Slasher Maze Mechanic

by: Noah Ortega

Initial Analysis

I chose to base my mechanic on the slasher movie genre. This genre, while deemed by most as not being a serious genre full of "cheap" scares, many elements from this genre are extremely applicable towards games and game mechanics. There has never been a game made in the slasher movie genre, sure there's plenty of survival horror games out there, but they always pit the player against an uncountable number of enemies. The traditional hero in survival horror games is much more powerful than his adversaries, slasher films are the exact opposite of the traditional survival horror genre.

First of all, the hero in slasher movies is almost always a female with no combat, or self defense training, their main defense is the ability to run away, and while they are up against the same overwhelming enemy force, that force manifests itself in a single person. This makes for an intense game of cat and mouse, because in order for the protagonist to overcome the antagonist they need to improvise and think outside the box.

Now this is all well and good but for my mechanic I focused on specific (and very effective) techniques that are commonly used in slasher movies to up the tension before a big scare. I broke this down into three things.

Music: The music is a HUGE component of what makes a movie scary, and what slasher movies tend to do is slowly ramp up the scary music right before something is about to happen and then cut it out seconds before the big scare. As the music ramps up it increases the tension, then when it cuts out it provides the contrast for the loud "jump" scare.

Movement: Movement is an extremely effective way to increase the tension in a scene, almost every single slasher film uses movement as an element to increase tension. This technique is all about contrast and drawing out the audiences expectation about when something is going to happen. This is used in many ways leading up to a big scare, slowly reaching for something, slowly walking down a hallway. slowly opening a door, you get the idea. The point is that the slow movement provides the contrast for the frantic movement that is about to occur, so, just like with music, it's all about contrast.

The Camera: The best example of camera use in a slasher film is Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th blows away every other slasher movie when it comes to the camera. The key to this technique is not contrast but rather, ambiguity. Friday the 13th uses a very voyeuristic camera for most of it's shots, which always has you wondering if it's just a camera, or if you're looking at things through the killer's eyes. Another thing they do with the camera is cut off your peripheral vision. When they are increasing the tension in the scene they will slowly move the camera closer in to the protagonist, effectively cutting off your peripheral vision of the scene just when you need it most. This makes the killer's spatial location in relation to the protagonist very ambiguous. He could be right behind the protagonist but you can't see him because the camera is so close.

When you effectively combine all three of these techniques into a slasher movie the effect is profound.

Prototype Integration

The mechanic I ended up integrating into my prototype is music. Music in games is usually lacking, so I wanted to see if I could effectively integrate it as a way to increase tension. All I did was make a maze (because I needed a place for the players to run around and get disoriented in), attach a sound emitter with a falloff radius to one of the players, give him a rocket launcher, and give the other player nothing. This mechanic fully supports multiplayer by the way, and I really want to play it with someone so if anyone's interested we should play sometime after realistic environment is due.

The "killer" is extremely powerful and has nothing to fear from the hero, but the hero can hear the other player coming through the ramping up of the music. This is where I integrated the ambiguity element, because the players are in a maze they will always have walls between them, so even though the hero may know the killer is close they have no idea of their exact spatial relationship to each other.

I would like to work some more on the right side of the maze but for now it's good to go.