Could there be such a thing as a horror strategy game? I've practically been jumpscared when a beefy enemy unit appears during a mission when I don't expect it, what if it was actually scary too? Or maybe a less visceral kind of fear, more overwhelming despair as you struggle to survive against seemingly impossible odds while the world burns around you. DEFCON comes close I think, just needs a proper campaign to hammer home how fricked it all is.
I think there was a furry cannibalism game about the Russian civil war but that wasn't horror.
There was a flash game about surviving the zombie apocalypse (had to reclaim tiles on the map, game ended with finding a cure or moving to a new place) which made my skin crawl but only when I had the music turned on.
So yes, you could but it'd rely heavily either on atmospheric tension or require you to not be the eye-in-the-sky god who lords over everyone - for example take FNaF but instead of watching merely CCTV cameras you're commanding soldiers and you will get a jumpscare death if you let someone breach the line and get to your HQ.
>and you will get a jumpscare death if you let someone breach the line and get to your HQ.
Had this idea of something like Duskers but as an RTS. You're stuck in a vehicle and you have to direct unreliable robots (or maybe cyborgs) through schematic views overlayed with grainy radar imaging against an alien threat you only get a vague impression of and doesn't sit still. But you can also hear stuff going on from your position, distantly. Sometimes not so distantly.
imagine being the head of planetary security on a world undergoing a xenomorph/flood/zerg/necromorph outbreak. Constant timer in the corner of every mission depicting the planet's population steadily ticking downward. Nuclear strikes as a delaying action.
>Radio Commander but it's freaky fricking flesh aliens and you're closer to the front.
>"This is Command to 2nd Platoon, I need you to head 400 meters south"
>Nothing but flesh being torn from bone and muffled screams
>Radio in the 1st Armored Platoon
>Nothing but the quiet whimpers of the driver, the last surviving crewman
>The sounds of battle get closer and more visceral the more your troops are pushed back
>Your command room gets emptier and emptier the more Staff Officers leave to round up as many men as they can to hold off the swarm
>Until it's only you, alone in a dimly lit bunker.
>You can hear them, outside the sealed blast doors
>Scratching, clawing, trying to imitate human speech patters.
>You unholster your service pistol and place it to your head. You know why they try to speak.
It could probably be done better but it was just off the top of my head. I think a key component is making the player a real person on the field, in danger too.
I'd play that. That sounds rad as hell.
Sounds similar to Deadnaut.
or Dusker
>move your units right or le spooky monsters jump scares you
literally fnaf
Thank you for your input, Reddit.
That's kinda my idea that I just wrote up, needing to monitor both the actual strategic element, and your own base/security.
I would genuinely throw money at this.
That sounds awesome
>I think there was a furry cannibalism game about the Russian civil war but that wasn't horror.
You're talking about Tooth and Tail, right? It's a fun little game, but IIRC the only even slightly disturbing scene is in the beginning where that one dude's son get chosen for the "harvest" and turned into food. Although I guess the underlying theme of a society fighting each other to decide who gets turned into livestock is pretty neat. It's a pretty fun game besides all that.
I reckon that horror in the traditional sense wouldn't work in a strategy game, since you're usually pretty disassociated from whatever is happening on the ground. Though that does allow for the game to unload some grander, maybe existential horror and stuff like that on the player.
Yes that's the one.
>the only even slightly disturbing scene is in the beginning where that one dude's son get chosen for the "harvest" and turned into food.
And that's why I didn't think about buying it.
>red faction lower left corner
>Although I guess the underlying theme of a society fighting each other to decide who gets turned into livestock is pretty neat.
for being a silly little RTS this concept was incredibly bleak, i loved the campaign for it but wonder how it would land if they nixed the furry angle and just made all the factions humans living in, like, a resource-depleted earth or something. Just really frick that shit up.
>There was a flash game about surviving the zombie apocalypse (had to reclaim tiles on the map, game ended with finding a cure or moving to a new place) which made my skin crawl but only when I had the music turned on.
Rebuild. It was kino
Executive Assault has that last bit but it isn't really horror oriented
>Or maybe a less visceral kind of fear, more overwhelming despair as you struggle to survive against seemingly impossible odds
Hoi3
Set difficulty to Very hard
Select June 1941 scenario
Let AI manage your production and technology.
You control everything else.
Play as Soviet Union
Despair.
Despair a lot.
i tend to get an erection when im slowly losing a war in grand strategy games
rattenreich
Hitler lost, chud.
moron
I feel like ufo defense and xenonauts can capture that vibe at some times, and xcom2012 definitely did a number on me as a kid
playing it gave me nightmares
>ufo defense
X-COM was my initial thought as well. And in a similar vein, Incubation.
I've been jumpscared a few times when playing against the Zerg in StarCraft too.
X-COM Files does horror pretty well. Those early deployments where you only have a couple of guys and handguns and know *something* is in the dark waiting for you are very tense and can lead to great organic horror movie situations. Monsters can get the drop on you, zombies can push you back and overwhelm you because you can't get out enough firepower to kill them before they reach you if your deployment is unlucky. These scenarios are so good. The closest experiences I've had in gaming to the Resident Evil 3 opening cutscene, which is my idea of how a great horror strategy game would play out.
There's that Cepheus Protocol game in development now, waiting to see how that works.
Third for XCOM. Easily the best part of XCOM:Piratez was when the Star Gods had their really glitchy, hacky version of invisibility that was based on sightlines. Because half the time it wouldn't work right and they would just STAY invisible- it lead to situations where no matter how good you are, if you thought an Ethereal was in that building you had to bomb it. No way around it.
It felt like fighting Cthulhu, and all you had was conventional weapons. You actually felt like you were fighting an enemy that was beyond you.
Homeworld Cataclysm is pretty much the only all around Horror RTS, it nailed it's atmosphere so well
Some missions in Nexus:Jupiter Incident I found kind of unnerving
Attila Total War is kind of apocalyptic (and everyone hates it because of it) but not really horror
The first time you board a space hulk in Dawn of War 2 but it gets overused and played out in the expansions
Battle Brothers maybe
Just play DEFCON
I think the hard part is combining the horror with an actual game
If you want to have a le spooky monster wreck your shit it will stop being spooky the first time it forces you to start over
I feel like instead it could be something like, every mission result is permanent. You fail a mission, the story continues with you having to deal with the consequences of town XYZ being overrun and violently disemboweled by horrors. The ending you get could depend on how many missions you succeed in. Fail them all and your guy dies horrible as a miserable failure, win a few and he blows his brain out, win a decent amount and you and your dudes make it at least, win them all to get the "there's actually hope for mankind" ending.
I make games as a hobby and I actually want to tackle an horror RTS/RTT (I feel like the horror melts away if you can pause and asses the situation, gotta be real time) but knowing I can't count on top notch VA and professional music means the game would need an incredibly tight design to work as both a strategic game and a horror game
problem is that if you mix that with the notoriously autistic strategy playerbase people would just start over until they get a perfect run.
The multiple endings aren't out of the question but it can't be based on success, it has to be some other parameter that the player is unaware of
For example the game could be something like World in conflict, where getting your whole army wiped out means nothing since you just get your deployment points back, but secretly the game is tracking your losses
>> the notoriously autistic strategy playerbase people would just start over until they get a perfect run
Ah, but we have a solution to that problem: don't let them start over. Do what One Shot did and be all in. You have one shot, you fail, your savefile get's deleted and you try again. Maybe do some taunting where the Aliens are invading a new world/contient and use the appearence of your previous guys? Their clothes, their voicelines, maybe have the first type of enemy, and the most numerous, you encounter be slightly shaped like your previous Commander to really drive it home you failed?
A Rouge-like RTS horror game where the reason for being allowed to costumize your troops and Commander is because when you lose they come back to haunt as the Aliens wear them like flesh-socks.
>I feel like instead it could be something like, every mission result is permanent. You fail a mission, the story continues with you having to deal with the consequences of town XYZ being overrun and violently disemboweled by horrors.
I'd unironically love that. I love games that punish you for taking unnecessary risks (that fail). That whole aspect of the strategic thinking gets lost if you can just start the mission all over.
>problem is that if you mix that with the notoriously autistic strategy playerbase people would just start over until they get a perfect run.
That's true too though. People are moronic.
I think the trick is ultimately in creating the right atmosphere and sense of suspense. You can even play up the fear of the unknown by proper limiting information through fog of war mechanics.
Yeah but imo there's a difference between a horror strategy game and a strategy game with a horror atmosphere
Like I'm thinking of fear emanating from the gameplay itself, which is hard as balls when a free cam means you can miss the action at any time
>a free cam means you can miss the action at any time
I guess you go the Homeworld route, where you hear the screams of your fleet over the radio when they die.
I thought Wolfenstein was pretty scary first time I played it. Admittedly I was off my fricking tree at the time.
old UFO
Myth
Achievable by robbing player so much of their omnipotent ability to keep them on edge, and leaving cues for horrible thoughts.
Faulty and limited detection, such as limited field of view, refresh rate, accuracy and recognition, anomalies and deceiving IFF, ominous tracks and remain left behind, and their inconsistency(between different units and different times), making you paranoid of what you see and don't see.
Faulty networks, such that part of your comm network can be cut out, or resort to radio silence to avoid detection. Again the inconsistency found after reconnection can really bring out the trust issue.
Close ranged infection destroys safety in numbers as infection bomber will always get through and cascading the disaster.
Through video and audio feed from the units to you and between themselves to further propagate the chill.
Lobotomy Corporation is an obvious example.
Othercide is a more obscure one. It's an X-Com-like roguelite with heavy horror themes. It's a very cool game that is unfortunately ruined by a lack of variety.
First-person RTT in a closed environment with poor information?
Darkest Dungeon, if the gameplay didn't suck.
Some examples come to mind
> Modded OXCE (oldcom)
> JA2 1.13 with zombies and crepitus settings tuned up
> In a sense the new xcom as well
> Hard West (it's pretty grimdark)
> Templar Battleforce (a nice war40K clone)
> Othercide
> Mechanicus (although it is too easy going on)
> Dead State
I think there also was a lovecraftian tbs but i don't remember its name
Sea Salt, but you are the monster and serve Dagon. So it's nothing to Geiger-ish. Also it's an ok game, but it feels more like an arcade game you play on and off.
Sea Salt has some good lore and atmosphere.
Highfleet with the strike fleets hunting you.
>*Thermal signature detected*
>*Attention, visual contact!*
>*Ti-ti-ti ti ti-ti-ti-ta ti-ta ti-ti-ti ta...*
>"Dronish descent" starts playing
Why is everyone here talking tactics games when OP specifically asked about strategy games?
>Or maybe a less visceral kind of fear, more overwhelming despair as you struggle to survive against seemingly impossible odds while the world burns around you
Frostpunk
There's Cepheus Protocol which is an absurdly janky but kind of interesting zombie apocalypse RTS/RTT thing. It's gonna have an FPS mode too, eventually.
Unironically shit like Defcon is the closest I can think of to a horror/scary strategy game.
It's been mentioned a few times in this thread before but I don't think most people realise just how horrific Homeworld Cataclysm was
Imagine playing a strategy game where your opponent was The Thing or The Many and it had whole fleets at its disposal
Forget scariest /vst/ enemies, The Beast is one of the scariest enemies in videogames, period
>CUT US LOOSE
Great game though I never understood why they made the Somtaw ships so whacky and out of scale with the existing factions.
what exactly is whacky 2u?
Unsure on the scaling, but the Somtaaw ships look different as they're either civilian ships pressed into service as combat units, purchased from the Bentusi, or copied from Bentusi designs, as they couldn't afford the licensing fees the other kiith charged to use their designs.
SMAC had a kind of creepy aspects to it as the game revolved around exploring different types of hellscape societies enabled by future technologies and extremist ideologies. And the alien planet itself was kind of a hellscape in itself with sentient fungi and worms that would literally suck people's brains out.
But it I don't think it really gets deep enough in the juicy details to really qualify as horror.
Maybe a cosmic horror one? Filled with a bunch of enemies that break rules?
Also enemy factions, each faction of cosmic horrors should have their own goals, some might be exterminating everything, others taking over, some just taking some humans for study?
I imagine something xcom like, having to try and figure out what the enemies goals are, what their abilities are, and how to stop both of them.
Also it should have a more personal element, maybe a tactical screen where you have to monitor the base your stationed in, or it can be invaded/infiltrated, which can have multiple effects, such as an instant game over.
I feel like the only real way to make a strategy game actually horrific is to diverge from the survival horror kind of horror (since that relies on our inherent survival instincts to drive the horror) and go into more existential horror. Less, "oh god, they're going to eat me" to more "oh god, this is what people do to each other?"
>oh god, this is what people do to each other?
Eh whenever a strategy game tries doing "le horrors of le war" I never feel like it manages
It especially doesn't work if you or your guys are the one doing the warcrimes
A million deaths becomes a statistic.
Probably can't go beyond squad based command.
Eh could easily see a much larger game. I think you could easily do it in a very difficult game where most actions are to delay. An overwhelming alien threat for instance while you sit in the furher bunker losing city after city in a desperate conflict. Like most people have already said it just needs a proper presentation and atmosphere. DEFCON already proves my concept I think of a "winning but at what cost" type war game. Horror typically goes for a more personal story and to get you closer to the character, such as dead space making UI elements in game. Many devs don't realize you can go the exact opposite way and make everything completely emotionally detached, such as DEFCON and Duskers.
Could make creating the executive cabinet like creating an RPG party. And you're managing everyone's stress so the general doesn't decide to murder suicide everyone. Have to weight evacuating early against the hit in approvals.
strategy games are too detached from actual characters, units and environments to induce any feelings, horror included. That would have to be a small tactical scale and more of a squad RT Tactics game with RPG elements like X-COM or something closer to This War of Mine.
Otherwise you're just watching an interactive movie.
Some RTS do feature bodyhorror/spooky ayy's as the race. But they not gonna do same justice without propper art + sound directon. This is solid 60-70% of horror.
A VR game where you're playing a strategic board game in a haunted house.
Against a ghost.
An RTT version of Space Beast Terror Fright
There's an underutilized niche in the form of a zombie rts tbh. It could play out with an advanced version of the fog of war seen in CoH2 with urban environments with a timed survival and limited resource bent. Just trying to stretch out a limited pool of units as long as you can to survive.
I think it could be done by focusing on the inevitability of a death that slowly creeps into the map you play and your objective is either focused on prolonging your life as long as possible or perhaps fighting other factions to use the limited means of escape.
Creeper World isn't explicitly horror, but it does this and it does mange to convey a since of urgency and dread as you watch the creeper slowly fill up the map. Another way you could do it would be like Mystcraft's Decay, which starts in unstable dimensions and slowly converts nearby material to itself, sometimes spreading through the air as well. You can physically destroy it yourself, but it's just a temporary delay since it grows faster than one person can remove it.
X-COM: UFO Defence and X-COM: Terror from the deep are both good games who cope with the task of scaring the player
Gemcraft (especially Labirynth and Chasing Shadow) seems to qualify.
>you fight monsters who want to reach you and devour you
>also, there's an ancient evil demon
>who regularly screws with the interface, appears in the backgrounds and doesn't give a frick that you paused a game.
You could have a game where the out of combat preperation and upgrading was represented by a board game being played between you and SOMETHING in the shadows, and the in combat gameplay showing your very real soldiers facing up against that thing's horde.
Inscription isn't a horror game and it's only sort of a /vst/ but it illustrates my idea well enough
For me it's Disciples 2. No other fantasy strategy game sold me on the undead and demons as grotesque and dangerous creatures like this. Everywhere else they are just some disposable fantasy monsters.
I just bought it on gog.com but I can't start it. I've already tried the compatibility settings options.
How are you running it? Is it because I am using Windows 11?
>I am using Windows 11
My condolences.