Three Specific Kinds of Terror

Summary by Krater

An analytical video exploring the horror mechanics of Amnesia: The Bunker, Who's Lila?, and The Utility Room, concluding that their horror stems from the loss of control and the consequences of player choice.

From the video

Answers: What do horror games like Amnesia: The Bunker, Who's Lila?, and The Utility Room reveal about the horror genre?

• horror game design
• player agency and choice
• resource management in horror games
• facial expression mechanics in horror
• atmospheric dread in virtual reality

What it concludes

• Amnesia: The Bunker blends helplessness with an arsenal, punishing resource management and forcing difficult choices regarding survival items.
• Who's Lila? subverts traditional dialogue trees by forcing players to manually manipulate facial expressions to convey emotions in real time.
• The Utility Room utilizes VR scale and atmospheric dread to create an unsettling, primordial sense of horror without traditional genre tropes.
• All horror ultimately stems from a loss of control, and games that grant agency simultaneously deny it by forcing players to live with the consequences of their mistakes.