Horror vs. Terror

Hi everyone! It's been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. But this may become the norm as projects and work has been creeping up on me.

Now I've recently started working on a small project that involves invoking terror into the player. When I was talking to a friend of mine about it, a question came up regarding the difference between horror and terror. Some people may think that these two words are the same but there is a difference between the two.

Horror is something that comes externally. It's something we see in the world that in turn gives us fear. But terror is something that comes internally. For example, when you get scared watching a film like Nightmare on Elm Street, Critters or Friday the 13th, that's horror. But when you get scared of the darkness after watching the film, that's terror. Basically, horror is something we see whereas terror is something that comes from our mind (such as the
fear of death).

Now you may argue that some people get terrified when they see spiders, and this is true. But the terror isn't from seeing the spiders, it's from imagining them up close and seeing their fangs, eight eyes and hairy legs. They're mind soon convinces them that the spiders are crawling all over them, making them shake, jump and go crazy. That's terror.

By now you may be wondering why I'm talking about this. Well it's more to help you determine what kind of fear you wish to invoke from the player when they play your scary game. Games that are considered horror are ones such as the Resident Evil series. But one game that may be considered terrifying is Amnesia: The Dark Descent. If you've played both, you'll understand the difference in experience between the two games.

Most of the time, to invoke terror, you let the player's imaginations fill the gap because you probably can't make something as scary as what their minds can think up. So don't think that in order to scare people, you need to put in scary monsters. Sometimes, the absence of monsters can instill more fear.

Anyway, that's all for this week. I'm hoping to do another post next week but I can't promise anything. Thanks for reading!