by riffraffselbow on Wed Mar 17, 2010 6:47 pm
It's probably been said before, but CONTRAST, CONTRAST, CONTRAST. You need to have lulls in the scary, or horror turns to slasher action damn quick. Anticipation is what scares us most; fear of what we don't know, not what we do.
Always keep to somewhere between a 3:2 to 4:1 Dark:Light ratio; any more light and you are moving into that weird style of Psychological Horror that's based on things not happening, any less and you're just a slasher flick.
That said: Don't be afraid to invert the rules; The Shower Scene in Psycho worked because it inverted the traditional assumptions (not so traditional any more, the concept has been ridden to hell and back) that there are "safe" places. Have the lights go out. Have the character's companion (be it literal or metaphorical; Alyx versus the writing on the walls in Portal, for example) disappear.
On that note, companions are often seen in horror films for a reason; they work. A companion can be something as metaphorical as a style of lighting, or, say a type of weapon (try taking away all AR2s from the player in a HL2 level, for example). But always remember, contrast. Contrast is important even in non-story portions of your game/level/whatever; look at, once again, the psycho shower scene. She moves from the hotel room, which has hard lighting, somewhat ominious, to the bathroom which has soft lighting, comforting. This is, as I said, inverted by the Psycho.
As a side note, what I'm saying only really applies to "true", story-based horror, not the Alien Versus Predator "OH GOD THAT THING JUST RIPPED HIS BALLS OFF" horror. So don't try to apply it there.