Targeting Horror via Level and Soundscape Generation
Phil Lopes, Antonios Liapis, Georgios N. Yannakakis · Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment · 2015
Horror games form a peculiar niche within game design paradigms, as they entertain by eliciting negative emotions such as fear and unease to their audience during play. This genre often follows a specific progression of tension culminating at a metaphorical peak, which is defined by the designer. A player's tension is elicited by several facets of the game, including its mechanics, its sounds, and the placement of enemies in its levels. This paper investigates how designers can control and guide the automated generation of levels and their soundscapes by authoring the intended tension of a player traversing them.