Spatiality, Focalization and Temporality in Horror Games

The horror genre can be found both in books and movies to shock and scare the audience. In digital games, players have to survive, they try to progress while they have to overcome frightening obstacles, otherwise they cannot be successful. The paper analyses three main topics: spatiality (where closed, open and looping spaces are in the centre), focalization (based on G. Genette’s term., We shows how the different angles could contribute to the narrative and what unique methods exist), and temporality (where traumatic experience and looping time is at the focal point, and E. Husserl’s protentions and retention terms will be important as well). We also argue that these games are unusual if we take a look at M. Csíkszentmihályi’s skills-challenges diagram and see if they fit in the flow zone. The paper aims to extend our understanding of horror games.