it just clicked with me. Big "aha!" moment. I now have a better grasp of how to create wonder, thank you for that.

Another tip is to make everything unfairly difficult or luck based. Difficulty will lead to fear and not to annoyance. This works best when you have long gaps between save points, or no save points at all.

I love spiders so the instant a full-screen spider jumpscare occured I immediately screenshot it and sent it to my friends saying “the scrunkly squishy goober I love”

Postal 1 is a good example of a good horror game, just fully showing it's creepiness without even any jumpscares at all in the game.

Here's a (possibly done before) horror idea: at or near the beginning of the game show the monster in its full glory and make its whole deal very obvious to the player. As the game goes on, show some evidence of the monster being around you, such as tracks and past victims. As the player progresses though, they may start to notice some "discrepancies"; parts of the locale having been melted away despite the monster only using teeth and claws, evidence of torturously long struggles while the monster has been shown to be ruthlessly efficient, corpses of past victims having an eerie smile on their faces for no reason. Eventually, the player discovers more signs of a struggle leading up to a corpse. A massive one. A smiling one. A partially melted one. The corpse of the monster. Have fun :)

jokes on you, this is actually kind of a great tutorial for a comedy horror game

Is this the 'Terrible writing advice' of games?

I recently had a idea that defies the laws of horror games. A game where here's no monster, just sounds and maybe shadows in the side of your vision.

that hand at 0:39 is beautifully drawn. for me its very hard to draw pixelated hands. so i applaud you.

Here's the proper way to use jump scares, just like in fnaf 3 a bunch of unavoidable jump scares as just a regular game mechanic and as punishment for losing an underwhelming jump scare that only really counts because the scream sound plays

A jumpscare is good here and there, but the games that rely on jumpscares are just not it imo

I love this series and have been watching for a while, my favorite is the how to fail at platformers I took it into much consideration. But I think that a fun one to do would be “How to fail at a rhythm game”

Good video, will use this to make garten of banban chapter 1674. 👍

Man, those jumpscares were horrifying! I pissed myself 7 times while watching (the anticipation was really nerve-wrecking), not to mention how many tons of shit are in my pants. Especially the spider, clown, Breaddy McFazman, unnamed void, and especially especially that zombie. My neighbors probably thought I was murdered based on how much screaming I was doing. The dark bit was really scary, the realisation I'm in a room with LOLLIPOPS was pweety wepic. This one video is scarier that the entirety of FANF. 23TonsOfShit/10.

GARTEN OF BANBAN WATCHING THIS: RIGHT THAT DOWN! RIGHT THAT DOWN!

Another tip for failing: Do not add trigger warnings when the player opens the game or on the games download page. That might allow them to be prepared for all the spooky scaries you have in store for them or even worse it might cause them to steer clear of your game entirely and you don't want that. So no matter what trigger warnings are a no go.

This is the scariest video I’ve ever seen. All those predictable jump scares with zero context and nothing being left to the imagination was absolutely terrifying! That’s definitely the way to make a horror game.

those jumpscares were nothing 😎

Y'know all those horror games that pretend to be cutesy and kid freindly but get eViLEr over time? I'm gonna do the opposite! A game that starts off scary but then you slowly realize that there's actually no danger whatsoever!

I saw a vertical line move left in the total darkness sequence.

How to fail at making a horror game: Make a garten of banban game

You forgot make it based off of something from your childhood but turned dark and twisted

This was somehow cute. Was that warning a genuine warning or an attempt at mental manipulation? is now a question that will forever follow me in the dark...

Good horror games: fnaf, resident evil 4 Bad horror games: ban ban

Awesome series 😁!!

While I agree with what you're saying, (And my personal tastes completely agree with you) I think Horror is the easiest field to succeed in as an indie dev by just abusing the exact things you state will help you fail. I mean if you want to get into the nuance of what success and failure mean to each individual you can, but I'm just specifically talking about grabbing attention and possibly getting a few cheap sales. Cheap scares are an evergreen genre in of themselves. That's why haunted houses are still a thing. (At least in America) And some haunted houses are literally just jump scare after jump scare. (I worked in a haunted house as a kid. An annoying kid. I did very poorly)

Nice that a new episode comes out about a day after I find this series.

someone knocked on my door at the end of the video and It was so perfectly timed I thought it was part of the video.

Don't lie, did I get you with any of the jump scares? (I jumped a few times while editing.)

Most of this also applies to cinema.

glad to see this channel is getting more popular

If you feel any strong emotions, the video ends - Roblox frontpage

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: If you want to give the player a companion, DO NOT make them smart enough to avoid the danger of the game. Good AI is hard, and it might make the game too easy if they can distract the scary thing and survive it legitimately. Instead, give them plot armor until around halfway through the game at which point they sacrifice themselves to save you or die for another stupid reason.

Gonna be real, I almost ignored this cause i thought it was just gonna be fnaf slander but im really glad i watched it. Good video 👍

Im genuinely confused on the whole safe space rule and what counts as a safe space. If the safe space is a part of gameplay, like a closet or something, would it be bad to punish the player for using it for too long? Would a title screen also count as a safe space? I've seen games change their title screen as the game goes on to something creepier to add a lot of uneasiness and tension. I feel like it would be really effective to build up a sense of safety only to break it, or at least tease the idea of it being broken.

Funny how a video on cheap horror uses a spider jumpscare.

Horror is unfortunately one of those genres that was heavily affected by singular game or singular franchise, for the worst, to create more bad games. It was slenderman in the past and in modern times it was fnaf. But at the same time? I kinda feel as though horror kinda peaked (atleast non survival horror games)with Amnesia or Penumbra series, sure some games were close at mimicking it but still. It's just, the more horror games you play, the weaker the fear factor. Especially if you play games in same franchise but even by playing other horror Franchises you kinda get less and less afraid. The game can only do so much to scare ya before you see it as cliche

We can apply the advices of "How To Fail At Horror Movie" : Make the characters having missed a whole century of horror subculture, it will be more immersive if they had no clue what a zombie is.

Ive always wanted to try game development. Now after watching this video and reading comments I feel discouraged and afraid of publishing one lol

How to fail at making a horror game: Make the game take place in a toy factory with characters that have very kid orientated designs.

I find it funny how fnaf is an actual good horror game. Wo the irony goes hard

Don't forget the necessity to shoehorn pointless and edgy lore that is shoved in the player's face at every moment through inorganic and obnoxious methods that massively weigh down the pacing like overlong paper notes in arbitrary and easy to miss locations, or forced cutscenes and disconnected gameplay segments that have literally nothing to do with the present events. This lore should also be deliberately confusing to the point where nobody can understand it, because this helps distract the player from the aspects they must actually engage with, like the gameplay and events that are happening around them as they continue onward - and, as said before, this gameplay should always just be a bare bones walking simulator, sometimes broken up by mediocre combat or a boring stealth system, both of which should be extremely unfair and have no complexity whatsoever so as to minimalise player engagement. Oh, and the protagonist should have absolutely no personality or any real role in the plot unless said role could've been filled by literally anyone else, because the story becomes significantly more compelling when the person you have to experience it through has absolutely nothing you can relate to or sympathise with. Their goals should typically consist of nothing other than wanting leave the place they have entered for shallow reasons that ideally will have nothing to do with the plot - instead of giving them a valid reason not to turn back, which would require giving the character some actual personality and complexity, just make them have absolutely no common sense or the most inexplicably bad luck in the world so that everything will end up physically stopping them from leaving, like making every floor break beneath their feet for absolutely no reason. The latter is particularly useful for making the events in the game feel contrived which will help shatter a player's immersion, ensuring they have an even harder time experiencing the game and its horror as intended. On top of all this, always put in a stealth level where you have to turn on several generators in the most ridiculous locations, no matter how little sense it makes.

Your jumpscares are funny

Fear and Hunger: "felt cute, might transform a literal pile of clothes into an invincible enemy that slowly drives the player characters insane just by existing

And this is why Voices of the Void failed.. At failing. The creator clearly wasn't taking your advice, and now there's a huge handful of KZfaq videos of it out there, and he essentially doesn't need to make people pay for the game because of the amount of donators he gets, as well as how the dread you can feel from playing the game is the *real* cost of the game

and its either a copy of fnaf, a game where you collect x of y things, or a topdown game where your in a house

how to fail at horror step 1: be the euphoric brothers

Around a minute in, I realized what this was and I feel obligated to say that you hit the nail on the hear

Bonus tip: make the jumpscares as predictable as possible, jumpscares are most effective when the player knows exactly when and where they are, and are ready for it!

Lethal company didn’t have lore and kinda just has monsters rush the player yet it sold very well

The best way to scare players is to show them that a certain area is dangerous to go in Then force them to go in

I’d love it if you made games with these vids

so i have an overactive imagination and have a brilliant idea for a horror game.

Fnaf was actually quite scary back in the day. Another tip to fail is to make the monster watch you from far away because it will be very, very scary.

Feels like you basically just described BanBan

This is about the first time I laughed hard at jumpscares xD

poor lady got hit in the face three times :(

I'm gonna do the opposite of everything this video says to try to make a good horror game and hope that my focus doesn't shift before I get close to finishing it!

The Batman orphanage!!😂

Can you do a video on how to fail at cozy games and or survival sandbox or survival games?

hi if i could ask you i would like how to fail at idle games i honesly learnead a lot what not to do from your videos at development and i always wanned to make an idle game but i have no idea how to fail at it :)

yo! I wanted a video on horror games, you can combine horror with any other genre so you can fail twice as hard. I thought about making a FNAF clone for a long time but platformers are my forte!

I like the part where he says to make a shitty non-scary horror game, just rip-off a shitty non-horror game lul

The end WAS GENIUSS You know exactly why.

Nope, nope, There are some good walking simulator horror games. But they break up the walking know later , this is a reminder 0:35

i wonder if one reason i've never been scared of basically everything in the horror genre is because of how played-out most of it is.

this is like “Terrible writing advice” for games.

If i wanted my HORROR game to suck i would copy a horror game from the app store

I mean, it would be cool to have a safe point where the monster gets closer and closer the longer you sit there. Like even just sitting there for like 3 minutes, get You killed 4:03

as someone with anxiety who is gonna make one this is funny

The main tip is to take child theme and turn it freakin twisted

You gotta do fighting games next. I’m thinking of making one and I don’t want to take any steps in the right direction.

TIHI for not making a Garten of Banban joke

If you could make a how to fail at rpg horror games that'd be really cool

"How to fail at tower defense" since I am fixating on PVZ2.

1:50 SMM2 moment XD

The funniest thing about this is not ironic or unintentional, but the fact that _almost_ none of these apply to the classic FNAF games (1-6 and UCN, the latter of which is customizable) as mentioned in the video, kind of.

Oh shit, my game only covers a few things 😂

Other tips 1.Make sure to rip of of poppy playtime like it ripped off bendy, like it ripped off fnaf 2. make sure to have a chase sequence, even tho it lost the suprise attack because IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME 3. Make sure the villains die stupidly After their chapter, telling the player that they were just an obstacle 4. lankybox makes a video on you 5. Game theory takes a deep dive in your game's lore (you were shitpost half of the time)

At the end of the day you choose how you want your game

What do you mean by you horror devs 🤔 I am just starting game development, and my plan is just to focus on horror because I like those games (ahm ahm, and because I was guilty of thinking that 'well for horror games you just need to throw the player in a dark house with a monster and they're required to find some stuff to escape' xD). I'm struggling to find the sweat spot between creating a horror game and a survival-based game. I am afraid too much acton and gameplay will make it into a resident evil game, and too much quietness will just be another Granny game, I wonder if you have any tips? Please keep this coming. Also, maybe you can do "how to fail at indie games" or "how to fail at marketing" or "how to fail at unreal/unity' ;)

Random appreciation of the art in these videos: THE BACKGROUND IS NOT PURE WHITE. MY EYES ARE HAPPY.