As far back as the ZX Spectrum’s rudimentary beeps and bloops, video games have utilized sound effects as a key component of mood and atmosphere. Horror titles are no exception, and indeed, more than any other genre, the best examples of these games prove that sound design is a crucial tool in terrifying their players to death.

As video game hardware has improved, so has the access developers have enjoyed to the best quality audio effects, recording techniques, and sound designers. From Capcom’s original zombie masterpiece, Resident Evil, to award-nominated indie titles like 2017’s deeply distressing Darkwood, horror video games continue to innovate when it comes to using sound to scare the pants off players.

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A History of Terrifying Sound in Video Games

As the audio capabilities of video games have improved, developers of horror games have been able to lean more heavily on sound design to reinforce the tension, dread, or scream-inducing jump scares that permeate the experience. During the 80s, modern sound chips enabled games to progress from chiptune music and effects to include much more atmospheric audio, and by the early 90s, games like Doom were utilizing frightening sound design to great effect. Its combination of custom screams, growls and explosions with modifications of freely-available stock effects created an unforgettable and unnerving soundscape.

However, new avenues for sinister sound designers were to be opened just a few years later with the advent of the CD-ROM. This upgrade, with its vastly-increased storage capabilities, enabled seminal horror titles like The 7th Guest to include orchestral music and vastly-improved speech sampling, including this memorable and disturbing rhyme:

As developers realized the potential of the new technology, high-profile musicians would start to get involved in video game sound design. Id Software’s groundbreaking 1996 first-person shooter Quake featured Trent Reznor, frontman of legendary industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, as its lead sound designer. His effects and dark ambient musical score are still praised twenty-five years later.

The decade would include many more influential and sonically terrifying titles. Resident Evil and Silent Hill were among the best horror games of the PS1 era, owing a huge part of their success to the sound effects that saturated their creepy mansions and fog-shrouded streets. The latter even utilized its audio as a highly effective game mechanic, with a malfunctioning radio emitting a static crackle and hiss whenever enemies are nearby, often enabling the player to anticipate (and fear) a monster long before they could see them.

The work of sound designer Akira Yamaoka on the title, including his spooky and mysterious ambient soundtrack, made him an industry icon. His subtle and melancholy score has influenced countless titles in the years since the game’s release, and he has been an integral part of almost every subsequent entry in the Silent Hill franchise. He continues to be in demand as a composer and sound designer, bringing his haunting music to such recent horror games as The Medium.

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Recent Horror Titles Are Using Sound Design to Brilliant Effect

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In the new millennium, developers have built upon this legacy to squeeze every last drop of atmosphere out of their sound design. The Last Of Us 2 utilized innovative recording techniques to create its chilling effects, including capturing the sounds of squeezing oranges and oatmeal forced through a set of bellows, to bring its nauseating creatures to life.

It isn’t just AAA releases that have learned from the success of classic horror games. Terrifying indie games are also finding new ways to scare their fans with creative use of audio. Darkwood forces players to barricade themselves into a makeshift fortification each night while horrific beings roam outside. Players have found the sounds of monsters’ footsteps, or the hammering noises as they try to smash their way inside, even more frightening than any of the game’s grotesque artwork.

More and more, sound design is placed at the front and center of the development of games whose intent is to shock and scare. Some horror titles specifically suggest that they are best played with headphones to ensure their unsettling audio is as impactful as possible, with games like Dead Space even including a recommendation during their loading screens. This popular science fiction horror classic will soon be revisited for a full remake, although the decision to enable Dead Space’s famously silent protagonist to speak may prove controversial.

Video games have, of course, also taken inspiration from the sound design in movies for many years, and interpreted these influences in different ways. Games like P.T., which feature memorable jump scare moments, often choose to mirror Hollywood’s approach by adding non-diegetic percussion or piano discords to emphasize these heart-stopping reveals. Other games eschew this trope, building a sense of dread with weird and disquieting background ambience, or deploying sudden and unexplained noises "off camera" to keep the player on their toes.

Horror fans hope that as-yet unreleased titles continue to apply these practices. Upcoming games like Wronged Us are proudly declaring their Resident Evil and Silent Hill influences. However, to be truly successful horror experiences, developers will need to ensure that they adopt the sound design techniques of their predecessors, alongside the more obvious components of disturbing artwork and tension-building narrative.

If developers make intelligent, discerning and inventive use of music and sound effects, players can look forward to many more hours of terrifying gameplay in the days (and nights) ahead.

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