Ask Lemmy

VR

You may be right about classic horror and jump scares, but I think psychological horror needs more space and introspection, and that fits better with literature. That's my opinion, of course.

it's film and it's nowhere near close. but just to use an obscure choice, a binaural radio play is very effective. sadly the only one i know of is deadhouse by the bbc

you have to lie down flat and wear headphones. the first episode concerns two people working on your corpse, while you become aware of what's happening. i thought it was terrifying

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09zr1dk/episodes/player

https://archive.org/details/bbc-deadhouse

would love to know if there's anything else like this

For me, movies/tv or novels/short stories because games just don't make me feel afraid. Seeing something happen to someone else is actually mkre immersive for me, because most games have game engine limitations that remind me I am playing a game.

It can still be good as a game, just hot as horrifying. Also, gore and violence are not horrific to me on their own either, they can compliment the real horror I find terrifying which is powerlessness or losing a sense of self.

Film or books or other passive mediums. IDK, video games just don't build the same tension or hit the same. The lack of control in the other mediums makes a huge difference in feeling scary.

Video game horror never makes me feel unfomfortable or frightened. Jump scares don't even make me jump (often because I end up not looking in the right direction at the time).

Best Medium: Live Action Role Play

glances at the government building

For horror fiction, I'd say games or books, depending on what you're going for. Visual, you could go with film, but games are more interactive; otherwise, the same thing (visual). Psychological, like getting inside someone's head, like Pet Sematary does, I'd say the book is the superior option — or the audiobook narrated by Michael C. Hall (Dexter).

For real life/true horror, life experience. I'd say there's not much scarier than not knowing if you'll survive the night because you live with a psychotic partner (or parent). For the partner, watching the violent partner drink and trying to control the mood with the TV or music trying to keep the atmosphere fun or at least safe, and them teetering on a violent outbreak, or being a child witnessing this and huddling in a closet or under a bed having to listen to one parent being beaten and hoping the violent one doesn't come for you. Or they pull one of your siblings out and you hope you're not next. Stuff like that, I think is worse than any fictional horror. There was a video game, Alien Isolation, that tried to put you in a situation like that, but it was just a video game, you could pause it and get up and take a walk (or, if you couldn't pause it (the Mass Effect trilogy was great at not respecting your time, despite being amazing otherwise), just turn it off). In real life you can only wait it out. Or make a run for a window or the door and hope you can get help or something.

games imo, but only if you are properly creative with what you do, otherwise you end up with comedy at best. Watched a streamer play some horror game with friend where if you make too much noise at microphone, you die. Biggest difficulty they had was they kept laughing too much at everything. At the end streamer also commented about the design of the game and how it would have been better if there had been for example, monsters that react to your sound differently; maybe some have to be yelled at to stay away or some are attracted to sound or whatever. But instead the game was just "if sound exceeds certain treshold you die and thats it".

With games you can do so much more than any other media, since its possible for you to "be there" and have more at stake than just reading or watching things happen to someone else. But you have to be creative about the game and cant be lazy on the gameplay design, otherwise might as well just not bother and do some other genre.

VR is the best medium for horror. Everything is scarier compared to flat games.

VR survival horror.

Multimedia/'alternate reality' (what people used to call ARGs, now I think there's some other term).

Edit: suppose this is a cop out though, since it involves combos of film, literature, audio, web design, and occasionally IRL events or materials. So putting that aside, I think video games edge out film a smidge, in the hands of the right creator/team.

The problem with horror games is that it depends on the GM and other players.

To be even more radical, I played an amazing horror larp, but it could have failed dramatically if a single player started to laugh, even if it was to release tension

I'm with you which is why I've only ever played a handful of them. I know dead space isn't like a true horror game cause other than a few jump scares it did not elicit much fear in me. But fuck silent hills, like all of them. Resident evil is kinda hit or miss like 1 was ok but 2 scared the fuck out of me, while 4 just felt kinda like an on rails shooter.