Defined Design: Alien Isolation’s Accentuated Anxiety

VGChartz's Paul Broussard: "It might not be unreasonable to say that horror is the most challenging genre to develop a game within. While there are a number of generally agreed upon rules for what makes a good action, adventure, or strategy game, pinning down what exactly makes a title “scary” is a lot tougher to do. Not only do people wildly differ in what they find scary, but developers then have to program and design a game very carefully to ensure the source of the fear remains scary throughout. Because, after all, if a horror title stops being scary, then it’s lost its purpose.

Or, so I thought. Every so often, a release comes along and rather rudely undermines all of my neat assumptions about game design and what makes something good or bad. Alien: Isolation challenges the notion that a “horror” title needs to consistently be scary throughout to succeed, and as it turns out, the way to do it is to kick the anxiety level up to ten throughout the entire experience."