Scenes from Juon, Night of Sacrifice, Nanashi No Geemu, and Calling. Can you tell which is which? Click for bigger version.
A while back I wrote about a Wii horror game called Juon: The Grudge, based on the film of the same name. In that article I focused on how Juon seems to be a great translation of a teen horror flick to game form, and that it is interesting because it appears to be targeted at women and played with friends. One of the other aspects that I glossed over was the fact that Juon is incredibly easy to play: it’s designed so that people who have no game skills whatsoever can still appreciate it.
Last week I finished イケニエノヨル (Ikenie No Yoru, “Night of Sacrifice”), a horror game notable for its use of the Wii Balance Board. I wrote a review, which you should check out, because I actually enjoyed the game quite a bit. It wasn’t until I finished that game that it hit me: Night of Sacrifice and Juon are part of a larger movement of casual horror games.
In fact, there are several other games that fit this description on the market already. And thinking about it, they are all very similar games. In addition to Juon and Night of Sacrifice, consider Calling and Nanashi No Geemu. All four of these games are first person exploratory horror games with no combat whatsoever. They feature only the most basic of puzzles, all shipped exclusively for Nintendo platforms, and all use a pointer and a single button to move and play (in Nanashi No Geemu’s case, the pointer is the DS stylus; all the others use the Wiimote). They are short, easy, and even feature similar-looking enemies. All four of these games shipped close enough to each other that they are probably not ripping each other off–it’s more likely that different developers are operating independently to target the same audience. Perhaps an art movement rather than a sub genre. These games are casual horror games: horror games intended to be enjoyed by people who don’t necessarily have a lot of gaming skills.
There have been other non-combat, first person explorer horror games before these, of course (think Echo Night: Beyond and Hell Night), but those games are not as simple or straightforward as the more recent games above. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an interesting edge case; like the games above, it has few mechanics and is mostly concerned with exploration. But it doesn’t feel like a casual game; it’s full of puzzles and mechanics that rely on a certain level of game experience on the part of the player. It’s a simple game to control, but it’s not a simple game.
Juon and the rest, however, are about as simple as can be. Yet, they can still be pretty scary; even with all of the complicated stuff removed, each of these games is able to put even a veteran player like myself under pressure. They must be absolutely terrifying for neophytes.
I think there is potential for this style of casual horror game to become a third “branch” of the horror tree, the other two being Adventure-style horror games and Action-style horror games (see the previous post, and probably the next one, for lots of discussion about that particular division). Casual horror games haven’t caught on yet, at least not outside of Japan, but I think they have huge potential. Horror is a mass market genre–it appeals to people of all sorts, which is why Hollywood insists on producing horror films ad nauseum. Horror games, too, have a wide, diverse audience. Anecdotal evidence suggests, for example, that the readership for this site is pretty evenly split between men in women; in fact, there may be more women reading this than men. Though horror games have wide appeal, thus far they’ve only been targeted at a small subset of the population: gamers. But the introduction of casual horror games suggests that the genre can be brought to a much wider audience.
The mass market isn’t going to play these things on Wii or DS, though. They are going to play them on their phone or tablet. iOS and Android are probably the grounds upon which the casual horror audience will be won. Consider Dark Meadow, an atmospheric RPG that, while not quite a horror game, certainly takes many cues from the genre. Or the Mystique series of first-person horror escape games. These games are scratching at the surface of horror on mobile devices, but they are all well received and, like Juon and the others on traditional consoles, might be the beginning of a real trend.
Last week I received a pre-release build of a game called End Night, which is scheduled to ship for iPad sometime in February. It’s an interesting mashup of traditional horror mechanics and tablet-centric pacing. The game is a single loop, played over and over, in which you try to guide your character from his safe house to more and more distant locations around town during a zombie invasion. Your mission is to collect samples from certain deceased persons and bring them back to your lab to produce a serum that just might cure the zombies. The moment-to-moment play is quite informed by traditional horror games: there are tons of stats to manage, health packs are few and far between, and ammunition is always scarce. Areas must be searched for items, wounds must be washed off to prevent infection, and car alarms may be sounded as a distraction. The game is also quite hard, and death sends you all the way back to the beginning. Mechanically, it’s very much a traditional horror game.
But End Night has been wrapped up in casual packaging. Each action in the game earns the player points, and points can be spent on upgrades after each death. So while you play the same (large) level over and over again, over time it gets easier as your character becomes more powerful. This short, engaging loop is what makes End Night throughly tablet-focused experience. The controls are pretty simple: just a virtual analog stick and a shoot button that auto-aims for you. The perspective is top down and the whole game is rendered in nice 3D. The game is complicated by tablet standards, but it’s dead simple compared to your average console horror game. It’s completely different from the Juon crowd, but its target audience is similar. I’ll write more about End Night when it comes out, but its existence alone is intriguing.
It is clear that many horror fans are less than thrilled by games like Resident Evil 5 because they miss the emphasis on narrative and slower pace employed by older games. These fans should be excited by games like Juon and End Night. They suggest that casual horror may become a bastion for “traditional” horror design, albeit structured in ways we might not normally associate with the genre. Tablets and phones may just be the market within which these games take hold.
Good article, it’s making me consider trying to hunt down a copy of some of the games you’ve mentioned (I had my eye on the JuOn game when it was first revealed, but it kind of just disappeared afterwards).
Could games like House of the Dead be considered somewhere between Casual and “core” horror games? The storyline is basically there to justify the existence of Zombies and mutants, but the rest is just shooting at a screen and reloading.
There’s also Rise of Nightmares for Kinect, and to an extent I guess you could point out Dead Space: Extraction and the Resident Evil lightgun games (Gun Survivors 1,2, & 4, and Umbrella & Darkside Chronicles).
It’s interesting to see that with this generation we’ve seen an increase in titles that could fit somewhere within the horror genre, with a large number following the casual, semi-casual, or action route.
The idea of casual horror games sounds intriguing but most all of those games I’ve never found much info on. Perhaps the council scene isn’t for them, and the mobile market will allow them to grow. With a little bit of cultivation, a casual horror game can transcend story driven horror games.
You just finished Wind-Up Knight, right? Maybe your next stop could be a casual horror experience for the iPhone (I’m sure you’ve already consider this, so allow me to just cheer you on). You can do it! You can pioneer the casual horror genre into new territories! 😉 Hopefully wind-up knight generates enough revenue to fund another project (I’d like to check it out myself, but my phone isn’t nearly intelligent enough… yet).
On a related note, I’m sure smartphones are the future of most indie projects that want to make money. In my school we are working on designing a game for our capstone project. It’s a stealth game about using shadows to sneak by monsters (not horror, but has some horror elements). We’re releasing it on xbox live indie games. I really would have rather released it on PC or iPhone or something where it would’ve had a chance of making money, but that’s not how the class is set up. Maybe next time…
I think my point there was supposed to be something about most “new” genres like casual horror will probably end up pioneering themselves on cheaper development places like iPhones. and then, if they become successful there, will make the transition to things that are more expensive to develop for, like consoles.
The new Fatal frame on 3DS seems to be aiming much further towards a casual audience, with a short story mode, mainly AR based and with lots of side mini games. In an interview Shibata said that they wanted it to be a way that people can get together and be scared but have fun at the same time.
I reckon Amnesia is leaning towards “Casual Horror”, but similar to Shattered Memories, doesn’t feel so. It has pretty simple puzzles, no combat and the story doesn’t have a large emphasis. I think this has made it easily accessible, opening it up to it’s meme-like status on the internet.
I think “Casual” isn’t the right word here. In the terms of horror those games are much more hardcore than most of the other current-gen games out there, and they actually aim for a very niche market.
Also, games like Nanashi no Game or Calling are basically the same as old PS1-era horror-adventure games (Echo Night, D, Clock Tower, Hellnight, Iru, Shadowgate64), so it’s not really possible to call them a “new movement”.
Are you talking about Juon et al? If so, I strongly disagree. These are easy games, with very simple mechanics, aimed at players who are not necessarily gamers. That describes a much larger market than “niche”–it describes everybody! That’s why these games are on Wii and DS and not 360. This is, to me, a very clear simplification of more traditional horror mechanics to render the genre accessible to a much larger set of users.
Totally disagree with this as well. The new games are certainly influenced by the old, but they are fundamentally different. Even very simple old games like Shadow Gate or D are more complicated than these games, and required dexterity with a controller. They are games that rely, at least a little bit, on having played games before and having a bit of skill before starting. Juon and the others, however, are designed to be played by anyone.
That said, the games you mentioned all came from a period in Japan where the PS1 was an incredibly mass-market device. It crossed gender and age boundaries in ways that no other console since it (other, I’d argue, than the Wii and DS) has. Many of the games from that time were also designed with a super wide audience in mind, and I think the new games are influenced by those earlier attempts.
What we are seeing now, though, is a reaction to a new market. It’s about players who are not gamers, who have never held a Playstation controller, picking up a Wiimote or an iPad and playing a horror game. The design is fundamentally different to make the interface accessible to such players. That’s why I think it is quite distinct from earlier horror games.
Adventure games generally don’t require much gaming skill and have quite easy mechanics. D no Shokutaku, Yumemi Yakata, Clock Tower, Echo Night, Hellnight, Iru – did any of those horror-adventure games require precise shooting skills, platformer jumping skills or something like that? No.
But we can’t really call them “casual”, can we?
Check their sales, Chris. They’re all sold quite badly (and some weren’t even released outside Japan), which doesn’t really go well with “appeal for large market” idea.
And creators of Nanashi no Game even openly stated in interview that they knew that their game “wasn’t good for the market” – that’s why US release got canceled.
Creators simply can’t afford enough money to make a PS3 or X360 titles, because they know that they won’t get enough sales. So they make low-budget games with simplier graphics for DS and Wii.
Niche genre = low sales. That’s why we don’t see many big-budget horror-adventure titles nowadays.
D no shokutaku only used D-pad and one button to navigate through FMV world.
And original ShadowGate only required moving a cursor and choosing options.
Actually i don’t see how those two games require “more dexterity with controller” than Nanashi no Game or Calling, where you need to actually run away from ghosts.
So basically i don’t think that there’s any actual “fundamental difference”. The mentioned games are just niche low-budget games, that try to stick with old horror-adventure formula of D and Echo Night to appeal to horror fans.
But we can’t really call them “casual”, can we?
No, I wouldn’t call any of those games “casual.” What I am saying, though, is that Juon, Nanashi No Geemu, Calling, and Night of Sacrifice are fundamentally different than those games. They are an order of magnitude simpler. They are aimed at a wider audience. They are casual.
Ah, but sales only reflect the result and not the intent. I think these games are intended to reach a wider audience. Whether they are successful or not is a separate question. To tell you the truth, these aren’t great games. I’m more interested in them as a shift in approach than as market successes.
Whatever the reason for them selecting the DS and Wii, the point remains that they have made games that can be easily played by non-gamers, which represents a huge segment of the DS and Wii customer base. If they had been making 360 or PS3 games, I suspect they would have made something else. What I’m saying is, somebody sat down and said “how do we reach more people?” and this was the result. Whether they chose the platform or were forced by market forces is irrelevant. The point is that the games represent a fundamental shift in target audience.
That’s four more buttons than are required by Juon!
When I talk about “dexterity with the controller,” I mean “able to use buttons and sticks to move in 3D space.” Gamers all have that ability. Non gamers generally do not. Non gamers can still play the games I’ve labeled as casual because a simpler input system has been designed for them. That’s not true of the older horror games that you mentioned, though I agree some of them are exceedingly basic.
It’s not just about input simplicity, though, it’s about overall game complexity. Compare the map layout in say, Hell Night or Echo Night to Juon. Though the later levels get a little more complicated, Juon is basically a straight line with no branches. Same with Nanashi No Geemu, which was one of my complaints with that game (the second was a little more interesting). Same, for that matter, with Night of Sacrifice.
There’s no inventory. There’s no powerups. No health. No life bar. There aren’t any puzzles, even.
You might remember Shadow Gate as a simple point and click game but I remember it as a hard core item management puzzle layered on top of a point in click game, with eight operations to perform on any object or the environment or yourself, and tons of objects to collect, and puzzles that result in death after death after death.
If we draw a line between the most convoluted, complex game you can possibly think of (Siren?) on the left and, say, Nintendogs on the right, the games you are talking about are somewhere right of the center. But the games I’m talking about are way, way further to the right, to the point where they are giving Nintendogs a run for its money on the casual factor. End Night is a little further to the left but still clearly simpler and more casual than Shadow Gate or Echo Night or any of those games.
And that’s why it’s interesting. I haven’t seen games in the horror genre go that far to the right before. And it occurs to me that now might be a time when the market is actually ready to play those types of games, because “the market” now includes just about anybody with a phone or tablet.
Though I’m personally not a big fan of the current casual gaming scene, it’s interesting to look at the shift in focus, and to think of how casual horror games might influence more traditional horror games in the future.
Complexity suits some just fine (and believe me, I love games like Siren and Fatal Frame), but technology is progressing to the point where we can find more elegant and immersive solutions to certain design challenges. I’ve always wanted to see horror games move away from endless combat and refine the way they handle exploration, interacting with non-player characters and the world, storytelling in general and, well, immersion. Casual games might not be able to address all of those issues, but they might be able to provide inspiration.
>>fundamentally different
Not really. Just standart horror-adventure fare. Although i must admit that later games have less emphasis on puzzles and center more on pure exploration and atmosphere.
>>simpler
I wouldn’t say that Yumemi Yakata or D are harder or have more sophisticated mechanics than Calling or NnG.
>>aimed at a wider audience
All those games are aimed at [quite niche] audience of horror-adventure fans and none of the games requires much gaming skill.
This theory contradicts with the information from interviews.
If developers of Nanashi no Game really wanted to reach a wide audience, they should’ve included gun-shooting sequences to attract more gamers. But instead they made a pure exploration-oriented horror-adventure game even though they knew that this type of game won’t sell too well.
It’s the common problem with extremely low-budget games. Developers just can’t afford making huge and detailed levels. So i think it’s more a problem of budget limitations rather than intended design.
Health and life bars are useless in a game where one hit kills the character. I don’t remember any heath bar in Hellnight, for example.
And regarding puzzles – i think they’re just not very popular among gamers now, because sometimes puzzles can be rather frustrating and just break the game’s atmosphere and tension. Actually RE, SH, Siren and Fatal Frame almost don’t use any puzzles nowadays too.
Siren and Nintendogs aren’t ADVENTURE games, really. Ofcourse they have more complex gameplay.
How about HUNDREDS of text-based horror-adventure games like Kamaitachi no Yoru, Silent Hill GBA or Higurashi…? They have even simpler gameplay than Nanashi no Game and D no Shokutaku, and still they aren’t considered “casual” games at all. On the contrary, it’s probably the most niche genre around.
Kirby, I think you are confusing “casual” with “simple.” Though simplicity is an important trait of many casual games, it’s not the defining trait.
Being “casual” is about accessibility. If you took somebody who has never played a video game in their life, say your grandmother, and sat them down in front of the TV, they could play Juon. The entire game, from the interface to the map layout to the short level sequences to the first-person perspective is designed to be accessible. As a console, the Wii and DS are hits because they dramatically widen the game playing audience. Controllers with sticks and buttons are fine for people who know how to use them, but they are unwieldy and scary for people who do not.
Grandma can play Juon. She can play Night of Sacrifice. Can she play D or Hell Night? Probably not–those games require a more complicated controller-based interface, and require puzzle solving and strategy skills that are second-nature to gamers but foreign to everybody else. It’s not just that Juon and Night of Sacrifice and all the rest are simple, it’s that they’ve been made with this non-gamer in mind. That’s what sets them apart from other simple horror games.
Grandma could certainly learn to play games with more traditional challenges, but the definition of casual is that somebody who does not play games regularly can get into it without actually having to learn a bunch of new skills. They can casually play without any sort of real skill or time investment.
Of all of the games you have mentioned so far, I think the only other title that comes close to this level of accessibility is Kamaitachi No Yoru. It’s a good example, but its existence hardly refutes the point of the article, which is that now is a time where casual horror has a unique chance to make an impact on a much wider audience than people with game consoles in their homes, and in fact there have been several games in the last two or three years that I would count in that category.
My point was not that simple horror games are new, but that suddenly developers seem to have discovered an appreciation for an audience that might want casual horror games. And so they’ve made games that are designed for an audience who, prior to the Wii and iPad, have never before explicitly targeted by game developers.
I should probably leave the rest of your argument alone, because I think your response is based on a misunderstanding of my point, but I’ll just point out a few things.
There’s nothing but exploration and atmosphere in these games. There’s barely any story, even! I’m not sure why this would be “standard.” I’ve played all of the games mentioned in this thread and none of them are like this. I’m also not sure why these would be “Adventure” games, as none of the traits of traditional Adventure games seem to be present (e.g. item puzzles, dialog trees, pixel hunting, etc). The genre is irrelevant anyway because I’m talking about accessibility.
If developers of Nanashi no Game really wanted to reach a wide audience, they should’ve included gun-shooting sequences to attract more gamers. But instead they made a pure exploration-oriented horror-adventure game even though they knew that this type of game won’t sell too well.
See, I read it exactly the opposite way. People who like games with gun shooting sequences are the niche. They are traditional gamers, and while there are a while lot of them, they are a tiny fraction of the overall market. The market isn’t just “gamers” anymore, it’s everybody. The DS has reached an incredibly diverse audience, much more diverse than any other console, I think. There are literally millions of DS owners out there who would never qualify as what we think of gamers. So the developers targeted that audience–the huge group of people that includes, but is not limited to gamers. That’s actually a pretty good bet for the DS audience. Whether or not it worked out is, as I said, sort of inconsequential. What is interesting is that this greater-than-gamers audience was targeted at all. That’s the shift in the industry that I find interesting.
While I’d love to hear a definition of “Adventure” that excludes Siren but includes Juon, the point is irrelevant. The genre is inconsequential. I’m talking about game interface. In that respect, Nintendogs is a good extreme because it has a super-accessible interface. It’s so accessible that it might not even be a game.
I’m agreed that these games are ultra-niche and not casual! But I don’t see much what they have to do with the games I’ve named in the article. They are simplistic games, but they are not designed for a non-gamer crowd.
Man, I could almost write an entire blog post in response to this perspective. It betrays so many misunderstandings about how the game industry works.
I estimate that Juon cost 10x to make compared to Hell Night. Easy. The primary cost in game development is salaries, and games that have a lot of content require people to make that content, which pushes up the development cost. Despite being simple and linear, Juon’s content is way, way higher resolution than something like Hell Night. Whereas Hell Night could probably be created by a team of 2 or 3, Juon is complex enough (from a technical and art perspective) to require 10 or 15 people. That still makes it one of the cheapest possible games to develop in this day and age.
But the argument that the levels are linear because the game is cheap is so dramatically off the mark that I almost don’t know where to begin debating it. The cost has almost nothing to do with level layout. Juon may have been developed on a tight budget, but for what it is the quality is high. I didn’t really enjoy the game that much, but that’s not a function of cost; I dislike some of the design decisions, but the workmanship isn’t shoddy.
Juon is linear by design. It is linear because it is designed for people who do not have a whole lot of experience navigating complex 3D spaces. It is linear because it is attempting to scare its players in the simplest way possible and traversal puzzles are were not deemed necessary.
And that’s why it’s fascinating! This is a design strategy that betrays an interest in a segment of the market that has never played games before. Juon is even something of a dinosaur already because it’s tied to a console. The real action for this kind of game will be on phones and tablets. It’s a new school of thought, and one that I am cautiously excited about.
As i said earlier, almost all adventure games can be enjoyed by the people who have no gaming skills. Clock Tower is even more accessible than Juon – you don’t have to struggle with unresponsive wiimote, pointing an arrow is all that needed here! And D is even simpler. Yet, we don’t call Clock Tower or D a casual games.
So accessibility and simplicity alone doesn’t make the game casual.
By the way, Chris, do you really think that game, centered around atmosphere and immersion (especially when you need to only play it at night to fully enjoy it), can be called “casual” at all? I think it heavily contadicts with the essence of casual games.
When we talk about casual games – we usually mean stuff like tetris or angry birds. I.e. simple short gameplay-oriented games, that don’t require any immersion and can be easily played in a bus, train, during work breaks, etc.
If grandma can play Juon, then she would most definitely be able to play D. But i don’t think that anyone other than experienced gamers would be able to enjoy Nanashi no Game, for example. Control scheme there is just too frustrating. Furthemore, for grannies that game would probably be a bit too scary to play. They would rather play Tetris or Solitaire.
Kamaitachi no Yoru has as much accesibility as any other text-based horror adventure game. Yet, still it is very niche genre.
Why? Because though all horror-adventure games are technically very simple and accesible, they still can target only a small audience of horror-adventure fans. And again, it requires a lot of immersion and lacks fun gameplay, so it not fit for casual play in trainsbusduring work and so on. Casual gamers just won’t be interested with such game.
Point of the article itself is correct. But using pretty much standart horror-adventure games like Nanashi no Game or Calling as an example of “new movement of casual horror” doesn’t feel right.
If we search, i’m sure we would be able to find better examples of casual horror.
For instance, have you heard about Capcom’s Nazo Waku Yakata for 3DS? It’s a series of horror-themed short mini-games. I think it fits perfectly with a casual horror definition.
And new Shinrei Camera seems also to be like that – it would be centered around short mini-games.
Or Mite wa Ikenai for DS, where the point of the game is to find scary things in pictures.
There was a lot of simplistic horror adventure games like Calling back in the 90s, but was there anything like Nazo Waku Yakata or Mite wa Ikenai? Maybe THAT’s our real “new movement of casual horror”?
So accessibility and simplicity alone doesn’t make the game casual.
I think here is where our major difference is. I disagree that Grandma can play D or Clock Tower for two reasons. First, those games, simple as they are, require a level of knowledge of how video games work that Granny doesn’t have. How is she supposed to know, for example, that clicking on things in Clock Tower might produce a result? Or that the changing of the cursor indicates interactivity? The game doesn’t tell her. It’s expected that the player has some modicum of game background. The second, more important reason, is that these games are played with D pads and require some degree of speed. In Clock Tower you must have sufficient control of the game to be able to run effectively from Bobby, find a place to hide, etc. D has a section in which you must hit exactly the right keys at the right time or be stuck in an inescapable loop (the haunted armor section). If you put a PS1 controller in Grandma’s hands, it’s going to take her a whole lot longer to come to grips with the interface than the Wiimote or Balance Board.
That’s why those games are not what I’d call “casual” games. They are not designed with absolute newbies in mind. Whereas Juon, Night of Sacrifice, and the rest actually are designed with those people in mind. You can see it in every detail of these games (and I’ve mentioned a whole lot of them already). That’s what makes them different from earlier horror games: they represent a change in focus on the part of the developer. A shift towards a different audience. Though the results might look look so different to you, that shift is a major change. It’s absolutely a movement.
When we talk about casual games – we usually mean stuff like tetris or angry birds. I.e. simple short gameplay-oriented games, that don’t require any immersion and can be easily played in a bus, train, during work breaks, etc.
Yes I do. I think immersion is a red herring. Casual is about who can play it, and how easily they can get into it. Angry Birds is a casual game. Juon is a casual game. Juon has loads more atmosphere and immersion than Angry Birds, but it’s still exceedingly casual. Those two variables are orthogonal.
Nanashi no Geemu is an interesting example because its target is slightly different than Juon. It’s target audience is people who played NES games but never really got into the whole 3D thing. There’s a prevailing theory in Japan that Japanese gamers have had a tough time getting used to 3D camera motion (makes some people sick), and that a lot of players gave up on games in the mid 1990s when things started to go all 3D. If you look at the Japanese version of Spyro, for example, you’ll see that the camera system was changed to always be locked directly behind Spyro, and turn as he does at abrupt 90 degree angles. This was an attempt by Sony to combat what they perceived as a weakness with 3D camera movement in the Japanese audience.
There’s a reason that Nanashi No Geemu’s cursed game looks like Dragon Quest 3. That game is probably the most popular game in Japan of all time. Pretty much everybody over the age of 25 played it. It was huge, and SquareEnix continues to re-release earlier games in the series every few years. Every time they sell like hotcakes.
The target audience for Nanashi No Geemu, then, is people who’s last real gaming was done in the late ’80s playing games like Dragon Quest. These people can be assumed to have some basic D-Pad skills but probably not 3D first person combat skills. The DraQue design is both a way to make the game accessible to this crowd, and a marketing tool to get people who loved JRPGs back in the day to get nostalgic and buy Nanashi No Geemu for the DS they have thus far only used for things like Brain Age.
But the real indicator that this game is aimed at these not-very-game-savvy types is the 3D mode. The controls are as simple as can possibly be, and since it’s first person and moves very slowly, there’s no chance of motion sickness. Add in all the other stuff I already said about linear level design and lack of inventory or puzzles and you have a throughly casual game. Maybe one that’s not aimed at Grandma per se, but something for people who are nonetheless not regular gamers and are outside the traditional market segment.
Why? Because though all horror-adventure games are technically very simple and accesible, they still can target only a small audience of horror-adventure fans.
I agree that this is true for all of the games that you’ve mentioned. I don’t believe it is true for the games I mentioned in the article. That’s why they are interesting! That’s the fundamental difference! They are not the same as these earlier simple titles because they were designed with a different goal!
Also, why the insistence that all of these games be “horror-adventure”? What genre is that? What does it have to do with anything?
And new Shinrei Camera seems also to be like that – it would be centered around short mini-games.
Or Mite wa Ikenai for DS, where the point of the game is to find scary things in pictures.
These sound like plausible candidates for casual horror, yes. Especially Mitewa Ikenai. That game is, like the others mentioned here, playable by somebody who has never played a game before. In fact, it’s DESIGNED to be playable by people who have never played a game before. That’s the key.
C’mon Chris, you’re underestimating the grandma too much 🙂
First, the cursor changes and clearly indicates that something will happen if you click it. Second, manual clearly shows you that you need to click on things. Even grannies and kids can easily play it.
So considering this simplicity and accessibility we probably need to assume that Clock Tower was a casual game made for grannies and wide audience, right? 🙂 Wrong! In reality it was just a niche game made mainly for horror fans. And Calling, Nanashi no Game and Ikenie no Yoru are also that way.
Playing with D-pad is much simpler in my opinion.
On the other hand, Wiimote controls in Juon was quite awful – i wouldn’t recommend this game to a beginner. Only to the people who are already very familiar with wii control system.
This section was a piece of cake, really. Even a complete newbie would finish it in a few tries. Running away from ghosts in Calling is harder.
I believe that audience for Calling, Nanashi no Game, Echo Night, Amnesia and Hellnight are basically the same.
But on the other hand, audience for games like Mite wa Ikenai and Nazo Waku Yakata are really fundamentally different. Average fan of Calling and Echo Night probably won’t be interested in Mite wa Ikenai at all.
But then you’re just confusing casual games and easily-accesible games. And we’ve already discussed that it’s not the same thing.
Game may look simple and easy-accessible, but still be targeted at very niche audience (d, clock tower, higurashi, iru, calling).
Sorry, i think that theory sounds very far-fetched.
In my opinion Nanashi no Game is simply aimed on horror adventure fans who enjoyed games like Echo Night and [slightly] for people who feel nostalgic about NES RPGs.
Because they’re all horror-themed adventure games, obviously.
There is few more key features:
1) Mite wa Ikenai allowins gameplay in short bursts, during work breaks or on public transportation
2) Mite wa Ikenai is fun and gameplay-oriented
3) Mite wa Ikenai doesn’t require much immersion
4) It’s not really scary or depressing (unlike Hellnight, for example), so more people can enjoy it.
That’s what make Mite wa Ikenai good example of casual horror game and separates it from D, Clock Tower, Calling, Nanashi no Game and other more traditional games.
Kirby, I don’t understand your argument. I’ve attempted to back mine up with quite a bit of data, but your seems to be “no, that’s wrong.” You’re going to have to present something more than “nah, I don’t think so” if you hope to convince me. I’ve tried to base my argument on specific traits of specific games, but if you’re not interested in discussing specifics and would rather just lump all of these games into a single category and call it done, I think we should probably just stop talking about it because it’s no longer fruitful.
Right, but you’re not grandma. I am not sure how much professional experience you have in game testing or usability studies, and I hate to play the “take it from me” card, but your personal experience is in no way representative of the general non-gaming populous. You are probably quite representative of gamers, but that places you outside the target audience for these games. The Wii, DS, and iPad are successful because ANYBODY can pick up and play them without ANY background knowledge. That’s simply not true of a D-pad. It’s a skill that requires learning. You’ve learned it already, but most regular, non-gaming people have not.
Juon’s controls seem terrible to you because you’ve played first person games with sticks and know how much more fidelity there can be. But for a user who can’t deal with dual sticks because they don’t have the skillset and find the interface intimidating, a Juon-like control scheme (point where you want to go!) is ideal. I’m not saying Juon’s developers got it right–we’re talking about intent rather than result–but they tried. The attempt is where the interesting stuff is.
And just as “casual” doesn’t mean “simple,” it also doesn’t mean “easy.” It does have something to do with difficulty–generally challenges in casual games ramp up slower than they might in a hard core game, and sometimes challenges are organized to be optional. Some casual games are extremely difficult. The key to accessibility is presenting the difficult challenge in a way that the absolute neophyte can still interact with.
They are the same thing, but “easily accessible” is not what you think it is. Angry Birds is easily accessible. Echo Night is not.
That’s fine. Would you like to present an argument as to why you think the theory has holes? I believe I backed that assertion up with a bit of background and some reference games. Could you at least provide some counter examples? Or are you just talking about a gut feeling with no particular justification?
This is why we should stop talking about this and move on to the next topic. First, you didn’t answer my question. Why is genre relevant to this discussion? And second, what is your definition of “horror-themed adventure game”? Because when I think about Adventure games, I think about the original Adventure game, the Colossal Cave Adventure, and I think about games that came after that, like Zork and Planetfall, and I think about Graphical Adventure Games, like The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. And those games are defined by puzzles involving items and object interactions, dialog trees, and searching spaces for more items to use in puzzles. Those games also had slow, user-driven pacing, a lot of text, and a focus on story.
There are certainly horror-themed Adventure games out there, and I’ve argued that Resident Evil and its ilk are direct descendants of Adventure. But I don’t see what Juon or Nanashi No Geemu or Night of Sacrifice or any of those games have particularly in common. There’s no items, no item puzzles, very little dialog, no dialog trees, not very much text, the pace is not set by the player, etc.
So I don’t really understand what you mean.
I have not played Mitewa Ikenai, but I’d buy that it’s part of this casual horror movement. It’s a DS game, which was the only place a casual horror game could live when it came out. From now on, though, I think games aimed at that audience are bound for phone and tablet games.
The argument that earlier simple horror games are somehow related to all of this is interesting, but you’re going to have to make some sort of substantive argument to convince me. I see dramatic differences in accessibility, target audience, cost, and developer intent. If you don’t see those things, that’s cool; but absent data I think you are simply not looking close enough.
Sorry, Chris but i see no point in continue arguing about Calling and Nanashi no Game. I already explained my view, but ofcourse you’re free to disagree with me.
By the way, out of curiosity i ran a few google searches to see if anyone else actually calls Nanashi no Game, Calling and Ikenie no Yoru “casual games”.
Like this:
http://tinyurl.com/83lppus
or this: http://tinyurl.com/8729ncf
That’s funny. You seem to be the only person in whole english-speaking internet, who actually tries to lump those games into casual games category…
There are certainly horror-themed Adventure games out there, and I’ve argued that Resident Evil and its ilk are direct descendants of Adventure. But I don’t see what Juon or Nanashi No Geemu or Night of Sacrifice or any of those games have particularly in common. There’s no items, no item puzzles, very little dialog, no dialog trees, not very much text, the pace is not set by the player, etc.
Regarding adventure games in general – see, i already explained that adventure genre have moved away from the puzzles. Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit or The Path for example – they don’t have any puzzles at all, they’re all about immersion, atmosphere, story and experience. And still they are considered adventure games.
And Japanese adventure games are also like that – they’re not about puzzles, gameplay or complexity. They’re all about letting you enjoy immersion, atmosphere and story. It’s not because they target casual gamers (actually they are very niche genre), it’s just that gameplay isn’t the main point here – letting you experience an ADVENTURE is main point of such games.
So now back to topic.
I’ve remembered another real casual horror game that you might be interested in.
It’s called “Joshikousei Nigeru!”. Very simple horror-themed puzzle game that can be enjoyed by wide audience, don’t require much immersion and can be easily played in bus or train. Perfect fit for “casual horror” category in my opinion.
You can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhdmZqj_G2s
No problem with an opinion! This is an interesting discussion and I was hoping you would back your argument up with some meaty examples. It’s fine to have a gut feeling, and I’m not trying to coerce you into agreeing with me–I’m actually enjoying this discussion.
With respect to games like Joshikousei Nigeru! (which I played a few years ago), the game has horror imagery but isn’t a horror game (no intent attempt to be scary). It’s certainly simple and casual, as are most match-3 and tetris-like puzzle games. Since there’s no attempt at fear I don’t think it’s very interesting (it is just a puzzle game with some eyeballs and stuff), so it doesn’t represent an attempt to reach a new market. That said, this kind of game also works very well in aggressively casual settings, like a smart phone.
Anyway, interesting discussion. I don’t have anything particularly new to add to what I’ve already said, so let’s move on.
Interesting article, I noticed this trend as well.
As the first poster mentioned, it looks like Rise of Nightmares is another addition, although on the 360 and for Kinect, which is directed towards a more casual audience.
I think you also explained why I didn’t enjoy Juon when I first tried it. I think I expected it to be different somehow. Although I did enjoy Calling…
Perhaps I’ll give Juon another shot sometime.
What I’m most interested in is where you can take the concept of “casual horror”. When I think casual game I think Tetris and Bejeweled, something that you mainly play to casually pass the time, then there’s party/social games like Smash Bros. and Wii Sports. Juon fits on the party/social games side but I have a hard time picturing the sort of game that would fit on the other.
It seems like these games don’t have to emphasise story. Which is very interesting. All other horror games have you follow a characterized protagonist through an intriguing setting, leading you though a winding tale of macabre. But these games have virtually blank-slate characters, stock settings, simplistic ghost stories. Not to degrade them but to really scare you have to make it personal. The idea of a casual horror game may have the ability to skip the need of a protagonist and directly involve the player. But how is it best implemented?
The easiest way is have a copy of Mine Sweep have a realistic spider crawl up the screen, but that would result in more then a few iPhones thrown across the room. Screamer type scares are the simplest way to scare the player but they’re considered cheap. What we talked about in South Dakota, Chris, about a casual game as the launching point for an ARG, that way a casual player can enjoy the game on it’s own and anyone looking for story can delve deeper. From there the only thing I can think of taking a simple story/character and drenching it with symbolical messages. Then there’s the Juon type game that is fairly straight forward with it’s horror but light on story.
So there’s the question, where to take it so it’s approachable for casual gamers and enjoyable for the horror aficionado? There has to be more ways to take this then what I’ve mentioned. I have hopes that Casual Horror can showcase the bare bones of how to create an emotional response through a simple game mechanic.
By the way, have you carried on playing Fatal Frame IV yet? You gave a small preview thing a while back but nothing since…